“Full of Canadian Club, that’s what’s the matter with him… You ought to see the trouble I have getting him home nights.” “You’re the only friend he has,” Agnes would say, rolling up her eyes. “I think it’s noble of you to stick by him.”
Margo was paying all the back bills up at the apartment and had started a small account at the Bowery Savings Bank just to be on the safe side. She felt she was getting the hang of the stockmarket a little. Still it made her feel trashy not working and it gave her the creeps sitting around in the apartment summer afternoons while Agnes read Frank Science and Health in a singsong voice, so she started going around the dress shops to see if she could get herself a job as a model. “I want to learn some more about clothes… mine always look like they were made of old floursacks,” she explained to Agnes. “Are you sure Mr. Anderson won’t mind?” “If he don’t like it he can lump it,” said Margo, tossing her head.
In the fall they finally took her on at Piquot’s new French gown-shop on Fiftyseventh Street. It was tiresome work but it left her evenings free. She confided to Agnes that if she ever let Mr. A out of her sight in the evening some little floosey or other would get hold of him sure as fate. Agnes was delighted that Margo was out of the show business. “I never felt it was right for you to do that sort of thing and now I feel you can be a real power for good with poor Mr. Anderson,” Agnes said. Whenever Margo told them about a new plunger he had taken on the market, Agnes and Frank would hold the thought for Mr. Anderson.
Jules Piquot was a middleaged roundfaced Frenchman with a funny waddle like a duck who thought all the girls were crazy about him. He took a great fancy to Margo, or maybe it was that he’d found out somewhere that her protector, as he called it, was a millionaire. He said she must always keep that beautiful golden tan and made her wear her hair smooth on her head instead of in the curls she’d worn it in since she had been a Follies girl. “Vat is te use to make beautiful clothes for American women if tey look so healty like from milkin’ a cow?” he said. “Vat you need to make interestin’ a dress is ’ere,” and he struck himself with a pudgy ringed fist on the bosom of his silk pleated shirt. “It is drama… In America all you care about is te perfect tirtysix.”
“Oh, I guess you think we’re very unrefined,” said Margo. “If I only ’ad some capital,” groaned Piquot, shaking his head as he went back to his office on the mezzanine that was all glass and eggshellwhite with aluminum fittings. “I could make New York te most stylish city in te vorld.”
Margo liked it parading around in the Paris models and in Piquot’s own slinky contraptions over the deep puttycolored rugs. It was better than shaking her fanny in the chorus all right. She didn’t have to get down to the showrooms till late. The showrooms were warm and spotless, with a faint bitter smell on the air of new materials and dyes and mothballs, shot through with a whiff of scented Egyptian cigarettes. The models had a little room in the back where they could sit and read magazines and talk about beauty treatments and the theaters and the football season, when there were no customers. There were only two other girls who came regularly and there weren’t too many customers either. The girls said that Piquot was going broke.
When he had his sale after Christmas Margo got Agnes to go down one Monday morning and buy her three stunning gowns for thirty dollars each; she tipped Agnes off on just what to buy and made out not to know her when she pranced out to show the new spring models off.
There wasn’t any doubt any more that Piquot was going broke. Billcollectors stormed in the little office on the mezzanine and everybody’s pay was three weeks in arrears, and Piquot’s moonshaped face drooped in tiny sagging wrinkles. Margo decided she’d better start looking around for another job, especially as Mr. A’s drinking was getting harder and harder to handle. Every morning she studied the stockmarket reports. She didn’t have the faith she had at first in Mr. A’s tips after she’d bought Sinclair one day and had had to cover her margin and had come out three hundred dollars in the hole.
One Saturday there was a great stir around Piquot’s. Piquot himself kept charging out of his office waving his short arms, sometimes peevish and sometimes cackling and giggling, driving the salesladies and models before him like a new rooster in a henyard. Somebody was coming to take photographs for Vogue. The photographer when he finally came was a thin-faced young Jewish boy with a pasty skin and dark circles under his eyes. He had a regular big photographer’s camera and a great many flashlight bulbs all silvercrinkly inside that Piquot kept picking up and handling in a gingerly kind of way and exclaiming over. “A vonderful invention… I vould never ’ave photographs taken before because I detest explosions and ten te danger of fire.”
It was a warm day in February and the steamheated showrooms were stifling hot. The young man who came to take the pictures was drenched in sweat when he came out from under the black cloth. Piquot wouldn’t leave him alone for a second. He had to take Piquot in his office, Piquot at the draftingboard, Piquot among the models. The girls thought their turn would never come. The photographer kept saying, “You let me alone, Mr. Piquot… I want to plan something artistic.” The girls all got to giggling. At last Piquot went off and locked himself in his office in a pet. They could see him in there through the glass partition, sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. After that things quieted down. Margo and the photographer got along very well. He kept whispering to her to see what she could do to keep the old gent out of the pictures. When he left to go up to the loft upstairs where the dresses were made, the photographer handed her his card and asked her if she wouldn’t let him take her picture at his studio some Sunday. It would mean a great deal to him and it wouldn’t cost her anything. He was sure he could get something distinctively artistic. She took his card and said she’d be around the next afternoon. On the card it said Margolies, Art Photographer.
That Sunday Mr. A took her out to lunch at the Hotel Pennsylvania and afterwards she managed to get him to drive her over to Margolies’ studio. She guessed the young Jewish boy wasn’t so well off and thought Mr. A might just as well pay for a set of photographs. Mr. A was sore about going because he’d gotten his big car out and wanted to take her for a drive up the Hudson. Anyway he went. It was funny in Margolies’ studio. Everything was hung with black velvet and there were screens of different sizes in black and white and yellow and green and silver standing all over the big dusty room under the grimy skylights. The young man acted funny too, as if he hadn’t expected them. “All this is over,” he said. “This is my brother Lee’s studio. I’m attending to his clientele while he’s abroad… My interests are in the real art of the future.” “What’s that?” asked Mr. A, grumpily clipping the end off a cigar as he looked around for a place to sit down.
“Motionpictures. You see I’m Sam Margolies… You’ll hear of me if you haven’t yet.”
Mr. A sat down grouchily on a dusty velvet modelstand. “Well, make it snappy… We want to go driving.”
Sam Margolies seemed sore because Margo had just come in her streetclothes. He looked her over with his petulant grey eyes for a long time. “I may not be able to do anything… I can’t create if I’m hurried… I had seen you stately in Spanish black.” Margo laughed. “I’m not exactly the type.”