Read Astor Place Vintage: A Novel for Free Online

improved. Yet I wondered if I was doomed to spend the rest of my life in Cold Spring.
    At last, I’d reached the fifth floor. I stepped off the moving staircase with the triumph of a mountain climber reaching the summit. My heart raced as I found the green door to the employment office.
    Turning the knob, I entered a hallway where a young woman instructed me to stand at the end of a line to receive an employment application from a receptionist, who then directed me to enter a room where I found about a dozen women filling out their cards. I noticed with dismay that I’d overdressed. Almost all my competitors wore simple skirts and waists.
    After finishing my application, I was ushered to yet another room, where I was surprised to find rows of benches crowded with even more applicants. Others hovered in the back, wondering where to go. My heart sank. Were all these women here for my job?
    An energetic woman with gray hair stood up front, telling thegirls to sit in the order of their application numbers. “Please pay attention! We need your cooperation. Who has number twenty-nine? Please sit here.”
    I had number seventy-five.
    I berated myself for failing to bring a magazine and fought off the urge to leave. My path to this moment had been too tortuous for me to give up now.
    The financial panic swept the country after I’d been working at Father’s store for about six months, almost a year after I graduated from Miss Hall’s. Many fortunes were lost in the stock market, and businesses went under. But the Woolworth chain weathered the crisis without trouble, reporting in the June newsletter that eight more stores were slated to open in 1907. It was another announcement in the issue that had particular interest for me. A new manager was needed at the Thirty-fourth Street location in New York City, known as the “mother store,” the biggest one of all. Wasting no time, I encouraged Father to apply, reassuring him that I’d love to live in New York City. To bolster my case, I reminded him that moving to Manhattan would greatly improve my chances for marriage. I didn’t mention anything having to do with department store buyers or high salaries for women.
    Father admitted that he’d already seen the listing and was tempted. The move would mean a substantial raise in salary, and since the corporation’s home offices were in Manhattan, it could very well give him entrée into Woolworth’s inner circle.
    Despite his interest, a considerable obstacle remained. Aunt Ida considered Manhattan a den of vice to avoid at all costs; she wouldn’t take a day trip to the city, much less move there. The woman had uprooted her life to take care of us. How could we leave her alone in Cold Spring?
    As fate would have it, the financial crisis provided a solution. Margaret, a neighbor and dear friend of Aunt Ida’s, had kept most of her savings in the stock market. The crash wiped her out, andshe had to sell her house for income. Since people were strapped and banks were nervous to lend, she didn’t get nearly what it was worth—or had been worth. Aunt Ida proposed that Margaret move into one of our extra bedrooms.
    Father and I welcomed her into the household. She was a plump, sweet-natured woman who baked the best pies in the world. Of course, it didn’t escape me for a moment that her presence would enable our move to New York. It wasn’t until the end of summer that we officially knew Father had been appointed manager of the Thirty-fourth Street store.
    “Number seventy-five? Seventy-five!”
    I snapped to attention as my number was called. An assistant directed me to my interviewer’s office. A thickset woman who appeared to be about forty sat behind a large wood desk covered with neat piles of cards. Her nameplate said MISS LILLIAN HAPGOOD .
    “Olive Westcott?”
    “How do you do?”
    Without bothering to introduce herself, she told me to sit on the chair across from her desk. I folded my hands together as she read my