One morning she gave him a little flat package wrapped in blue tissue paper. When Martin opened it, he discovered a lock of blond hair. He was on the point of saying something witty when he raised his eyes and saw little Alice Bell staring at him tensely. Without a word he nodded gravely at her, gently wrapped up the curl of hair, and placed it in his pocket.
A day came when Mrs. Bell failed to return to the hotel at noon. Martin paced in the lobby, trying to suppress his anger, while Alice walked a little bit out of his way, casting at him looks of shame and mortification. He strode over to the cigar stand and talked for a few minutes with Bill Baer, who gave him an apple and half a hard roll, then resigning himself to a ruined hour he sat down in a red-plush lobby chair and watched the guests walking purposefully, striding in and out of parlors, sinking flamboyantly into armchairs and couches. Beside him Alice kneeled by the arm of the chair and seemed to try to see what he was seeing. Martin knew that she felt his irritation and, glancing down at her as she kneeled there, he had a moment of pity for the lobby orphan and of anger at himself. He let his left hand drop over the side of the chair and touched her on the shoulder. Alice grew suddenly tense — turned to him with a startled, almost violent look — her shoulder trembled — and all at once Martin felt something pass over him, his heart beat fast, there was an inner bursting, and the entire lobby was transformed: he became aware of the soft underswish of petticoats, the faint creak of stays, the rub of silk stockings, a dark alluring undersound of silk and lace, a sudden dark flash of glances — and as they strode past or sank sighing into soft couches, the ladies of the lobby began shedding their long dresses, unlacing their tight corsets, flinging up their petticoats like bursts of snow, throwing back their heads and breathing sharply as veins beat in their necks, while Martin, rippling with terror, started to rise and knocked something over that began rolling away and away and away along the wavy pattern of the marble floor.
8. Advancement
THREE DAYS LATER THE BELLS, MOTHER AND daughter, returned to Boston. From Mrs. Bell, Martin received a box of cream-filled chocolates, and from Alice he received — suddenly and secretly, as Mrs. Bell’s back was turned — a small heart-shaped gold locket, still warm from being clutched in a fist. He watched them follow the doorman along the shade of the awning. The locket contained a hand-painted photograph of Alice Bell, with eyes too blue and hair too yellow, staring thoughtfully and a little sadly at the viewer. Martin kept it at the back of his shirt drawer in the bedroom over the cigar store.
With relief he watched them disappear beyond the glass doors, and also with the conviction that something needed to be done about a part of his life he rarely gave much thought to, and then only in a vague, shadowy way. At dinner he spoke briefly and directly to Bill Baer, and a few nights later he accompanied his friend to a house Bill Baer knew on West Twenty-fifth Street off Sixth Avenue. You had to be careful to choose a good house, Bill said, because some of the houses hired creepers who stole your money through secret panels in the walls. In the gaslit parlor with plush chairs and couches and a yellow-keyed piano, Martin chose a dark-haired girl with heavy shoulders, who reminded him of a younger, coarser, sadder Mrs. Hamilton. He followed her up the nearly dark stairs and had a moment of hesitation as he entered the dim-lit bare-looking room with pink-flowered wallpaper and a drawn yellow shade. Against one wall was a wooden washstand with a zinc basin, beside which stood an enameled white pitcher with a red handle. When she sat down on the bed he walked over quickly. Three things stayed with him: the violent rattle of the window behind the drawn shade as the El train roared past, the girl’s look of fear as he made a sudden gesture with his hand, and the odd feeling of gratitude to Mrs. Hamilton, for teaching him what to do in a brothel.
He began visiting the house with rattling windows regularly, once or twice a week, at first choosing only Dora, the dark-haired girl, out of a sense of loyalty. One night when she remained upstairs he chose a big blond girl in a blood-red robe called Gerda the Swede, and in time he made his way through the remaining four girls, though he always chose Dora when he could. Martin looked forward to the night strolls up the sidewalks of Sixth Avenue, past the high columns of the El. Bursts of piano music came from the concert saloons. Rushing trains shook the overhead tracks, spewed out coalsmoke shot through with red flames. It was a world of top-hatted swells and toughs in reefer jackets, of brazen-eyed women standing in doorways, of sawdust smells through swinging saloon doors mingling with the tang of horsedung thrown up by clattering wheels and ironshod hooves — and then the sudden plunge into darkness under the high tracks. One night a man with a black scarf around his neck lurched out at him from behind an El stanchion, holding a knife. Martin, frightened and outraged, swung from the shoulder. He left the man kneeling on all fours, coughing blood onto the dropped knife. In the sudden glare of an arc light Martin saw his split-open knuckle crusting with blood. But for the most part his walks were undisturbed; he welcomed the red streetcorner lamps casting their glow over the fire-alarm boxes, harsh laughter from the saloons, the familiar doorway with its red lantern, the gaslit parlor with its yellow-keyed piano on which stood a pair of double-branched tarnished brass candlesticks containing four white candles, the girls in low-cut robes and half-bare breasts walking in and out or sitting on the chair-arms. It struck him that the parlor and the girls were night versions of the hotel lobby, as if these were the same women who by day walked about in long dresses and wide-brimmed hats heaped with fruit. Sometimes he found himself imagining how, at night, all the hotel ladies loosened their hair and put on blood-red robes and walked back and forth, showing their breasts, leaning close, giving off warmth and a sweetish, sharp smell of liquor and perfume.
Meanwhile he was working harder than ever at what he called his triple life: day clerk at the Vanderlyn Hotel, lessor of the cigar concession in the hotel lobby, and part-time assistant in his father’s cigar store. From Monday through Friday he clerked full time at the Vanderlyn, from six to six, and on Saturday and Sunday half-time, from noon to six, for a total of seventy-two hours. He worked at the cigar store four nights a week, from seven to nine, and two or three hours on Saturday mornings, for a total of ten or eleven more hours. Three nights a week — Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday — were his own, as well as Sunday mornings and two hours on Saturday mornings when he didn’t work in the store; much of this time he spent with Bill Baer, walking about town, riding the horsecars and the El roads, exploring the city. Martin was fond of taking the Sixth Avenue El all the way up to the 155th Street terminus and emerging in a world of picnic grounds and beer gardens and dance halls, with a flight of steps up to Washington Heights. But what struck him most on such trips was the vast stretch of land between the Hudson River and the Central Park — a strange mix of four-story row houses and weedgrown vacant lots with rocky outcroppings, of isolated châteaux and clusters of squatter’s shacks, of unpaved avenues and tracts of sunken farms like canyons. He had heard a good deal of talk about this wilder and newer part of town; it was said that speculators were holding on to lots in expectation of a boom.