Three-Martini Lunch (38 page)

64

O
ne person I hadn't run into since the night of our party was Rusty. It was true Rusty had behaved like a pretty big villain, and everyone—Swish, Bobby, and Pal included—had agreed that if we ever ran into him again he'd get the cold shoulder. Of course, I wasn't much for talking to Bobby and Pal just then. I wasn't much for talking to Swish, either, even though he hadn't been there to join in when old Gene began stabbing me in the back. He was part of their gang and I figured they could all go to hell—the whole pack of 'em—which was why I was at the White Horse drinking alone when I ran into Rusty and why I temporarily forgot all that business about giving him the cold shoulder.

“Heya, Cliff,” he said to me when he spotted me. His voice was casual and normal and I knew he had made it sound like that on purpose and this meant Rusty wanted to pretend like nothing had ever happened. “Brought you this,” he said, setting a full glass of beer on the table. “Looked like you were running on empty.”

It was true my glass had nothing left in it but a thin film of suds at the bottom. I thought about making some crack about Rusty putting something in the drink but then I changed my mind because it was useless to bring up a sore subject. Rusty was a coward at heart and he might pull that crap on someone like Miles, but he wouldn't pull it on me.

“You drinking alone?”

I nodded.

“Want some company?”

I shrugged. He sat down and we shot some bull. Rusty was one of those guys who loved to hear bad things about other people, so we both tried to come up with everything we could about guys we both knew. But then the subject of Bobby came up because with Rusty the subject of Bobby always came up. I didn't want to talk about Bobby, or about Swish or Pal just then, and I said so. Rusty raised an eyebrow and smirked as though he was in the know and this was our little secret and that really irked me. He changed the topic and we sat there rubbernecking all the people who came in the door.

“How's the writing going?” he asked me now, and obviously this was his other old tactic to get on my good side. But I'd stopped hoping Rusty would exert any influence on my behalf. I shrugged again.

“I don't know,” I said, and I realized I was being honest. I hadn't been tinkering around with my writing much anymore. After I'd come home drunk that night and thrown everything away, Eden had rescued it all from the wastebasket and sorted the pages and stacked them up real nice. When I saw what she had done, I felt bad, but I hadn't poked around with any of it. The truth was, I was pretty close to giving up for good. As lousy as it was to think, I knew it was only a matter of time before I went out and got the kind of job my folks had been harping about all along.

“Tell you what,” Rusty said now, “I'll buy us another round.”

He got up and went to the bar and I watched him go, thinking about
how the tables had really turned. It used to be I paid for every drop he drank when we were out. I knew better than to ever expect an apology for what had happened on the roof at our party but Rusty buying beers was about as close to it as anyone was ever bound to get from that rat.

It was funny that I had thought of Miles because just then he walked in the door. He didn't see me. The way the White Horse is laid out there is one entrance but three rooms, one after the other running along Hudson Street. The table where I sat was tucked all the way back in the third room. I could see the bar at a distance from where I sat but unless the people turned on their stools and purposely peered through the doorway they weren't likely to notice the folks in the other rooms.

Now I watched the bar to see what would happen once Rusty and Miles got an eyeful of each other. Miles was with a guy I'd never seen before who had the good looks of a movie star and who reminded me a little of Errol Flynn. They ordered a couple of whiskeys neat and started right away talking to each other with serious, confidential expressions on their faces. It was clear that whoever the other man was, the two of them were very close. I considered going over there and saying hello to Miles and telling him I had picked up the composition book he'd dropped in the diner in Harlem, but then he would see the company I was keeping and catch on to the fact I was friendly with Rusty again and the last time we'd talked I'd sworn I was through with Rusty for good. The fact that Rusty had come over—uninvited, but even so—was bound to make a liar out of me and I slouched a little lower in my seat and hoped Miles wouldn't look through the doorway.

But just then Miles caught sight of Rusty and flinched. I held my breath. I was sure Rusty was going to do something rude, make some sort of snide gesture or remark, but to my surprise Rusty merely approached Miles and the young man and shook hands politely. Miles recoiled but shook Rusty's hand anyway and I could see mostly he just didn't want trouble. Rusty proceeded to chat it up for a few minutes, making what
looked like small talk, as calm and as indifferent as ever. Then he left the bar and came back over to me.

I was surprised by this, because Rusty always struck me as one of those stingy bullies and I figured he would really have it in for Miles. I expected a few petty remarks at the very least and as Rusty put down the beers and slid back into the bench now I considered perhaps I'd misjudged him.

“It was swell of you to keep your cool,” I said.

“I'm a swell guy,” Rusty said.

“I would've thought you'd try for some kind of revenge.”

“Nah. I don't pick on my inferiors,” Rusty said, all tough and proud, like he was the kind of guy who lived by a goddamned code or something. “Besides,” he added, “if I really wanted to get revenge, I could, you know.”

This sounded more like the Rusty I knew. “How?”

“That fella he's with? Got his first and last name and a few little tidbits. Turns out he works for the good old State Department—how 'bout that for some comedy? That ol' sonofabitch Joe McCarthy might've croaked, but his way of doing business hasn't. All it would take is one phone call. It just so happens, I know some fellas who work for the State Department. You know: anonymous tip, that sort of jazz. It would bust up their cozy little knitting circle.”

I asked him what he meant but I already knew. It was a malicious idea. Once you knew Rusty you knew exactly how he thought. Rusty elaborated and as he talked I began to wonder if he wasn't going to make that phone call simply out of spite. The more he talked about it the more he seemed excited by the idea. I tried to sneak another look at Miles, wondering what terrible thing he must've done in a past life to merit having caught the attention of a villain like Rusty, but Miles and his friend had gone.

Before I could think about it anymore, Eden sailed through the door. It was funny, because we'd been awfully sore at each other lately and you wouldn't think I'd be happy to see her. But there was something about the way she walked into the room and smiled when she saw me that reminded
me of how it had been that first time I'd waited for her to turn up at the White Horse.

When she saw Rusty sitting with me, her smile flickered and faded a bit but did not vanish altogether.

“Cliff!” she said in a happy, breathless voice, ignoring Rusty. “I have some wonderful news.”

65

I
told Joey I wanted to go home.

“Home?” he asked. I could tell by his voice he was hoping I meant the hotel.

“To my mother's apartment,” I clarified. Our chance encounter with Rusty at the White Horse Tavern had left me supremely uncomfortable and I was still worried about what Cob might be thinking, having seen us at the museum. “I'd like to go home,” I repeated. “Now.” My brain ticked through the list of possessions still in Joey's hotel room. There wasn't much, only a change of underpants, an old razor, and a fresh shirt; I didn't need to go back for any of it, not right away.

“All right,” Joey said, baffled and clearly hurt. “Will you come back to the hotel later?”

“I'll phone you,” I replied, and said good-bye. We were standing on the sidewalk on Hudson Street, and didn't embrace. I walked away quickly and didn't look back.

•   •   •

W
hen I got to the apartment it seemed empty at first. I heard a faint stirring from the back of the apartment and I was surprised to find Cob in his room picking up fragments of shattered glass and smashed insects.

“Cob—get away from that glass!” I commanded, kneeling down to take his place. “Let me do this.” He stood up and stared at me glumly as I took the broom and dustpan from his hands.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Wendell got mad,” he said. His child's voice sounded old and weary. I prodded him a little more as we continued to clean up, and was able to piece together, more or less, what had happened.

My mother was out running errands and Cob had arrived home from his field trip. Excited about the beetles he'd seen in the Egyptian wing, he had chattered away about them to Wendell, who—as habit often found him—was seven beers deep into his afternoon. At some point Wendell grew irritated with Cob and got into one of his ornery moods, until finally he went on a rampage around the house, shouting at Cob and calling him “an inconsiderate bug-crazy little shit.” That's when he'd flown off the handle altogether and charged into Cob's room, smashing the jars of live bugs Cob collected and cared for, stomping the insects underfoot. Now Wendell was gone—out for another beer around the corner, surely—and Cob was trying to clean up everything before my mother came home.

“Wait! Save that, please,” Cob called out as I brushed up what appeared to be some kind of carrion beetle. Cob had made a small terrarium for the beetle, and had been feeding it tiny pieces of hamburger meat. Now the life had been knocked out of it, but somehow its hard outer shell had remained intact. I carefully extracted it from the broken glass and handed it to Cob. With an expression of deep sadness, he pinned it to one of his felt boards, where he kept and catalogued his non-living insects.

“I guess it can go here now,” he said in a dull voice. Out of the corner of my eye I became aware of a tiny movement somewhere on the floor by the window. It was a swallowtail butterfly, injured, but trying to come back to life in jittery fits and starts. I remembered Cob had caught the butterfly as a caterpillar and nurtured her as she spun her cocoon. I went over to the window, scooped her up, and brought her to Cob.

And then he did something that broke my heart.

He picked up the swallowtail and looked at her for a moment. With a cold, mechanical movement, he placed her against the felt board and swiftly pushed a pin through her. Her wings pulsed twice slowly and stopped moving.

“I might as well get to her before Wendell does,” Cob said.

As we finished putting the room back in order, I made up my mind. I would have to make the call quickly, before my mother got home. I walked to the kitchen.

“I won't be back to see you this weekend, Joey,” I said once the hotel clerk had put me through to his room. “I've got some things to do.” I could tell from Joey's voice on the other end of the line that he was disappointed, and also frightened.

•   •   •

H
aving canceled my plans with Joey, I spent the rest of the evening thinking about Cob, and soon enough the thought of my lost composition book returned to gnaw at me. I had, over time, increasingly come to the conclusion that I'd lost the book when I'd gone to the coffee shop to meet Cliff. If he
had
picked it up, I couldn't imagine why he would want to keep it instead of returning it. I hoped he was just too lazy.

Either way, there was only one thing to do: track him down and ask him about it once and for all. I made my way over to his East Village apartment. I stood on the stoop, but as I was about to press the buzzer, the door flew open.

“Oh! Pardon me,” a woman's voice said. To my surprise, I found myself staring at Eden. She froze when she caught sight of me. “Miles?” she said in disbelief. I explained to her, in very abstract terms, about Cliff's visit to Harlem and that I'd come looking for him now because I'd dropped something and it was possible he'd picked it up. Her brow furrowed.

“He's upstairs, all right,” she said. “But I'm afraid he's in a bit of a state: He's going on nearly two days of celebration.”

“Is it all right if I go up?”

“Of course,” she said. Then she hesitated. “But, Miles . . . you should know . . . well, Rusty is there. That's why I'm stepping out to run some errands. I couldn't stand to be around him anymore. I'm still . . .” She paused as though searching for the right words. “. . . very sorry about what happened to you that night.”

I nodded. I didn't want to talk about it. I also didn't want to see Rusty again—it was bad enough Joey and I had run into him only the night before—but if I truly wanted to determine the whereabouts of my composition book, I had no choice. Remembering the night before, a thought occurred to me: Cliff had likely been
there
, somewhere in the White Horse Tavern, lurking in a corner. The two of them running around together had never brought about anything good for me in the past.

“You said Cliff is celebrating?” I asked, wondering what awaited me upstairs.

“Oh yes,” Eden said. “Cliff is just over the moon. He's written a novel—a very good one, as a matter of fact—and his father is going to publish it at Bonwright.”

“A book?” I asked, my stomach suddenly dropping.

“Oh yes. It's amazing . . . I'm so proud of him,” she said. “Cliff is much deeper than I ever imagined. You know, he hasn't the easiest relationship with his father, and yet he wrote an incredibly detailed, subtle, touching story about a father and a son. The son grows up with a disabled father,
you see, and doubts the father as a role model, but what he doesn't know is that the father was actually a war hero of great integrity . . .”

I went numb as she prattled on. Nothing could've prepared me for the shock as I listened to Eden describe the details of Cliff's literary victory, the dim comprehension of exactly what he'd done with my notebook slowly sinking into my bones.