Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser Read Free Book Online Page A

entire lobby was transformed: he became aware of the soft underswish of petticoats, the faint creak of stays, the rub of silk stockings, a dark alluring undersound of silk and lace, a sudden dark flash of glances—and as they strode past or sank sighinginto soft couches, the ladies of the lobby began shedding their long dresses, unlacing their tight corsets, flinging up their petticoats like bursts of snow, throwing back their heads and breathing sharply as veins beat in their necks, while Martin, rippling with terror, started to rise and knocked something over that began rolling away and away and away along the wavy pattern of the marble floor.

Advancement
    T HREE DAYS LATER THE B ELLS, MOTHER AND daughter, returned to Boston. From Mrs. Bell, Martin received a box of cream-filled chocolates, and from Alice he received—suddenly and secretly, as Mrs. Bell’s back was turned—a small heart-shaped gold locket, still warm from being clutched in a fist. He watched them follow the doorman along the shade of the awning. The locket contained a hand-painted photograph of Alice Bell, with eyes too blue and hair too yellow, staring thoughtfully and a little sadly at the viewer. Martin kept it at the back of his shirt drawer in the bedroom over the cigar store.
    With relief he watched them disappear beyond the glass doors, and also with the conviction that something neededto be done about a part of his life he rarely gave much thought to, and then only in a vague, shadowy way. At dinner he spoke briefly and directly to Bill Baer, and a few nights later he accompanied his friend to a house Bill Baer knew on West Twenty-fifth Street off Sixth Avenue. You had to be careful to choose a good house, Bill said, because some of the houses hired creepers who stole your money through secret panels in the walls. In the gaslit parlor with plush chairs and couches and a yellow-keyed piano, Martin chose a dark-haired girl with heavy shoulders, who reminded him of a younger, coarser, sadder Mrs. Hamilton. He followed her up the nearly dark stairs and had a moment of hesitation as he entered the dim-lit bare-looking room with pink-flowered wallpaper and a drawn yellow shade. Against one wall was a wooden washstand with a zinc basin, beside which stood an enameled white pitcher with a red handle. When she sat down on the bed he walked over quickly. Three things stayed with him: the violent rattle of the window behind the drawn shade as the El train roared past, the girl’s look of fear as he made a sudden gesture with his hand, and the odd feeling of gratitude to Mrs. Hamilton, for teaching him what to do in a brothel.
    He began visiting the house with rattling windows regularly, once or twice a week, at first choosing only Dora, the dark-haired girl, out of a sense of loyalty. One night when she remained upstairs he chose a big blond girl in a blood-red robe called Gerda the Swede, and in time he made his way through the remaining four girls, though he always chose Dora when he could. Martin looked forward to thenight strolls up the sidewalks of Sixth Avenue, past the high columns of the El. Bursts of piano music came from the concert saloons. Rushing trains shook the overhead tracks, spewed out coalsmoke shot through with red flames. It was a world of top-hatted swells and toughs in reefer jackets, of brazen-eyed women standing in doorways, of sawdust smells through swinging saloon doors mingling with the tang of horsedung thrown up by clattering wheels and ironshod hooves—and then the sudden plunge into darkness under the high tracks. One night a man with a black scarf around his neck lurched out at him from behind an El stanchion, holding a knife. Martin, frightened and outraged, swung from the shoulder. He left the man kneeling on all fours, coughing blood onto the dropped knife. In the sudden glare of an arc light Martin saw his split-open knuckle crusting with blood. But for the most part his walks were undisturbed; he welcomed the red