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

in the door—if it was a door you wanted to get your foot in. If they liked you, and Henning already liked Martin, and if you showed you had the stuff, you could work your way up: already the Vanderlyn employed two day clerks and a night clerk, and there was talk of hiring a mail clerk to take some of the pressure off. And there were openings all the time in other hotels, especially the new uptown joints that were springing up as fast as you could blink an eye. Martin ought to think it over.
    Martin didn’t have to think it over, since the idea was as fantastic and crackbrained as the idea of joining a circus, and as he dismissed the offer with a shrug he suddenly imagined himself walking along the red-carpeted corridors of the Vanderlyn, past the high doors, looking up at the brass numbers; and for a moment he saw so vividly the half-open door, and the two feet crossed on the bed, that a confusion came over him, as if he were waking from a dream to find himself in a brown, dusky shop. Charley stood with his hands in his pockets and his head tipped at a jaunty angle. His father’s face was thoughtful. And seeing his father’s thoughtful face, Martin had the sense that he was slipping back into his dream of the dim red corridor, the high doors, the actors and actresses sitting along the walls.
    That night Otto Dressler proposed to Martin that he accept the bellboy job at the Vanderlyn Hotel. AlthoughMartin had all the makings of a first-rate cigar man, and would one day inherit the store, Otto wanted him to have the chance to better himself. Wasn’t America the land of opportunity? And wasn’t the Vanderlyn Hotel a golden opportunity? Sure, the cigar store was doing well enough, but the hours were long and hard and life was an endless battle to pay the lease. And it wasn’t as if Martin would be leaving home, or quitting the store; he’d simply devote his mornings to the Vanderlyn and the rest of his time to the store. He would then be in a position to choose. To his mother’s objection that the job would mean an end to Martin’s education, which would never go beyond the eighth grade, his father replied that there were other ways to get an education, that he himself had gone to work at the age of twelve, and that in any case Martin could quit his job after a few months or a year and return to school if the job proved disappointing. As for the odd hours: he himself would walk Martin down the block to the hotel at twenty of six each morning. Martin would be home for lunch.
    Two days later Martin began work at the Vanderlyn Hotel.
    In his dark green uniform with maroon trim, he sat on a bench near the check-in desk with three other bellboys and watched the main door. When he was at the end of the row it was his turn to spring up whenever the desk clerk rang a bell, unless the buzzer rang and the bellboy captain ordered him up to a room. Martin, who enjoyed the drama of sliding along the row and wondering what fate had in store for him, was astonished by the immense variety of things peoplecarried: leather Gladstone bags with nickel corner protectors, slim leather dress-suit cases, soft alligator-skin satchels, pebble-leather club bags, English cabinet bags, canvas telescope bags with leather straps, hatboxes, black umbrellas with hook handles, colored silk umbrellas with pearl handles, white silk parasols with ruffles, packages tied with string; and one morning a woman wearing a hat with fruit on it came in with a brass cage containing a monkey. The idea was to offer people immediate relief from their oppressive burdens, while never seeming to insist. But there was more to it than that: Martin saw that after the signing in it was his job not merely to carry the bags, but to lead the way to the elevators—and this meant being careful not to walk too quickly, especially in the case of those who were clearly new to the hotel and seemed a little uncertain, although the opposite error of being overly familiar must also be