Free Bandbox by Thomas Mallon

too.
    Nervous again at this thought, he decided to get back to business. He reached for the unopened envelope full of Gardiner Arinopoulos’s just-developed, just-delivered pictures, the ones the photographer had managed to take after hotfooting it out of here this morning with that freaky animal and dope addict. Harris would concentrate on the material, be resolute, decisive. He vacated his swivel chair before Nicos could even remove the bib, now covered with his gray and black hair. “No, thanks,” he said, deflecting the whisk broom from his own shoulders; Mukluk would only be shedding all over him in a couple of hours’ time.
    “Hazel!” cried Harris, pulling Nicos through the open door. “Give Dmitri ten bucks.” He shook hands with the barber, whose payment interrupted Hazel’s attention to
True Story
. Harris was always too afraid to tell her that if she spent half as much time doing Oldcastle business as she did reading Macfadden’s magazines, he might give her a raise. As it was, he gave her a raise whenever she asked.
    Down the long hallway, just this side of Mrs. Zimmerman’s desk, the countess was conversing with Max Stanwick, who had stayed around after the morning’s chaos to bang an Underwood in somebody’s vacant office. The two of them waved to Harris before he went back behind his frosted glass.
    “As I was saying, Mr. Stanwick,” breathed Daisy DiDonna, four inches from Stanwick’s face. “I just adored your piece.”
    Max, who had just seen the third proof of his article on Arnold Rothstein, felt an instant, tumescent gratitude. “I thank you. And I thank you again for correcting my underestimation of Mr. Big’s shoe size.”
    “Not at all,” declared the countess, coming even closer, causing Max to wonder why he had spent the day banging the Underwood instead of Daisy. He knew, of course. Now living over in Brooklyn Heights with a wife and two little girls, he was reformed to the point of uxoriousness. But he had to remind himself of all this as Daisy blinked her lashes rather more than was necessary. For her part, Daisy had just begun to wonder why she had ever bothered unshoeing Rothstein when she could have been—could be even now—massaging Max’s intrepid and no doubt equally large feet.
    But then she recalled the new determination she’d begun feeling Friday night, and managed to retract her face a full two inches from Max’s. No, no more lost, or even short-term, causes. She had to begin thinking of a future beyond her cramped little room on Beekman Place.
    She didn’t relax her smile, but she straightened her spine.
    “I have such pleasant memories of the evening I spent in Mr. Rothstein’s company,” she told Max. “Perhaps especially of my ride with Mr. Diamond—Edward, that is, not Legs—who was kind enough to take me home.”
    Max wondered where this was going.
    “But, silly me,” continued Daisy. “I promised to send him a copy of my book and then misplaced the address he gave me. I don’t suppose that
you …
”
    Max smiled. So Daisy must be lovelorn; or just having a slow month. Well, if the old trouper in front of him could handle Rothstein himself, she could handle any of Mr. Big’s lieutenants. But didn’t she deserve somebody nicer than Eddie Diamond? “Sure,” said Max, extracting a pen and small piece of paper from his breast pocket. “But, Countess, I can do better than that.
This
is a name worthy of an accomplished, wellborn gal like yourself.” He wrote out the address of a recently widowed judge, one of Rothstein’s most dependable possessions on the city bench, and handed it to Daisy.
    Recognizing the name, she closed in on Max’s face and purred, from an inch and a half away: “Wait right here.” She went racing, on her tiny high heels, down the corridor and around the corner, returning half a minute later with a copy of
My Antonio
from her diminishing stash. “Could I have been more
rude
?” she said, while inscribing it. “I