Night Soldiers

Plaque Tournant

Brush your teeth with Deems Your smile needs those gleams! Robert Eidenbaugh leaned back in his swivel chair and promised himself for the hundredth time to oil the squeak. Bister, the poisonous little snake in the next cubicle--the _corner__ cubicle, from which he could see both Lexington Avenue and East Forty-second Street--could hear him every time he sat back in the chair. He'd said so, one day at the water cooler: "Heard you squeaking away this morning, Eidenbaugh. Leaning back again?" Clearly, he meant _leaning back__ in both the physical and metaphorical senses of the expression. Bister had done well at Princeton and wore a bow tie--just a little frivolous for the J. Walter Thompson advertising company--and definitely saw himself as a man on the way up. Following his remark, he'd shot a furry eyebrow and smiled coldly, confirming his own wit. Confirming his own progress in the world, _bister__ didn't lean back. _Bister__ stayed hard at it all day long, pounded his typewriter, talked on the phone, went to meetings--he quite loved meetings--or thought up ways to apple-polish Mr. Drowne, the copy chief. _Bister__ was on the way up. He was not. After the snotty remark at the water cooler, he'dlet the conical paper cup fill to the brim and, just about the timethe great bubble broke the surface with its characteristic _blurp,__squeezed the sides violently so that a miniature waterspout leapt into the air, narrowly missing Bister's dazzling brogans on the way down. "Sorry, Bister," he'd said as the little man jumped backward, "do you melt?" But Bister was correct. He did sit back in the chair--_squeak__--and gaze out onto Lexington Avenue, eleven floors below. It was December, and it was snowing. Soon it would be Christmas, which meant that1941was almost over. Good! Next there'd be1942.Hooray! During which time he would undoubtedly do exactly what he'd done in1941,which was very damn little. For the last year, the only thing that had truly engaged his attention was the war in Europe. The high point of his day had become the morning delivery--just after the milk--of the _New York Times.__ Over coffee he would read of Polish lancers attacking German tank units. Of the rules of the German occupation: Poles forbidden to ride in taxis, carry briefcases, have their teeth filled with gold, use railroad waiting rooms, walk in parks, call from phone booths, enter athletic events, or wear felt hats. But it wasn't only the Germans, the newspaper told him. Forty Russian divisions had invaded Poland from the east, along a thousand-mile frontier. The Russian armor flew white flags, and the tank commanders yelled down from their turrets that they'd come to help the Poles fight the Germans. Thus they were unopposed. When it came the turn of France to be subdued, he was enraged. He had spent his childhood in France and the thought of the jack-booted Nazis striding arrogantly down the streets of Toulon, where he'd played as a child, was nauseating to him. Guilt pricked him and made him lean forward over the hateful Remington as the chair complained. _Brush your teeth with Deems I Says the girl of your dreams!__ Not so bad. But then they'd need a _girl of your dreams__ in the layout, and he knew that old Dr. Deems--a dentist from Rye, New York, before he became a tooth powder millionaire--wasn't having anything quite so daring in his advertising campaign. There would be a sparkling illustration of the tooth powder can--an example of which sat on his desk--in its brand-new blue and white colors. The art director had tried for a dream girl in one of his mock-ups, but Dr. Deems had labeled the notion "prurient." Prurient!