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THE HOTEL PENNSYLVANIA’S Café Rouge was a lively gathering spot for the late-night theater crowd. The room was immense and elegant; outfitted in a Tuscany-inspired terracotta and limestone finish. Spirited chatter and the jazzy tunes of an orchestra were in full swing. This was not just another dinner date.
“Do you think my name brings to mind that of an English butler?”
“That’s so ridiculous,” Alexandra said. Everything about Archibald Leach still made her heart go boom-boom. “It’s terribly warm in here. Would you hang my jacket?”
In relinquishing her Cossack hat, the coat checker gushed, “Aren’t you the one who sat on—”
“I was misquoted!” Alexandra snapped. She sighed and turned to Archibald. “Anyhoo, the joint looks jumping.”
Their dinner progressed swimmingly.
Alexandra stared misty-eyed at her charming date. Archibald offered a tongue-in-cheek overview of touring small towns throughout America in vaudevillian hits or misses upon his arrival from England in 1920. He chuckled over the ridiculous nature of such work: serving as a unicycle rider, stilt walker, and crooner of penny serenades. So far, he remained hesitant to follow his press agent’s advice to change his name to something less domestic servant sounding. Over their stroll through Herald’s Square, he had mentioned hitting lean times, having lost his microscopic role in Golden Dawn once the show had met its cheerless sunset. By his alarmed look upon entering the restaurant, it was clear he was unaccustomed to such an upscale setting.
Alexandra finished the last bite of her chicken brochette. “That was the best application of cayenne and cumin I’ve tasted since Marrakech prison. How did you find your steak, Archie?”
“Deliciously unaffordable. I’m afraid it found me as usual; very rare.” He tried to shrug off his comments as sarcasm. After the waiter offered the dessert menu. “Stuffed to the gills, are we?”
Alexandra ordered baked alaska and requested the check. She thought her date even more adorable when chagrined and postponed informing him she planned to pick up the tab. She leaned back and rotated her shoulders, trying to crack her spine. In catching Archibald’s eyes pop, she flashed one final shake of her bosom.
“I injured myself bodysurfing. I miss my Japanese masseuse whilst traveling. She’ll have me disrobe, lay down, rub healing oils into my back and bum, and then apply to them a sensual massage.”
“It sounds... Is there room for one more?” Archibald appeared dry-mouthed and needed a sip of water to continue. “How do you manage without during your travels?”
“I’ve attempted many remedies but have found only two that ease my back pain. The first was crashing a hot air balloon into the Sea of Galilee, but to do so again seems impractical.”
“And the second, I dare ask?”
“I dare not say. I’ve been referred to a proctologist for treatment.”
Archibald appeared baffled. He cringed in spotting the waiter’s approach. “Do Americans usually see a proctologist for back pain?”
Alexandra snickered. “Don’t be silly. That would be anal.”
“I see... I think. Would you care to dance?”
“Soon.”
Alexandra had elected to wear the sleek green tabard dress that had dazzled his eyes upon their first meeting seventeen months ago. It was too splashy for her everyday travels and chicly espoused an evening carousing the New York nightlife like no other in her wardrobe. While stylish, it fit too snug to entertain anything rollicking flowing from the bandstand.
The check arrived. Archibald whimpered and loosened his tie. “Tis a shame having no topper of alcohol.”
He had suffered enough. “I smuggled in a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.” Alexandra plucked the billfold from his hands. “It’s sitting on ice in my suite upstairs.”
He shared a look of disbelief. “How can you afford all of this?”
“Don’t let it trouble you. I’m worth millions,” she casually stated. “I spent today sorting out my investments with my Wall Street moneymen. They kept insisting I invest big in dirigibles, but I convinced them to place a sizeable egg on a small flying operation I came across whence touring Key West. It’s called Pan-American Airways.”
“Well, aren’t I, mister lucky?” To Alexandra’s gesture the Gershwin brothers’ “S’Wonderful” would do, he escorted her to the dancefloor.
She melted in his arms and wondered if it was worth abandoning her self-fashioned business for a lifetime of carefree nights such as this. Archibald—so easy on the eyes, so humorous, so debonair—was the only charming devil charismatic enough to tempt her to do it.
She felt a first inkling of falling in love.
“I’ve thought of you often over these many months.”
He whispered, “Thoughts of you have inspired me to great lengths.”
Archibald was too much a gentleman to even cop a feel. She said, “A firm hand to the base of my spine helps with the pain.”
He obliged, and her pelvis brushed against his.
Inspired to great lengths, indeed. She blushed and stepped back.
“So, you’re sure I should not change my name for my career? Not become Harry Brandt?”
“Your name and your soul are the only things of which you have absolute ownership.” Alexandra spoke deadly serious over this. “Once you surrender one, they’ll surely come for the other.”
He smiled. “You truly are an Andalusian goddess.”
Alexandra suspected he would soon have more pressing matters to worry over. From the surrounding conversations of those who had attended the opening night performance of the musical comedy Boom-Boom at the Casino Theater, she predicted the newspaper reviews come morning would be brutal. Archibald held the minor role of Reggie Phipps in the production. He shared the lead in the song “Nina” with starlet Jeanette MacDonald and inspired the loudest laughter in his few acerbic speaking lines. As for the rest of the Broadway show, it lacked the harmonized music, wit, and comedic delivery of one destined for longevity. Unless something changed, it would flop.
The ballad ended. Alexandra rested a hand on his smooth cheek, lifted herself on tiptoes, and kissed him passionately.
A delectable piece of baked alaska with two spoons awaited back at their table. Alexandra dug in, needing to cool herself off. She gave a passing glance to the check and tossed a nice tip into the billfold after checking the box to bill her room. The band was playing a very brassy number, and it was difficult to hear much of anything. She lifted out her cigarette case, freed one, and waited for Archibald to light it, as he had already fired her up in every other way.
He also lit one of his own and slumped in his chair. He called out to cut through the racquet, “It seems the peanut gallery is not too high on the show. Backstage, we sensed Boom-Boom went kaboom halfway in.”
Alexandra fed him a scoop and shouted back, “You were hilarious, but the actor playing Skippy Carr lacks pizzazz.”
“It must embarrass you to dine with a chump like me!”
“Don’t be stupid, Archie!” Alexandra realized that flaunting her money had wounded his pride. She loudly declared, “Archibald Alec Leach, I find you the most attractive man in the world. My suite has a wondrous view of the skyline. The moon is right. I have partaken in carnal pleasures only once over the last year, at least vaginally, and yearn to be one with you. You may have me at your leisure!”
The cigarette fell out of Archibald’s mouth. Those seated at nearby tables gawked: stunned and stupefied.
With her hands gripping the corners of the square table and head dramatically thrust back, Alexandra waited to be taken. When nothing happened, she sensed how quiet things had fallen since the band had wrapped up its song midway into her proclamation.
She risked opening one eye. “Everyone heard, haven’t they?”
“Just all of it,” he said, waiting for blood to return to his head.
“Archie! There you are.”
Two men rushed over. One said, “We’ve looked everywhere for you. You’ve got to come back to the theater. It’s an emergency! Kendall broke his leg. We have no understudy for Skippy Carr! Lee and J.J. say you’re the only one who can save the show! You’ll need to rehearse all night to be ready by tomorrow.”
Archibald’s hands locked onto the table’s corners. “You don’t realize what you’re asking of me!”
“This is your big chance!”
The two men battled to pry free his grip, finally succeeding.
“No, no!” Archibald begged. “You can’t do this! You mustn’t!”
“Archie, you really must go,” Alexandra intervened. “We’ll finish the date whence I return from Washington.”
He looked like a man being shanghaied. He yelled, “Whence might that be?”
“Soon!”
—‡—
MONSIEUR BABE RUTH could not be hitting them out of the park any deeper. Alexandra Bathenbrook was operating in unrehearsed territory: poised, confident, and eloquent to the extreme, regardless of the stress derived from engaging in her job interview of a lifetime. She was not imagining it. Her reflection in the glasses of the man across the table confirmed this abnormality of social grace. Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, president and chief editor of the National Geographic Society, was a pocket-sized fellow with a receding hairline, which lent his bushy mustache to stand out with vigor. Though his eyes remained crunched behind his round nose-pinched spectacles, his gleeful smile hinted that Alexandra’s performance at Hubbard Hall far surpassed a tour de force. It was downright magnifique!
“The magazine’s October issue will feature ‘Scenic Glories of the American West,’” one editor promoted.
“Montana bred.” Alexandra shot him a wink.
Another elated editor pitched, “Next November’s lead is ‘Battlefields of France Eleven Years After.’”
She said, “I’ve visited Zone Rouge. It’s nothing to blush over.”
“Utterly remarkable you’ve ventured into primeval Papua,” another gasped. “Your thoughts on returning up the Fly River by seaplane?”
Alexandra placed a whimsical hand on her chin. “To this time bring Gayetty’s toilet paper.”
The gathered editors all partook in jovial laughter.
The National Geographic Society had been founded in 1888 as a club for academics, travelers, and well-to-do patrons to discuss and promote knowledge and understanding of the world. Its monthly magazine had expanded to a circulation of over one million, with each issue offering compelling tales, maps, sketches, and photographs of diverse cultures, exotic lands, and natural wonders. “The Society” was pioneering new methods of night photography and colorization via the Autochrome Lumière process. No realm, short of the moon, was its domain for study.
To Alexandra, sitting the same room with such luminaries of a “vive la différence” approach to experiencing life was serving as the pinnacle of her young career. Her humorous and intrepid sagas mesmerized her audience and left them dancing to her strings. Each editor was now pitching their projects against those of their peers.
“‘Bethlehem and Along the Way of the Magi,’ just in time for next year’s Christmas,” an editor spurted. “What say you?”
Alexandra tossed up her hands. “Sounds like a great opportunity to once more go ballooning!”
“‘Java. Queen of the West Indies.’ Please say you’ll return to that mystical land and photograph its splendor for us.”
“Just between us six,” she leaned forward to tell on the sly, “I saw little of the island my first go around because of dysentery. The Dutch nuns even named a muddy river after me. I’d love to return!”
The editor expounded a victorious bellow to her agreement.
“‘Across Madagascar by Boat, Auto, Rail, and Filanzana?’”
Alexandra clasped her hands together. She informed the man, “It has always been my dream to be carried through the most foreboding jungles of the world on a filanzana. Sign me up!”
Savoir-faire shined everywhere. If she were any hotter, Alexandra would combust spontaneously. Contracts for her signature were being drawn up that would fill out her schedule for 1929 and beyond. She leaned back in her leather chair as the editors skimmed over her pièce de résistance, genuflecting wonder and astonishment. The portfolio held photographs she had taken more so as a tourist. Many of these works were among her crème de la crème, and she was giddy with sharing them. A warm flush swelled her heart, soul, and mind. Her big gamble in 1927 had paid off. She felt proud, and perhaps her days of public gaffes and squishy self-esteem were misadventures des jours passés.
Now, if only she could suppress the incessant French superlatives exploding within her head. She hoped it was due to nothing more than her hotel having featured French toast as its breakfast plat du jour.
An elderly secretary entered the nicely outfitted boardroom carrying a pile of contracts. She passed them to Grosvenor for inspection. He then slid them across the table.
“Choose whatever you wish.”
Alexandra looked them over, relishing her carte blanche.
The secretary handed her a gold fountain pen.
One editor fumbled while holding Alexandra’s portfolio. It crashed to the floor. The others scrambled over to be part of the cleanup team. They halted their work and fell silent, looking over two photographs.
They were passed over to Grosvenor. He looked up, shocked. “Is there any sanitary explanation for these, Miss Bathenbrook?”
Ooh, la la! Alexandra bit her knuckles, having wondered where they were hiding. “The first photo is me sprawled across the lap of artist Salvador Dalí receiving a spanking. It was my parting gesture of gratitude for allowing me to pose nude for him.”
“And this second one of him sucking your toes?”
“His parting gesture to me.”
Alexandra rolled her eyes and sighed. The society leadership looked at each other, unsure what to think.
“It was all Pablo’s crazy idea,” she jittered. “You know, gentlemen, when in Bohemia...”
One editor inquired, “Pablo, as in Picasso?”
“Is there another? He insisted we send copies to Hemingway in Key West to lighten him up.”
“Hemingway, as in Ernest?” asked Grosvenor.
“But of course,” Alexandra chortled, fingers crossed.
Semi-contained laughter soon flooded free.
“Honestly,” Alexandra said, laughing herself. “Spending time with those two mad Spaniards was the most fun I’ve had since riding Subaru Takahashi’s huge pole like a crazed woman in St. Moritz.”
Silence swept the room. Grosvenor asked, “Whose what?”
To their drop-jawed stares, she clarified, “Subaru Takahashi...? He’s only the twenty-sixth best cross-country skier in the world. Don’t any of you read the sports page?”
By the continued hush, it was clear they did not.
“The Onbashira festival...? The Japanese Shinto practice of riding felled pine trees to the sacred temple...? Truly learned gentlemen, you must know of it?”
They all sighed and started nodding energetically. Grosvenor wiped a tear of mirth from his eye. “Please, pardon us.”
Alexandra polished her knuckles on her shoulder—still golden.
As they settled down, she decided. It would be Java, Madagascar, and France, for starters. She took the fountain pen and attempted to sign the first contract, but it held no ink. The peevish secretary scurried out to retrieve another. Everyone sat idle, smiling. The secretary returned with a new pen.
Alexandra winked. “To a long and fruitful relationship, fine sirs!”
Two brawny men abruptly stormed into the boardroom. They flaunted serious dispositions and flashed government badges. One shouted, “Special Agent Grigsby, United States Secret Service. Alexandra Bathenbrook, I am placing you under arrest!”
Sacré bleu! She looked up as the two special agents loomed behind her. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Come peacefully, or we’ll cuff you,” warned Grigsby.
Alexandra panicked in spotting Grosvenor sliding the contracts away from her side of the table. The secretary confiscated the pen. “Is this about killing those banditos in Brazil? Turning that guy into a eunuch in Morocco? Blowing up the archaeology site in Palestine?”
“You know what this is about,” Grigsby insisted.
Alexandra tossed out, “Sitting on the Prince of Wales’ face?”
“You fired a gun at President Coolidge,” Grigsby answered. “You’ve violated your parole.”
“But Mister Hoover is our new president,” she defended.
“The inauguration isn’t until next March.” Grigsby gestured for her to stand.
“Mister Grosvenor, allow me to explain,” she pleaded.
Alexandra huffed when he shook his head. All the editors had left their chairs to cower along the far wall. She bit her forefinger deep enough to draw blood and dove forward to sign her name on a contract.
Within seconds, her hands were behind her back and the cuffs clicking on. Sprawled across the table, she pleaded to Grosvenor, “I saved the president’s life! You must let me explain. I beseech you!”
The second special agent searched through Alexandra’s suitcase. He removed her Electrex Ultra and set it on the table.
The elderly secretary placed a hand on her forehead, sighed, and succumbed to the vapors.
Not knowing what sort of weapon it was, the agent began frisking Alexandra. He stopped copping his feel along her buttocks and lifted her skirt. He reported, “She has something sticking out of her knickers. It looks like a grenade pin.”
“We’ll conduct a comprehensive cavity search once returned to the station,” Grigsby said. “Whatever you do, don’t pull it!”
It was too late.
Alexandra’s eyes burst wide. Oh, l’ humanité!
—‡—
IN AUGUST 1921, ALEXANDRA Illyria Bathenbrook had been riding her horse along the Missouri River. She observed a fly-fisher knee-deep in the water, and though his chin placed her life in no jeopardy, the large grizzly plodding toward the river imperiled his. She had galloped over, yelling a warning, but the elderly man remained unaware. Rifle in hand, she had fired a warning shot to scare off the bear. Several men had rushed out of a car parked atop the hillside, firing guns at her. Alexandra had skedaddled, only to be later arrested and charged with the attempted assassination of the Vice-President of the United States. It had taken a full day to sort out the facts, and the sheriff had prepared the fluffiest flapjacks for breakfast.
Thankfully, more cerebral leadership now filled the ranks of the Secret Service, and no jail time was required.
With her fancifully luggage-labelled Globe Trotter leather suitcase in hand, Alexandra entered Union Station humming James P. Johnson’s “If I Could Be with You (One Hour Tonight).” She looked up at the scheduling board, undecided about her next destination. A few weeks were left in 1928 to wander aimlessly, completely adrift, yet for once not entirely lost.
Perhaps she’d visit Emma’s grave in Chicago or ride all the way to Montana just to see if the sky had remained beautiful in her absence. Thereafter, a return to New York for some quality Archibald Leach time and then sea passage back to London.
Yet sometimes in life, people simply followed wherever their inner demons might lead them. Since nearly ending her life in France, her malevolent voices had subsided, having been forewarned once more about the consequence of pushing her too hard. For an insouciant vagabond and finagler extraordinaire, no date was set, nor destiny written.
While there would no doubt be further missteps perfecting her shutterbug strut, Alexandra knew, no matter which path she chose, one thing would always remain paramount in her travels—Adventure!
She concluded her humming. It was time to sing.
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~la fin