THE ELEVENTH PAGE

Trotting out my dramatic new way of speaking, I ventured out to the bookstores along Eighth Street in Greenwich Village. The Marlboro remainder shop was not what I had in mind and the folks at the Eighth Street shop either thought I was too phony, or not phony enough. Perhaps they thought a person with a speech impediment could not peddle books?

Back at my bathing alcove at the B.C. I shoved more hayseed out of my voice and added a bit of Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet.” I was moving toward mid-Atlantic, but was snarled in the cables.

It became smoother as my search moved uptown. I began to hit the chain stores. The Doubleday Shops seemed a good bet because there were so many of them and they looked clean. Doing time at the B.C. had given me a new respect for cleanliness. I inquired at the Doubleday shop at 33rd Street, a couple at Penn Station, one near CBS at 53rd Street and finally a big, new store at 57th Street. All but the latter looked at me like shit on the shoe and barely responded to my queries. A guy at the big one had the courtesy to tell the truth that they did not hire from the store, rather from the Doubleday main offices on Madison Avenue. I marched over a couple of blocks to those offices, lied may way through some forms, and was told to report to work the next day. I did so.