tonight now the room fills with the throb and hubbub of departure the explorer gets a few necessities together coaches himself on a beginning
better the streets first a stroll uptown downtown along the wharves under the el peering into faces in taxicabs at the drivers of trucks at old men chewing in lunchrooms at drunk bums drooling puke in alleys what’s the newsvendor reading? what did the elderly wop selling chestnuts whisper to the fat woman behind the picklejars? where is she going the plain girl in a red hat running up the subway steps and the cop joking the other cop across the street? and the smack of a kiss from two shadows under the stoop of the brownstone house and the grouchy faces at the streetcorner suddenly gaping black with yells at the thud of a blow a whistle scampering feet the event?
tonight now
but instead you find yourself (if self is the bellyaching malingerer so often the companion of aimless walks) the jobhunt forgotten neglected the bulletinboard where the futures are scrawled in chalk
among nibbling chinamen at the Thalia
ears dazed by the crash of alien gongs the chuckle of rattles the piping of incomprehensible flutes the swing and squawk of ununderstandable talk otherworld music antics postures costumes
an unidentified stranger
destination unknown
hat pulled down over the has he any? face
Charley Anderson
It was a bright metalcolored January day when Charley went downtown to lunch with Nat Benton. He got to the broker’s office a little early, and sat waiting in an empty office looking out through the broad steelframed windows at the North River and the Statue of Liberty and the bay beyond all shiny ruffled green in the northwest wind, spotted with white dabs of smoke from tugboats, streaked with catspaws and the churny wakes of freighters bucking the wind, checkered with lighters and flatboats, carferries, barges and the red sawedoff passengerferries. A schooner with grey sails was running out before the wind.
Charley sat at Nat Benton’s desk smoking a cigarette and being careful to get all his ashes in the polished brass ashreceiver that stood beside the desk. The phone buzzed. It was the switchboard girl. “Mr. Anderson… Mr. Benton asked me to beg you to excuse him for a few more minutes. He’s out on the floor. He’ll be over right away.” A little later Benton stuck in the crack of the door his thin pale face on a long neck like a chicken’s. “Hullo, Charley… be right there.” Charley had time to smoke one more cigarette before Benton came back. “I bet you’re starved.” “That’s all right, Nat, I been enjoyin’ the view.”
“View?… Sure… Why, I don’t believe I look out of that window from one week’s end to the other… Still it was on one of those darned red ferries that old Vanderbilt got his start… I guess if I took my nose out of the ticker now and then I’d be better off… Come along, let’s get something to eat.” Going down in the elevator Nat Benton went on talking. “Why, you are certainly a difficult customer to get hold of.”
“The first time I’ve had my overalls off in a year,” said Charley, laughing.
The cold stung when they stepped out of the revolving doors. “You know, Charley, there’s been quite a little talk about you fellers on the street… Askew-Merritt went up five points yesterday. The other day there was a feller from Detroit, a crackerjack feller… you know the Tern outfit… looking all over for you. We’ll have lunch together next time he’s in town.”
When they got to the corner under the el an icy blast of wind lashed their faces and brought tears to their eyes. The street was crowded; men, errandboys, pretty girl stenographers, all had the same worried look and pursed lips Nat Benton had. “Plenty cold today.” Benton was gasping, tugging at his coatcollar. “These steamheated offices soften a feller up.” They ducked into a building and went down into the warm hotrolls smell of a basement restaurant. Their faces were still tingling from the cold when they had sat down and were studying the menucards.
“Do you know,” Benton said, “I’ve got an idea you boys stand in the way of making a little money out there.” “It’s sure been a job gettin’ her started,” said Charley as he put his spoon into a plate of peasoup. He was hungry. “Every time you turn your back somethin’ breaks down and everythin’ goes cockeyed. But now I’ve got a wonderful guy for a foreman. He’s a Heinie used to work for the Fokker outfit.”
Nat Benton was eating rawroastbeef sandwiches and buttermilk. “I’ve got no more digestion than…” “Than John D. Rockefeller,” put in Charley. They laughed.
Benton started talking again. “But as I was saying, I don’t know anything about manufacturing but it’s always been my idea that the secret of moneymaking in that line of business was discovering proper people to work for you. They work for you or you work for them. That’s about the size of it. After all you fellers turn out the product out there in Long Island City, but if you want to make the money you’ve got to come down here to make it… Isn’t that true?”
Charley looked up from the juicy sirloin he was just about to cut. He burst out laughing. “I guess,” he said. “A man’ud be a damn fool to keep his nose on his draftin’board all his life.” They talked about golf for a while, then when they were having their coffee, Nat Benton said, “Charley, I just wanted to pass the word along, on account of you being a friend of old Ollie’s and the Humphries and all that sort of thing… don’t you boys sell any of your stock. If I were you I’d scrape up all the cash you could get ahold of for a margin and buy up any that’s around loose. You’ll have the chance soon.”
“You think she’ll keep on risin’?”
“Now you keep this under your hat… Merritt and that crowd are worried. They’re selling, so you can expect a drop. That’s what these Tern people in Detroit are waiting for to get in cheap, see, they like the looks of your little concern… They think your engine is a whiz… If it’s agreeable to you I’d like to handle your brokerage account, just for old times’ sake, you understand.”
Charley laughed. “Gosh, I hadn’t pictured myself with a brokerage account… but by heck, you may be right.”
“I wouldn’t like to see you wake up one morning and find yourself out on the cold cold pavement, see, Charley.”
After they’d eaten Nat Benton asked Charley if he’d ever seen the stockexchange operating. “It’s interesting to see if a feller’s never seen it,” he said and led Charley across Broadway where the lashing wind cut their faces and down a narrow street shaded by tall buildings into a crowded vestibule. “My, that cold nips your ears,” he said. “You ought to see it out where I come from,” said Charley. They went up in an elevator and came out in a little room where some elderly parties in uniform greeted Mr. Benton with considerable respect. Nat signed in a book and they were let out through a small door into the visitors’ gallery and stood a minute looking down into a great greenish hall like a railroadstation onto the heads of a crowd of men, some in uniform, some with white badges, slowly churning around the tradingposts. Sometimes the crowd knotted and thickened at one booth and sometimes at another. The air was full of shuffle and low clicking machinesounds in which voices were lost. “Don’t look like much,” said Nat, “but that’s where it all changes hands.” Nat pointed out the booths where different classes of stocks were traded. “I guess they don’t think much about aviation stocks,” said Charley. “No, it’s all steel and oil and the automotive industries,” said Nat. “We’ll give ’em a few years… what do you say, Nat?” said Charley boisterously.
Charley went uptown on the Second Avenue el and out across the Queensboro Bridge. At Queens Plaza he got off and walked over to the garage where he kept his car, a Stutz roadster he’d bought secondhand. The traffic was heavy and he was tired and peevish before he got out to the plant. The sky had become overcast and dry snow drove on the wind. He turned in and jammed on his brakes in the crunching ash of the yard in front of the office, then he pulled off his padded aviator’s helmet and sat there a minute in the car after he’d switched off the motor listening to the hum and whir and clatter of the plant. “The sonsabitches are slackenin’ up,” he muttered under his breath.