And, finally tonight, several hundred miles to the west, in the small town of Greencastle, Indiana, where the temperature was several degrees higher, and the pace of life several knots slower, nineteen-year-old John Shepard turned a page of his magazine and pondered the necktie being worn by the man with the python.
He wasn’t altogether sure that such a tie was “him,” John Chilton Shepard, but he was sure that nobody would ever find this bold piece of neckwear in any shop in Greencastle—not even two years from now, when, as a Bandbox subscriber, John knew it would certainly be out of fashion.
The magazine’s January issue had arrived only today, and as John fingered the Addressographed subscription label, he felt connected to the whole glamorous production; he felt part of the scene just by knowing that in some print shop in New York City a machine had chattered out the characters of his name.
What to read first? The short story by Stark Young? Stuart Newman’s piece on “The Girls Who Can’t Stop Loving Sacco and Vanzetti”? Or just the latest page of wisecracks collected from Malocchio? With allowance made for rereading, the issue would last John nearly a week, after which he would have to return to O. O. McIntyre’s syndicated newspaper column for vicarious glimpses of New York life. But McIntyre’s own glimpses had come to seem vicarious to John; he was tired of hearing about the columnist’s apartment way up in the Hotel Majestic. Bandbox, by contrast, made a fellow feel he was truly down there in the thick of things, that he didn’t just have to use his imagination. John had been applying that quality to New York life ever since he’d been ten years old and the sound of the 8:30 chime from the dining-room clock had come to mean that the curtains were going up—at that very moment!—in every theatre on Broadway.
“John!”
At this cry from his mother, he turned down Cass Hagan and His Park Central Orchestra, who were on the radio playing songs from Manhattan Mary.
“Yes, Mother! I’ve lowered it!”
Mrs. Shepard treated him like Penrod, whereas John’s self-image was catching up to the idea he had of Waldo Lindstrom, a young man who even in that snakeskin tie, one could tell, never lost his effortless command of a yacht or a wine list or a woman.
“John!” Mrs. Shepard’s voice came once more up the stairs. “Never mind the noise—mind the time! You’ve got errands to run all day tomorrow!”
“Yes, Mother,” he replied, so wearily his words never carried all the way down to the parlor.
He looked at the trunk, already sealed and labeled with the address of his fraternity house at IU. The new term was about to begin, and he would soon be there instead of—there, he thought, closing his eyes to imagine the clarinets in Hagan’s orchestra, pointed upwards, spouting their music like a row of singing skyscrapers.
Turning the radio back up, John, seized with inspiration, rushed to get a blank card, a pen, and some shears, in order to fashion a new label for the trunk, one that would ensure its GENERAL DELIVERY, about a week from now, in NEW YORK CITY.