Louise's Blunder (8 page)

‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘That’s me. But I don’t think we should talk about it.’

‘You’re correct, of course. But I can tell you all about what I’m doing. It’s not one bit confidential.’

‘What then?’ I asked.

‘Every day I pick up Dr T.V. Soong from the Chinese Embassy and drive him to the Federal Reserve Building, where they’re holding the Trident Conference, and stay by his side all day. His English is excellent of course, but he likes to speak Chinese to me, and I take notes for him.’

Soong was Foreign Minister of China and brother-in-law to both Dr Sun Yat-sen and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. He was a wealthy banker who financed the Flying Tigers before they became part of the US Air Force.

‘He’s the only delegate from China,’ Clark continued. He glanced around the garden to make sure no one was near. ‘And there’s no representative from the Soviet Union. Do you believe that? The Russians have withstood Stalingrad and continue to engage Germany on the Eastern Front, yet they weren’t invited to help plan the next phase of the war?’

The next phase of the war was a future cross-channel invasion of Europe. Oh, I could chat knowledgeably about the issues being discussed at Trident, but I had no intention of doing so. It was fine for Clark to expound all he wanted about politics and his work at OSS, he had the pay grade, but I was just a government girl, and I wasn’t about to engage him in policy discussions. If I took one step too far in our conversation he might take umbrage and then I would be in trouble.

I took a sip of water. ‘Perhaps we should go back inside?’

Clark grinned at me. ‘Smart woman,’ he said. ‘You’re right, I should be more reserved in public. Guess I had a little too much to drink myself. Do you really want to go back inside?’

‘Actually, no,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a wonderful time, but I think I should be heading home.’

‘Let me take you,’ he said. ‘I have my car.’

‘That’s all right, I came on the bus.’

‘I’m taking Sadie and Rose back to their apartment; I can drop you off with no trouble.’

‘Are they ready to leave?’

‘Let me go ask them.’

I was surprised that Clark Leach had spoken to me so freely, but there was no one within earshot and nothing he’d said was remotely secret or confidential. I took out my lipstick and compact and tried to bring a little color back into my face.

Clark appeared with Sadie and Rose in tow.

‘That was fun,’ Sadie said. ‘But I’m tuckered out!’

‘They’ll keep partying for hours,’ Rose said. ‘Until morning probably.’

‘I suppose you have to work up to clubbing, like doing a hundred push-ups,’ Clark said. ‘We can get out this gate here, I think. My car should be down the street about a block.’

Clark’s car was a roomy Buick with luscious white upholstery and a mahogany dashboard. He must have a private income; he couldn’t afford a car like that on a government salary. Most of the big men in OSS were ‘dollar a year’ men, like General Donovan and my own boss, Wilmarth Lewis. I sat in front while Sadie and Rose climbed in back.

‘Let’s go again next week,’ Sadie said.

‘I’ll have to save up,’ Rose said. ‘It’s expensive.’

‘That’s how they get the best clientele,’ Clark said. ‘Colored or white, a five-dollar cover charge is a lot of money.’

‘Thank you for the drinks, Clark,’ I said. ‘I’m not as broke as I might be otherwise.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘It was a pleasure.’

Clark dropped Sadie and Rose off first. I was worried that he might use the opportunity to ask me out on a date. Like I thought earlier, his pay grade was way above mine. To my relief he didn’t.

‘Don’t come around,’ I said, opening my car door myself in front of my boarding house. I wanted to keep him at arm’s length.

‘Will I see you at Sadie and Rose’s next week?’ he asked.

‘Absolutely,’ I said. I planned to come to their ‘salon’ every Thursday as long as they’d have me. I could talk to Sadie and Rose in a way I couldn’t speak to anyone else in Washington. Plus I had to get a look at Paul Hughes, whose bout of the flu at his mother’s house had caused so much fuss.

I told myself that I didn’t have a hangover. I had a shocking headache because of the clouds of cigarette smoke in the Club Bali, not the three Martinis I’d slurped. And my stomach lurched on account of the exotic Korean food, not because of the three Martinis either.

I put on my glasses and staggered into the bathroom, where I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I don’t think I had ever seen my eyes bloodshot before. It did not improve my appearance. Neither did the dark circles below my eyes that made me look like a raccoon. I pulled my stringy hair back in a bun. I could smell the smoke of a hundred cigarettes still clinging to my body. I wanted desperately to bathe but I needed to put something in my stomach first.

Back in my bedroom I dressed in jeans and my favorite blue and buff George Washington University sweatshirt. I swear I tiptoed going down the stairs to avoid the noise of my footsteps. And I gripped the stair banister as though falling was imminent. Never again, I swore. Now I knew my limit. No more than two Martinis in one evening!

Milt must have slept late too. He sat alone at the kitchen table eating pancakes, cutting them with the edge of his fork.

‘’Morning,’ he said. ‘You look like you had fun last night.’

‘I did,’ I said. ‘I think. Who fixed the pancakes?’ Dellaphine didn’t cook breakfast or supper on Sundays. She poured all her energies into Sunday dinner when she got home from the Gethsemane Baptist Church.

‘Henry,’ Milt said. ‘They’re real good.’ He gestured with his fork toward the range.

‘Want some? There’re plenty left. Not a lot of maple syrup though. Fresh coffee too.’

My stomach lurched and it must have shown on my face.

‘Maybe not,’ Milt said.

‘I’m going to fix some toast,’ I said. Dry toast. Washed down with plain water, with maybe some more Bromo-Seltzer in it.

‘Where did you go last night?’ Milt asked. ‘No, sorry, it’s none of my business.’

‘I don’t mind. The Club Bali.’

Milt forked the last bite of pancake into his mouth before he spoke.

‘No joke! That’s in the colored part of town. “U” Street, right?’

‘Just around the corner. It was grand. “Satchmo” Armstrong played. And we had Korean food.’

‘Slant-eye food? I’m surprised the club could get away with that.’

‘Korean isn’t the same as Japanese.’

Milt shrugged, laying down his fork before picking up his coffee cup.

‘They all look the same,’ he said. ‘There are plenty of Koreans in the Japanese Imperial Army.’

Korea had been occupied by the Japanese and its citizens conscripted into the Japanese Army and into labor camps in Japan. Instead of arguing with Milt, who after all had lost an arm and was bound to hate the Japs and anyone who fought alongside them, I went into Dellaphine’s pantry to find the Bromo-Seltzer.

But Milt wasn’t done. ‘They should fire that Korean cook, and throw him into an internment camp.’ He could see from my expression when I went back into the kitchen that I didn’t appreciate what he’d said. ‘Shocked?’ he said. He nodded at his empty sleeve. ‘Better yet, send the lot of them back where they came from in boxes.’

‘I’m sorry about your arm, Milt,’ I said. ‘Terribly sorry. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. But George Kim didn’t wound you. He came to this country to escape from the Japanese.’

Before I said anything more to Milt that I might regret later – he was my landlady’s son, after all –I went upstairs to bathe. I felt like I was washing more than smoke off myself. I’d been wrong about Milt and Henry sharing a room. It looked like they’d get along real well.

I rose out from beneath my covers feeling like Lazarus. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a nap. My headache was gone, my stomach was quiet and I thought I would live.

I’d fallen asleep after my bath in my underwear, wrapped up in a blanket. I recalled that I’d just planned to rest for a few minutes.

Then I heard the pounding on my door.

‘For heaven’s sake, come in!’ I said. ‘There’s no reason to break the door down.’

Ada opened the door.

‘You’re alive, good,’ she said. ‘I’ve been taking messages for you all afternoon. Joan has called you three times. A man called too. And you missed Sunday dinner. Don’t you think you should get up?’

‘What time is it?’ I asked.

‘Four o’clock,’ she said.

‘I’m coming.’ Joan would want to know all about the Club Bali and I was starving.

I hoped there were leftovers from Sunday dinner in the refrigerator. I could always scramble some eggs. I threw off my covers.

‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

Ada sat on my bed to wait while I dressed. She wore black capris, a pink cable knit sweater and straw espadrilles. Her peroxide hair was swathed in a matching pink turban.

‘Don’t you want to know about the man who called?’

‘Sure,’ I said, pulling on the same jeans and sweatshirt I’d worn down to breakfast.

‘Did he leave his name?’

‘Clark Leach,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ I checked my mirror. I’d slept on my wet hair. I looked like a witch. Brushing it back tight I secured it into a ponytail.

‘Not interested?’

‘He’s not calling me for a date. He’s way out of my league,’ I said. ‘He went with us to the club last night. I had too much to drink.’

‘He probably thinks you’re fast,’ she said, teasing me. She pulled her cigarette holder out from behind an ear. ‘I’m going to go out on the porch and have a cigarette. Please call Joan. That girl really wants to talk to you.’

I spent fifteen minutes telling Joan everything that had happened at the Club Bali.

‘I was a fool not to go,’ she said.

‘You can come with us the next time,’ I said. ‘It will be a while for me. It’s not cheap.’

‘By the way,’ she said. ‘Have you read the paper yet?’

‘Not yet.’ I was eager to get her off the line. My stomach was growling.

‘One of our people drowned in the Tidal Basin. Did you know him? His name was Paul Hughes.’

Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination—one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibility of lawsuit but also reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

‘1943 Guide to Hiring Women’,
Mass Transportation
magazine, July 1943.

M
y hunger forgotten for the time being, I rummaged through the
Washington Post
looking for the story on Paul Hughes’ death. I found it in the local section well below the fold. I read the story twice, trying to fit the reporter’s chronology of events into mine. Hughes’ corpse had been found Monday by a soldier patrolling the shores of the Tidal Basin. By Friday his fingerprints had identified him as Paul Hughes, a mid-level government employee. That in itself seemed odd to me – didn’t Hughes have his wallet on him? According to Hughes’ landlady, who was in tears when the reporter talked to her, Hughes had fallen ill with the flu while visiting his mother in Fredericksburg. A spokesman for Hughes’ employer, of course not identified as OSS, said that the police investigation concluded that Hughes returned by train to the District on Sunday, despite what his mother had said in her telegram. Apparently still weak from his illness, Hughes must have fainted while walking from the train station to the streetcar terminal underneath the Bureau of Engraving on the path around the Tidal Basin. The police could only speculate that he hit his head on the rocks that lined the shore of the Tidal Basin, fell in and drowned. A freak accident, they called it. Very unfortunate. He was a popular and competent employee. All sympathies to his family and friends.

That meant that when I checked into Hughes’ file use on Tuesday, when I visited Mrs Nighy on Wednesday, Hughes was already dead. Tucked into a refrigerated drawer at the District police morgue until his fingerprints were identified.

I poured a cup of coffee and carried it and the section of the
Post
I was reading up to my bedroom, where I added sugar to the coffee cup from the dwindling pound I’d bought on the black market a couple of months ago. OK, so I wasn’t a perfect American patriot. But there were far worse violators of the ration rules than me. Take Henry, now. Last winter he’d stocked the garage with jerry cans of black market gasoline he’d bought somewhere. And driving Phoebe’s car, fueled by that illegal gas, he’d criss-crossed the Virginia countryside in search of an illegal source for prime beef. He justified himself by explaining that rationing was illegal under the Constitution, and besides, Roosevelt just didn’t understand the concept of supply and demand. Phoebe had finally insisted that Henry stop violating the Office of Price Protection regulations, afraid he would get caught and she might be in trouble for not reporting him.

I was a curious person. Too curious, my parents used to say. Paul Hughes’ story fascinated me, so I climbed on to my bed with a notebook and a pencil to lay out the chronology of the week’s events.

The last time anyone at OSS had seen Paul Hughes was Friday at the end of the workday. This was confirmed by Don Murray, my old boss, who now worked in Hughes’ division as Assistant Head. According to his landlady, Hughes went to Fredericksburg on that Friday after work to visit his mother. He didn’t take a suitcase, as he kept spare clothes and toiletries at his mother’s.

Sunday Mrs Nighy got a telegram from Hughes’ mother saying he was ill and wouldn’t return to the District until he’d recovered. Mrs Nighy didn’t have either an address or a telephone number for Hughes’ mother. Monday Hughes didn’t show up for work. On Tuesday Major Wicker assigned me to find out what files Hughes had been reading, with no explanation, except that it was a convenient time as Hughes was absent. After I turned in my notes I was dismissed until Wicker asked me to go to Hughes’ boarding house to inquire after him. That was on Wednesday.

When I visited Hughes’ landlady she gave me the telegram from Hughes’ mother telling her that he was ill. There was no way that OSS could have been notified. Neither Mrs Nighy nor Hughes’ mother would know that Hughes worked for OSS. No OSS employee would give out that information – no one in my boarding house knew I worked there. Joe had guessed but we never discussed it. You would think that Hughes would have thought of some way to notify his office that he was ill. Unless he was so ill he just couldn’t. But then why did he return to the District on Sunday after his mother sent that telegram?

On the east side of the Tidal Basin, the streetcar terminus underneath the Bureau of Engraving and the railroad stop just where the Railway Bridge entered the District were just footsteps away from each other. Hughes could have disembarked from a northbound Virginia train and walked a section of the Tidal Basin path to reach the streetcar stop. From there he could hop a streetcar to Foggy Bottom and his rooming house.

Then there was the note Hughes had scribbled at his desk. About meeting one ‘G’ on Sunday. I had assumed this meeting was to happen in Fredericksburg, since I thought he had gone to his mother’s there. Now I wondered if Hughes had returned to the District to make that meeting with ‘G’.

And I could swear that on Thursday, when I went to Rose’s apartment, Peggy Benton said Hughes was coming back to work as soon as he was well. Don Murray had said much the same thing when I talked to him. I had assumed that OSS had somehow checked up on Hughes, but maybe not. Perhaps Major Wicker and Don Murray had simply taken Hughes’ mother’s telegram at face value and assumed that Hughes would return to work as soon as he was well. I mean, why wouldn’t they? With the Trident Conference on, OSS had enough to do without worrying about a sick employee.

What I couldn’t figure out was why Hughes wasn’t identified until after his fingerprints were processed. Didn’t the man have his wallet on him? And who the hell was ‘G’? Was ‘G’ an old friend Hughes intended to meet for drinks? Or a contact related to his job at OSS? And why did Major Wicker want me to check on the files Hughes was reading?

None of this was any of my business, but I loathed loose ends that refused to tie themselves into a neat bow.

‘Louise!’ Ada hollered up the stairs to me. ‘Telephone again, for God’s sake!’

For one brief thrilling second I thought it might be Joe. But it couldn’t be. It was too expensive to call long distance. And I remembered, with a deep pang of guilt, that I hadn’t written him back after receiving his letter on Tuesday. I had to write him tonight. But just the thought of putting my thoughts on paper made me feel terribly lonely. I almost wanted to avoid that depth of feeling by not writing. But he’d wonder why he hadn’t heard from me and I couldn’t bear to cause him any unhappiness.

‘Coming!’ I answered. Shoving the newspaper section and my notebook into the top drawer of my dresser I ran down the stairs to get the telephone.

‘Honestly,’ Ada said, handing me the receiver, ‘you’d think I was your secretary!’

It was Clark Leach.

‘Louise,’ Clark said, ‘I’m calling to find out if you’re feeling OK? Your friend said you were napping earlier.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I ate and drank too much last night, that’s all.’

‘But you had fun?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said.

I heard voices in the lounge, so I stuck my head in to be polite and greet my housemates before I went hunting for leftovers in the kitchen.

Phoebe and Milt sat together on the davenport. Milt still wore his pajamas and held a tumbler of bourbon and ice in his only hand. The bourbon bottle on the coffee table was less than half full. Henry was seated on the matching armchair, or it used to match before Phoebe threw a crocheted bedspread over it to hide the worn spots. Ada and I had been plotting to slipcover the lounge set for her – we knew its shabbiness embarrassed her – but we hadn’t found enough good fabric at the right price yet.

‘Hi, Louise,’ Henry said. ‘I’m trying to convince Milt and Phoebe to let me take them out to supper.’

‘I don’t want to go out in public,’ Milt said. ‘Besides, I’m not hungry.’ He took a swallow from his drink. ‘I had plenty at dinner.’

‘Dear,’ Phoebe said, ‘I could fix you some scrambled eggs.’ She drew a lap robe further up Milt’s body. Milt pushed her hand away roughly. ‘Don’t, Mother, it’s too hot,’ he said. Phoebe replaced her trembling hand in her lap.

‘Milt just needs more time to recuperate,’ Phoebe said to Henry. ‘He’s had such an awful time.’

Milt poured himself another drink.

Henry shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘of course. Anyone else want to go out to eat with me? Phoebe?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry either.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m off then. I won’t be late.’ He left and I heard the door close behind him.

‘I’m going on upstairs,’ Milt said. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Oh, honey, please don’t,’ Phoebe said. ‘Sunday nights we all gather here and have popcorn and listen to Walter Winchell.’

‘I want to be alone,’ Milt said, dumping the lap blanket on the floor as he stood up. ‘I have my own radio.’

After he left the room Phoebe turned to me, hands twisting in her lap. ‘I just don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘Milt’s so unhappy.’

‘I don’t think there’s much anyone can do, until he makes peace with losing his arm,’ I said.

‘But it’s all so awful. He thinks his life is ruined.’

I’d grown up in Wilmington, North Carolina where men made their living fishing the open ocean and building ships. It was a rough and dangerous life. Men drowned, dragged off their boats when their nets tangled around them. They fell off scaffolding in the boatyards. Or had legs amputated when they were caught in canning machinery. I was used to seeing men, and some women, who’d lost fingers, or an arm or a leg. As long as I could remember, one of my daddy’s workmen, who shucked oysters, picked crab and cleaned bluefish, limped around on a peg leg. No one thought anything of it.

But Milt was a college boy and from the city to boot. Good-looking, young, destined for a job in banking or some such profession, the possibility that he’d go though his life without an arm hadn’t occurred to him. And he wouldn’t have had any example of surviving a terrible injury and adjusting to it. He didn’t yet appreciate that he was lucky to be alive.

Enough of Milt. He wasn’t my problem. I was hungry. Back in the kitchen I ran into Madeleine foraging in the refrigerator. Dellaphine, on her regular Sunday night off, was enjoying a potluck supper at her church and visiting with her friends. Together Madeleine and I heated up leftover fried chicken, butter beans and mashed potatoes. We sat together at the kitchen table to eat. Phoebe would have preferred that I sit at the dining-room table by myself, but I was a poor Southerner, not a rich one, and I was used to living and working in close quarters with colored people.

‘Miss Ada said you went to the Club Bali last night,’ Madeleine said. ‘And you heard “Satchmo”!’

‘I did,’ I said. ‘It was swell. Ever been there?’

Madeleine shook her head. ‘Too expensive. My friends and I go to the Howard Theatre.’

‘You still dating that piano player?’

‘Yeah, and it’s still a secret, too. Momma would hang me out to dry with the rest of the laundry if she knew I was seeing a musician.’

‘My lips are sealed.’

Sometimes I felt I was keeping enough secrets for my fellow boarders that they qualified for the ‘L’ file room at the OSS Registry.

I sharpened my pencil. I’d learned a couple of months ago that I had to do a rough draft of any letter I wrote to Joe on cheap paper, otherwise I’d be wasting good stationery. ‘Dear Joe,’ I began. Sweet heaven, what a weak way to begin a love letter! ‘Dearest Joe’. No. Who was I trying to fool? Go ahead and write it down, coward. ‘Darling’. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

‘Darling, I miss you terribly too. And I promise, promise faithfully, that I am coming to visit you just as soon as I can get away. It might be a last-minute decision because of work. That wouldn’t be a problem, would it? If I sent you a telegram on a Friday afternoon saying I was just that minute catching a train?

‘Your apartment sounds lovely. And it must be nice to live alone, at least for a little while. To be able to sleep, eat and read whenever you like sounds like heaven!

‘Have you heard from Phoebe yet? Milt Junior has returned home. He’s lost his left arm and will be living here for good. He was kind enough to move in with Henry so that Ada and I wouldn’t lose our rooms. So when you come back to the District you’ll need to find a new place to live. Do you know when that might be? When you might come home, that is?

‘Miss you.’ No! I missed my cat back home. Joe was my sweetheart. ‘Darling, I can’t wait to see you. Since you left my life has gone from Technicolor to grey.’ So, so cheesy! But it would have to do. ‘Love, Louise.’ Not ‘Love always.’ Nothing was sure in life, especially during wartime.

I copied my draft on to the new stationery I’d bought at Woodies. It was cream with my initials engraved on it in sky blue. I’d never dreamed that someday I’d own monogrammed letter paper.

The large reception room on the first floor of the main OSS building was jammed with OSS staffers paying their respects to Paul Hughes. Since Hughes’ remains had been shipped to Fredericksburg, his home, for his funeral, this small reception was his only memorial in the District. His co-workers had brought in vases of spring flowers for the tables, there was a picture of him on a table at the entrance to the room, and more friends had brought punch and cookies made with honey and molasses. He must have been popular.

I was at the reception out of morbid curiosity. I barely knew the man. But I still wondered about his death and I wanted to observe the people who attended his funeral, like the detectives in Agatha Christie’s novels. Not that I had any evidence that Hughes’ outlandish death was anything except bad luck. But I was obsessing over ‘G’. Would ‘G’ be here? Was ‘G’ an actual initial, or some kind of shorthand? I mean, ‘G’ could be his barber! And last of all, was Paul meeting ‘G’ in Fredericksburg or in the District?

The most senior men in the room were Don Murray, my ex-boss and now Hughes’ boss, and Major Wicker. When Wicker spotted me he shot me a look that ordered me in no uncertain terms not to speak to him. I wasn’t insulted. He didn’t want anyone to know we were acquainted.