Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

2. Charley Stratemeyer

MARTIN’S FIRST SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS VENTURE took place not long after. Charley Stratemeyer, one of the day clerks at the Vanderlyn Hotel, had a fondness for a particular kind of fancy panatella that he couldn’t get at the lobby cigar stand, and for the past few months he had taken to strolling over to Dressler’s Cigars and Tobacco during his lunch hour and chatting with Martin before walking over to a little chophouse he knew on Seventh Avenue. Martin, who liked the humorous young man with the melancholy eyes, and who had been struck by something Charley had said, turned things over in his mind and at last decided to make a proposal. He pointed out that Charley had to walk from the Vanderlyn to the cigar store and then turn around and pass the Vanderlyn on his way to Seventh Avenue, so that he was losing valuable time on his lunch hour. But if Martin delivered the cigar to Charley at the Vanderlyn each day, then Charley would save time on his walk to the restaurant. In return he asked only one thing. Since the cigar stand in the hotel lobby had disappointed Charley, it must also disappoint many people who stayed at the hotel, and he asked Charley to put in a word for Dressler’s Cigars and Tobacco. At this Charley laughed aloud and clapped Martin on the back, saying he was a sharp little devil.

Now every day at noon Martin walked from the cigar store to the Vanderlyn Hotel, where he delivered Charley’s cigar and took in the great lobby with its chairs of maroon plush, its pillars carved at the top with leaves and fruit, its ceiling decorated with gilt hexagons, the plants in stone pots, the shiny brass spittoons on the marble floor, the cigar stand in the corner. One day he walked over to the stand, behind which sat an old man reading a newspaper, and saw that it was a careless mix of expensive and cheap cigars, displayed without plan, the whole affair badly thought out from start to finish. Soon the first new customer from the Vanderlyn entered Dressler’s Cigars and Tobacco; and business began picking up in a small but noticeable way.

Martin liked the hot noon walk down his street to the Vanderlyn at the corner of Broadway. He knew each window and awning well: the paper and twine window under its green-and-white-striped awning, the window of derbies and fedoras under its red-and-white-striped awning, the window of umbrellas and walking sticks under its brown-and-white-striped awning, the window of ladies’ dress trimmings, the stone steps going down to the linen draper’s shop, the window of bolts of cloth past which he could see old Grauman the tailor, the window of ladies’ hats, the barbershop window with the reflection of the turning pole — and then the fringed awning, the rounded stone entranceway, the high glass doors of the six-story Vanderlyn Hotel. Martin was soon friends with the doorman in his maroon-and-gold jacket, who for some reason reminded him of old Tecumseh, and the lobby no longer seemed like one of the colored pictures in the Arabian Nights, but a familiar place filled with interesting details: the heavy room keys hanging on a board behind the desk clerks, the chairs grouped in twos and threes around small tables, the gentleman with gloves and a fancy walking stick who sat smoking a second-rate cigar. Sometimes when Martin handed Charley his cigar he would stand talking for a few minutes before returning to the store, but one day Charley said he’d like to show Martin something. He led Martin through the lobby past a group of pillars into what seemed another lobby, with half-open doors giving glimpses of smaller rooms, and turning a corner he came to a row of three elevators.

An elevator boy in a dark green uniform was pulling open the shiny door. Inside Martin saw polished dark wood. Two benches covered in dark red velvet stretched along the walls. “Fifth floor, Andy,” said Charley. The door slid shut, followed by a rattling brass gate that unfolded like a bellows. There was a deep rumble, and Martin had the odd sensation that he was falling upwards. Once, coming downstairs to the cigar store, he had reached the bottom and started forward, only to discover that it wasn’t the bottom, there was nothing at all, and he had been about to fall when he suddenly understood that he had miscalculated the number of steps — and this sense of being about to fall, while understanding that you weren’t going to, was what the elevator was like. He was beginning to enjoy it when they came to a clunking stop. The elevator boy pulled open the brass gate. The floor of the elevator was too low. They lurched up; the boy pulled open the heavy door; Martin stepped out after Charley Stratemeyer onto a landing with stairs in front and doors on both sides. He followed Charley through a door and down a red-carpeted dusky hall lit by gas brackets with blue glass globes, past high doors with brass numbers on them. He heard voices. Charley held up a hand in warning, and when Charley turned the corner they both stopped abruptly.

Martin saw men and women sitting on the floor against both walls and standing in open doors. In the middle of the corridor a woman in a black dress with yellow flowers in her hair was pacing up and down, wringing her hands. A man with a brown beard stood with his arms folded on his chest, glaring at a younger man in a silk hat who carried a walking stick. The woman covered her face with her hands and began to weep. Suddenly she fell to the floor, the young man in the silk hat dropped to his knees beside her. Martin, watching in terror, saw that no one was doing anything: a woman sitting on the floor was peeling an orange, a man in a doorway bent over to brush something from his shirt front, someone was smoking a perfumed cigarette. A few faces turned toward Martin and then looked away. He had the strange, melancholy sense that something terribly wrong was happening, it was as if he had stepped into someone’s dream, but already Charley was tugging at his arm and whisking him back along the way they had come. In the elevator, which suddenly began to fall, so that Martin stumbled back against a bench, Charley explained that a troupe of actors and actresses had rented a row of rooms on the fifth floor. They liked to rehearse at strange hours, sometimes they didn’t come in till four in the morning, you saw all kinds of queer things in this line of work, and as Martin stepped out into the hot sunlight of the street he recalled with sudden vividness a curious detail: through one of the half-open doors he had seen the corner of a bed with a pair of crossed feet on it, one of which was naked and white and one of which wore a shiny black button-up shoe.