Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser Page A

meaning until they were connected to the larger design. Then he grasped them, then he held them in place and felt a deep and almost physical satisfaction—and in his mind, in his chest, in the veins of his arms, he felt a secret exhilaration, as when in his childhood he had gone shopping with his mother and had realized not only that all the toy fire engines and diamond necklaces and leather gloves were different parts of one big department store, but that the store itself was part of a block of buildings, and all the blocks went repeating themselves, rectangle by rectangle, in every direction, until they formed a city.
    As he threw himself into his new duties, which took him away from the life of the lobby but placed him close to the inner workings of the hotel, he sometimes had the sense that he was being led by friendly powers toward a destinationthey had marked out for him. The management, in the person first of Mr. Henning and then of Mr. Westerhoven, had shown him unusual favor, had singled him out and raised him up from the lowly rank of bellboy to his present position as personal secretary to the manager, all in the space of a few years. There had been rumors from time to time of Mr. Westerhoven’s retirement, of Mr. Henning’s promotion to manager, of the creation of a new position above assistant manager and below general manager, and Martin, who disliked rumors, which struck him as the exasperating equivalent of speculations about what would have happened if Lee had won the war, or if Booth had been a bad shot—Martin sometimes found himself wondering whether there might be something in the rumors after all, whether the friendly powers might be moving him in a direction. Then the dream-feeling would come over him, as if his real life were not here, where it seemed to be, but over there, a little off to one side, just over there.
    Meanwhile the cigar stand was turning a nice little profit. Martin increased the amount of display space for cigarettes and added gift items that proved popular: alligator cigarette cases lined with satin, porcelain figurines of humorous pipe-smoking farmers, cast-iron clown faces that blew streams of little smoke rings. He and Bill Baer discussed ways of drawing women into this mostly male domain: on the cigarette counter they placed a chromo of a well-dressed woman smoking a cigarette, and alongside brightly lacquered boxes of specially selected cigars they set advertising cards directed at a woman in search of the perfect gift for the manin her life. Purchases by women had tripled over the last three months; and Martin added a new line of silver ashtrays, with the hotel insignia, a tiny Vanderlyn, engraved in black and red.
    Martin had money now, more than ever before, even after his monthly rent for the cigar stand, his monthly contribution to his father’s store, his dinners with Bill Baer, and his visits to the house of rattling windows. In his free hours on the weekends he walked the streets of the city or rode the four Elevated lines, emerging at random from El stations to descend the graceful iron stairways with their peaked roofs, their slender columns ornamented at the top with lacy ironwork. He walked everywhere, alone or with Bill Baer—on sun-striped shadowy avenues under the El tracks, out on East River wharves, past fire escapes hung with blankets and joined by washlines, along new uptown row houses facing weedgrown bushy lots. As he walked, looking about, taking it all in, feeling a pleasant tension in his calves and thighs, he felt a surge of energy, a kind of serene restlessness, a desire to do something, to test himself, to become, in some way, larger than he was. He wasn’t sure what it was, this thing he wanted to be, but one day not long after his twentieth birthday he had a little idea that began to occupy his deepest attention.

The Paradise Musee
    H E HAD LEARNED FROM HIS FATHER THAT THE old Paradise Musée was going to shut down. It stood at the other end