About thirty of the people Mary had invited were already here, and it was warm enough for her to open the window. The place was beginning to smell a little like the Maine Avenue wharf where she’d gotten the crabs and cherrystone clams that Paul had helped her to steam all afternoon—work he’d enjoyed much more than sitting with her through the Mannes Trio at the Coolidge Auditorium Thursday night.
What was it she’d come in here for? Napkins, that’s right. Okay, now she had them and could rejoin both Paul and Beverly Phillips, who’d arrived with some nice widower from the Social Security Administration.
“He said he wanted to take me to the Shubert!” crowed Beverly, who was in a fine mood. “I told him, ‘Hey, what do you take me for!’”
“I had to tell her they haven’t done burlesque in five years,” the nice widower explained to Paul Hildebrand.
“See how far behind you get living out in the suburbs!” exclaimed Beverly. “Gosh, Mary, this place is cute. And jammed!”
“Everyone who’s ever filled out a Form 57,” observed Paul.
“How does this poor man know about that!” cried Beverly. “Oh, God, Mary, he’s not going to make you leave, is he?” Paul Hildebrand’s dislike of politics and government had become a matter of teasing and speculation among those who knew the progress of Mary’s romance, and two bourbons had made Beverly even more direct than usual.
“No,” said Mary. “I think Form 57 was mentioned in the monologue Paul got a little while ago from that girl in International Materials.” She pointed out a young lady across the room. “She was telling him how well she hears women are doing at the FBI. Getting to be everything but agents.”
Beverly’s widower seemed interested in pursuing the subject, but it would have to be without Mary, who had just decided that she and Paul, as if they really were married, should be circulating separately through the party. Departing the conversation, she introduced one of her old Q Street roommates to the little circle Paul would now be in charge of. Betty Bowron, conspicuously tanned, had just been to Miami with her boss for a Commerce Department conference, and she seemed eager to talk about it.
Mary edged into another conversation. Her old friend Millie Brisson, the congressman’s secretary, was talking about the suicide of a young guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“Mysterious, no?” said Millie.
“Redundant, I’d say,” offered the young man Millie was talking to, a Lousiana acquaintance of Mary’s who was up here trying to write a kind of national version of All the King’s Men.
Mary checked the phonograph: the Christmasy Corelli concerto had another two inches to go before she’d need to change the record. But one of Jerry’s daughters, she now noticed, was struggling with a hem that had fallen. Maybe the hard-drinking mother had dropped a few stitches. “Honey,” called Mary, coming to the rescue, “let me get you a little old safety pin.”
Inside her bedroom, while she rummaged the sewing box, Mary’s glance was drawn through the window, to a scene made visible by the streetlamp two houses down P Street. Hawkins Fuller, dressed for her party and holding a small brown bag, stood talking to a smaller man in a woollen cap and zippered jacket. She now recognized him—the tortoiseshell glasses—as the boy who’d come to the office with the book a couple of months back. He and Fuller appeared to be saying goodbye. After giving Fuller a sweet, casual punch on the arm, the boy smiled and walked away. At which point her colleague turned around and started toward her apartment.
Mary wondered: Had that lovelorn little dogsbody leapt at the mere chance to walk Fuller to a party the older man wouldn’t even let him enter?
What exactly should she be feeling? Disgust? Sympathy? She blocked the questions from her mind, and decided to use a needle and thread, instead of a pin, on the Baumeister girl’s skirt. Picking out a spool of bright red, she heard Corelli give way, abruptly, to Eartha Kitt: Santa baby, hurry down the chimney to me…
Looking out into the living room, she saw Fuller at the turntable and realized that he’d had a phonograph record inside the little brown bag. People were beginning to cluster around him, just as they would have had he only blown some dust off the needle and dropped it back onto Corelli. An older man from European Affairs was asking in a loud voice if he didn’t “think it terrible what had happened to poor George Marshall over in Oslo. You were over there once, weren’t you, young fellow? The poor general, heckled by those Communists while picking up his Peace Prize!” Fuller agreed that it was a shame, and moreover an embarrassment to old Haakon VII, “a fine chap and top-drawer king.” Even as his always-adaptable speech found him communicating in the EA man’s idiom, Fuller began letting his own shoulders sway in a manner both slinky and manly, one that belonged to nobody else at the party. Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing, a ring…
Mary watched him and nodded but didn’t smile. She proceeded to Jerry’s daughter with her needle and thread.
Ten minutes passed before she again needed to be in the kitchen, where she found Miss Lightfoot, middling drunk on Harvey’s Bristol Cream and wearing a hideous hat. Mary had had to invite her, and poor Mr. Church, an old friend from the Passport Office, was having to listen to her.
“What do you mean by ‘this’?” asked Miss Lightfoot, who knew perfectly well that Mr. Church had meant the sway of Senator McCarthy when he told her that “this could all end if Senator Morse just voted with the Democrats.” Should Oregon’s independent—formerly a Republican—throw in with the other side when it came time to organize the congressional session, then the chairmanship of McCarthy’s committee, and much of his power, would pass to the opposition.
“Well, Morse won’t vote with the Democrats. He’s already said so,” Miss Lightfoot informed Mr. Church, whose more serious error had been to assume, from the general tenor of those at Mary’s party, that Miss Lightfoot, too, wanted all “this” to end. She did not. Nor, actually, did the Democrats, she now argued. “They don’t want to take over. They’d rather carp. Which is why they left the committee in the first place.”
Mr. Church was shaking his head with forbearance, allowing Miss Lightfoot to overprove her point, when Hawkins Fuller brushed past them both. Leaning against the sink, Fuller took note of Mary’s sleeveless black dress and declared: “That appears to be a very cold shoulder.”
Miss Lightfoot, already keenly stimulated, and wishing for a sprig of mistletoe under which to capture Fuller, tried to annex him to her own conversation. “Mr. Fuller, tell Mr. Church here how you’ve got to deal with the Democrats on Capitol Hill. Tell him how—”
Fuller ignored her ardent grasp of his forearm. He was interested only in the lady of the house, who he realized had already had enough to drink herself.
“You came alone?” Mary finally asked him.
“More or less,” he replied.
“How is a person ‘more or less’?” asked Mary. “Did you make that poor creature I saw from the window walk all the way back home by themselves?” Lit as she was, she took care to keep the pronouns neutral, even at the expense of grammar, since she and Fuller now had Miss Lightfoot’s complete attention, Mr. Church having beaten a gentlemanly retreat once the handsome guest began having words with the hostess. Fresh from political triumph, but still smarting from Fuller’s rebuff, Miss Lightfoot now appeared determined at least to savor victory over whatever hapless female Fuller had apparently declined to bring up to the party.
Mary attempted to move out of the kitchen, but Fuller blocked her, trying to smooth things over with a laugh. “If I’d brought him up, he would only have asked you for a glass of milk. And you don’t seem to be serving any.”
By now furious at being ignored, Miss Lightfoot could feel her overpowdered jaw suddenly slacken. Him? He? A small cascade of pennies started dropping in her head. After all her flirtation! She’d even sung with this man! Without hesitation, she began a loud, seething recitation of the words she’d seen that boy, that milk-drinking nancy, write in the Lodge biogr
aphy: “‘With thanks to Hawkins Fuller. I got the job. You’re wonderful.’” She made the inscription sound as if it were a cable from Moscow that had been discovered in Fuller’s shoe.
Mary, still unable to get away, could picture the book lying on Fuller’s filing cabinet. He’d never even taken the gift home—a bit of callousness that still appalled her, even as she wanted to defend Fuller from this harridan to whom he’d so foolishly exposed himself. Pushing Miss Lightfoot aside, she at last returned to the living room.
Fuller lifted the bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream from the kitchen counter. He topped up Miss Lightfoot’s drink and poured one for himself. He clinked her glass and said, “Miss Lightfoot, I am wonderful.” And then, before walking away, he leaned over and whispered in her ear: “So why don’t you just suffer.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
December 23, 1953
At 6:05 a.m., the radio was saying that Cardinal Spellman, Catholic vicar of the armed forces, had departed for Korea to say Christmas Mass for the troops. On the Formica table near Tim’s bowl of cereal lay the current issue of The Nation, which he’d been making himself read last night. Kenneth Woodforde’s short sarcastic article on the Potter hearings argued that the Hollywood Ten might now be making a fine sentimental film about the forced march to Taejon if they hadn’t been blacklisted from practicing their profession.
Since the atrocities testimony, Tim had more strongly than ever felt himself part of a great moral battle, and more and more he wondered how Hawkins, stationed at its international center, could exempt himself from the fray with the handful of liberal nostrums and jokes he uttered whenever Tim tried to draw him out on the subject. An attempt to discuss his encounter with Woodforde, for example, had resulted in Hawk’s telling him only to “stay away from reporters. They dress worse than McCarthy.”
Tim opened a box containing the cheap necktie, monogrammed with a huge, loud “F,” that he’d bought the other night on Fourteenth Street. He would tell Hawk that the “F” stood for “Farouk,” not “Fuller.” The deposed Egyptian king was back in the papers now that his gaudy possessions were about to be auctioned off to help pay for the Aswan Dam, and a sketch that Tim had gotten up early to finish—of Hawk as a sultan surrounded by prostrate secretaries and ambassadors, each peeling him a grape or fanning him with palms—would go into the box with the tie. Tim drew well enough to have once thought about going to art school, and he’d felt a wonderful contentment while illustrating Hawk late last night, even if he’d had to work from memory. (Would he ever possess a photograph?)
He planned to deliver the tie before Hawk left for work. He knew he would be taking a risk by coming unannounced, and was certain there would be no present for him in return. But he could not face the trip home for Christmas without seeing Hawk once more.
There had been no question of buying a real gift. Any present that seemed to express deep feelings instead of high spirits might invite Hawk’s disapproval. As it was, once Tim boarded the bus to Foggy Bottom, he worried about even this silly tie.
Traveling across the city, whose early commuter traffic was moving mostly in the opposite direction, he calculated how much time he had left to get to Hawkins’ apartment, give him the gift, and then make it back to his own office on Capitol Hill. The time was tighter than he would like, but even so, he got off the bus in Farragut Square, in front of the Army and Navy Club, a few blocks from his destination. He liked to approach the apartment on foot, to walk down I Street savoring his own apprehension along with new details of his beloved’s neighborhood. All too soon, he was there, at the front door of the building, able to avoid the downstairs buzzer by slipping in behind a meter man.
He had hoped to surprise Hawkins while he was still in bed, to find him wearing striped pajama bottoms and no top. But instead he was up, already in a shirt and tie. He’d been reading the paper at the kitchen table and seemed neither angry nor startled to find company at the door. Was there a chance he was pleased? He motioned Tim in, pointing to a story in the paper. “Have you sent a Christmas card home, Skippy? Even Guy Burgess has written his mother. From where is unclear, but he’s let old Mum know he’s still alive.”
“I’ll be seeing mine when I get back to New York tomorrow.”
“I go up to Bar Harbor tonight. Not a safe harbor, either, with such a large gathering of the paternal clan in the offing. Before New Year’s everyone will be wishing they’d spent the week somewhere warmer and with somebody else.” He pressed the trash container’s little foot pedal and scraped the remains of his plate into the can. “I should have arranged to go to Bermuda, with you.”
Tim was thrilled beyond measure. Anyone would have told him this was only a pleasantry. But it’s the thought that counts, he heard himself thinking.
Hawkins poured him some orange juice while glancing back at the story on Burgess, the British spy.
Say you’ll miss me, thought Tim. All his thoughts were racing; all of them were upping the ante. Finally, he leaned over and kissed him. “Merry Christmas, Hawk. Here.” He handed him the gift.
Hawkins smiled at the box’s shape. “You may have noticed I already have one of these on.” He sat down at the table. “Should I open it now?”
“Later’s okay.” Tim suddenly didn’t care about the dangers of rejection, about all the unspoken protocols and endless calculations of risk. He climbed onto Hawk’s lap and began kissing his face and neck with the desperate greed he always imagined the darkness hid.
“Hey, hey,” whispered Hawkins, making a token effort to push him away. “My own juvenile delinquent. Careful you don’t wind up in that Senate investigation.”
“That’s me,” said Tim, kissing him some more and loosening the necktie that must have cost twenty times more than the one in the box. “I’m your hoodlum, your little j.d.”
“Complete with switchblade,” said Hawkins, feeling Tim’s hard-on through his Sanforized trousers.
In another minute they were on the bed, shirts off, pants open. Tim forced himself to keep one eye on the clock, though his frantic ardor ensured that things would be over quickly. His tongue was soon moving along the thin line of hair that ran down Hawk’s stomach to the waistband of his jockey shorts. As Tim sucked him, Hawkins tousled his hair and softly moaned, not for the first time, “You’re the best,” a phrase that always excited Tim, even if the competition it implied was more disquieting than complimentary.
He wanted Hawk to climax in his mouth, but soon found himself being lifted up, brought face-to-face with the man he loved, a man who wanted to kiss him—as if aware that this was what he truly needed to be soothed. With their tongues pressed together, he came all over Hawkins’ stomach and chest.
The next kiss he received—for all the devastating tenderness of the one before—could not have been more perfunctory. “Time and tide,” said Hawkins, cheerfully, looking down at his own torso, from which he’d gently displaced Tim. “And I do mean tide.” He got up to get a towel.
Tim lay in the bed, scarcely daring to breathe. This last kiss had put him back in his place, turned the ecstasy stale, and plunged him into a welter of self-loathing. He watched Hawk towel off and rebutton his shirt in front of the bathroom mirror. Knowing he’d soon be crying, unless he held in the tears by force of will, he grabbed for something on the night table. He wanted anything small that he could squeeze in his hand to distract himself, the way one forgets a pain in one place by introducing another somewhere else. He realized what object he’d picked up—a pair of cuff links, hooked together—only after he’d finished squeezing the metal as hard as he could and opened his hand to have a look.
Hawkins returned to sit on the edge of the bed. “Put your shirt back on,” he said.
Tim obeyed, while Hawkins went and got a pair of scissors that he used to cut off the white buttons at Tim’s wrists. After making two small slits to match the buttonholes, he proceeded to refasten the sleeves with the cuff links he’d seen Tim squeezing.
The si
lence and the gestures seemed ritualistic. Were the cuff links meant to be a return present, Hawk’s way of saying “I didn’t have time to shop”? Should he be insulted? Either way, he wanted them. They were proof, testimony to their union, a more elegant exhibition of it than the bottle of milk Hawk had brought with him that night to Capitol Hill, and which he’d never thrown away.
And yet—a horrible thought—what if the cuff links were someone else’s? Left behind like that pair of galoshes? Tim could almost hear the stranger and Hawk laughing, as the jewelry clinked onto the night table just before some drunken dawn.
But then he saw the initials cut into the silver: HF.
Hawkins let go of his wrists and looked into his eyes. And then Tim understood: these were his reward for not crying, for not making the scene he’d been on the verge of making. He touched the cuff links, trying to enjoy the feeling that he was branded, owned; trying to appreciate the small bit of recklessness required of Hawk to give them. Wearing them would entail a measure of daring, too: what would he say if someone read the initials? His mind proceeded to construct the sort of fast little lie that people like himself learned to construct a dozen times a day. They’re not real silver. A Maryknoll nun gave them to me when I made a donation. The “HF” stands for “have faith.”
“I’m going to be late, Skippy.” Hawkins got up and walked to the door, leaving him to show himself out.
Within fifteen minutes, Fuller was at the department. Inside Congressional Relations, a bottle of Kentucky bourbon—a gift of the bureau chief—sat atop each desk. On Mary Johnson’s blotter there was also a tiny box, no bigger than two inches wide and high. A ring from the brewer, Fuller supposed, as soon as he saw it.
Fellow Travelers Page 11
