Tiffany Girl

by Deeanne Gist

  This fast and reckless method of Nan’s caused a great deal of glass to stack up on Flossie’s table in a very short amount of time. The higher the piles, the more pressure Flossie felt, and the more anxious she grew. She managed to bite her tongue until Nan started pulling glass for Christ’s throne. It sat in the innermost spot of the entire window and it needed to be spectacular—the perfect color, the perfect texture, and the perfect amount of transparency.

  Turning, Flossie sorted through a selection of rippled glass Nan had passed over and chose an iridescent goldenrod dotted with metallic-looking speckles. “What about this one?”

  Nan huffed. “Hardly. You just worry about cutting the pieces I’ve chosen and be sure to line them up so the grain flows in the same direction.”

  Flossie bit back her retort. What would Mrs. Driscoll say when she returned? Flossie didn’t fancy the idea of having to recut all these pieces simply because Nan couldn’t be bothered to slow down.

  Grimacing, Nan placed a hand against her stomach. “I hope I’m not getting whatever it is that drove Lulu to leave yesterday.”

  Flossie hoped so, too. The last thing she needed was to get sick. “Your stomach ails you?”

  “It does.”

  “Maybe you’d better rest. I’ve plenty of cutting to do.”

  Rubbing her stomach, Nan glanced around at the others. “No, I’ll be all right.”

  But throughout the next two hours, she continued to worsen, as did her selections. By noon, she wasn’t even holding the sheets up to the window. She simply grabbed colors, slapped a template onto them, and set them on Flossie’s table.

  “Nan, it’s clear you feel wretched. Go home. I’ve plenty to do.”

  After a great deal of waffling, Nan finally acquiesced. With her coat slung over her arm, she tapped a stack of glass she’d just put on Flossie’s table. “It’s imperative that you use these pieces for the nativity. Do you understand?”

  “You needn’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

  The moment she left, Flossie’s mood lifted. She’d not realized how oppressive Nan had become, but the sun shone brighter, the work went faster, and the other girls’ banter became infectious.

  She finished cutting the pieces for Christ’s throne, then studied the cartoon. The sheets Nan had chosen for a nativity scene disrupted the flow, had the wrong texture, or didn’t produce the luminosity of a true Tiffany piece.

  Worrying her lip, she glanced about the room. Aggie wrapped foil around cut pieces of glass, using beeswax as adhesive. Mary, the daughter of a portrait painter, worked on a new cartoon. Ella, who drank enough tea for the entire British Empire, selected glass for a window of Christ blessing evangelists while Elizabeth worked as her partner cutting it.

  Flossie looked again at the cartoon depicting the nativity scene. She could do a better job selecting than Nan had. She knew she could. If Mrs. Driscoll had been there, she’d have asked permission first. But she wasn’t.

  Flossie wasn’t worried, though. Mrs. Driscoll had asked to be surprised. Well, once she saw the glass Flossie selected, she’d not only be surprised, she’d be pleased. Turning to the trays of discarded sheets, Flossie pulled new glass. Her fingers flew to the different selections, much like a typesetter who was so in tune with the type he hardly had to look to find the exact letter he needed.

  Once she’d made her final decisions, she cut the pieces and pasted them to the glass easel. Never had she worked so fast and with so much joy.

  When she finished the section, she stared at her work, a sluice of euphoria sweeping through her. This was what it meant to be an artist. This was what she wanted to do. This was where her talents lay.

  Once again, she imagined Mrs. Driscoll’s reaction, then hugged herself. She could hardly wait.

  CHAPTER

  27

  What is the meaning of this?” Mrs. Driscoll made a sweeping gesture with her arm to indicate the section of window Flossie had redesigned.

  The maroons and golds of the wise men’s robes offered a rich contrast to Mary’s brown outer tunic. The sky in the background hinted of morning colors. Yet Mrs. Driscoll’s tone indicated displeasure. Perhaps she was referring to the section where a bearded Jesus preached to the apostles. Flossie hadn’t much cared for the color selections in it, but she’d only had time to change the nativity scene.

  “Which part exactly?”

  “These!” Mrs. Driscoll pointed to the nativity scene—the exact part Flossie had changed.

  She fingered a button on her shirtwaist. “You mean, the places I selected colors for?”

  The other Tiffany Girls had yet to arrive. Flossie, however, made sure she was always the first one in and the last one to leave. Her parents had told her over and over to be the very best at everything she did. Arriving early was part of that, and so was picking out the very best colors for the windows. At least, so she’d thought.

  “What on earth possessed you to select colors? You cut the glass, and at a more leisurely pace than ideal as it is.”

  Leisurely pace? She might not be as fast as Elizabeth, but she wasn’t slow, either. She shifted her weight to the other foot. “Nan wasn’t herself yesterday and I was simply trying to keep us from having to redo anything.” She looked to the door to make sure no one was coming, then lowered her voice. “You should have seen the selections Nan made for this section. They weren’t very good at all. I tried to offer my suggestions, but she refused to listen.”

  Mrs. Driscoll stared at her with an incredulous look. “Miss Upton didn’t select the colors for this section. Didn’t you notice she failed to hold them to the light, but instead simply took them from the tray, pulled the template, and handed them to you?”

  Flossie stiffened. “That’s why I was so distressed. I thought she was trying to hurry things up and was sacrificing the quality of the window.” She looked at the nativity scene. “Was there something you didn’t like about the glass I chose?”

  “Yes, I liked the glass that had been previously chosen.”

  “I mean no disrespect, Mrs. Driscoll, but did you look at the glass that had been chosen for that part of the cartoon? I don’t know who did the selecting, but whoever she was, she picked ridged glass for the Virgin Mary’s gown, rippled glass for the wise men’s gifts, and fibrillated textures for baby Jesus.”

  For a long moment Mrs. Driscoll said nothing. Her light-brown eyes merely studied Flossie as if she were an oddity in a curiosity shop. “I’m sure this will come as a shock to you, Miss Jayne, but Mr. Tiffany himself selected the glass for this section of the window.”

  Flossie’s mouth slackened. She took a step back.

  Looking to the side, Mrs. Driscoll let out a huff of air, then turned back to Flossie. “Mr. Tiffany also invented ridged glass for the specific reason that when it is made by his formula, it looks like clothing draped into folds. As for fibrillated glass, he uses it in places which call for a rather soft glow—much like a baby would have. He developed rippled glass because it creates a sort of fiery glitter, which would be quite suitable for the treasures the wise men bestowed upon Jesus.”

  Flossie’s breathing grew deep. Her head became light.

  Placing her hands on the table, Mrs. Driscoll leaned toward her. “Just this once, I’m going to pretend you never said the things you said, nor did the things you did. But if you ever do another task you were not personally assigned by me to do, I will dismiss you. Do we have an understanding?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Driscoll.”

  “Good. Now, I suggest you get back over to your station and start looking for the templates you discarded yesterday. You have done us a great disservice. I will have to find the pieces Mr. Tiffany chose—if I even can. If I can’t, then he will have to do them over, and he will not be pleased about it.”

  Flossie’s heart began to hammer. “I’m—”

  “In addition to that, you are going to get even more behind on your cutting because you’ll have to put the templates back on the easel o
nce you find them, you’ll have to remove all the glass pieces you have up there, and you’ll have yesterday’s and today’s cutting to do instead of just today’s. We won’t even mention the cost of the glass you’ve ruined, but from here on out, if you make any mistakes or break any pieces, the cost of the glass will be taken out of your pay.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Driscoll. I’ll be careful. And I’ll hurry. You’ll see.”

  After curtseying, she rushed back to her station, tears stinging her eyes, the cut marks in her rough wooden table blurring. Shoving her glasscutters to the side, she rifled through the trash bin for templates. She couldn’t see a thing, but she made sure no sounds escaped as her shoulders shook.

  What if she wasn’t chosen to go to the fair because of this? She had to be. She simply had to be. It was just one mistake. She’d work doubly hard—harder than any of the other Tiffany Girls, so hard that she’d be irreplaceable.

  Finally, with a trembling breath, she wiped her eyes, laid out what numbered templates she had, then began to switch them out for the pieces she’d cut.

  BOARDERS AT DINNER 17

  “Everyone looked at the Trostles, the new elderly couple who’d just moved in.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  Does anyone know where today’s New York World is?” Nettels asked. “It’s not in the parlor.”

  Everyone looked at the Trostles, the new elderly couple who’d just moved in, assuming it was them who’d removed it from its proper place.

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. Holliday worried her lip. “I’m afraid I’m the culprit. I was reading The Merry Maid of Mumford Street.”

  Reeve choked on his coffee.

  Oyster slapped him on the back. “Oh, I saw that this morning. A delightful story, indeed.”

  Capturing his breath, Reeve looked up. How in the blazes did they know about the satire he’d written?

  “We should have someone do a reading of it tonight,” Mrs. Trostle suggested. The woman exuded a level of wealth none of the other boarders could match. Reeve briefly wondered if Miss Jayne’s mother might have sewn for her, but if that were the case, what was the woman doing in Klausmeyer’s Boardinghouse?

  “But Miss Jayne isn’t here,” Mrs. Holliday countered.

  “Miss Jayne?” Mr. Trostle shouted, overcompensating for the fact that he couldn’t hear too well. He was every bit as old as his wife, but hadn’t aged as gracefully. His forehead was stacked with wrinkles like a pug, and his gray goatee bobbed at the end of a protruding lower jaw that was missing a few teeth. “Is she the Tiffany Girl?”

  The start of the fair had come and gone, but the Tiffany Girls still hadn’t finished the windows and had been kept at work for long hours, so the Trostles had yet to meet Miss Jayne. Reeve had heard her leave early every morning and come home late in the evenings. He never waited up, nor did he go looking for her, but, much to his frustration, neither could he fall asleep until he heard her return.

  Smoothing his tie down his chest, Nettles straightened in his chair. “I suppose I could read it in Miss Jayne’s absence.”

  Reeve only listened with one ear to the rest of the conversation. His day had been taken up with some follow-up interviews with glass strikers. Surely the story Mrs. Holliday mentioned wasn’t his. Yet, he’d not noticed it in his drawer lately. Had he somehow accidentally stuffed it in an envelope with one of his other assignments?

  Even if he had, his editor would have realized it wasn’t anything worth publishing. After all, Reeve didn’t write fiction. He was a journalist. He wrote serious pieces. Important pieces. Pieces about real people in real situations with real consequences. The farcical pseudonym of I. D. Claire alone should have clued Mr. Ulrich in to knowing it wasn’t a legitimate submission.

  As soon as he could excuse himself, he did. He needed to have a look at today’s paper.

  NEWSPAPER OFFICE 18

  “Wooden desks lined a bank of windows on one side of the room, standing desks and shelves lined the other.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  Wooden desks lined a bank of windows on one side of the room, standing desks and shelves lined the other. Reporters, proofreaders, and clerks looked up as Reeve walked past them toward the editor’s office. Pipe tobacco smoke mingled with cigar, creating a hazy fog and a woodsy odor.

  “Hey, Wilder.” Bob Tarver unhooked his glasses and loosened his tie.

  “Tarver.”

  Reeve glanced at the paper on his desk. “What’re you working on?”

  “News just came in that the opening of the Ferris wheel has been delayed for another month.”

  “They’re that far behind? I thought it was supposed to be ready by now.”

  “It was.” Tarver scratched his head, making a couple of strands of hair stick out—what there was of it anyway. His hairline had receded so far back that his part was only a couple of inches long. “It’s not Mr. Ferris’s fault, though. It’s those Chicago bureaucrats. Took them so long to agree that the wheel was the best way to upstage the Eiffel Tower that Ferris wasn’t able to start on the thing until the fair was almost upon him.”

  Lifting the cloth of his trouser leg, Reeve propped a hip on the edge of Tarver’s desk. The Eiffel Tower had been built as the entrance arch to the Paris Exposition in ’89, but Chicago had been determined to outdo the thousand-foot monument. “They should have had the fair in New York. We’d have had everything finished on time.”

  “That we would have.”

  Reeve glanced toward the back wall. “Is Ulrich in?”

  Tarver used his thumb to point behind him. “He’s been typing away on his Smith Premier all morning.”

  Rising, Reeve clapped him on the shoulder, then walked to the back, exchanging greetings with several of the men while noting three of the desks had been cleaned out. He reached his editor’s office and tapped against the open door.

  Ulrich waved him in. His cowlick was in rare form today, combed up into one giant red curl, creating the perfect foil for his equally bright goatee. “I’m glad you’re here, I need to talk to you. Have a seat while I finish this up.”

  An oversized window behind him cut a swath of light across the desk, highlighting a stack of papers on his right, a dictionary half a foot thick, three competitors’ newspapers, and several notes tacked to the wall.

  Reeve settled into a spindle-back chair and propped his ankle on his knee. Ulrich had removed both coat and waistcoat, leaving him in shirtsleeves, suspenders, and tie. A spot of ink marred the left breast of his wrinkled shirt.

  Finally, he whipped the piece of paper he’d been working on out of the typewriter’s roller and pointed to a basket of mail on a table in the corner. “You see those letters over there?”

  Nodding, Reeve rested a hand on his ankle.

  “Those are from subscribers who read your boardinghouse satire.”

  “I was going to ask you about that.” Reeve eyed the stack of mail. “I could have told you we’d get complaints. I didn’t even mean to send it in. I just wrote it as a joke. It must have gotten mixed up with my other stuff.”

  “Since when do you make jokes?”

  “Since this once, I guess. I wish you’d sent word before printing it.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Ulrich tucked the ends of his tie inside his shirt between the third and fourth buttons. “I’m in the newspaper business, Wilder. When my boys send me stories, I assume they’re for printing.”

  “Didn’t you see the pseudonym?”

  “I saw it.” He smiled. “Wasn’t much like you, but then, neither was the story.”

  “I wrote the thing over two months ago. When did you receive it?”

  “Last week.”

  Reeve rubbed a hand down his face. “I see. Well, I’m sorry. I should have burned it the minute I finished it. I shouldn’t have even written it. Are the higher-ups mad?”

  “No, they’re not mad.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  Ulrich dropped the legs o
f his chair onto the wooden floor with a thump, then removed a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his top drawer. “The higher-ups want you to serialize it.”

  He stilled. “They what?”

  “They want you to serialize it.”

  He frowned. “Why?”

  Opening the pouch, Ulrich took a pinch of tobacco, dropped it into the pipe bowl, and tapped it with his finger. “Because the readers are going crazy over it. The letters have been pouring in ever since it ran.”

  Reeve looked again at the mail basket. “Those aren’t complaints?”

  “Nary a one.” Striking a match on the side of his desk, Ulrich waited for it to flare, then held it to his pipe, puffing until the tobacco lit. With each draw, more and more smoke seeped from his mouth. A pungent odor filled the room, not unlike the smell of burning leaves. “With subscriptions down, the higher-ups are looking for ways to draw in new readers, and they’re willing to pay for it. So they told me to have you serialize this Marylee character.”

  Reeve rubbed his temples. “But . . . the story is stupid, and I don’t even write fiction, don’t know the first thing about it.”

  “Well, I could try and find somebody else.” Ulrich fired up his tobacco again for a deeper light, then waved away the smoke. “Didn’t occur to me you wouldn’t want an increase in pay.”

  Reeve tapped a thumb against his leg. “How much of an increase?”

  “Two-fifty. If the serialization does well and subscriptions go up, so will the fee. If they don’t, you’ll have to wrap up the story prematurely.”

  Reeve studied a calendar on the wall. Ulrich hadn’t flipped the page for two months. “How high could the fee go?”

  “Up to five dollars.”

  He lifted his brows. “Per installment?”

  “Per installment.”

  At five dollars per segment, he could double his forty-eight dollars of savings in two months. Even the two-fifty a week would be quite a boon. He jiggled his foot. “What would the storyline be?”