The Chelsea Girls(88)

Charlie must have sensed her reluctance. “Look, I don’t have to come inside. Is that diner down the street still around? Can we go there and I’ll buy you a coffee or something?”

She could use a coffee. Her stomach growled. She was starving as well. Back when they were lovers, they’d order grilled cheese at the diner after their romps in bed. Back when.

“Fine. Give me a minute.” She left him standing out in the hallway as she gathered her purse and coat, smoothing her hair in the mirror by the front door. This unexpected reunion hadn’t sent her spiraling into confusion the way she might have expected it to. Then again, she’d dated men in the intervening years, even fallen in love a couple of times, although nothing lasted more than a year, usually because she got bored or annoyed. Life had moved on.

The elevator descended slowly, stopping on the fourth floor to pick up a shaggy, deep-voiced kid—Stanley had mentioned he was some Canadian poet/rock star—and a rough-looking woman he called Janis who wore a blue fur coat that looked like it’d been run over by a truck. They barely noticed Hazel and Charlie, murmuring gravelly whispers to each other as the car descended.

Embarrassed, Hazel stared straight ahead.

Out in the street, Charlie let out a breath. “Wow. The hotel’s really changed since I was there last.”

Her defenses kicked in. Only the residents had the right to disparage the place. “Not really. It’s still full of artistic types, it’s just that the mediums have changed. Films are different, songs are different. So the people who live in the Chelsea reflect that. Classical composers have been replaced by rockers, compositional painters by pop artists. Who knows what it’ll be like in another twenty years?”

“You sound like you don’t mind it.”

“The entire city is different. You can’t expect your little piece of the pie to stay the same.”

They made it to the diner and she slid into a booth, happy to have the table between them. They both ordered coffee and grilled cheese.

Charlie placed his napkin in his lap, not looking up. “My father was eventually sued, did you hear about that?”

She had. In 1962, a radio show host named John Henry Faulk had won $3.5 million in a libel suit against Laurence Butterfield and Vincent Hartnett, for damage done to his name and career during the blacklist. In a strange twist, Charlie’s father had died the night before the judgment was announced.

“I had heard. I’m sorry you lost your father.” And she was. Having lost her own, she knew how disorienting it was to lose a parent. Even one as pigheaded as Laurence Butterfield.

“I’m glad Faulk got his day in court and won. After everything my father did.”

“Right.” They ate in silence for a while. She waited him out, mainly because she had nothing to say.

He finally cleared his throat. “That note you left for me at the library, you mentioned you’d met someone else. Who was he?”

She couldn’t lie anymore. What was the point? “There was no other man. I didn’t want to see you. Floyd Jenkins had just jumped to his death. I was there when it happened. I couldn’t take it anymore.” Her sentences came out short and sharp, like Morse code. “I wanted to stop fighting, stop everything. Live my life like a normal person, whatever that is. So I left that note, knowing it was the only thing that might stop you from reaching out.”

He sat back, looking like he’d been hit. “It wasn’t true?”

“No.”

“Oh.” The look on his face reminded Hazel of a sped-up clock, whirling away. “You lied.”

“I did. Why didn’t you come back sooner, Charlie? Where were you for five months, not calling or writing, leaving me to fend for myself?”

He took a moment before answering, as if gathering courage. “My father had me hospitalized upstate, supposedly for my epilepsy, but basically he wanted to keep me out of the way. I’d made too much trouble.”

“You were involuntarily committed?”

“Yes. They drugged me, I had no idea where I was, or what day it was. As soon as I got out, I tried to contact you through Mr. Bard—I figured the FBI was still tapping the phones. Then, at the library, I got your note.”

For years, she’d assumed he’d deliberately stayed away, repulsed by her toxicity, like so many others. Her heart broke for him, for both of them. “I thought you were keeping your distance because you didn’t want to be associated with me.”

“I should have been clearer in my letter, but I was worried they’d find out somehow and come after me again. After I got your answer, I just took off. I traveled abroad for a time, before coming back and getting a job with the government. Not as a federal agent—the hospitalization dashed any hope of that—but I worked my way up, and it’s a decent job, a good one, to be honest.”

“What exactly do you do?”

“I work for an agency that tries to decipher Russian codes.”

After all this time. “So you’re still obsessed with Russian spies?”

“I am.” He pushed aside his plate. “To be honest, that’s why I reached out.”

He hadn’t come to declare his love, then. Of course not. She chided herself for even considering the possibility.

“We recently uncovered some Soviet cables. It turns out a Soviet agent called Silver was the linchpin of all the activity that was going on back in 1950: Julius Rosenberg, David Greenglass, Harry Gold.”