1503934136 by Michael Wallace

Author:Michael Wallace [Wallace, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503934139
Published: 2016-05-17T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Victoria drove herself harder than ever in the first weeks after opening the shop. She sewed early in the morning and late at night and in the shop whenever there were no customers. When it was especially slow, she left Maeve in charge while she visited every clothing store in a six-block radius. When a rival shop seemed busy, she noted its location, its way of arranging goods, the manner in which the shopkeeper addressed her, and any other details she could find.

After only ten days, she pulled up stakes, swallowed the loss of her rent, and found a better location in an absurdly expensive building on Broadway. She bluffed her way into renting the room without paying a deposit. She and Maeve were soon sleeping in the back storage room instead of paying for lodging. But the business improved at once. The mass of traffic on Broadway almost assured success.

The street was already packed with people, animals, and vehicles when they opened every morning, and never let up its energy and movement until Victoria and Maeve extinguished the lamps and locked up. But the nature of the crowd itself changed hour by hour. In the morning laborers pushed their way uptown, catching rides on omnibuses or joining the throng on foot, together with porters, clerks, and artisans. Then came merchants and shopkeepers to open their stores and women leading their children to school. By late morning the crowd slowly became clusters of women or smartly dressed men walking alone. These men provided much of the shop’s custom. Afternoon brought deliveries, people setting off to eat, workers quitting early, and so on. Victoria could soon tell time simply by glancing out the window at the nature of the foot traffic.

The money was beginning to confuse her, so she spent seven cents on a battered copy of a book titled The Mystery of Sums and Figures and was stunned to realize there was an entire system for accounting, with ledger and columns and all the rest, that she should use if she wanted to understand her business. She studied it until she nearly had it memorized, then made Maeve read it as well.

The month of November was terrifying, and December little better. Victoria ended the year with three dollars and twelve cents on hand. Within two more months, she had amassed eighty-two dollars in ready money, but she now knew that this was an illusion. According to the ledger, once she subtracted liabilities, her true funds shrank to a total of one dollar and forty-seven cents. She owed the Silvers, the coal man, the building owner, and even the seamstresses, whom she’d convinced to take their increased wages weekly, instead of daily, in return for better payment. She now employed six women, plus herself and Maeve.

Maeve began attracting the attention of the young stockbrokers who formed the more prosperous portion of their clientele. Both women had been as scrawny as street dogs when they came down the gangplank from the

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