We settled into a corner booth at Sardi’s at 234 West Forty-fourth Street, where I ordered Duchess Soup and a pork chop with potatoes and French fried onions. Archie ordered the sirloin steak and a Waldorf salad. He’d picked one of the few places that stayed open this late to serve dinner.
“So, Miss Shine,” he said, smiling. He had a wide smile, a little crooked, giving him a playful, boyish look, despite having about ten years on me. “Tell me everything about yourself,” he said. “I’m dying to know.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“Well, first, I must insist that you call me Olive if I’m to call you Archie, and secondly, you already know a little about me—where I work, that I sing, that I possess a gorgeous evening cape. Why don’t you tell me about you?”
“Well,” he said, sitting up a little taller, “I’m from Cincinnati, but lately I spend many of my days in New York City. I have a suite at the Plaza.”
“The Plaza?” This was no bohemian.
“My business interests are both here and back home, and I find myself traveling quite extensively.”
“Oh.” I nodded. “Perhaps you’re not who I thought you were.”
“How so?”
“When I met you at the Pirate’s Den you were with poets andartists. I just assumed you were one of them… but it sounds like you’re a businessman after all.”
“Does that disappoint you?”
I shrugged. “I suppose I’ll have to find out. The businessmen I’ve met thus far are a bit of a bore.”
“Ha, couldn’t agree more. I collect art, it’s a hobby of mine, so I’ve become quite friendly with many of the artists along the way.” He leaned in as if to let me in on a secret. “They’re a terrible influence on me, but we do have an awful lot of fun.”
I looked at him curiously. He was not what I’d expected.
“Oh dear, I’m boring you already.”
“You’re not. Go on, tell me everything, start at the beginning.”
He laughed and shifted a little in his seat. “My first time traveling anywhere outside of Ohio was to New York. My parents didn’t have much, and I knew that if I wanted to make something of myself I’d have to head to the big city. So, at sixteen I got on a train and headed east in true Horatio Alger style.”
“My brothers loved his books! I read a few of them too—boy from humble upbringing rises up through the ranks through hard work, determination and some heroic act of honesty or courage. Same story over and over in every book, but so good!”
“I devoured those books as a boy. I basically mapped out my life based on them.”
The waiter delivered my soup, creamy with vegetables peeking through. If Archie weren’t sitting with me I would have inhaled it, I was so hungry, but I forced myself to eat like a lady.
“So, I worked as a clerk during the day and took night classes at Cooper Institute, and as things progressed, by the time I was twenty-six I was the proud vice president of a salt company. It was only a fledgling business at the time, but I got some partners, bought more interests and combined them into the National Salt Company. At the time, the United States was consuming thirteen million barrels of salt a year, and we were lucky enough to supply nine million of them.”
“Wow, that’s quite impressive.”
“We had big plans to supply the whole world with salt, we were going to be the first international trust ever formed, but then the deal fell through.”
“What happened?”
“Now, that would definitely bore you—it just didn’t come together, but that was all right. I was thirty by then, and I’d made it in New York just as I’d hoped I might. I did well, but I wanted to see more, learn more, so I took two years off and went to Europe.”
I carefully spooned some of the soup, scooping away from myself toward the back of the bowl the way my mother had taught me.
“I knew that if I didn’t see the world, educate myself and do the things that fed and inspired me, then I would never do them, so I went to as many museums and art galleries as I could and met some wonderfully gifted artists. After two years away, I came back from Europe and got back to work. I formed Columbia Gas and Electric with a businessman I met on my travels, supplying natural gas and electricity to Cincinnati and its neighboring towns, and that’s what I do now.”
“Here or there?”
“Both. I was just in Cincinnati this past week, actually, or I would have called on you sooner.”
