Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t get away.”
    Martin realized that he had been careless, that by appearing cool he had hurt Mr. Henning in his pride. He was irked at himself, and at the stupid cigar, but the hesitation had been powerful and couldn’t be ignored. He knew perfectly well that the promotion was a great chance; what caused him to hold back was something else, something that had to do with his relation to this hotel and to any hotel. He needed time to think it over. He said, “What I meant was, I always talk these things over with my father.”
    Mr. Henning raised his eyebrows and threw up his hands, one of which still held the unlighted cigar. “And do you think for a minute I haven’t spoken of it to your father?”
    It struck Martin that Mr. Henning was shrewder than he’d given him credit for: the assistant manager had sensed a crucial thing. Martin agreed to finish out the week as bellboy before taking up his new position, and that night, seated in the parlor over the cigar store, listening to his mother and father talking down below, it suddenly came to him: he had hesitated because his life in the hotel was a dream-life, an interlude, a life from which he would one day wake to his real life—whatever that might be.
    Meanwhile Mr. Henning had plans for him, and that was fine with Martin, who threw himself into his new duties with a zest that surprised him. It was as if, having acknowledged the dream-nature of his life in the Vanderlyn Hotel,he was able to sink wholly into the dream without any fretful hankering to wake up. He liked his new hatless uniform, with its chocolate-brown jacket and brass buttons, and the shiny mahogany counter, and the rows of heavy keys hanging from numbered hooks. Mr. Henning hovered erratically behind the desk before vanishing on mysterious errands. It was John Babcock, the other day clerk, a polite and reserved young man of eighteen whose thick pale eyelashes gave him a slightly blurred look, who helped Martin with the details of his new job, such as presenting the leather-bound hotel register for guests to sign, distributing mail to the rows of wooden boxes, and operating the handsome new cash register, with its jumping-up numerals that appeared behind the glass at the top and the satisfying bing of its bell. It all seemed very clear to Martin, as if he’d been working behind the desk for a long time. He enjoyed attending to newly arrived guests, answering questions, soothing ruffled tempers—talking to people. Was it so different from the cigar store, really? People talked to you, and you talked back. You tried to imagine the confusion of strangers, satisfy their desires, make things simple and orderly and clear. And people liked him back: he could feel it in his bones. Guests began relying on him, coming to him for advice. John Babcock was an efficient room clerk, but Martin saw that he didn’t really like anyone; he spoke to everyone in the same polite toneless voice, which seemed the echo of his eyelashes.
    Mornings, Martin arrived at a quarter to six, changed into his uniform, and took over from Charley Stratemeyer,whose skin beneath his melancholy eyes was the color of plums and who had taken to greeting Martin with ironical flourishes. “Ah, young Lochinvar is come out of the West,” he would say, or “Up bright and early to greet the dawn, eh, Martin?” There was a new coolness about Charley, which shaded at times into an air of mockery, mixed with something murkier that felt like a sort of spiteful respect. It occurred to Martin that at twenty-two his old pal must sometimes wonder whether he was going to spend the rest of his life as a room clerk. Charley had already received two warnings from Mr. Henning for arriving late; the plum-dark patches under his eyes, the waxy skin, the talk of hookers under the El and the joys of bought love in borrowed rooms, a touch of harshness about the mouth, all this gave Martin the sense that Charley was turning into someone else before his