I sat facing Broadway, and now I stood up; quite dark here, no light from the street this high. The ledge was white; I could see it. And I began walking around the building, patrolling it. I felt like an idiot, slowly strolling round and round the Flatiron Building up there in the dark, watching the empty walks below, careful not to trip, almost sliding my feet along the stone. It was getting cold, a small breeze. It must be eleven o’clock—where were they?
Around the prow then, slowly, not quite lifting my feet but sliding them along. Now a lone pedestrian across the street on Fifth Avenue. But not coming here, not even looking this way. I turned the corner at Twenty-second Street, and crept along the back. Nothing.
Around the corner, and now along the east, Broadway side, the busy white lights far ahead up there. On up to the prow again, and then it occurred to me: I stopped, and stood—a kind of figurehead against that prow, but facing the wrong way. And stood there watching Broadway and Fifth Avenue both.
And then here came someone, suddenly, out of Twenty-second Street, now crossing Broadway angling toward the building. And well, yes, I recognized him, as who would not, as he walked into a circle of weak orange light lying on the pavement under a streetlamp. I’d seen this figure often in black-and-white film—the decisive movement, the power in the tilt of the big head. And now, as the streetlight momentarily moved across them, the familiar small round glasses and mustache below them. Then as he stepped onto the sidewalk, the dark, wide-brimmed old Rough Rider hat.
He stopped beside the building wall, the hat turning as the invisible head under it turned to look north. I looked too, and now here came the other, from the north, crossing Broadway toward us, and I hurried along my ledge with no sound, or almost none, and arrived there over their heads as they met.
“Well, my boy. On time as always,” said the surprisingly not deep but almost thin voice.
“I try to be, sir.”
“And enjoying New York? But of course you are.”
“Always, as you well know. Sir, I could have come to your—”
“No, too many reporters lurking about these days. Wouldn’t do for them to see you arrive. I simply left by the back door, and down a—you know the passageway.”
“Yes, sir.”
Silence now, movement by the heavier figure; he was tall enough but not so tall as the other. We were right about that, Rube: Z is tall. And now a whiteness, something in hand. “I worked on these this afternoon, and I believe they are right, they will accomplish their object.” The taller man’s hand reaching out, taking the papers. “You have Howard’s?”
“Yes, sir,” tucking the papers away.
“Then good luck, my boy. Good luck, and be careful.”
“Always.”
“No, not quite always.” And they both laughed a little. Then, abruptly, suddenly embarrassed it seemed to me: “Good luck,” once again, and a quick single handshake. Then they both turned away, and I stood there on my foolish little stone shelf staring down at first one, then the other of the two dark hats and wide brims which were all I’d ever seen, all I could possibly have seen from the only place I could possibly have hidden. There he went, the almost portly old Rough Rider, back the way he’d come, vanishing into Twenty-second Street. And there crossing Broadway toward Madison Square went the back of Z’s hat, the back of his neck, the back of his coat, then was lost among the trees, and I stood up there on the side of the Flatiron Building trying to think what that meant. Z was gone forever now, no other clue to finding him left. The Great War? Well, the notion of a single man somehow preventing that enormous event had never quite seemed real; had seemed faintly absurd, in fact, and I just shrugged, and began to climb down to the sidewalk. But what about Willy? I didn’t know; just have to think about that.
No cabs down here, and turning away from the great stone Flatiron, I began to walk. Z was gone, but Tessie and Ted were here, weren’t they? Yes, here in 1912 New York. On Broadway, they’d always said. So why hadn’t I found them? Crossing Twenty-eighth Street, glancing left, I saw the marquee lights of the Fifth Avenue Theatre a short block to the west. And in that moment they went out, but I stood motionless on the curb because just a little further down that short block a single light, a round white globe, still burned, and I realized that this was the stage door. I hesitated. I wanted to go home, I wanted my family, and I could go tonight, go to the Brooklyn Bridge, and within an hour . . . But I turned left, and walked the short block to that lighted globe.
Yes. Lettered on the green wood door beneath it: Stage, in washed-out white, and I stood on the walk looking at it, not knowing what to do now. The door opened abruptly, and a young woman walked swiftly out, on her way and knowing exactly where, enough makeup still on so I knew she’d been part of the show. I took a shallow little breath, pushed the door open with a forefinger, waited, then walked cautiously in.
21
ALONG A SHORT DIM CORRIDOR, up three wooden steps, and—I sketched this later from memory—the stage-door man asleep. Sneak by him? No. I didn’t know where to go or what I was doing: I’d be caught, and thrown out. I looked at this sleeping man, then got out my wallet, moving quietly, slipped out a twenty-dollar bill, and folded it twice. Holding it in my closed fist, I worked up my best timidly eager, I’m-harmless smile, and tapped the man on the knee.
He didn’t move, just opened his eyes slightly, used to being caught asleep and pretending he wasn’t. He looked up at me steadily, and I said, “Excuse me, but I wonder if I could possibly see . . .” Who? I spoke the only name I knew here: “The Dove Lady.”
He was going to shake his head, ask who I was, and all that, but, not looking at my hand, as though it were acting independently, I passed him my folded-up bill. He glanced at it, then up at me, eyes going hard, and I understood. I’d made a mistake; he’d seen the yellow back and the big 20, and it was too much, ten times too much possibly, and it made him wary. But still . . . he glanced down at what lay in his palm, hesitated, then got to his feet. “Wait here.”
The little wooden-floored area he left me in was maybe ten by ten. To my right I saw the dark stage and the edges of the many backdrops, mysterious ropes rising up into blackness. From down the corridor my doorman friend had walked into, I heard a woman casually singing. Heard a man’s easy, skilled, good-natured laugh. Heard a man swear, not meaning it. The wall at my left was bare brick, a bulletin board fastened to it, and I walked over to see what the thumbtacked notices said.
One was a typed list of acts, with call times for afternoon and evening performances. A notice printed on cardboard—I had time to copy it—read, Don’t say “slob” or “son-of-a-bitch” or “golly gee” on this stage unless you want to be canceled peremptorily. Do not address anyone in the audience in any manner. If you have not the ability to entertain Mr. Keith’s audiences without risk of offending them, do the best you can. Lack of talent will be less open to censure than would be an insult to a patron. If you are in doubt as to the character of your act consult the local manager before you go on the stage, for if you are guilty of uttering anything sacrilegious or even suggestive you will be immediately closed and will never again be allowed in a theater where Mr. Keith is an authority. Wow.
Along the top of the bulletin board’s wood frame someone had lettered pretty neatly in crayon, Don’t send your laundry out until after the first performance. On the white-painted wooden surface of the board itself were more inscriptions, hand-printed in ink or pencil. Don’t blame the orchestra, they are too busy at the foundry to rehearse . . . Gee, what a small stage . . . Where’s the mail? . . . We know the theater’s rotten, but how’s your show? . . . The dressing rooms are swept out every summer . . . Tacked up in a corner, a printed calling card: Zeno Brothers, acrobats, can be addressed care of Billboard. A rubber-stamped inscription, Luke Mason of “The Josh Wilkins Company” is America’s Greatest Comedian. In pencil on a little rectangle of paper carefully torn from an envelope: Flo De Vere, of “The Belle of Boston” Company sending regards to the Wrangler Sisters of “The Merry Marauders Company.” A typed list of Boarding Houses: some twenty-odd addresses, mostly in the west Thirties and Forties. And added in pencil, half a dozen more. Penciled comments beside some of them: Good . . . Good food but not enuf . . . A bum place—for acrobats only. I heard my man walking toward me, and when I looked up he poked a thumb over one shoulder, saying, “Go on back,” and walked past me toward his chair; I felt like asking for my twenty back.