Tiffany Girl (24 page)

Even if he had, his editor would have realized it wasn’t anything worth publishing. After all, Reeve didn’t write fiction. He was a journalist. He wrote serious pieces. Important pieces. Pieces about real people in real situations with real consequences. The farcical pseudonym of I. D. Claire alone should have clued Mr. Ulrich in to knowing it wasn’t a legitimate submission.

As soon as he could excuse himself, he did. He needed to have a look at today’s paper.

NEWSPAPER OFFICE 
¹⁸

“Wooden desks lined a bank of windows on one side of the room, standing desks and shelves lined the other.”

CHAPTER

29

W
ooden desks lined a bank of windows on one side of the room, standing desks and shelves lined the other. Reporters, proofreaders, and clerks looked up as Reeve walked past them toward the editor’s office. Pipe tobacco smoke mingled with cigar, creating a hazy fog and a woodsy odor.

“Hey, Wilder.” Bob Tarver unhooked his glasses and loosened his tie.

“Tarver.”

Reeve glanced at the paper on his desk. “What’re you working on?”

“News just came in that the opening of the Ferris wheel has been delayed for another month.”

“They’re that far behind? I thought it was supposed to be ready by now.”

“It was.” Tarver scratched his head, making a couple of strands of hair stick out—what there was of it anyway. His hairline had receded so far back that his part was only a couple of inches long. “It’s not Mr. Ferris’s fault, though. It’s those Chicago bureaucrats. Took them so long to agree that the wheel was the best way to upstage the Eiffel Tower that Ferris wasn’t able to start on the thing until the fair was almost upon him.”

Lifting the cloth of his trouser leg, Reeve propped a hip on the edge of Tarver’s desk. The Eiffel Tower had been built as the entrance arch to the Paris Exposition in ’89, but Chicago had been determined to outdo the thousand-foot monument. “They should have had the fair in New York. We’d have had everything finished on time.”

“That we would have.”

Reeve glanced toward the back wall. “Is Ulrich in?”

Tarver used his thumb to point behind him. “He’s been typing away on his Smith Premier all morning.”

Rising, Reeve clapped him on the shoulder, then walked to the back, exchanging greetings with several of the men while noting three of the desks had been cleaned out. He reached his editor’s office and tapped against the open door.

Ulrich waved him in. His cowlick was in rare form today, combed up into one giant red curl, creating the perfect foil for his equally bright goatee. “I’m glad you’re here, I need to talk to you. Have a seat while I finish this up.”

An oversized window behind him cut a swath of light across the desk, highlighting a stack of papers on his right, a dictionary half a foot thick, three competitors’ newspapers, and several notes tacked to the wall.

Reeve settled into a spindle-back chair and propped his ankle on his knee. Ulrich had removed both coat and waistcoat, leaving him in shirtsleeves, suspenders, and tie. A spot of ink marred the left breast of his wrinkled shirt.

Finally, he whipped the piece of paper he’d been working on out of the typewriter’s roller and pointed to a basket of mail on a table in the corner. “You see those letters over there?”

Nodding, Reeve rested a hand on his ankle.

“Those are from subscribers who read your boardinghouse satire.”

“I was going to ask you about that.” Reeve eyed the stack of mail. “I
could have told you we’d get complaints. I didn’t even mean to send it in. I just wrote it as a joke. It must have gotten mixed up with my other stuff.”

“Since when do you make jokes?”

“Since this once, I guess. I wish you’d sent word before printing it.”

Leaning back in his chair, Ulrich tucked the ends of his tie inside his shirt between the third and fourth buttons. “I’m in the newspaper business, Wilder. When my boys send me stories, I assume they’re for printing.”

“Didn’t you see the pseudonym?”

“I saw it.” He smiled. “Wasn’t much like you, but then, neither was the story.”

“I wrote the thing over two months ago. When did you receive it?”

“Last week.”

Reeve rubbed a hand down his face. “I see. Well, I’m sorry. I should have burned it the minute I finished it. I shouldn’t have even written it. Are the higher-ups mad?”

“No, they’re not mad.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

Ulrich dropped the legs of his chair onto the wooden floor with a
thump
, then removed a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his top drawer. “The higher-ups want you to serialize it.”

He stilled. “They what?”

“They want you to serialize it.”

He frowned. “Why?”

Opening the pouch, Ulrich took a pinch of tobacco, dropped it into the pipe bowl, and tapped it with his finger. “Because the readers are going crazy over it. The letters have been pouring in ever since it ran.”

Reeve looked again at the mail basket. “Those aren’t complaints?”

“Nary a one.”
Striking a match on the side of his desk, Ulrich waited for it to flare, then held it to his pipe, puffing until the tobacco lit. With each draw, more and more smoke seeped from his mouth. A pungent odor filled the room, not unlike the smell of burning leaves. “With subscriptions down, the higher-ups are looking for ways to draw in new readers, and they’re willing to pay for it. So they told me to have you serialize this Marylee character.”

Reeve rubbed his temples. “But . . . the story is stupid, and I don’t even write fiction, don’t know the first thing about it.”

“Well, I could try and find somebody else.” Ulrich fired up his tobacco again for a deeper light, then waved away the smoke. “Didn’t occur to me you wouldn’t want an increase in pay.”

Reeve tapped a thumb against his leg. “How much of an increase?”

“Two-fifty. If the serialization does well and subscriptions go up, so will the fee. If they don’t, you’ll have to wrap up the story prematurely.”

Reeve studied a calendar on the wall. Ulrich hadn’t flipped the page for two months. “How high could the fee go?”

“Up to five dollars.”

He lifted his brows. “Per installment?”

“Per installment.”

At five dollars per segment, he could double his forty-eight dollars of savings in two months. Even the two-fifty a week would be quite a boon. He jiggled his foot. “What would the storyline be?”

“Whatever you want, so long as it takes place in a boardinghouse and the New Woman—Marylee, I think—remains the focal character. That’s what most of the letters mention.” Ulrich shrugged. “I’d suggest throwing in a few more eccentrics. You know, meddlesome landladies, coquettish daughters, slovenly servants, ill-mannered housemates, horrific food—don’t you live in a boardinghouse? Just fictionalize the people who live there.”

Reeve thought of the boarders at Klausmeyer’s. After the question-and-answer game they’d been playing, he knew them much better than he used to. It wouldn’t be hard to turn them into caricatures of themselves, except for Mrs. Dinwiddie. He’d never do something like that to her. It’s just that the rest of them weren’t particularly interesting.

Well, there was Miss Jayne. She was interesting. Compelling, even. And definitely complex. Still, to cast her in a leading role of an entire serialization? He wouldn’t know the first thing about it. The extra money would help him garner money for that down payment, though. A down payment he very much wanted.

He scratched his jaw. If writing this serialization would accelerate his chances of getting the Brooklyn place back, then maybe he ought to do it. It wasn’t as if anyone would know he was the one writing it.

Taking a deep breath, he uncrossed his legs and pushed himself to his feet. “I still want to write my regular articles. And the satire can only be published under the pseudonym.”

“Agreed.”

“All right, then. I’ll have something for you by the end of the week.”

Clamping the pipe at the corner of his mouth, Ulrich held out his hand. “That’s the spirit, Wilder. That’s the spirit.”

Reeve clasped his hand, but couldn’t help wonder if he’d just made a deal with the devil.

CARTOON FOR DISPLAY AT WORLD’S FAIR 
¹⁹

“Mr. Tiffany looked at the designers, who were all bunched together at the other end of their line. ‘I have agreed to send them a cartoon by Miss McDowell and some sketches by Miss Northrup, Miss de Luze, and Miss Emmet.’ ”

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