Three-Martini Lunch

by Suzanne Rindell

  Joey’s apprehension doubled when they asked him to take a legal oath, but he could see little way to refuse, so he took it. The two men continued to stand over him as they went about swearing him in. Joey remembered noticing his hand left behind a sweaty palm print on the leather cover of the Bible.

  One of the men—Joey couldn’t remember their names; he’d been so nervous, the whole experience was now a blur—finally sat down and took out a notebook. He marked down a few idle observations about Joey’s dress and demeanor.

  “Now, hold on just a minute, fellas,” Joey protested, conscious of his Southern accent as his temper flared. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  The man didn’t answer. He just looked up at Joey with a dull expression. His tie was soup-stained and he had steely eyes and a sallow, unpleasant face, Joey recalled as he told me his story. The other man had a well-worn countenance for a man around the cusp of thirty, probably on account of his badly pock-marked complexion.

  “God only knows where they find these goons,” Joey commented as he shivered before me in the hotel room now.

  They began to question him, he said. They reminded him he’d taken an oath; all this showmanship was meant to scare him, he was certain, but Joey was too nervous to puzzle out why. They asked him a few idle questions—how long he had been at his post, the name of his supervisor, that sort of thing—and then they dropped their bombshell. The U.S. Civil Service Commission had encountered information that suggested he was an admitted homosexual, they said. Did he care to comment?

  Joey’s heart stopped. He couldn’t think why they were asking him that; he was so careful. He also knew his answer was crucial. If he lied, it might be considered perjury and come back to haunt him, but he couldn’t very well tell the truth, for obvious reasons: He would lose his job.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, boys,” Joey said, chuckling and trying to keep a light note in his voice. “Who told you that? Where is this coming from?”

  Neither of the men answered. Instead, they pressed on. Had he ever gone to the Derby Room for the purposes of meeting other gentlemen? Did he frequent the Redskin Lounge? Did he know another State Department employee by the last name Wentworth who was known to dress in women’s clothing and threw parties for other men who liked to do the same? Did he regularly associate with other homosexuals? Were there others he could name within the State Department?

  Joey was blind with panic. He found himself giving half-answers to the two men, which somehow made things worse. He didn’t see how bad it could be to admit to going to certain clubs and restaurants—where was the harm in that?—but his partial admissions only caused the men to redouble their efforts in trying to lure him into admitting something much more damning, and the specifics were growing more lurid by the minute.

  “Hold on a minute, fellas,” Joey said, pretending to keep his calm. “The conversation is getting . . . well . . . rather blue here.”

  “Oh, of course . . . pardon us,” one of the men said in a jeering voice. “You know, we didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

  Joey rejoined the man’s comment with a stony stare. “It occurs to me,” he finally said, finding a last-ditch shred of courage deep within his own indignation, “if I’ve taken an oath, I ought to get a lawyer involved in this business.”

  “Sure, fella,” the second man replied. “I suppose you know your rights and all of that. But you know, we’re only asking a few harmless questions here. You wouldn’t need a lawyer if you had nothing to hide.”

  Joey stood up on quivering knees, and the two men reached for their hats. “We’ll be in touch again real soon,” one of the men said. “This matter is hardly closed.”

  • • •

  “Once I challenged them, they gave up pretty quickly,” Joey said as I squeezed his hand. “Nothing about it was right,” he murmured. “They seemed to know it. They seemed to know it was not quite right. You should’ve seen the look in their eyes. They hated me. They don’t even know me, and they hate me.”

  “Well,” I said, coughing to clear my throat. During the course of Joey’s story a lump had lodged itself in my throat and refused to move. “It’s a good thing you finally stood up to them, then.” As soon as the sentence was out of my mouth, I knew it was a foolish thing to say, and I instantly regretted it. Joey turned to me with wild eyes.

  “What are we going to do, Miles?”

  I shook my head, and he looked down at his hands.

  “I’m sure they’ll leave you alone now,” I said.

  Joey looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and disdain.

  Minutes ticked by. In the bathroom, the faucet continued its annoying plink, plink, plinkity-plink-plink, like a clock that had forgotten its obligation to keep even-handed time. All I could feel was shock and—I’m ashamed to admit—a seedling of doubt that things had happened exactly as Joey had said. Surely he was exaggerating. As if sensing this, Joey put his face in his hands and began to cry.

  “I just . . . I just don’t understand,” I said stupidly. “The FBI . . . is really taking this seriously? How did this happen?”

  Joey lifted his face from his hands. He looked up at me with reddened eyes. “That’s what I found out today,” he said. His lips twisted in a sick smile. “Somebody telephoned in an anonymous tip. That’s all it takes,” he said in a defeated voice near my chest. “You know as well as I do, that’s all it takes.”

  72

  Joey’s paranoia grew quickly. The FBI questioned him twice more, and each time they did, more and more of his easygoing personality chipped off and crumbled away, leaving both of us increasingly frightened: He, frightened of the FBI. Me, frightened of him. I ought to have been there for him, to comfort him, to reassure him. Instead, I inched further away. He had become a man disfigured by neediness, in my eyes. We were two men clinging to a life raft, and Joey was the one who threatened to swamp both of us.

  I told myself none of it was my fault. It was one thing if someone had phoned in a tip to menace Joey, but it was something else if the FBI kept after Joey, interviewing him more than once and investigating the details of his life further. It meant that Joey—with all his careless, jovial indiscretion—had given them cause. I could not be held accountable for that. At least, this is how my thinking went at the time.

  And so, as Joey became increasingly desperate to see me, I became increasingly desperate to put some distance between us. Meanwhile, I devoted more and more of my time to Janet. In perhaps the more despicable, cowardly parts of my mind, I figured no one could accuse me of impropriety if it was clear to the world I was happily preoccupied with my lovely fiancée.

  These two facts—my avoidance of Joey and the increased amount of time I spent with Janet—reached a crossroads one day, quite literally, on the sidewalk outside my mother’s apartment building. I was walking down the street with Janet on my arm. We had spent that Sunday afternoon at the lunch counter around the corner and, knowing that Wendell was not home, I had suggested we drop in on my mother to say hello. If Janet and I were truly going to wind up as husband and wife, I thought it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to bring Janet around more often.

  “Shouldn’t we telephone first?” Janet asked nervously as we neared our destination.

  “No, no,” I reassured her, patting her hand where it curled around the inner crook of my arm. “My mother doesn’t like formalities anyway,” I said, politely burying the truth behind this, which was that my mother thought formalities were only for uppity people, and had used the word uppity to describe Janet once or twice in the past already. I looked at Janet’s earnest, concerned expression, and smiled. It was plain to see how much she loved me and how much she wanted this to work. I was touched.

  But just then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something else: a familiar figure, sitting on the stoop right outside the entrance to my mother’s apartment buil
ding. A jolt of cold shock went through me.

  It was Joey.

  I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. There had been something ragged in his voice the last time we talked, which was also the last time I canceled on him, fobbing him off with a flimsy reason. If he had any dignity at all, I figured, he would read between the lines and leave me well enough alone.

  I had thought he sounded like a crazy man as he pleaded with me, and now here was proof that I wasn’t off the mark. He was sitting, as bold as day, to the left side of the top stair. A rush of panic came over me as I wondered: How long had he been here? What was his purpose? Had he been upstairs to see my mother? He was wearing his overcoat—the one that looked very much like my own—and his knees were drawn up to his chest, giving him the air of a sullen child. Even out the corner of my eye, I could see him regarding Janet intensely, scrutinizing her attractive wide eyes, the shabby faux fur of her collar, her middle-class shoes. I got a flash of Janet through Joey’s jealous, assessing eyes and found myself suddenly angry.

  The stoop was not very wide. My heart was thundering in my chest. I stiffened. Janet and I would have to walk right past Joey, within a few inches. And I would have to pretend not to know him.

  We began our ascent. I could feel Joey’s presence like a palpable barrier, as though he were radiating some sort of energy or negative radio wave. Whatever else he’d come for, he was here now because he wanted to frighten me, to punish me, I realized.

  We reached the top step.

  “Nice day out,” Joey commented in an idle, conversational tone. It wasn’t. The winter had come to stay, and despite the occasional patch of sun breaking through the clouds, the air was full of a wet, icy chill.

  “Yes,” Janet replied, to be polite. She seemed puzzled as to what a young white man was doing loitering on the stoop of a Harlem apartment building, but she didn’t say so aloud, not even once we’d gotten inside the hallway and were climbing the stairs. Instead, she squeezed my arm and asked, “Are you all right, Miles? You’re not nervous for me to spend some time with your mother, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “Why?”

  “Your arm. It’s trembling.”

  “Oh.”

  • • •

  Later, when I went to walk Janet to her home on the other side of Harlem, Joey was no longer there. I kept throwing little glances over my shoulder as we walked, half-expecting to see him lurking at a distance, following us. But he wasn’t.

  Before I made it back to my mother’s apartment, I stopped at a pay phone. I had a hunch where I might reach him.

  “Hello?” he answered, after I dialed the hotel where we’d stayed during his last visit.

  “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” I realized I was yelling. I didn’t care.

  “I needed to see you,” he replied. “You weren’t making it very easy.”

  “SO YOU CAME TO MY MOTHER’S HOUSE?”

  “It’s not like I rang the bell and introduced myself.”

  “You can’t come around like that, Joey. You just can’t. Don’t you get it? People are asking you questions. I don’t need them asking me questions, too.”

  There was a pause, during which Joey gave out a small, sick noise that sounded like a cross between a nervous laugh and a frantic sob. “You think I don’t know that?” he said. “Please . . . I only came up to New York to see you because . . . because I’m losing it, Miles. They’re picking apart my life. My family . . . It’s only a matter of time until . . . I need a friend. I need someone to help me keep it all together.”

  “You have Eddie,” I said.

  He was silent. Part of me wanted to give in and comfort him. But another part of me—the cruel-hearted animal that could sense Joey’s terrible weakness—decided to snap its jaws shut.

  “Don’t come around here anymore, Joey. I mean it. I have a fiancée. I told you before: I’m not like you.”

  “You’re not like me?”

  “I’m not . . . the way you are.”

  Again silence.

  “I’m marrying Janet,” I said with an air of finality. “I’m sorry for your trouble, but I’m done. I want you to leave us alone.”

  “Miles . . . You promised you wouldn’t do this again.”

  I could think of nothing to say. My throat was too thick, and my stomach was already beginning to turn inside out. There was nothing to say. Joey was one hundred percent right. I hung up.

  73

  An unexpected event occurred around that time. I was tip-toeing around the apartment one morning, getting dressed and making breakfast as quietly as I could so as to not wake Wendell, when the telephone’s shrill ring nearly caused me to drop the glass into which I was pouring orange juice. I hurried to pick it up before it could ring a second time.

  “Mr. Tillman?” came a man’s unfamiliar voice over the line. His words were articulated with that type of stiff jaw particular to businessmen and lawyers, and I couldn’t imagine why someone like that would be calling. I wondered if by Mr. Tillman the stranger on the line meant my father.

  “Mr. Miles Tillman?” he clarified, as though reading my mind.

  “Yes?”

  “I presume you’re acquainted with a gentleman named Augustus Minton?”

  My mind swirled. Mister Gus. The voice on the phone meant Mister Gus, I realized as my brain dredged up Mister Gus’s full name from some forgotten place. But why was someone calling about Mister Gus? My armpits were suddenly cold with sweat.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to inform you that Mr. Minton passed away today,” the man continued.

  “Oh,” I said. I paused, trying to find the right words, ashamed at my relief. “Oh,” I said stupidly again.

  “Yes,” the man said. “My name is Jim Arkle, and I’m Mr. Minton’s attorney.”

  “All right,” I said, not certain what to make of this information.

  “I see Mr. Minton has your name written down here.”

  My heart pounded. My mother came into the kitchen, frowning, and looked at me askance.

  “The notation he’s made here indicates he’d like you to have a hand in facilitating his arrangements. It says you were once his assistant and that you will know how he’d like things done.”

  I was silent, hesitating.

  “There’s also an envelope of cash with your name on it,” the lawyer added, as though he sensed I needed persuasion.

  “No, it’s not that,” I said.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “I just . . . This is a surprise. I’ll need to call my current job and notify them of my absence today, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Good,” the lawyer said in a tone that insinuated he firmly believed his mention of the envelope of cash had convinced me. “See you soon.”

  I hung up.

  “Miles?” my mother prodded.

  “Remember the old man who paid me to run errands?”

  She tsked and shook her head. “That him, demanding you do somethin’ for him?” My mother, with that sixth sense of hers, had always been leery of Mister Gus, an older white man who—she felt—was unnaturally interested in me. “You tell him: You got enough to do without him callin’ you at all hours in the morning, expecting you to drop everything and come over.”

  She paused, and her frown deepened.

  “Why you look like that?”

  “He died today,” I said.

  Her mouth opened, then closed again.

  • • •

  I called in sick to my messenger job. When I got to the townhouse, I walked so as to go around to the side and use the servants’ entrance, as was my habit, but I realized I no longer had the key, so I went to the front door and rang the bell, a small copper button inside a lion’s mouth. The door sprang open to reveal a short bearded-and-bespectacled man within.
r />   “Yes?”

  “Are you Mr. Arkle, the lawyer I spoke to on the phone?”

  “Spoke to on the phone . . . ?” he echoed.

  “I’m Miles Tillman.”

  “Oh—oh yes! Pardon my surprise. But of course you’re a Negro! I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Why would you?” I blurted, puzzled.

  “Exactly, my son, why would I, exactly. Well, come on in! There’s so much to do,” he said, gesturing. I followed. “I was going to get this unpleasant business under way—you know, call the coroner and such, but Ada, the cook who was hired recently—have you met? She’s the one who found him—stopped me and directed my attention to these papers and told me I ought to read them first.” We had made our way into the kitchen and he scooped up a series of what appeared to be folded letters.

  “Here you are,” he said, handing one folded sheaf of paper to me. I opened it and read it. In Mister Gus’s tight, stingy handwriting was an enumerated list. At the top was written MR. MILES TILLMAN TO ADMINISTER THIS LIST. “So that’s you, hey?” The lawyer pointed.

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we start with the telephone calls?”

  We worked our way down the list Mister Gus had written, telephoning one person at a time. We called Mister Gus’s personal physician first, and he came over about an hour later to check the body and write up a certificate of death. The notary, a scarecrow-like fussy man with glasses, was second. He seemed irritated by our request to notarize the certificate, and barely looked it over before putting his seal on it and leaving. A mortician and a funeral home were called, as well as a church Mister Gus had long ago stopped attending—or so we deduced, for the name of the minister he had written down corresponded to a man the church said had made his eternal migration from the pulpit to the churchyard several years prior.