Decorum by Kaaren Christopherson Read Free Book Online Page B

had been a younger son, the renegade—a musician and composer whose work made him a frequenter of opera houses, theaters, music halls, and mansions. With an artist for a wife—and she reputed to have come from Spanish gypsy stock—the bohemian life of artists’ studios, salons, and the adoption of personae as the situation dictated were as familiar to Blanche as if they had been inscribed on her personality from birth. The gifts of money her father’s mother had intended for her and her sisters’ education financed the family for two years in Europe, where indeed the young and striking trio of Blanche, Teresa, and Harriet received an education beyond anything their grandmother would have imagined—or approved. With the preoccupation of survival and the desire to rise in the world, Blanche had given not a moment’s thought to the withdrawal her spirit had undergone when deprived of the color, noise, odor, and sensation of the life she had known. The chance to reacquaint herself with the theatrical costumers and the world with which she and her family had been so familiar was intoxicating.
    Though the theaters that catered to the elite had begun their great migration uptown many years before, the Bowery still boasted good entertainment. Blanche picked her way through the dirty back streets and fetid, trash-strewn alleyways. She jostled with handcarts and horse-drawn vans and stopped at shop after shop, referred on to street after street until she found what she sought.
    Down a blind alley, recessed into a windowless wall of dingy brick, was a door bright with red-, green-, and yellow-painted panels and a brass knob and knocker. Above the door, a black sign with bold red letters edged in gold proclaimed A TELIER M AXIMILLIAN. She gave the knocker a brisk rap. A peephole door snapped open and a spectacled eye appeared and raised a bushy eyebrow. The door was flung open by a portly man in plaid trousers, a brocade waistcoat, and a white collarless shirt, with a smattering of grizzled hair on top of his head and sticking out over his ears.
    “My dear Mrs. Alvarado,” the man exclaimed as he took her hand and kissed it. “How do you do, my dear lady?”
    “Hello, Max, darling.”
    “You should have wired that you were in town. How long it has been since we’ve had the pleasure. Come in. Come in.”
    “I had a good job tracking you down,” said Blanche, stepping over the threshold. “You seem to have moved shops several times since we last met.”
    “Yes, well, you know how it is,” he said, still smiling. “The fortunes of war, one might say. The modern bill collector is such a relentless breed of bloodhound.”
    “The Oriental and the Neue Stadt still not paying up?” asked Blanche sympathetically.
    “Oh, my dear, the list gets longer and longer. But let us not speak of unpleasantness. Come on back and let us become reacquainted.”
    He led her through a rabbit warren of rooms crowded with costumes hanging from every hook and pole, mounted a narrow staircase, and skirted the perimeter of a workroom flooded with light from three tall windows. Three women ran three sewing machines that kept up a steady rat-tat-tat as a man cut a pattern at a long table. Fabric was stacked to the ceiling, scraps of braid and lace were trodden underfoot, and trays of notions were set higgledy-piggledy on shelves. The proprietor admitted Blanche to a small glassed-in office and indicated a shabby wooden chair. She sat down and drew off her gloves.
    “Now, my dear, may I offer you refreshment from my somewhat limited stores?” he said, opening a small cabinet containing a single bottle and two glasses. “Gin or gin?” This invitation she declined and Max, glass in hand, sat down with a creak at the well-worn desk.
    “What brings you to New York and to my humble establishment, my dear?”
    “I arrived here several weeks ago to join a gentleman who has just concluded a rather lucrative business deal. We are expecting to be