Fellow Travelers (32 page)

“Ain’t she
grand
?” asked McCarthy, looking more like the baby’s uncle or grandfather as he thrust it into Tommy’s arms for closer inspection. Overtaken by his own sentiments, Tommy appeared unable to resume the mission that had brought him here, and in the commotion of the baby’s transfer Tim at last managed to slip away.

He got as far as the vestibule before he felt McCarthy’s hand on his shoulder.

It should have been frightening, but it wasn’t. McCarthy himself looked innocently wounded, wanting to know what the hurry was. “You
do
look familiar,” he said.

“We met just before the hearings, the day after Senator Potter got a copy of ‘the Adams chronology.’”

“When Charlie was trying to get me to fire Roy!” McCarthy laughed, as if remembering some comically bad season with the company baseball team.

“Yes,” replied Tim, at a loss for more to say as he looked for another escape route from Tommy’s vengeful world. He could feel himself being lashed to it by the telephone line that had once reached into Madison Square Garden.
Boys, girls, your old-maid auntie. When he’s hammered he’ll grope anything…

He moved for the door, but McCarthy kept coming toward him, with an enormous, devouring smile. Reaching for the handle, Tim heard himself saying, inanely, to keep the man calm: “I was also at your wedding. Helping out Miss Beale for the
Star.
”

“No kidding!”

McCarthy proceeded to smother him with a hug, to give his neck a boozy kiss and his crotch a hard locker-room squeeze.

“We’re going to christen her Tierney!” he called out as Tim raced toward the street. “Come to the church!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

February 21, 1957

Two days ago, Lyndon Johnson had complained on the Senate floor about Secretary Dulles’s lack of response to his letter protesting the administration’s apparent willingness to impose sanctions on Israel over the continued presence of her troops in Egypt.

So now the CR Bureau had a sizable fire to put out. How odd to find all these congressional crackers and cornpones suddenly so enamored of the Jews, thought Mr. Hill, the bureau’s director, who didn’t know whether Dulles’s delay in replying reflected a deliberate stall, or a desire to insult the majority leader, or just the secretary’s protracted convalescence. The old boy was still looking awfully frail.

Several feet from Hill’s office, Hawkins Fuller sat in his own, having just finished up with Mr. Jerome Duggan, chairman of the American Legion’s legislative commission. The Legion was ending a three-day conference that had included a big dinner at the Statler last night. Speaker Rayburn and Nixon had both shown, and Fuller had been there with Lucy.

The evening’s other big affair had been staged by the International Rescue Commission for Hungarian Relief, at the Mayflower, and the Fullers had stopped off there, too. After introducing Lucy to the Goldwaters, Fuller had listened to an ex–Budapest State Opera singer perform the Hungarians’ national anthem in a moment that seemed designed to evoke the “Marseillaise” scene from
Casablanca.
The crowd had contained the usual charity-ball locksteppers, most of the women looking like Margaret Dumont, but there had also been many fervent, unfamiliar faces, so eager to help that they would have settled for bread and water for their twenty-five dollars.

Fuller had listened gravely while József Kövágó—six and a half years a prisoner of the Russians, six and a half days the mayor of free Budapest—told his stirring tale to the audience, among whose nonhabitués, Fuller had suddenly noticed, sat Skippy, an honest-to-God guest at an event Betty Beale was chronicling for “Exclusively Yours.”

Catching his eye, Fuller had nodded, as if the two of them had last seen each other five minutes before at the coat check instead of two years ago inside the New York Avenue bus depot.

Tim had just stared back, as startled as Kovajo must have been when the door to his cell was flung open—or slammed shut.

“Mr. Fuller, I have a Mr. Laughlin out front.”

Yes, here he was, a day later, at four o’clock in the afternoon. Fuller had known it would happen since last night; no, since he’d gotten the telegram three months ago. Actually, he’d known it all along, since the empty milk bottle had dropped from the tower.

He waited a minute, looking in his middle drawer for the blank job application he’d put there three weeks ago, certain even then that Skippy would come along to claim it. He set the manila envelope on the blotter and walked to the receptionist’s desk.

Tim was reading the front page of today’s
Star.

“Hawk.”

“
Mister
Laughlin?” asked Fuller, quoting the receptionist. “Not Corporal?”

“Only on weekends.” He was flashing his fast, nervous smile.

Fuller tousled his hair. The receptionist, new, looked at them quizzically.

They walked back to Fuller’s office, Tim on noticeably unsteady legs.

“Well,” said Fuller, pointing to one of the New York papers piled on a chair. “Roy Cohn is thirty years old. He gave himself a big birthday party the other night.”

“Was Private Schine there?”

“Home with his fiancée, according to Miss Kilgallen. She doesn’t note Roy’s feelings about the girl—only that he seems to be unhappy over Zwicker’s being promoted to major general. You can’t say he forgives and forgets.”

The cat still had a part of Tim’s tongue.

“Imagine,” Fuller continued, “if Zwicker were still commanding Camp Kilmer. All those poor Hungarian refugees having to get their teeth drilled by a Communist dentist.” He cleared the papers from the chair. “Here, sit down.”

Tim had never been inside Fuller’s actual office, and he was reminded of its owner’s old apartment by the negligence of the arrangements—the tennis racket lying atop some out-of-order encyclopedia volumes, the cardboard coffee cup next to the broken thermometer on the windowsill. He felt the old desire to hoard and decode the objects in evidence. He was relieved to see no photograph of Lucy Fuller, and his heart leapt at the sight of the Lodge biography.

“Here,” he said, handing Fuller the book he’d brought with him today, a copy of
The Last Hurrah.
“A birthday present. Belated.” Three weeks ago, on the first of the month, Fuller had turned thirty-two.

For Hawk—

This time you get the book in advance.

I want the job.

It would be wonderful.

S.

“You missed thirty and thirty-one,” said Fuller.

I have to get over you.

Tim tried to ask himself why he was actually here. Because Tommy had dipped him back into the world of who had what on whom? Forced his head beneath its compromising sewage and tried to hold him there? But if
that
was the reason, had he come here seeking the poison’s antidote or its best dispenser, the beautiful Lucifer who had, after all, given him his first trip through the underworld?

“You’re going to be a father,” he said.

“A careless one. In May, I’ve heard.”

Are you my brave boy?

Tim stared at the familiar tweed overcoat lying on a table strewn with file folders, and he thought he was starting to cry. “Is there really something for me to do?” he asked, as briskly as he could.

Fuller picked the manila envelope up from the blotter. “Come with me,” he said.

Outside, in the aisle leading through the rest of the bureau, Tim asked: “Where is she?”

“Miss Johnson? She took early retirement.” Fuller noted Tim’s look of surprise. “You honestly haven’t seen her?”

“No.”

“Or Grandma Gaffney, either, I’ll bet.”

“No, not her, either.”

Fuller understood how completely he governed Skippy’s world, even now, two years after the self-imposed exile. But he discarded the thought, telling himself that if
he
weren’t in command, then someone else would be.

“Where
is
she?” asked Tim. “What happened?”

“You’ll have to call her and find out.” And when you know, Fuller thought, maybe you can tell me; she walked out—more than two months ago—and never came back.

Moving along the corridor outside the bureau, they passed photo-portraits of Eisenhower, Nixon, and Dulles. Tim pointed to the latter. “His son is a priest, you know. Avery. A convert.”

“Maybe the Reformation can ransom him back with an offer of my mother, who’s still straddling the fence between Rome and Geneva. With a bank balance that these days could fulfill a vow of poverty.”

An elevator took them down two flights and past the Miscellaneous M Unit.

“I’m pretty sure I can get a good recommendation from Senator Potter’s office,” Tim said hopefully. “I’m not sure he’d have much to say himself, but Miss Cook will write something nice, and he’ll sign it.”

“No florid encomium from McIntyre?”

“I don’t ever want to speak to him again.”

“You once said as much about me.”

He started to stammer out a reply, but Fuller relieved him of the need for one by picking up the pace and administering a cheerful poke in the ribs. The gesture depressed Tim; it lacked the intimacy of the hair-tousling a few moments before and seemed to suggest that they were just joshing old friends. He suddenly feared that’s all they might in fact become, a fate more disrespectful to their former romance than impassioned estrangement would be.

Entering the office that seemed to be their destination, Tim heard Fuller ask the receptionist if they could see Mr. Osborne. The girl buzzed him while Tim regarded a recently framed
Time
cover on the wall behind her desk. The magazine’s Man of the Year was the Hungarian Freedom Fighter, an artist’s handsome conception of those who’d made the doomed revolution.

Once Mr. Osborne emerged, Tim judged him to be about thirty-five. He looked athletic and a bit severe, but he greeted Fuller with a hearty clap on the shoulder. It turned out the two of them were handball partners at GWU.

“Osborne, this is Timothy Laughlin, a veteran of the United States Army, a staunch defender of the Second Line of Communication in France, and a proud member of our underfunded reserves. You’re going to schedule an appointment with him to discuss one of those positions being set up to administer the Refugee Relief Act. He has excellent writing skills, passable French, congressional staff experience, a charming disposition, and a terrifying grandmother.”

Apparently used to Fuller’s palaver, Leonard Osborne said only, “Sure.” Turning to Tim, he added, “If you like, you can come back right now and fill out the first of the forms.”

“Nope,” said Fuller. “No time.”

“Okay, then. Tommorow morning at ten o’clock. Bring a résumé,” Osborne instructed Tim. “When you get here I’ll take you three doors down the hall to the man who’s really in charge. You’ll find, I’m afraid, that nothing happens very fast around here, even when it’s an emergency.” He explained that the Refugee Relief Act, once it actually passed, would entitle anyone fleeing a Communist state to asylum.

“Thank you, sir.”

Tim’s ingratiating smile gave way to perplexity as Fuller nudged him back into the corridor.

“Hawk, this is great, but I could have seen him now.” He waved the manila envelope with the application he’d gotten from Fuller himself. “It’s not as if I can’t take the rest of the day off from St. Mary’s.”

“You’ll be better off having your résumé with you.”

They’d reached the end of the corridor. Fuller guided Tim down two flights of stairs and then opened the door to Twenty-first Street. “Put on your gloves. It’s cold out.”

“You don’t even have a coat.”

“We’re not going far. Only a few blocks up and over.”

They walked fast to H Street and then turned west. In just his blue suit, Fuller attracted even more stares than usual.

Brightening, Tim asked: “We’re not going to see Mary, are we? You can’t walk all the way to Georgetown like that!”

“No, you can see Mary on your own. Christ, it
is
cold.”

Tim removed his scarf and looped it over Hawkins’ neck, as if garlanding a Christmas tree. Fuller responded by putting an arm around his shoulder, in such a way that would have left anyone thinking this was his kid brother.

They reached a red-brick house that was in total disrepair at the corner of Twenty-fifth Street.

“There’s no lock,” said Fuller. “Go inside and wait for me. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Tim had found army life easy because all his life he had more or less done what he was told. And it was of course the same now; in a moment he was inside the house and trying the nearest light switch. It didn’t work; nor did any of the others. The only available illumination, a fading late-afternoon azure, came through gaps between the mostly broken window sashes and the brown paper covering the panes of glass. There was dust everywhere, but also evidence of recent visitation: pillows plumped and straightened on the couch; a newspaper from last week beside a jelly-jar glass on the counter by the sink.

The house was so narrow that Tim had the sensation of being inside a locker at school. But it was tall, too, dominated by a staircase running up the eastern wall. Everything suggested verticality and ascent. Even a little cut-glass chandelier, unlit, drew one’s eyes to the ceiling above a bay-windowed alcove that might once have held a small dining room table. The space’s bare little octagonal floor looked like the abandoned ballroom in a doll’s house.

Tim climbed to the second floor, past a bedroom with some rags on the floor and a small WC that, however filthy, seemed newer than the rest of the house’s interior. Seeking the turret he’d glimpsed outside, he continued up to the third story—a half-finished attic, really—where he found it, a little cone whose walls leaned in above a pile of clean blankets that had been spread upon the floor. Next to them stood a space heater that, in the absence of any other electricity, had been hooked up to two fat dry cells. The darkness outside was growing, and soon the only possible light would have to be coaxed from the glow of this contraption’s coils.

Where had Hawk gone? And what could he accomplish in a matter of five minutes? Would he be bringing someone back with him? Maybe Mary, after all? Or some other third party?
Maybe the two of us can become the three of us.

Or maybe Hawk had left him for a few minutes in this dark space above the littered street to reacclimate himself to the fact that he would always have to wait for Hawkins Fuller, for each brief chance to be alone with him, separate from the rest of the world.

He removed the brown paper from one of the turret’s two tiny windows and let in the last now-inky light of day. He looked out across the street to the empty space where the neighborhood’s gasworks had once been, before he sat down on the blankets and tried to be patient. He told himself that later tonight he would borrow Gloria’s typewriter and construct a new résumé. He would get to bed early—it was easy with no more radio of his own—and tomorrow, once the interview was through, he’d get back to St. Mary’s in time for lunch. If he got the job, he would offer up the work to God, confident he was helping those who’d arrived from Hungary to worship Him once again.

He prayed for Hawk to hurry, to get here while he could still pretend these were really the thoughts in the front of his mind.

Last night, when he’d seen Hawk’s face, he’d thought his heart would collapse into itself. He’d forced himself to keep talking to Father Molnar, pouring forth chatter about how much the work at St. Mary’s meant to him, and Father Molnar, who’d depleted his life savings by half in order to come up with the twenty-five dollars for his own dinner ticket, had expressed delight.

He’d lain awake most of the night thinking what a delusion it had been to believe that two years away could do anything, that he could be strong enough to come back to D.C., or that he had come back for any other reason than Hawk. This morning he’d gotten up for early Mass at St. Mary’s, dragging himself from the artists’ loft as if God were a boyfriend he was seeing on the rebound; and then this afternoon, only an hour ago, he’d raced from the church to the streetcar to the glass doors of State as if it were October of ’53 and his heart had not yet been flooded and battered in all the ways it had been since then.