Mornings, Martin arrived at a quarter to six, changed into his uniform, and took over from Charley Stratemeyer, whose skin beneath his melancholy eyes was the color of plums and who had taken to greeting Martin with ironical flourishes. “Ah, young Lochinvar is come out of the West,” he would say, or “Up bright and early to greet the dawn, eh, Martin?” There was a new coolness about Charley, which shaded at times into an air of mockery, mixed with something murkier that felt like a sort of spiteful respect. It occurred to Martin that at twenty-two his old pal must sometimes wonder whether he was going to spend the rest of his life as a room clerk. Charley had already received two warnings from Mr. Henning for arriving late; the plum-dark patches under his eyes, the waxy skin, the talk of hookers under the El and the joys of bought love in borrowed rooms, a touch of harshness about the mouth, all this gave Martin the sense that Charley was turning into someone else before his eyes.
From his position behind the front desk he had a clear view of the glass doors before him, through which he could see a strip of awning and the clattering traffic on Broadway. He also commanded a view of the great lobby stretching away to the left and, in an alcove of the lobby, the newsstand and an edge of the cigar stand. Everything about the cigar stand irritated Martin: the choice of cigars, the display, the dullness or indifference of old man Hendricks, who never offered customers advice and sat on a stool reading a newspaper through small square spectacles worn low on his nose. Once or twice Martin had tried to strike up a conversation with him, in an effort to win his confidence and offer a suggestion or two, but the old man had looked up from his paper with red-rimmed hostile eyes. After that, Martin had no qualms about sending cigar-smoking guests to Dressler’s Cigars and Tobacco, conveniently located just down the block. He wondered how the concession could possibly pay, though of course it was more convenient for a guest to step out of an elevator and walk three steps to purchase a morning paper and a so-so cigar than to leave the hotel for even a short walk down the street. The hotel rented lobby space to three other concessions — the newsstand, a florist’s shop, and a railway ticket agency — all of which seemed to Martin to be operated far more skillfully than the cigar stand. When he asked the assistant manager whether the hotel couldn’t enforce higher standards, since it owned the space, Mr. Henning looked at him with amusement. He said that there had been no complaints, that the hotel wasn’t in the cigar business, and that so far as the lobby concessions were concerned, the hotel was simply a landlord, who demanded from the concessionaires only the rent check and behavior appropriate to the reputation of the Vanderlyn Hotel. Martin argued that the Vanderlyn was in the business of attracting guests, and that the lobby concessions were part of that business, and that therefore — but here Mr. Henning laughed and said that all this talk about cigars was making him hungry for a smoke, and if it made Martin feel better, there was talk that old man Hendricks would be giving up the concession when the lease ran out at the end of the year. “Then I’ll take it over myself,” Martin said irritably. Mr. Henning burst out laughing, then looked at him sharply. “Go easy, lad. One thing at a time.”
The old man gave notice before the end of the year: John Babcock said he was moving out to Brooklyn to live with his widowed sister, a milliner who owned the house over her shop and took in boarders. And Martin, after thinking things out for two months, explained his plan to his father, presented it in detail to Mr. Westerhoven, the hotel manager, and took over the cigar concession. For the past two years Martin had been giving half his salary to his father and putting the other half in the bank; although he had saved enough money for a month’s rent, he needed his father’s signature as guarantor of the lease, which ran for one year. His father agreed to advance Martin a sum of money good for six months’ rent, after which Martin had to pay the rent himself or give up the lease. And Martin, who had no intentipn of giving up either the lease or his post as day clerk, had in addition to pay the salary of the cigar vendor. He wanted someone young and vigorous, someone who knew cigars, and Otto Dressler had just the man for him: Wilhelm Baer, the twenty-year-old son of Gustav Baer, a cigarmaker on Forsyth Street in the old neighborhood. Wilhelm, who had no trace of a German accent and called himself Bill, had worked as a cigarmaker and a packer before clerking in a cigar store on Third Avenue under the El; he was out of work and would jump at the chance. Martin took an immediate liking to Bill Baer, a friendly man with alert blue eyes and copper-colored hair brushed hard to the side. He seemed grateful for the job, agreed with Martin in principle about the display of cigars but had strong opinions of his own, and seemed untroubled by the idea of working for someone three years younger than himself — although Martin at seventeen, with his serious dark eyes and soft brown mustache, looked like a man of twenty-one.
Bill Baer fell in happily with a secret plan of Martin’s, and one Sunday a few weeks before the cigar stand was to change hands, the two men took the Second Avenue El down to the old neighborhood, getting off at Canal and walking east toward the river. The old neighborhood was changing. Poles and Bohemians stood in doorways and leaned out of windows, ragged children sat on the curbs, and everywhere you looked you saw the black-eyed Ostjuden, dark and curly-bearded, gabbling their harsh tongue, crowding the streets, filling the tenements — forcing the Germans north, Bill Baer told Martin, into the quiet German streets around Tompkins Square, which the old people still called Der Weisse Garten. On a cobbled lane lined with furniture shops and clothing stores they came to a narrow alley. Baer led Martin along the alley to a small courtyard of workshops, where over an open doorway hung a wooden griffin with faded red wings and a blue tongue. Inside the dusky shop there was a sharp smell of fresh wood and varnish. Pallid sunlight swirling with sawdust penetrated partway into the gloom. They walked along a twisting path that led among shadowy life-sized figures, leaning wooden signs, upside-down barrels heaped with pawnbrokers’ balls, a wooden lion with open jaws — and always the stern Indians, standing erect, eyes glaring out their defiance. Martin heard scraping sounds. They came to an open door that led into a small workroom. A short, thick-chested old man in a leather apron stood planing a rough figure beside a workbench. Another man stood in a corner, applying paint to the face of an Indian. On the bench lay an ax, a spokeshave, scattered chisels, a mallet, piles of sandpaper of different roughnesses. The woodcarver, Asmus Friedländer, spoke only German. Bill Baer questioned him and led Martin back into the shop.