From Time to Time (29 page)

"Okay, I'll let you go. She walked to the door, then turned to me, hand on the knob. "But you know why I'm here, Si? In New York? I'm spending a small inheritance, that's all. Using it up, having a bit of fun. So why don't you let me help you? I have the time, and there must be something I could do to help.

"Sure, I said. "Fine, okay. She opened the door, and I made a little show of sidling past her looking scared, she made a fake little lunge, and we smiled. Then I headed for my room, only three doors down, still smiling; I liked the Jotta Girl just fine.

CHAPTER 20

I HAD THE EVENING TO KILL, but it didn't want to die and fought back. For a while I thought it might win, and nine o'clock never come. I had an armload of newspapers, and lay on my bed, shoes off, pillows stuffed behind me. But the World, the Express, the Tribune, the Post, all seemed like the strange newspapers you buy on vacation; funny-looking, the typefaces wrong, news headings about people and events that have nothing to do with you. Even the comics were strange: "Boob McNutt . . . "Lady Bountiful

"Foxy Grandpa . . . "Buster Brown . . . "Maud, the Mule. And they sure weren't funny.

I had the new Variety, still hunting for Tessie and Ted, but nope. I looked through Artists' Forum, the letters from readers section; also nope. One letter there said, Cleveland, Ohio, Editor Variety: I ask that you investigate the truth of the report from Cleveland. While at the Grand this week, I wish it to be known that the true fact is I was the laughing hit of the bill. The undersigned acts on the same performance acknowledge this fact. Sam Morris.

Below this Variety said, (Acts referred to, each signing above letter: Frank Rutledge, J. K. Bradshaw, Grace Bainbridge, The Four Bucks, Don Fabio, Miller and Mack, Onri Orthorpe and Co., and Win. H. Rorko ph, stage manager.)

Last week's Variety was over on the radiator, and I got it and, sitting on the edge of the bed, found the out-of-town review pages. These were dense with small-type reviews of vaudeville bills all over the United States, city after city, theater after theater, hundreds of terse, condensed, microscopic reviews-written, I thought, by locals in each town, attending with comps for whatever Variety paid them-not much, I imagined. Found Cleveland, 0; then, far down in the middle of the long column, Grand (J. H. Michel, mgr; agent, U.B.0.: Monday rehearsal 10)-Don Fabio, good contortionist; Miller and Mack, fair song and dance; Frank Rutledge and Co., featuring Grace Bainbridge, in "Our Wife, pleased; Onri Orthorpe and Co., spectacular dancers; Sam Morris, German monolog, did not please; Four Bucks, good cyclists.

Then I sat back on my bed thinking about Sam Morris rushing down to buy this Variety as soon as copies reached his hotel newsstand. Taking it off to a corner of the lobby maybe, finding all the pages of small-type reviews, finding Cleveland, finding the Grand, bringing the paper closer, finding his own name . . . followed by three sickening words, did not please. Not hard to picture a grimace then of-something: pain, anger, maybe fear. Then off at a lobby writing desk, keeping it brief and dignified, taking it to the Grand and carrying it around backstage to every other performer on the bill ("Sure, Sam, be happy to sign. Don't let that hick reviewer get to you! ). Finally, fighting to show that he was really the laughing hit of the bill, Sam Morris even gets the stage manager to sign his protest. A tough life. Oh, Tessie and Ted.

Still not ten o'clock, time frozen, Einstein right. It occurred to me that I might saunter down the hail, tap on the Jotta Girl's door, and say, "Hi! Just wondered what you were doing, but Julia didn't want me to. Neither did Willy. Rover thought it might be okay, but his moral standards were untested, so I just lay there and thought about England.

After a while, I walked to the windows and looked out. The sky was worth a look: clear and clean, a fine deepening blue out over the Park, and to the west, over the Hudson, a lingering touch of daylight that just hated to leave. And then, from around the corner on Fifth, the fish-horn squawk of a rubber-buibed horn, and it was l'heure bleu, full of promise, and I opened the window to lean out into this new night, and was happy.

Ten o'clock did in fact come. Downstairs then, no hat, no outer coat. Little chilly for that, but couldn't he helped. And I came tnt- trotting down the outside Plaza steps the way you do when you're momentarily nineteen again, and took a cab, a red one, down to Madison Square.

Broadway and Fifth Avenue cross each other just below Madison Square to make a giant X at Twenty-third Street. So that Broadway is suddenly east of Fifth. And on the little triangle this creates stands that peculiar structure, the Flatiron Building, shaped to fit its site. The neighborhood around it, relentlessly noisy all day, stood nearly silent now at ten twenty-five. I could hear my own footsteps, walking along Fifth Avenue directly beside the west wall of the building. Then as I walked around the narrow end-the prow-of the building, I looked north far up the nighttime Broadway of hotels and theaters at the distant lights of the Great White Way. But rounding the prow to walk south along the Broadway wall of the building, I looked down an ordinary Broadway of dark storefronts and emptied office buildings.

A good meeting place, but I'd had enough of scouting it, nothing much to learn. So, around the broad back of the building; then again I walked north toward its narrow end, but this time, at the little street-level shop stuck onto the rounded prow, I kept on walking-across Broadway to the dark greenery of Madison Square. And there on a bench I sat down to stare over at the puzzle of the Flatiron Building.

No: there was simply no way to sneak up on a pair of men standing beside a wall of the building over there on an otherwise deserted sidewalk. Maybe I could just stroll past them, a late passerby, and see their faces? Not if they didn't want me to, and simply turned away till I'd gone by. My mind strayed: Yes, it did look like a tall stone ship over there, ready to sail up Broadway or Fifth. I tugged out my watch, the face barely visible in the light of a park lamppost. Eleven minutes to eleven; I had to do something, and I stood up, walked across Broadway again, and stopped beside the building: What now? I'd passed the Flatiron countless times, but now directly beside it, really looking at it, I saw that its surface was cut stone in the shape of large blocks, mortised in the crevices. And I reached up, put my fingertips in a shoulder-height crevice, set the side of my right shoe in the first crevice above the sidewalk, straightened my knee, and stood, hung on the side of the building ten inches above the walk. And understood that I had to do it again, right now, before I could think, or I could never do it at all.

Hands raised one at a time to the next crevice, left toe to the next higher level, knee straightening. Did it again immediately, then again, the stone rough-cut, scraping in clothes, tugging at buttons, brushing my cheek, feeling cold.

Up, crablike, spraddled against the side of the Flatiron Building not daring to think, shoving thought aside, until I gently bumped my head on the underside of the stone ledge that runs clear around the building. There I hung, blocked: I could fall, some thirty feet, I thought, and no, not be killed-I didn't think so, but maybe. But certainly break bones, smash my shoulder easily if I hit wrong, or yes, crack my skull, that could happen. But don't think, just do it, and I very gently let go with my right hand, moved it up, knuckles brushing the underside of the projecting stone shelf, then out and back, my hand hooked over its outer edge. Then the other, very quickly, because now my feet couldn't hold, and I swung gently out, hanging over the sidewalk-and quickly, before my upper- arm strength drained away, I pulled myself up, steadily and fast, chin passing the shelf edge. Then, forearms going straight, I could bend forward and lie, legs still dangling, hut happy with relief, safe.

Then, knees up too, I crept across, and sat down on this little stone ledging, the window washers' delight, running clear around the entire building.

A moment, a few seconds of self-congratulation, sitting there in the dark up on the side of the Flatiron Building, back comfortably against the stonework between a pair of dark office windows lettered with-I couldn't really read it, looking back over my shoulder. Just that moment or so, and then it flashed in my mind like a comic-strip light bulb: On which side of the building were they going to meet?

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 street- lamp. 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 oven 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 he 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.

CHAPTER 21

ALONG A SHORT DIM CORRIDOR, up three wooden steps, and-I sketched this later from memory the stage- door man asleep.