U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [450]
There wasn't any doubt any more that Piquot was going broke. Bil col ectors stormed in the little office on the mez-zanine and everybody's pay was three weeks in arrears, and Piquot's moonshaped face drooped in tiny sagging
wrinkles. Margo decided she'd better start looking around for another job, especial y as Mr. A's drinking was getting harder and harder to handle. Every morning she studied the stockmarket reports. She didn't have the faith she had at first in Mr. A's tips after she'd bought Sinclair one day and had had to cover her margin and had come out three hundred dol ars in the hole.
One Saturday there was a great stir around Piquot's.
-330-Piquot himself kept charging out of his office waving his short arms, sometimes peevish and sometimes cackling and giggling, driving the salesladies and models before him like a new rooster in a henyard. Somebody was coming to take photographs for Vogue. The photographer when he final y came was a thinfaced young Jewish boy with a pasty skin and dark circles under his eyes. He had a regular big photographer's camera and a great many flashlight bulbs al silvercrinkly inside that Piquot kept picking up and handling in a gingerly kind of way and exclaiming over. "A vonderful invention. . . . I vould never 'ave photographs taken before because I detest explosions and ten te I vould never 'ave photographs taken before because I detest explosions and ten te danger of fire."
It was a warm day in February and the steamheated
showrooms were stifling hot. The young man who came to take the pictures was drenched in sweat when he came out from under the black cloth. Piquot wouldn't leave him alone for a second. He had to take Piquot in his office, Piquot at the draftingboard, Piquot among the models. The girls thought their turn would never come. The photographer kept saying, "You let me alone, Mr. Piquot.
. . . I want to plan something artistic." The girls al got to giggling. At last Piquot went off and locked himself in his office in a pet. They could see him in there through the glass partition, sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. After that things quieted down. Margo and the photographer got along very wel . He kept whispering to her to see what she could do to keep the old gent out of the pictures. When he left to go up to the loft upstairs where the dresses were made, the photographer handed her his card and asked her if she wouldn't let him take her picture at his studio some Sunday. It would mean a great deal to him and it wouldn't cost her anything. He was sure he could get something distinctively artistic. She took his card and said she'd be around the next afternoon. On the card it said Margolies, Art Photographer.
-331-That Sunday Mr. A took her out to lunch at the Hotel Pennsylvania and afterwards she managed to get him to drive her over to Margolies' studio. She guessed the young Jewish boy wasn't so wel off and thought Mr. A might just as wel pay for a set of photographs. Mr. A was sore about going because he'd gotten his big car out and wanted to take her for a drive up the Hudson. Anyway he went. It was funny in Margolies'
studio. Everything was hung with black velvet and there were screens of different sizes in black and white and yel ow and green and silver stand-ing al over the big dusty room under the grimy skylights. The young man acted funny too, as if he hadn't expected them.
"Al this is over," he said. "This is my brother Lee's studio. I'm attending to his clientele while he's abroad. . . . My interests are in the real art of the fu-ture.""What's that?" asked Mr. A, grumpily clipping the end off a cigar as he looked around for a place to sit down.
"Motionpictures. You see I'm Sam Margolies. . . . You'l hear of me if you haven't yet." Mr. A sat down grouchily on a dusty velvet model-stand. "Wel , make it snappy. . . . We want to go driv-ing". Sam Margolies seemed sore because Margo had just come in her streetclothes. He looked her over with his petulant grey eyes for a long time.
"I may not be able to do anything . . . I can't create if I'm hurried. . . . I had seen you stately in Spanish black." Margo laughed. "I'm not exactly the type."