AN HONEST WOMAN
45
Kay, to make the store into something more than a business, some–
thing closer to a civic center or permanent fairgrounds, with educa–
tional exhibits, like the old Crystal Palace. And the smart new reno–
vated tenements, which were springing up along the East River, in
the Fifties and Eighties, were still another example of intelligent
planning by capital: Vincent Astor had done them. The whole face
of New York was changing, Kay continued earnestly. The new
small movie-houses, where they showed foreign films and served tea
and coffee in the lounge and sometimes even had ping-pong tables,
were a sign of the times. Europe still had something to teach us in
the arts of living, but we were beginning to see that we could com–
bine the charm of the old world with sanitation and functional plan–
ning. Venetian blinds were an example, like the old jalousies, but
modernized, and the new apartment buildings, four or five stories
high, with central courts planted with grass and shrubs, and com–
pletely up-to-date kitchens. A lot of waste space was being eliminated
in these buildings-no more foyers or dining-rooms, which were ob–
solete conventions. John, said Kay, emphatically, was a perfect fanatic
about waste space. A house, he declared, ought to be a machine for
living, nothing more, nothing less. When they moved to a permanent
apartment, he was going to supervise all the painting, mix the colors
himself, and have a carpenter build everything in, bookcases, bureaus,
chests, phonograph. The beds were going to consist of mattresses and
springs, supported by four low pegs, and they were even talking
about a dining-table that could come down from the wall like a
Murphy bed-a single leaf of wood that would fold back into place.
John sat smiling phlegmatically as Kay expounded his ideas; it
was manifest to Dottie that they were awfully happy. They had
moved into their summer sublet the day after graduation, a week
before they were married. Everything in their life was planned.
Since Kay had not been trained to do housework, John had taken
it over; he swept and cleaned and marketed and, just now, the
first week, he brought her breakfast in bed. When Kay started at
the store, on Monday, John would serve the breakfast in the kitchen
and clean up, after she left, shop for the day at Gristede's with
the list Kay had left for
him,
until twelve-fifteen when he was
due at the Music Hall for the first show. He and the other assist–
ant stage-managers spelled each other, so that three nights a week
