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.
“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.
Once we had telephoned everyone, we were left to wait, and I moved to the items lower down the list. These were more like the chores I had performed in service of Mister Gus while he was alive, but with an obvious difference. For instance, Mister Gus wanted a particular suit to be laundered and pressed for his burial, and a specific pair of dress shoes polished. There were also the contents of a safe to be emptied; Mr. Arkle stood over my shoulder and watched me open it. Once he saw it contained nothing but letters and photographs, he lost interest and left me to my own devices. According to Mister Gus’s instructions, I was to burn these things in the downstairs fireplace, watching over them until I was certain all had been reduced to ash. I built a fire, lit the kindling, and stoked it. I put the letters in gently and watched them curl. I didn’t open or read them first. I thought perhaps Mister Gus would not have wanted anyone to read them, and that was why I had been selected for this particular task. At one point, one of the photographs slipped out of its sleeve and landed on the hearth. It was an aged, sepia-tone portrait depicting a young man with his hair parted neatly down the center and a smile turning the corners of his mouth. The words Charlie, April 3, 1902 were scrawled in ink on the bottom right-hand corner. I had the strange feeling of being watched as I moved to lift the photograph and ease Charlie back into the flames, and for a brief moment I thought I understood exactly who Charlie was and my heart filled with a profound regret.
Eventually a newspaperman turned up, and I was even more certain as to why I, of all people, had been named by Mister Gus to assist in sorting his final affairs. As the reporter probed my recollections of Mister Gus’s private life, I treated each gossipy question with the practiced evasion it deserved. When the reporter thanked me (with ironic intonation) and departed, the blackened photograph flashed again in my mind.
Towards the dinner hour the hearse from the funeral home finally pulled up to the townhouse. “Well,” Mr. Arkle said, sighing with exhaustion, “I think we’re mostly done here. If you have any last respects to pay, son, now’s the time to pay ’em.” Seeing Mister Gus in the flesh had never occurred to me, and I looked now at the lawyer in surprise. I’d spent the whole day in the house but hadn’t gone upstairs, much less into the bedroom. In this manner, Mister Gus’s body had been a sort of offstage actor in our scene, setting everything into motion but remaining far away and out of sight. “It’s up to you,” the lawyer said, “but here’s your big chance.” By now it was clear Mr. Arkle was under the impression Mister Gus and I had been lovers, the money-hungry apprentice and his lonely master. I didn’t bother to correct him; his opinion hardly mattered to me.
I went upstairs with reluctance and poked my head cautiously into Mister Gus’s bedroom. Everything was as jewel-toned and opulent as I remembered. I walked towards the foot of the bed but stayed several feet away, unable to draw nearer. With the life gone from his frame, Mister Gus looked even smaller than I remembered. The bedcovers had been folded back—for the doctor’s examination, I expect—and he lay there atop the sheets clad in burgundy silk pajamas, so slight as to barely disturb the bed. He looked so brittle, so white, almost like a shell you’d find on the beach, the curves of his gnarled fingers and cheekbones so deep as to be scalloped.
I stood there for the better part of ten minutes, my feet rooted to the floor, my eyes unblinking. I couldn’t think of anything to do or say. I thought about his last words to me, uttered months earlier. One fragment in particular of what Mister Gus had said kept returning to me as I stood there . . . and you’re left to fumble in terrible places and it’s only your body . . . yes, only your body trying to prove to the soul that it’s not alone, and failing time and time again. The photograph burning in the fireplace flashed in my mind for the third time that day, and I thought of San Francisco and of Joey, not wanting to believe there could ever be a part of Mister Gus’s life that had ever resembled my own. There were parts of Mister Gus’s life during which he had likely been happy and felt alive. And there were years that had inevitably come after 1902, in the wake of “Charlie”—whoever he was; years driven by loneliness that had prompted Mister Gus’s speech to me that I realized I’d never wanted to know about. Not then and not now. I continued to stand there, gazing upon Mister Gus’s frail shell of a body.
When I finally spoke, my voice barely croaked out of my throat. “I’m sorry,” I said, and walked out of the room.
Downstairs, Mr. Arkle was waiting for me with an envelope. Inside was a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.
• • •
That evening, I went to a pay phone and dialed the number for Joey’s apartment in Washington, D.C.
“I’m sorry, Joey,” I said once he picked up. “I need to talk to you. I’d like to see you this weekend. If you still want to.”
He was quiet.
“Joey? Are you there?”
“Did they put you up to this?” he demanded. “Look, I don’t know who this is, but I don’t want any trouble. This is a private line.”
I blinked, uncomprehending at first. Did they put you up to this . . . The words went through me with a cruel jolt. He was pretending not to know me. He was acting out of fear and suspicion, I realized. During the time we’d been apart—the time I’d abandoned him and sworn him off—his paranoia had gotten the upper hand. I felt a terrible pang of sympathy for him.
“It’s just me, Joey. Something happened today that made me realize how sorry I am . . . how much I need to tell you I’m sorry. I need to tell you everything.”
“What was that?” he demanded. “What was that clicking sound?” There was a pause. “Where are you calling me from?” he asked in a low, suspicious tone.
“A pay phone,” I answered.
He was quiet again; I could sense his tortured mind working. Finally, he sighed.
“It’s a pretty sure thing I’m going to lose my job, Miles,” Joey said. The tone of frenzy had left his voice, replaced by one of slow, defeated sorrow. “My family will know why. And you . . . I can’t stand it when you change your mind about me. You can’t do that anymore, Miles. You can’t. I can’t take it.”
“I won’t,” I said. I remember it came out forceful and clear, as though this time I truly meant it. And I believe I did.