A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

by Ben Hecht

THE LITTLE FOP

This little caricature of a fop, loitering in the hotel lobby, enthralled by his own fastidiousness, gazing furtively at the glisten of his newly manicured nails and shuddering with awe at the memory of the puckered white silk lining inside his Prince of Wales derby—I've watched him for more than a month now. Here he comes, his pointed button shoes, his razor-edged trousers, his natty tan overcoat with its high waist band and its amazing lapels that stick up over his shoulders like the ears of a jackass, here he comes embroidered and scented and looking like a cross between a soft-shoe dancer and a somnambulist. And here he takes his position, holding his gloves in his hand, his Prince of Wales derby jammed down on his patent-leather hair.

Observe him. This is a pose. He is living up to a fashion illustration in one of the magazines. Or perhaps he is duplicating an attitude of some one studied in a Michigan Avenue club entrance. His right arm is crooked as if he were about to place his hand over his heart and bow. His left arm hangs with a slight curve at his side. His feet should be together, but they shift nervously. His head is turned to the left and slightly raised—like a movie actor posing for a cigarette advertisement.

And there he stands, a dead ringer for one of the waxen dummies to be seen in a Halsted Street Men's Snappy Furnishings Store.

* * * * *

I've watched him for a month, off and on. And his face still says nothing. His eyes are curiously emotionless. They appear suddenly in his face. He is undersized. His nose, despite the recent massage and powder, has a slight oleaginous gleam to it. The cheek bones are a bit high, the mouth a trifle wide and the chin slightly bulbous. As he blinks about him with his small, almost Mongolian eyes he looks like some honest little immigrant from Bohemia or Poland whom a malignant sorcerer has changed into a caricature fashion plate. This is, indeed, the legend of Cinderella and the fairy godmother with an ending of pathos.

Yet, though his face says nothing, there is a provoking air to this little fop. His studied inanimation, his crudely self-conscious pose, his dull, little, peasant eyes staring at the faces that drift by in the lobby—these ask for translation. Why is he here? What does he want? Why does he come every evening and stand and watch the little hotel parade? Ah, one never sees him in the dining room or on the dance floor. One never meets him between the acts in the theater lobby. And one never sees him talking to anybody. He is always alone. People pass him with a curious glance and think to themselves, "Ah, a young man about town! What a shame to dissipate like that!" They sometimes notice the masterly way in which he sizes up a fur-coated "chicken" stalking thin-leggedly through the lobby and think to themselves: "The scoundrel! He's the kind of creature that makes a big city dangerous. A carefully combed and scented vulture waiting to swoop down from the side lines."

Evening after evening between 6 o'clock and midnight he drifts in and out of the lobby, up and down Randolph Street and takes up his position at various points of vantage where crowds pass, where women pass. I've watched him. No one ever talks to him. There are no salutations. He is unknown and worse. For the women, the rouged and ornamental ones, know him a bit too well. They know the carefully counted nickels in his trousers pocket, the transfers he is saving for the three-cent rebate that may come some day, the various newspaper coupons through which he hopes to make a killing.

All this they know and through a sixth sense, a curious instinct of sex divination, they know the necktie counter or information desk behind which he works during the day, the stuffy bedroom to which he will go home to sleep, the vacuity of his mind and gaudy emptiness of his spirit. They know all this and pass him up with never a smile. Yes, even the manicure girls in the barber shop give him the out-and-out sneer and the hat-check girls and even the floor girls—the chambermaids—all of whom he has tried to date up—they all respond with an identical raspberry to his invitations.

But he asks for translation—this determined little caricature of the hotel lobby. A little peasant masquerading as a dazzled moth around the bright lights. Not entirely. There is something else. There is something of a great dream behind the ridiculous pathos of this over-dressed little fool. There is something in him that desires expression, that will never achieve expression, and that will always leave him just such an absurd little clown of a fop.

* * * * *

When the manicure girls read this they will snort. Because they know him too well. "Of all the half-witted dumbbells I ever saw in my life," they will say, "he wins the cement earmuffs. Nobody home, honest to Gawd, he's nothin' but a nasty little fourflusher. We know him and his kind."

Fortunately I don't know him as well as the manicure girls do, so there is room for this speculation as I watch him in the evening now and then. I see him standing under the blaze of lobby lights, in the thick of passing fur coats and dinner jackets, in the midst of laughter, escorts, intrigues, actors, famous names.

He stands perfectly still, with his right arm crooked as if he were going to place his hand over his heart and bow, with his left arm slightly curved at his side. Grace. This is a pose denoting grace. He got it somewhere from an illustration. And he holds it. Here is life. The real stuff. The real thing. Lights and laughter. Glories, coiffures, swell dames, great actors, guys loaded with coin. His little Mongolian eyes blink through his amusing aplomb. Here are gilded pillars and marbled walls, great rugs and marvelous furniture. Here music is playing somewhere and people are eating off gold-edged dishes.

* * * * *

And now you will smile at me, not him. Because watching him of evenings, on and off, a curious notion takes hold of my thoughts. I have noticed the race oddities of his face, the Mongolian eyes, the Slavic cheek bones, the Italian hair. A mixed breed, this little fop. Mixed through a dozen centuries. Fathers and mothers that came from a hundred parts of the earth. But down the centuries they had one thing in common. Servitude. The Carlovingian courts, the courts of the De Medici, the Valois, and long before that, the great houses that lay around the Roman hills. Dragged from their villages, east, west, north and south, they flitted in the trappings of servitude through the vast halls of tyrants, barons, Caesars, sybarites, debauchees. They were the torchbearers, the caitiffs, the varlets, the bathkeepers, the inanimate figures whose faces watched from the shadows the great orgies of Tiberius, the bacchanals of satraps, kings, captains and squires.

And here their little great-great-grandson stands as they stood, the ghost of their servitude in his sluggish blood. He is content with his role of watcher as his people were content. These slightly grotesque trappings of his are a disguise. He wishes to disguise the fact that he is of the torchbearers, the varlets, the bathkeepers who produced him. So he imitates servilely what he fancies to be the distinguishing marks of his betters—their clothes, their manners, their aplomb. This accomplished, he is content to yield himself to the mysterious impulses and dreams that move silently through him.

And so he takes his position beside his people—the mixed breeds dragged from their scattered villages—so he stands as they stood through the centuries, their faces watching from the shadows the gorgeousness and tumult of the great aristocrats.