Free Astor Place Vintage: A Novel by Stephanie Lehmann Page B

do you do?” he said, bowing slightly.
    As I returned the greeting, I wondered if this had been a matchmaking scheme set up by the two fathers.
    Sitting across from Ralph Pierce, I supposed most women would find him attractive. He had a clean-shaven face, boyish features, and dark brown hair. A waiter wearing a white ankle-length apron came to the table, and the older Mr. Pierce ordered for all of us, using the Italian names. Then he took up my father’s current favorite subject. “Marble counters, porcelain syrup tanks, copper sink . . . Just keeping those soda fountains clean will be a nightmare.”
    “Not to mention,” my father added, “the bother of keeping the syrups stocked and the water carbonated. Frank Woolworth can’t leave well enough alone.”
    I sat up straight. “But he’s right.” All three men looked at me with surprise. “Men have their bars and saloons. Where can women sit by themselves for a quick refreshment without being conspicuous? A soda water fountain.”
    “No one wants to deny women their ice cream soda,” my father said. “But let them get it somewhere else.”
    “That’s right,” Howard Pierce chimed in. “We’re in the business of selling dry goods.”
    “If the sodas draw in more customers,” I replied, “you’ll be selling more dry goods.”
    Ralph Pierce chuckled. “I think she won that argument.”
    “And she’s prettier than any of us,” his father added.
    I refrained from rolling my eyes at the patronizing comment.
    A waiter arrived with our drinks and called me a bella donna while pouring steamed milk into my coffee. It seemed to be my night for compliments, but after the waiter set down our desserts, I couldn’t compete. Rum baba cake, canoli, biscotti, and something called sfogliatelle, with crisp thin layers of buttery dough, sweet cheese filling, and chunks of candied orange. “I’ve never tasted anything so delicious,” I said after savoring my first bite.
    My father took a bite of rum cake before asking Ralph Pierce if he was in retail.
    “I haven’t time for all those nickels and dimes,” he answered. “My line is advertising.”
    His father scowled while cutting the tube-shaped canoli into four pieces. “Advertising is a dead-end field. Woolworth doesn’t spend a dime on it, and business is better than ever.”
    “How many men are in your company?” my father asked.
    I feared Ralph Pierce would think Father was interviewing him as a potential son-in-law, so I tried to appear captivated bymy piece of cannoli, which wasn’t difficult. The deep-fried dough filled with cream, bits of chocolate, and candied cherries tasted scrumptious.
    “Just four of us,” Ralph said. “The stenographer, the office boy, an account man who brings in the work, and then I’m on the creative side. We just opened a big account for a new brand of soap. I’m writing the copy for it now.”
    “In hard times like this,” his father grumbled, “the first thing any firm cuts from its budget is advertising. That business with the copper stocks is going to drive the market down, don’t you think, Westcott?”
    “The copper situation won’t matter,” my father said. “Something of that sort only affects the people directly involved.”
    Howard Pierce shook his head. “I predict there’ll be a domino effect.”
    “Nonsense,” Father said. “The market has found its bottom. We’re poised for a recovery, you’ll see.”
    The older men continued to argue about the market, so I tried to hold up my end of the conversation with Ralph Pierce. “It sounds as if your father wishes you’d take a job with Woolworth.”
    “You noticed,” he said with a grim smile. “He refuses to accept that I’m not interested in retail.”
    “Tell me, how on earth does one think up anything interesting to say about soap?”
    “That’s the challenge. Anyway, you can’t make something interest you that doesn’t.”
    “I feel the same way about marriage,” I couldn’t