Bandbox

by Thomas Mallon

  The singer’s Ruth Etting imitation might be pretty second-rate, but Stuart Newman, falling asleep on a banquette at Mirador, was taking the song’s title to heart. After you’ve gone, Miss … what was the name of this girl who was half-on, half-off his lap?… after you’ve gone, Miss Brattle—that was it—maybe I can go home and go to bed.

  Stuart and Miss Brattle had already been to the Deauville, and her appetite for nightlife appeared to be such that he feared seeing the dawn break at some rent party up in Harlem.

  “I want to meet Texas Guinan!” she burbled, while tickling Stuart’s nose.

  He managed a smile. “That’s for tourists, honey.”

  Now that he could remember Miss Brattle’s name, he tried to remember how he’d met her. She was a Bryn Mawr girl, no? A member of the Art Students League? Which would indicate, perhaps, that he’d been introduced to her by Millicent, the artists’ model, whom he was quite sure he’d met through Miss Cronin, who worked in that little gallery. Stuart’s last dates were always recommending his next ones, because he knew how to stop short of breaking any of their hearts. Handsome and worldly as he was, he had an odd, almost little-boy’s voice, and he understood how to inspire maternal concern. Before he was through with them, his girls almost always came to regard Stuart as a species of social work. His evenings were like referrals: “Here, see what you can do with him,” each girl would say to the next. If no one so far had accomplished his emotional animation, the author of “The Bachelor’s Life” was never short on material. Miss Brattle would end up in a column on “Artistic Girls,” along with Millicent and Miss Cronin, so long as—he’d have to check—he hadn’t already used either of those two in “Greenwich Village Girls.”

  So entranced was Miss Brattle by his still-Greek profile that Stuart knew he could use it, should he so desire, to point her homeward to his lair in Gramercy Park. But instead of jutting his jaw in that southerly direction, Stuart surprised his date by saying, “How about me getting you a taxi, honey?”

  Miss Brattle made a little pout. It went unnoticed by Stuart, thinking now of Nan O’Grady, who would soon be complaining, in that precise little voice, about his overdue column. Shot through with longing and anxiety, Stuart could feel an old enemy suddenly banging on a door somewhere inside him. He allowed his profile to sink deep into Miss Brattle’s marcel wave.

  “Now, that’s better,” she said, falsely encouraged by the gesture.

  Stuart said nothing. His full concentration was on breathing in the smell of alcohol from Miss Brattle’s setting lotion.

  5

  And, finally tonight, several hundred miles to the west, in the small town of Greencastle, Indiana, where the temperature was several degrees higher, and the pace of life several knots slower, nineteen-year-old John Shepard turned a page of his magazine and pondered the necktie being worn by the man with the python.

  He wasn’t altogether sure that such a tie was “him,” John Chilton Shepard, but he was sure that nobody would ever find this bold piece of neckwear in any shop in Greencastle—not even two years from now, when, as a Bandbox subscriber, John knew it would certainly be out of fashion.

  The magazine’s January issue had arrived only today, and as John fingered the Addressographed subscription label, he felt connected to the whole glamorous production; he felt part of the scene just by knowing that in some print shop in New York City a machine had chattered out the characters of his name.

  What to read first? The short story by Stark Young? Stuart Newman’s piece on “The Girls Who Can’t Stop Loving Sacco and Vanzetti”? Or just the latest page of wisecracks collected from Malocchio? With allowance made for rereading, the issue would last John nearly a week, after which he would have to return to O. O. McIntyre’s syndicated newspaper column for vicarious glimpses of New York life. But McIntyre’s own glimpses had come to seem vicarious to John; he was tired of hearing about the columnist’s apartment way up in the Hotel Majestic. Bandbox, by contrast, made a fellow feel he was truly down there in the thick of things, that he didn’t just have to use his imagination. John had been applying that quality to New York life ever since he’d been ten years old and the sound of the 8:30 chime from the dining-room clock had come to mean that the curtains were going up—at that very moment!—in every theatre on Broadway.

  “John!”

  At this cry from his mother, he turned down Cass Hagan and His Park Central Orchestra, who were on the radio playing songs from Manhattan Mary.

  “Yes, Mother! I’ve lowered it!”

  Mrs. Shepard treated him like Penrod, whereas John’s self-image was catching up to the idea he had of Waldo Lindstrom, a young man who even in that snakeskin tie, one could tell, never lost his effortless command of a yacht or a wine list or a woman.

  “John!” Mrs. Shepard’s voice came once more up the stairs. “Never mind the noise—mind the time! You’ve got errands to run all day tomorrow!”

  “Yes, Mother,” he replied, so wearily his words never carried all the way down to the parlor.

  He looked at the trunk, already sealed and labeled with the address of his fraternity house at IU. The new term was about to begin, and he would soon be there instead of—there, he thought, closing his eyes to imagine the clarinets in Hagan’s orchestra, pointed upwards, spouting their music like a row of singing skyscrapers.

  Turning the radio back up, John, seized with inspiration, rushed to get a blank card, a pen, and some shears, in order to fashion a new label for the trunk, one that would ensure its GENERAL DELIVERY, about a week from now, in NEW YORK CITY.

  6

  “Raus!” cried Mrs. von Erhard, who with her much milder husband ran the newsstand in the Graybar’s lobby. The hapless accountant she’d caught browsing a magazine replaced it on the rack and beat his retreat to the elevator. Each day at least a dozen patrons vowed to tell Mrs. von Erhard off, but so far none had ever done anything more than cast a wounded look at her silent, cowed spouse.

  Hannelore and Siegfried had come to the U.S. from Hamburg just after the outbreak of war in 1914, and throughout America’s year and a half Over There had kept their sidewalk newsstand at Forty-second and Lex so festooned with Old Glory that out-of-towners catching sight of it would sometimes mistake the little shed for a parade float. The couple had gotten the Graybar concession by keeping a shrewd eye on the construction site, ingratiating themselves with everyone who showed up at it wearing a suit.

  Becky Walter loathed Mrs. von Erhard, but she didn’t risk a glance at Photoplay while reaching for a copy of this morning’s Times.

  “Trading up?” said a voice behind her.

  It belonged to Paul Montgomery, Bandbox’s Harvard man, regarded as the magazine’s true stylist, rangy and lyrical, not a Johnny One-Note like David Fine or Max Stanwick. You might not want him to cover Arnold Rothstein, but Paul could bring a touch of the poet to everything from the boxing ring to the assembly line to some Iowa kid building a soapbox racer. Becky found his simile-saturated copy to be as insincere as Paul Montgomery himself, who pretended to be collegial instead of ambitious and claimed to see the wisdom in every word anybody spoke to him. For all his self-deprecation, he so believed in the importance of his own success that he had no room left to believe in anything else. His politics were however you were voting; his drink was whatever you were having; and his take on any assigned subject was whatever he determined, from guesswork or direct instruction, Joe Harris’s to be. “You’re a horse’s ass, Montgomery,” Cuddles had once, in a moment of alcoholic candor, declared to his face. “I couldn’t agree more,” Paulie had responded.

  “Huh?” asked Becky, turning around.

  “Trading up?” he repeated, pointing at her Times. He’d all but said “Atta-girl.” Becky knew the real meaning of this supposedly encouraging remark to be that someone like herself should stick to the News or the American and leave the Times and World to men of consequence like himself. But she decided to say, simply, “That’s right, Paul,” since he would
only wind up harmonizing any disagreement into unanimity. She handed him the paper and took another copy for herself.

  “Dot vill be two cents, sir,” said Hannelore von Erhard, nodding gravely. This cranial bow was part of the hushed deference she and Siegfried always paid Montgomery, whose industrialist father had gone down with the Lusitania in 1915.

  “Where were you last week?” Becky asked Paulie on their way to the elevator. “You look like an unmade bed.”

  “I do, don’t I?” he said, taking off his hat to pat down his hair. “Just got off the sleeper from Atlanta. Long interview with Ty Cobb. Spent a few days with him back home. His last season’s coming up. So sad. But I think the Big Guy will be pleased.”

  “I’m sure he will be,” said Becky. So, no doubt, would Ty Cobb. Montgomery never departed from a subject without clasping the person’s hands as if he, or the interviewee, were about to board the Lusitania. Surely, Becky had thought more than once, all the little ruts and sinkholes in Paulie’s mind had been drilled by his father’s catastrophe.

  “So what’ve I missed?” he asked.

  “Nothing special,” said Becky. She knew better than to tell him about Friday’s greeting from Leopold and Loeb, especially with the Wood Chipper, wrapped into a ridiculous raccoon coat, now following them into the elevator.

  “Joe College?” asked Montgomery. He meant to sound, once more, encouraging, as if it were nice to see the lower orders of the masthead taking a turn at self-improvement.

  “I borrowed it from Fashion,” said Chip Brzezinski, without further explanation.

  “Trading up?” Becky asked him, trying to insult Chip and Paul simultaneously. She was still wondering how much involvement the Wood Chipper had had in the photo’s arrival on Friday, and, more important, whether what she now had in mind as a way out for Cuddles had a prayer of working.

  “You changed the part of your hair,” said the endlessly pleasant Mrs. Zimmerman as Paul and Becky and Chip stepped off the elevator into Bandbox’s reception area. “It looks nice.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Z,” said Montgomery. “One doesn’t make these decisions lightly.”

  He walked with Becky and Chip to the coffee wagon at the other end of the floor. Passing by each open office, he shouted hello as if its occupant were the person he’d missed more than anybody else during his week in Georgia.

  “Allen Case!” he shouted into the Copy Department. “The best blue pencil and the best fellow in New York!”

  Allen made no response, only because his eyes had just dilated in revulsion over the sight of Chip Brzezinski in that coat. The manufacturer might as well have left the raccoons’ heads attached to the pelts, so vividly could Allen imagine all their little faces with those bandit kerchiefs nature had fashioned for them.

  “How about some tea?” suggested Nan. “I’m going to get a danish.”

  The two of them joined a small crowd at the coffee cart run by Mrs. Washington, a fine, churchgoing Negro lady who couldn’t wait to get through with this bunch and bring her wagon up to the much more respectable underwriters on fifteen. She made no effort to conceal her contempt for these filthy-tongued fashion plates who—except for nice Mr. Newman—would be pouring an inch of booze into their cups as soon as they got the coffee back to their desks.

  Daisy thought she might need a little more than that this morning. Her gloomy Friday-night reflections had continued through the weekend, and the sight of Chip’s coat made her realize why, perhaps, there had been no late call the other evening: he’d been dating against type, she supposed; making a successful play in this borrowed costume for some college girl half her age.

  Becky looked down the corridor to Cuddles’ office and saw no sign of him. What’s more, ten minutes past what should have been the start of Monday’s 9:30 lineup meeting, Harris’s door was still closed.

  “He’s on the phone with Betty,” Hazel explained to the lengthening line of editors and writers outside it; they now included Stuart Newman, who looked so strained that the others were staring at him.

  “Probably the clap,” whispered Max Stanwick to Montgomery.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” responded Paulie.

  “The third call he’s already made to her today,” said Hazel, pointing to Harris’s door, as the clock moved closer to 9:45.

  “His mood’s bad,” said David Fine to Spilkes. “I can feel it.”

  Hazel smirked at the Wood Chipper, who still hadn’t shed his coat. “Careful out there,” she said. “It’s hunting season.”

  Spilkes, who despised Brzezinski, added a withering glance to her remark. The guy had no business being here—he didn’t take part in editorial meetings—and the managing editor wanted him to scram. Spilkes had no intention of bringing along this little operator the way Jimmy Gordon had tried to. Six months had passed since the Wood Chipper had written a word of Bandbox, and so long as Spilkes was m.e., Brzezinski wouldn’t be asked to do so much as a sidebar on “the perfect shoeshine,” one of the magazine’s perennials.

  “I guess I’ll go to my office and count paper clips,” said Chip, turning his back on the line and heading down the corridor.

  “You don’t have an office,” Spilkes reminded him, loudly.

  Back in the bull pen of fact-checkers’ desks, Chip decided that he would just count paper clips this morning, whereas his father, serving eight to twelve in Joliet State Prison for applying a tire iron to an alderman, was presumably counting the two hundred dollars he’d just made from Jimmy Gordon for photographing Leopold and Loeb to exact specifications. No one but Jimmy knew the Wood Chipper’s father was doing time.

  “Is Cuddles in?” Becky asked Hazel, as quietly as she could.

  “Haven’t seen him,” said Harris’s secretary over the scrape of her nail file.

  Through the frosted glass, the assembled staff could see the boss standing near his window, still holding the telephone.

  “I can’t help it,” he was telling Betty, as he looked down into Lexington Avenue, worried he might already see a bus carrying that terrible picture.

  “Will you just put out your issue?” Betty responded from three flights down. “Why don’t you let Jimmy Gordon’s world revolve around yours for a while, instead of vice-a-versa?”

  “What am I, living with Copernicus?”

  “Give who a kiss?” asked Betty.

  “COPERNICUS.”

  “Stop shouting. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack. I have to go. Oldcastle’s making me go to lunch with Helena Rubinstein. I’ve got another two coats of rouge to put on between now and then if she’s going to think I’m serious about her product.”

  “All right,” said Harris, replacing the receiver and finally shouting “Come in!” to the dozen of his hirelings beyond the door. “It’s ten o’clock, for Christ’s sake! You’re standing there like we’re a bimonthly!”

  The staff arranged themselves in two rows of chairs in front of his vast marble desktop. Its crystal inkpots and ornate fountain pens, bristling from brass holders, made it look like an ornamental sarcophagus.

  “Where’s Houlihan?” Harris asked Becky, once everyone was seated.

  No longer Cuddles’ keeper, she resented the question but lied for him anyway. “He’s probably tied up in the subway.”

  Spilkes made a small notation, and Sidney Bruck issued a pitiless snort. Harris, who on occasion did some poaching of his own, had recently stolen this elegant young man, with his long Shelleyan hair and humorless wit, away from Crowninshield at Vanity Fair. For the past few months Bruck had been handling—or dismissing—most of the writers who’d fallen by Cuddles’ wayside.

  He sat, prodigious and calm, beside Andrew Burn, the magazine’s publisher, a balding, thuggish Scot, probably the one who’d discovered the low road in and out of his native land. Burn had worked for Oldcastle in various fixer capacities for nearly a decade, before the owner gave him to Harris as a publisher. The Scot had been a major part of Bandbox’s turnaround, selli
ng a vast acreage of ads against the magazine’s new editorial formula; he remained the chief bulwark of Harris’s security in the wake of Jimmy Gordon’s desertion.

  “We’ve got some holes in April,” said the editor-in-chief, growling the meeting to order. “And May’s half blank. What have you got going, ladies and gents?” He looked at Paul Montgomery. “Cobb about ready?”

  “More than ready,” said Paul. After this enthusiastic assurance, he clammed up, hoping to indicate that the stuff he’d gotten was too extraordinary to be shared yet even with his colleagues.

  David Fine wasn’t buying. “Sounds special, Paulie. What’d Cobb do? Beat some colored guy to death with his bat, right in front of you?”

  “For starters!” Montgomery crowed, before sealing his lips with a finger gesture.

  Becky exchanged a look of revulsion with Stuart Newman, and in the process noticed the dark rings under his eyes—something more, she felt pretty sure, than routine sexual exhaustion.

  “I’ve got exactly two features in the May well,” said Harris, at just below a shout. “Anybody got any ideas on how to keep this bandwagon rolling for another month?” The chronic paucity of on-hand copy was actually an indicator of the magazine’s vitality. Harris kept next to no inventory to ensure topicality and solvency. And so anxiety reigned: the produce might be fresh, but the cupboard was always bare.

  “I’ve heard that Peggy Hopkins Joyce is dating Chrysler,” offered Spilkes. “Maybe there’s a story there.”

  “And lose the car ads for three months?” asked Burn.

  “He’s right,” said Paul Montgomery.

  Suddenly, several voices, loud and indistinguishable, could be heard in the corridor outside. Richard Lord uncrossed his shined shoes and murmured, “The Columbia basketball team, I believe. Arriving for a shoot.”

  Harris looked confused.