Escaping Dreamland

by Charlie Lovett

  XVI

  New York City,

  In the Days When the Elite Met at Delmonico’s

  “You look the part,” said Magda, brushing a bit of lint off Tom’s coat. He was dressed once again in imitation of a successful businessman. Magda had told him that money impressed Mr. Lipscomb and to come for his meeting looking as wealthy as possible. She had watched in the past as Lipscomb changed his entire attitude in the presence of the outer signs of affluence. He could suddenly become subservient and agreeable instead of his usual cantankerous self.

  “Now go in there like you own the place, like you’re doing him a favor.”

  Tom had shivered under his coat at Magda’s touch but now squared his shoulders and gripped his walking stick. He knew well enough how to play a part—he did that every day. True, he was more accustomed to pretending to be poor than to flaunting his wealth, but he trusted Magda to know what would work best for Lipscomb.

  “And flatter him,” whispered Magda, as she knocked on Lipscomb’s door.

  “Your eleven o’clock appointment is here, Mr. Lipscomb.”

  Without waiting to be invited, Tom strode in with an air of authority he had observed in Mr. Hearst. “Julius Lipscomb, we meet at last.”

  “Do I know . . .” said Mr. Lipscomb.

  “I’ve heard about your operation here. Word does get around in the publishing world.”

  “And you would be?” said Lipscomb, glancing at his appointment book.

  “Thomas De Peyster,” said Tom, presenting his card. “I’m an associate of William Randolph Hearst. More than an associate, really, but I’m not here to talk about Mr. Hearst. I’m sure, being a publisher, you know him well.” Tom was absolutely certain that Mr. Hearst had never heard of Pickering Brothers, much less met Mr. Lipscomb.

  “Actually,” said Mr. Lipscomb, but Tom could see the little man was flustered and he pressed his advantage.

  “I came to you, Mr. Lipscomb, because I believe you deserve an opportunity. I believe we need to stand up to that scoundrel Edward Stratemeyer and his plan to run his competitors out of business.” Lipscomb blanched and slipped back onto his stool. Tom could see he had hit a nerve. He had no reason to believe Stratemeyer was trying to run anyone out of business, but clearly Lipscomb was a small enough fish that he feared the appetite of the shark around the corner.

  “You need new properties, Mr. Lipscomb, and I’m here to give you one.” He produced a neat stack of manuscript leaves from inside his coat and slapped it down on the only corner of one of Lipscomb’s tables not already covered by books, magazines, or papers.

  “Frank Fairfax, Cub Reporter. A book that will get reviewed in every one of Mr. Hearst’s papers.” Again, Tom had no means of ensuring this, but he reasoned he probably had a better chance of getting the book a mention in at least the New York Evening Journal than most other aspiring authors.

  Lipscomb reached forward and picked up the manuscript. Tom remained towering over the publisher, but he had nothing more to say, having reached the end of his script. This pause in his monologue gave Lipscomb a chance to seize control of the conversation for the first time. A wealthy man making threats and promises was an uncommon sight in his office; someone bringing him a manuscript was business as usual.

  “Give me an hour,” said Lipscomb quietly as he pulled on his spectacles. “I’ll leave word with my secretary if I wish to see you after looking at this.” He turned his attention to the manuscript and Tom knew the interview had ended. He backed out of the office and quietly closed the door.

  “How did it go?” said Magda.

  “You might have told me about the bird,” said Tom. “It was rather nerve-racking to try to maintain my composure with that thing staring at me from behind your employer.”

  “And the manuscript?”

  “Mr. Lipscomb took my manuscript and told me to come back in an hour. I don’t suppose I could interest you in a cup of coffee at Childs?”

  “I have work to do, Mr. De Peyster. Besides, I don’t think it would be proper to go out with you without Mr. Pinkney as a chaperone. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  “You’ll see me for an hour,” said Tom, sitting in the chair by her desk. “I can wait.”

  And he did. Magda did her best to attend to business, which this morning consisted of retyping a manuscript that had been heavily edited by Mr. Lipscomb. Every few minutes, Tom would stand up and stroll to the window, staring down at the bustle of Fifth Avenue seven stories below. Without pausing her typing, she could sense when he stole glances at her. She liked Tom, she thought, and could even imagine his becoming something she hadn’t had since she left Kleindeutschland—a friend. But she didn’t need him surreptitiously eyeing her while she tried to work. She was a little relieved when, at exactly eleven o’clock, Mr. Lipscomb opened his office door.

  “Has Mr. De Peyster returned?”

  “Oh yes,” said Magda, “he’s just arrived.”

  In his second interview with Mr. Lipscomb, Tom hardly got a chance to speak. As soon as Lipscomb started in, Tom realized that the publisher viewed him now not as an impressive, well-connected gentleman, but as a manuscript, a commodity. This time, Lipscomb was all business.

  “I like the name,” he said. “Frank Fairfax sounds like a reporter. Names are important. But forget about saving people from disasters.”

  “But the whole point . . .”

  “I don’t care about the point,” said Lipscomb. “I care about what I need. I need exploration. Stratemeyer has boys going to the North Pole and the bottom of the ocean and the surface of the moon. The Explorers Club opened over a year ago and the closest thing I have to an explorer is Drew Stetson. But I’ve got something Stratemeyer doesn’t have. I’ve got imagination. Do you have imagination, Mr. De Peyster?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Tom, who suddenly felt like an eight-year-old being chided by his governess for some infraction of her rules.

  “Here’s what I want you to do. Keep your hero a reporter, I like that, but make his father a member of the Explorers Club—that gives him connections. Then have his editor send him along on expeditions. But here’s where we’ll get Stratemeyer. Your hero won’t go to the moon or the South Pole; he’ll discover places of legend. Here’s your first title: Frank Fairfax and the Search for El Dorado. If that one sells you can do Atlantis next. If I do the outline and you write it, you get a hundred and twenty-­five dollars; if you do the whole thing without my outline, it’s one fifty, but if I don’t like it, it’s zero.”

  “I think I can write it without the outline,” said Tom. “If I—”

  “And follow the rules—no kissing, no smoking, no drinking, and nothing mamby-pamby or wishy-washy. Every third chapter ends in peril, nobody gets killed, and the hero has impeccable morals. Got it?”

  “Yes sir, I—”

  “I’ll need it by the end of September.” Mr. Lipscomb turned away from Tom and picked up a paper which he began reading, clearly signaling that the interview was over. Tom wasn’t sure what to think. His carefully prepared manuscript had been torn to shreds. His idea that he would end the nightmares that began after the earthquake by writing a series of stories in which the hero saved people from disasters had been squelched. On the other hand, Mr. Lipscomb had offered him a hundred and fifty dollars to write a book. Everything he had ever written before had ended up wrapping fish or keeping vagrants warm on a winter’s night. His words in newspapers were ephemeral. But a book, a hardcover book, even one written in two months for a children’s series, might last. He turned to leave, and as he opened the door to the outer office, Lipscomb called after him.

  “Keep the pseudonym,” he said. “I like Neptune B. Smythe.”

  “So, what’s the problem?” said Gene. The trio sat again at the back table at Childs, where they had spent the last hour in conversation. Tom had shared the exciting news that Mr. Lipscomb wanted h
im to write a book about a boy explorer who discovers El Dorado. Buoyed by his enthusiasm, Magda had admitted her own desire to write a series for Mr. Lipscomb. She was so used to keeping secrets that she thought she would struggle to tell Tom and Gene about Dan Dawson, Circus Star, but in fact it had felt entirely natural. She didn’t understand why talking to them was so easy, but it was. She went on to relate the story of her interview with Mr. Lipscomb on the subject of women writing books.

  “The problem is he won’t consider a manuscript without meeting the author face-to-face,” she said. “And I may not look like Evelyn Nesbit, but I think it’s pretty clear I’m a female.”

  “Crystal clear,” said Tom. Magda felt a blush rising in her cheek. Tom had been paying her altogether too much attention during dinner and the cups of coffee that followed.

  “Yes,” said Gene, leaning forward, “you look like a woman now, fair enough. But that problem is easily overcome.”

  “It’s not a problem,” said Tom, smiling.

  “What do you mean? Have some man pretend to be me?” Magda had her own idea about how to deal with Lipscomb, but she wanted to hear what Gene had to say.

  “What if Lipscomb asks about details of her book?” said Tom. “It needs to be her.”

  “And it will be,” said Gene, “but Lipscomb will think she’s a man.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” said Magda, smiling at Gene. He could read her mind, she thought. Ever since she had met him, she had felt a connection, and his ability to understand just what she was thinking only strengthened it. She wondered if he could feel it, too.

  “How?” said Tom. “Magda looks less like a man than anyone I know.”

  “Trust me, if there is one among the three of us who can make someone look like a member of the opposite sex, it’s me.”

  “That’s a very specific claim,” said Tom.

  “And I’m willing to share my talents with my friends,” said Gene cryptically, hoping Tom would not follow his journalist’s instinct to dig deeper into this particular subject.

  “Is that what we are?” said Magda, boldly laying her hand on top of Gene’s. “Friends?” She hoped he would say something wildly romantic like, Oh, we’re so much more than that, but this time Gene did not read her mind.

  He gently extricated his hand from beneath Magda’s, all the while looking at Tom. “Yes,” he said. “We’re friends. Aren’t we, Tom?”

  “Absolutely,” said Tom.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had friends,” said Magda.

  “I used to have friends,” said Gene, “but then things changed.”

  “What changed?” said Tom.

  “I lost one of my last friends quite recently,” said Gene, deftly avoiding the subject of Paresis Hall and Princess Petunia and the other girls. Magda had mentioned Evelyn Nesbit, so why not regale them with a story that involved her.

  “I remember an evening we spent together a few years ago. He took me along to dine about once a month or so, just to check on me and sometimes to show off his latest conquest. We often dined at Café Martin, since it was close to his apartment, and sometimes he took me to the Players Club in Gramercy Park, where we sat at his usual table under a portrait of Edwin Booth, but that night we ate in a private dining room at Delmonico’s.”

  “You’ve eaten at Delmonico’s?” said Magda in awe. That an orphan from Kleindeutschland should be sharing a table with a gentleman who had dined at the grandest restaurant in New York seemed to Magda to define America perfectly.

  “I’ll take you there sometime,” said Tom, winking at Magda.

  “Earlier in the evening, my friend had invited me to meet him at Madison Square Garden for a boxing match,” said Gene. He had never paid much attention to sports before or after that night, but Gene remembered how those perfect bodies had gleamed with sweat. He had never seen such musculature except on the Greek statues at the Metropolitan Museum, and those did not move. But these men moved—oh, how they moved. He wished he could see Tom move like that. “We sat in a box,” said Gene, “slightly removed from the roaring crowd, yet close enough to feel their energy. I have never followed boxing, and couldn’t even name the fighters, but there was a raw excitement to the whole experience. After the bout, my friend took me round to the dressing room where he chatted briefly with the victor. Knowing nothing of the sport, I could think of no more to say beyond ‘Congratulations.’ ” Gene had been utterly tongue-tied not because of his ignorance of the nuances of boxing, but because of the presence of the most perfectly sculpted male specimen he had ever seen. The champion had removed his gloves and shoes, and wore nothing but a pair of shorts around which his muscles bulged. Gene felt his breath coming in shallow gasps and feared he might show visible signs of arousal as he ran his eyes up and down the athlete’s figure. He knew this was why Stanford White had brought him to the dressing room. “I thought you’d like a little treat,” he had said to Gene as they strolled up Broadway after escaping the crowds outside Madison Square Garden.

  “Who was this friend?” said Magda.

  “Shh,” said Tom. “A good storyteller saves a surprise for the end.”

  “Our next stop was the Casino Theatre, where we ducked through the stage door and met one of the chorus girls from Floradora, who was waiting for my friend backstage. The detour to the dressing room at the Garden had delayed us and she had waited nearly half an hour and was none too pleased, but when my friend explained that we had a table waiting at Delmonico’s, she softened. It was only a few blocks to the restaurant, and it was a lovely spring evening, so we decided to walk.

  “Delmonico’s is not the sort of place where a married man can dine with an eighteen-year-old chorus girl, but my friend had reserved a private dining room and besides, rules never seemed to apply to him. The maître d’ showed us upstairs to our room where several other guests awaited us. I had thought we would have a quiet dinner for three, but it soon became apparent that the chorus girl and I would be shunted to the side while my host and his influential friends had one of their late-night round tables. Among those already seated were my own employer, Mr. Tesla, along with Mr. Clemens, whom I had met once before, though he did not remember me, and whom the larger world knows as Mr. Mark Twain.”

  Magda had read most of Mark Twain’s books. Reading Twain was part of being an American, a librarian had once told her. This time she did not interrupt Gene, but she gazed at him with increasing infatuation. She had never seen herself as the sort of person who would fall in love with a man just because he had important friends, but of course her attraction to Gene had begun before she knew of these connections. Nonetheless, she could not deny that the fact that he had met Mark Twain made Gene even more captivating. She did not consider that she had had no such reaction to the news that Tom knew Upton Sinclair and William Randolph Hearst.

  “Now, it may sound exciting to have dinner in a private room in a fine restaurant, and I’ll grant you the food was exquisite. I can’t recall every course, but I remember lamb cutlets, terrapin, and roast duckling, heaps of vegetables, and meringues and ice creams for dessert with preserved cherries and pineapple. But though I was well known to my friend, and of course to Mr. Tesla—although I did not work directly with him at that time, I saw him in the lab nearly every day—they did not include me in their conversation. I listened for a while, and enjoyed hearing the bon mots of Mr. Clemens which I knew would turn up in his writing sooner or later. But eventually I noticed that I was not the only member of the party excluded from the intellectual bantering. The chorus girl sat between me and my friend, looking exhausted and miserable, though perfectly able to devour several plates of food.

  “She was, by then, something of a celebrity, and I had seen postcards of her for sale at newsstands on Broadway. We had met several times before in the company of my friend, but had never spoken more than a few words. On that night, I addressed her fi
rst with some kind comments about Floradora, to which my friend had taken me some weeks prior. She responded demurely, but then launched into an anecdote about one of the chorus girls who had been dismissed owing to her having gotten in a family way, and soon we found ourselves chatting away like old friends. I don’t recall what we spoke of, but I do remember that the evening suddenly went from dull to pleasant. I think of that night often—how one can find enjoyment in the most unexpected places. The room was filled with prominent men, yet I’ll venture that the two of us enjoyed talking over nothing in particular more than those men enjoyed solving the problems of the world.” Gene also recalled, though he did not say, that this had been one of the only evenings in his life that he had spent in the company of a girl.

  “You promised us a surprise ending,” said Tom. “That’s a pleasant ending, but I’m not sure I’d call it a surprise.”

  “I never promised a surprise ending,” said Gene, smiling at Tom. “You did.”

  “But who was the friend?” demanded Magda. “And who was the girl?”

  “As it happens, there is a surprise ending,” said Gene, his eyes clouding over. “A rather shocking surprise to me and to the rest of New York. I remained on good terms with my friend, though I never met Mr. Clemens again. The girl I saw several more times, and then her relationship with my friend ended and I did not see her for some years, until just less than three weeks ago. The twenty-fifth of June.” Gene paused and felt a catch in his throat.

  “Is that the end?” said Magda. “It’s not a very good ending for someone who wants to write adventure books.”

  “My goodness,” said Tom, “June twenty-fifth. That is a surprise ending. Though I should have deduced it before.”