Three-Martini Lunch (36 page)

60

C
liff was in a state. It wasn't difficult to figure out what had happened. At work, Mr. Nelson had handled Cliff's manuscript submission privately. After I spotted it on Mr. Nelson's desk, I never saw it again. But between the two of them, I had my ear to the ground well enough to know they'd been scheduled for lunch that afternoon. Having typed the manuscript myself, and knowing that Cliff brought out his father's harsh streak, I could only imagine what Mr. Nelson had said.

So I was hardly surprised to come home from work that day to an empty apartment. I assumed Cliff was likely out drowning his sorrows, raising a ruckus with Swish or else Bobby and Pal, running around the Village like a madman. I didn't care for Cliff's destructive tendencies—which were becoming more and more a dominant part of his personality these days—but in this case I at least understood and felt sympathy for the impulse. I hoped, whatever he was up to, he could get it out of his system, lick his wounds, and carry on. It turned out my hopes were misguided, or
at the very least terribly naïve, for his father's rejection sent Cliff into a blind rage more terrible than any I'd previously witnessed. I had a very dim premonition of what was to come. I went through my usual routine of fixing a little snack for dinner, reading, and cleaning. The radiators were on too hot that night, I remember. I had just opened the window to air out the room and was getting ready for bed when Cliff suddenly came thundering through the door, even more rip-roaring drunk than I'd expected.

“To hell w'th 'em!” he hollered in a slurred voice. “To hell w'th 'em ALL!”

“Clifford!” I screamed as he dropped an empty bottle and glass flew everywhere.

“And YOU,” he said, as though, upon hearing my scream, he'd suddenly noticed my presence in the room. He lifted a finger and pointed it in my face. “To hell with you most of all!” He lurched, his head swayed, and his attention fell upon the little card table where the Smith Corona sat. He suddenly seized the typewriter and, in one gut-muscled heave, threw it out the open window. I watched it fly with wide eyes, too surprised to make a peep, and heard the strange crunch and clatter of the typewriter as it hit the pavement outside. Cliff wasn't quite done yet, however. Next he pulled open a dresser drawer and reached for the stacks of pages within. Page after page, everything he'd ever written and everything I'd ever typed up for him, went into the metal bucket we kept as a wastebasket.

“There!” he shouted. “Now everything's 'xactly where it should be!” He flopped down on the mattress. “To hell w'th 'em. To hell w'th 'em all,” he muttered into the pillow. Several minutes later I heard the telltale guttural growl of a snore.

I unfroze and went to the window. Poking my head out, I saw that the typewriter was beyond salvaging. Luckily, the window looked down onto a small alleyway between our building and the next; therefore no one had
been maimed as a result of his tantrum. I swept the broken glass into a dustpan. Then I crossed the room to the wastebasket, sighed, and began pulling Cliff's pages out.

I was in the midst of sorting and stacking Cliff's manuscripts back into neat piles, when I got the second surprise of the night. One of the manuscripts caught my eye. I didn't recognize it. It was significantly longer than most of the other things Cliff had written, a body of work that—except for the aborted novel manuscript his father had likely rejected earlier that afternoon—mostly consisted of half-finished short stories and the occasional poem.

I began to read, right there, transfixed while in the middle of cleaning the floor, and soon couldn't put it down.

I don't know where or how the story had come to him. The last thing I'd ever expected him to be able to write about and portray with such eloquence was the story of a father and a son. I knew there were sometimes writers who had rich inner lives, who could write out of a keen sense of imagined empathy; now, for the first time, it was clear Cliff possessed that gift. I reread the pages several times, startled, and increasingly convinced that here was the novel we had all been waiting for, a novel that wasn't only about the war but about the next generation—
our
generation—picking up the pieces afterwards. It was truthful, it was poetic, and most important . . . it was
publishable
.

•   •   •

T
he next morning I got up per my usual routine. Cliff was still snoring. By that point the scent of bourbon had begun to sweat through his pores. I didn't envy him the headache he would have, but I knew of at least one thing I could do that might make it better. I tiptoed about, laying out breakfast, and then left for work with the manuscript tucked neatly in my bag.

61

I
was frantic, but had no clue what to do about it. There was no way to know where or when my composition book had gone missing. Common wisdom dictates that, when you lose something, it's best to retrace your steps. Unfortunately, being a bicycle messenger meant these steps stretched over the entire length of Manhattan, from the top of the island to the bottom, not to mention from the East River to the Hudson. It could have slipped out of my bag at any time, perhaps as I carelessly deposited and extracted packages and envelopes throughout the course of the day.

I thought, too, perhaps it had fallen out at the coffee shop where I had met Cliff. But when I went back the next morning to inquire about it, the man behind the soda counter only shrugged and said, “Sorry, pal, no one's seen anything like that.” If Cliff had picked it up, he would have returned it to me, I reasoned—wouldn't he? I wasn't entirely sure of this conclusion. He had seemed friendly enough, but I didn't trust him. His cagey
behavior unnerved me, and our conversation had amounted to little more than a superficial exchange. I couldn't understand why he had come all the way up to Harlem to see me, unless it was to assuage a conscience I wasn't entirely convinced he possessed. I went down to the Village and tried ringing his buzzer, then made a half-hearted search of all the regular bars he haunted, but couldn't find him. Swish, Bobby, and Pal hadn't seen him, either.

•   •   •

I
n the bigger scheme of things, I suppose I ought to have been grateful: I hadn't lost my father's journal, only my composition book. I brought the composition book along with me sometimes, just in case I had a spare moment between deliveries and remembered something from my childhood about my father that I felt like jotting down.

I understood my father's words weren't replaceable and mine were. If I really wanted to begin my project again, I could. But there was something terrible about the thought of starting over again; it set off a riot of feelings in me, it made my body feel limp with despair. I wasn't sure exactly what it was I had lost, in losing the composition book. I didn't dare allow myself to believe I was writing a memoir I might someday try to publish—I never admitted to ambitions so grand—but some part of me understood it was the first draft of
something
I had loved, and something I had needed to finish.

I wanted badly to tell someone about my loss, and I wanted that someone to be Joey. Joey would hold me, understand me. But of course Joey was out of reach now. I had seen to that myself.

Of course, there was still Janet. It was Janet's letter that had summoned me home, away from Joey and the houseboat and everything we'd shared on it. I knew I ought to take better care of Janet and that I had Janet's feelings to consider. Since getting back into town, I had put off seeing her again, but now I asked her out to a movie, knowing the theaters were
always a treat for her. She was excited and immediately said yes, and then shortly thereafter we met up at the box office. I let her pick the picture. She chose—seemingly at random—a Fellini film,
Nights of Cabiria
, which had come out the year before and was now playing at a discount at the Paris.

The movie was a mistake. It was gloomy and stark, the story of a prostitute looking for love and only being met with the cruelty of other peoples' indifference. There I was, fidgety and distracted throughout the entire film, and I couldn't concentrate. We'd gotten popcorn but I didn't feel like eating it; it stuck in my throat each time I attempted to swallow some. Something was causing me terrible discomfort, like a kind of indigestion, only more nebulous than that, and it affected me all over. I reached for Janet's hand in the dark and realized—with a shiver of disgust—that muscle memory had me expecting the familiar shape of Joey's. When the film finally ended, we stepped outside to find it was already dark. We had gone to a matinee, and the sun had not yet set when we had gone in. This, too, made me anxious and sad, and it was as if we had missed out on something important in not witnessing the end of the day's light.

“Wasn't that awfully depressing?” Janet said. Janet always liked to discuss whatever it was we had just seen. Her tone of voice suggested she was trying to make polite conversation, not complain, but for some reason I found myself incredibly irritated with her.

“Well, love is like that,” I said with impatience. She widened her eyes, both puzzled and a little afraid of my sudden anger.

“You don't really think love is like that, do you?” she asked. “Not
all
love.”

“A hell of a lot of it,” I said, just to be petulant. She took my arm and attempted a sweet smile. Janet's perfume, which I had found pleasantly floral back when we first met, suddenly struck me as rancid and treacly.

“Not
our
love, though,” she said, leaning into me and peering up into my face. She patted my upper arm. “Look at us: We're just fine. We're
happy together.” There was a pause, and I knew this was my cue to say something in return, but I didn't feel up to it. “Aren't we happy?” she prompted. I had a flash of Joey asking me the same question, back on the houseboat. It was bizarre the way time was like an accordion, and distinct moments that felt so disparate sometimes folded together with a callous symmetry.

“Sure,” I said, leading her in the direction of the subway. The pain of the lie shot through my body. “Sure we are. We're the picture of happiness. That's why no one will ever make a movie about us.”

•   •   •

I
saw Janet home and then headed back to my mother's apartment. Once inside, I stood in the kitchen, staring at the mute beige shape of the telephone. I lifted the receiver, then set it back in its cradle, then lifted it again. Finally, I made up my mind. I watched my finger dial, and the rotary wheel spin back into place.

“Information. May I help you?”

“Yes. I'm looking for a listing in Washington, D.C.,” I said. “Edward C. Jenkins.”

“One moment, please . . . The number is Hamilton 5-6240. Would you like to be connected?”

I hesitated. This was my chance to back out. I hadn't thought about the long-distance charge that was sure to show up on my mother's bill. Finally, I asked the operator to put the call through, hoping I would think of a reasonable explanation when the time came for it. The line began to ring. I felt a cold trickle of sweat stirring beneath my shirt.

“Hello?”

“Eddie?”

“Who is this?”

“It's Miles,” I said. “Miles, from . . . San Francisco,” I added when Eddie did not respond right away.

“I know from where.” His usually cheerful Southern twang sounded flat, sober, laced with anger.

“I guess I'm calling because . . .” I didn't know what to say. “I wanted to ask how Joey is doing,” I choked out.

“Ask 'im yourself,” Eddie said. I was quiet. Finally Eddie sighed and relented. “Look, if you really want to know, he's holding up at his new job all right, but he's gone back to his old ways, Miles. Staying out all night, running around with seedy types. He's new in town. Too new to be so careless, if you know what I mean.”

He declined to recount the specifics, and I understood why. We both knew the telephone was not the most private of instruments.

“Does he talk about me, Eddie?”

“Oh, he talks about you, all right. He's awful mad at you, Miles.”

“I'd like to apologize to him.”

“Well, that might take some doing,” Eddie grunted.

“I know. Will you help me, Eddie? If I go down there?”

There was a long pause. Without realizing it, I was holding my breath. The clock on the wall in the kitchen seemed to suddenly tick more loudly.

“There's a bar,” Eddie finally said. “Most nights you can find him there. The kind of place no one will look twice at a Negro walking in, even in D.C. . . . if you're really serious about fixing things with him.”

Eddie gave me the address and I scribbled it down.

“To be honest, I don't know what business you have together,” he said, and hung up.

•   •   •

T
he next day I found myself on yet another Greyhound. This time I was headed south. The bus was heated but I steadily perspired a cold sweat throughout the entire ride. My hands were like ice, as though the blood couldn't quite reach them.

It was evening and a cold drizzle was falling when the bus pulled into
D.C. I hadn't brought an umbrella. I stepped off the bus at Union Station and made my way through the long waiting hall. In the short time it took for me to make it outside, the rain had escalated from drizzle to downpour. Now the water was coming down in sheets, and there was no way to avoid getting drenched. I switched to a local bus and made my way across town, eventually finding my way to the bar Eddie had described over the phone. It was a dive, the kind frequented by a specific clientele. I was nervous but not surprised.

I pushed through the door and, once inside, let my eyes adjust as I surveyed the room, looking for any sign of Joey. Before I knew it, someone was hollering at me, trying to catch my attention.

“Say, fella, you gonna order a drink or what?”

I looked over to see the bartender frowning at me and realized I was hovering in the doorway. Truth be told, I had always harbored a private terror of bars just like this one. Old queens and men wearing rouge and the married stiffs in suits who, at the stroke of midnight, would turn tail and run back home to their unsuspecting wives. It ought to have reminded me of the Hamilton Lodge Ball, I suppose, but it didn't. Although chaotic and grotesque, the Hamilton Lodge Ball had also been whimsical and infused with glee. This bar was teeming with a deadly combination of angst and malaise. The air was bitter and lonely.

“I'm looking for a friend,” I replied to the bartender.

“We don't take kindly to people who come here just to look,” he said. I nodded but continued on past the bar to a little room in the back, searching for Joey.

My heart almost stopped when I found him there. A group of men were hooting and howling over a game of darts, two of them very burly, one of them old, and one of them dressed in drag. And there was Joey: staggering around, a heavy five-o'clock shadow on his cheeks, his beautiful face lopsided, distorted with drink. As Joey completed his turn at the dartboard, one of the burly men tried to pull him into his lap, and Joey
gave an angry laugh while trying to spit in the man's face. They were playing, but not in the spirit of true playfulness; it was the kind of play born of hate, hate for each other, but more than anything hate for themselves. My stomach twisted and I thought for a minute I might be sick. I gathered myself.

“Joey,” I called gently.

His brow furrowed and I watched him peer around the room in drunken confusion until, finally, his eyes landed on me. For a fleeting second his eyes lit up in recognition. But then an even darker shadow passed over his stubbled face.

“Joey,” I repeated. “I came from New York. I came all the way to find you.”

“Oh yeah? And exactly how did you know where to find me?”

I didn't answer, but as Joey glared at me, I saw that he guessed the truth: Eddie.

“Say, who's your friend?” the man who had been wrestling with Joey asked.

“Nobody,” Joey replied. He stood on one side of the cramped back room and I on the other. He looked away, not making eye contact.

“Joey, please,” I said again, keeping my voice low. “Please let me speak with you. In private.”

I prayed the others wouldn't get involved and continued to look at him until finally he looked at me and returned my stare.

“Please,” I repeated. I realized I was begging. I didn't care.

He held my gaze for several seconds, an acid look in his eyes. I never felt hated so much as I did in that moment. Then, all at once, something snapped in him and he moved for the exit.

“Fine,” he said, striding quickly out of the back room and through the bar. “Let's go.” Immediately, I followed him.

“Hey!
Wait a minute!
” his companions called after him. But we were already out the front entrance.

It was still pouring. He led the way, swerving on the sidewalk ever so slightly as he marched drunkenly along.

“Where are we going?”

He didn't answer me. After two blocks or so, he turned and stopped in front of a narrow redbrick row house, four storeys tall and crowned with a steeply pitched roof. Joey pushed open the gate, walked up the stoop, and paused in front of the door. He reached in his pocket for a key.

Unseen tenants coming home from work had abandoned their wet umbrellas in the front chamber, leaving them to leak small puddles of water all over the tiled floor. The hallways smelled musty, with a tinge of wet dog. The stairs groaned as we climbed them, wooden stairs covered with carpet that was nearly worn through. Finally we reached the fourth floor and walked to the end of the hallway, and Joey unlocked and opened the door to his apartment. I followed him in and stood in the darkness, listening to the sound of the door latching shut again behind me.

He switched on a light. We stood there unmoving, staring at each other as the dripping accumulated on the carpet until it made a tiny splashing noise with every drop.

“Joey,” I said, “I'm sorry.”

I stepped towards him, opening my arms. All of a sudden he punched me square across the jaw. My head spun to one side. Pain shot through my face from my teeth to my ear, but I continued to reach out blindly and tried to grab him anyway, hoping to hold him and calm him down. He fought back, and we fell to grappling with each other until we were wrestling on the ground and he was punching me again. We knocked over a lamp and I felt it break over my back. Joey had the upper hand now. He got on top of me and I felt blows landing all over my body as I tried to fight him off. We were slick with the rainwater we'd carried in on our skin and clothes, and hot with exertion. I tasted blood and realized my lip was cut.