A Fine Death
The women looked like tropical birds to Reese as he watched them flutter out of the cavernous maw of the old Harlem church.
Down the steps they skittered in fantastical garments of turquoise, peach, scarlet, lime, and lilac. Their outfits were topped by matching hats encrusted with lace and feathers and beads drooping over brims that swept from shoulder to shoulder. The display was delicious in its color coordinated intricacy and the Sunday afternoon light enhanced the air of theatrical excess.
The women looked powerful, inaccessible, gorgeous.
From his perch at the window on the second floor landing of a gray stone apartment building across from the church he had a panoramic view of the street below.
Awestruck, Reese was glad to be only an observer of the dazzling scene. He thought Joss would effortlessly fit in with this impressive gathering.
He was waiting for a quiet moment to enter the apartment of his latest target, having decided that a visit before noon on Sunday would not be welcomed.
According to Finch's sketchy information, their current number was an elderly man who lived alone on one of the premiere streets in the Strivers' Row neighborhood near St. Nicholas Park. Finch was confident that due to his advanced age the man could not be considered a threat to anyone else, so they assumed he must be the victim of an imminent violent plot of some kind.
The only blueprints of the building's interior that Finch could locate dated to its construction in 1895, so Reese was not sure of the current layout of the apartment. He could tell upon entering that the original arrangement of the residence as a single-family townhouse had been divided some time ago. He knew that his target lived in the upper two floors of the four story building.
Reese knocked firmly on the red door five times. He noticed a flicker of light through the peep hole and knew he was being examined. He schooled his face into an innocent expression he hoped was winning enough to gain entrance.
After a few uncomfortable moments, the door swung open and the observer swept a long arm in an arc of welcome.
Reese entered and turned immediately to launch into the cover story he had decided upon as an explanation for his visit. Even to his own ears, the notion that he was the representative of an insurance company seeking to verify the claimants to a lapsed policy sounded fake.
He wouldn't believe the story and he doubted the old gentleman before him did either.
But his host was gracious and led him without question toward the front of the apartment to a space designed as a reception room or parlor.
Reese knew next to nothing about architecture, but he could recognize the calm elegance of the room's proportions and appreciate the delicate moldings framing the cream-colored ceiling. The wood paneling that rose as high as his shoulders ran along all four walls. Reese was impressed with the oak fireplace which was decorated with small green and white glazed tiles.
A shiny grand piano dominated one corner of the room. Next to it were four stacks of white folding chairs, poised as if in anticipation of a great audience.
The windows overlooking the street formed a bay which was completed by high-backed window benches in black wood. This was where the old man led Reese and indicated he sit down.
"Now that you have that cock-and-bull story out of your system, young man, I hope we can have a civil conversation."
The tone was cordial and crisp, in a lilting tenor voice that took decades off of the appearance of its owner.
Reese found himself instantly at ease and amused by his canny host.
The man was at least six feet four, narrow and straight as a plum line, with the smoothest skin and whitest hair Reese had ever seen. The hair rose in a great cottony crown above the long bronze face which was punctuated by a white mustache clipped with military precision.
He carried a slender staff of polished wood, an inch taller than he was. But he didn't seem to lean on it for support so Reese guessed that the walking stick was a theatrical embellishment more than a crutch.
The closest Reese could come to describing the man's outfit was as a caftan, in a light weight fabric with a garish pattern of gold, orange, black, and green. The deep green was picked up again in the embroidery that garnished the neckline and sleeve openings of the garment.
He wanted to commit all these details to memory so that he could share them with Joss later.
"I'm sorry…" was all that Reese managed before the man launched into a tirade that warmed his heart even as it pretended to chastise him for his false bona fides.
"I suppose you are either peddling subscriptions to the Watchtower or selling cookies to raise funds for a charitable cause. I must warn you that I have been converted at least twelve times over my life span and none of them ever took.
"Perhaps you will have better luck today than your fellow religion pushers."
Reese tried to interject.
"No, I'm not…"
"And I must further warn you that I am a master baker. I have the blue ribbons from county fairs all over eastern Pennsylvania to prove it. So I have no need for your packaged Scout cookies full of dubious chemicals and strange admixtures.
"In any event, I wouldn't buy a cookie or a new religion at the point of a gun, Mr.…?"
"You can call me Reese."
He had hoped that the firearm secured at the back of his waistband was discreetly hidden, but apparently not well enough to escape this perceptive old coot.
"Well, Mr. Reese. My name is Andrew Arthur Austin. My parents had a sense of humor, so they called my sisters Annette, Amelia, and Adele. Their middle names also began with A, but I won't bore you with listing those."
The old man looked away toward the lofty ceiling as if studying the faces of his departed family and then brought his sharp brown eyes back to Reese.
When Austin didn't say anything further, Reese decided it was his turn at civil conversation.
"If you suspected I was not on the up and up, why did you let me in the door?"
"Oh, curiosity, I suppose. We rarely get a visitor under the age of eighty in this building. And certainly none with a face as beautiful as yours, Mr. Reese. You have the eyes of an angel fallen to Earth, as I am sure you have been told before."
Reese shifted on the hard bench at the frank compliment.
"But I suppose that, sadly, you are as straight as my walking stick. What a waste!"
The old man shrugged philosophically and then laughed at this latest sign of the universe's mysterious ways.
"You know, Mr. Reese. I am quite old. My birthday next month will make me one hundred and eight years old. I have seen many things you cannot begin to imagine and many more things perhaps you can imagine because you have seen them in the newspapers and on television. I was the first Black student – we were Negroes then - to graduate from the high school in our little town in eastern Pennsylvania. I think the only reason they tolerated me was that I was an excellent athlete and our team made it to the state finals in track for the first time ever the year I won the 100 meter sprint and anchored the four-by-four relay. I also had a pretty good tenor voice and they let me sing solos in the school choir every once in a while."
Austin didn't seem to need the stimulus of an interlocutor. Reese's willing presence was encouragement enough.
"When I went to college it was on a music scholarship, but I didn't spend much time studying music. Too busy giving hell to the college administration for their backwards policies. They tried to kick me out a few times, but since I was editor of the student newspaper, my colleagues threatened to raise an even bigger ruckus and I managed to hang on by the skin of my teeth."
Austin paused his narrative and raised his long narrow chin high.
"I was a Communist before the Spanish Civil War, Mr. Reese, before it was fashionable among the literary set. And I was an agitator for Negro civil rights before the Pullman porters even had a union. And I was a homosexual when there was not a shred of gaiety involved. Oh, I wasn't afraid to pursue my personal desires. Not at all. But it did cost me some dear friendships."
The old man shook his woolly head and closed his eyes. Reese missed the fierce glow they cast and hoped his host wasn't growing too tired to continue the story.
After a moment Austin rallied.
"If you will accompany me to the kitchen, Mr. Reese, I will make good on my earlier boast and provide you with something from the oven. I believe I have a slice or two of poppy seed cake left over from last night which, if I do say so myself, is delicious with my special lemon sauce."
The two men made their way slowly toward the rear of the apartment.
The long hallway leading to the kitchen was lined with framed photographs of Austin in formal poses across many decades of changing fashion in personal attire and politics. Alternating with the portraits were mounted dust jackets of books Austin had written on subjects ranging from peace to poverty to poetry.
When they stepped on the hard tile of the kitchen, the sound seemed to send a signal to the other occupants of the apartment. Two enormous cats bounded in from somewhere beyond the kitchen, eager to persuade their master that it was lunch time again.
"Ah, the lord and lady of the manor deign to make an appearance."
Austin bent to caress each furry triangular head and introduced them in turn.
"This is Brick. He favors me." The striped orange creature with outsized paws and yellow eyes looked up at Austin with apparent adoration.
"And this is Maggie. She, on the other hand, is voraciously heterosexual." As if to prove it, the sleek black and white cat curved around Reese's ankles and between his legs, purring furiously.
While Austin searched for plates and glasses, Reese retired to the bathroom. There he extracted the earwig and removed the cellphone from his pocket. He left the devices on the window ledge and returned to the kitchen unburdened and unobserved.
Austin cut two thick slices of cake, poured milk for humans and felines, and led his guest to the adjacent room which served as both a library and a dining spot.
The two men sat for an hour amid the book-lined shelves and the overstuffed sofas. With only a little prompting from Reese, Austin produced a set of leather-bound scrap books which contained a seventy-five-year collection of photos and newspaper clippings. He laid them out on the long table and proceeded to lead Reese through the collection in chronological order.
Reese flipped through the pages feeling increasingly inadequate and lost. He noted hundreds of yellowed pictures of Austin standing with men he presumed were famous, but whose names meant nothing to him.
He recognized only Dr. King, Paul Robeson, and several presidents and a few athletes; the rest of the faces were apparently noteworthy figures who had made news or culture or both during the previous century, but whose exploits Reese did not know of in any detail.
He thought of Joss again and wished she were here to look through these artifacts with him. She would know and appreciate what this history meant, he was sure.
Fortunately Austin did not require anything more from Reese than murmured words of approval and chuffs of amusement at jokes as dusty and old as the wine-colored notebooks themselves.
Drawing his finger along the crackled newsprint of a lengthy article in the fourth scrapbook, Reese was startled out of his silence.
"This is an obituary. For you. How is that possible?"
Austin barked a laugh, his head thrown back, his eyes closed in merriment.
"Oh, young man, I have been dead for quite a while, since 1987 to be precise!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, as you can plainly read, I passed away in my sleep from a heart attack at the age of 83 after a long and distinguished career of service to the nation. At my request, my body was cremated and there was no public funeral in my honor. The site of my interment was kept secret to protect my family from unwanted invasions of privacy. It's all spelled out right there."
He thumped a long index finger on the clipping to emphasize his point.
Reese felt unnerved by this facile explanation and impatient with the broad grin on his host's face.
"That makes no sense and you know it. What really happened?"
The old man's face softened into a more somber pose.
"If you must know, Mr. Reese. I chose some time ago to disappear from this life. It seemed the easiest way to do it was to go all at once and with finality. I had made some money from my books and speaking engagements but nothing really substantial. Some careful calculations and discreet inquiries revealed that my life insurance policy would pay out a sizeable amount to my heir in the event of my death. That amount was enough on which to live modestly and obscurely.
"And that is what we have done these past twenty five years, Robbie and I."
"Robbie?"
"Yes, Robbie. Robert Unger. I thought you had done your homework before you came calling, Mr. Reese."
The gentle chiding tone had returned in force, but Reese chose to ignore it.
"I don't know who Robert Unger is."
"I suppose you could call him my 'boyfriend,' if that term may be applied to a man just past eighty. 'Long-time companion?' So pretentious. 'Lover' seems so athletic and 'husband' seems excessively formal, don't you think?"
When Reese didn't reply, Austin continued lightly.
"Since it's only the two of us here - and the cats, of course - I just call him Robbie and let it go at that."
Reese was full of questions which Austin patiently answered over the course of the next half hour.
He and Robbie had met while working in a small international peace organization which promoted community reconciliation initiatives in the Third World. Robbie was an excellent writer and a sensitive editor, skills Austin took full advantage of to improve his last three books. They fell in love; Robbie moved into the magnificent old apartment on Strivers' Row and became his legal heir.
After his "death," Austin remained in absolute seclusion. Robbie did all the shopping, the banking, and the correspondence for the couple.
Austin passed his days reading newspapers, baking, and practicing the piano. He disciplined himself to write at least one thousand words every day and had completed four book-length manuscripts, a novel, and a memoir.
"Robbie has strict instructions to burn them all when I go. But I am counting on him to be disobedient."
Austin had never left their glorious apartment in twenty five years.
"Well, not quite never," he amended his declaration.
"I did decide to go out on the night that young man was elected president. I wanted to go down to Union Square and see the masses gathered in celebration there. Robbie was firmly against it. He said we would be trampled by the crowd. But I said, if I had to die – again – then I couldn't think of a better way to go. So we went down and had a simply marvelous time. All those young people, every color and ethnicity, tears running down all those splendid faces, the energy and joy there. It was extraordinary.
"Best night of my life, Mr. Reese, the best night of my life."
Austin's eyes shimmered with thoughts of that historic occasion. He wondered again at the ways of the mysterious universe in which he alone had lived long enough to see it when all of his dear friends, the ones who had worked the hardest in fact, had gone before him.
Reese let the conversation pause a moment, but he needed to press on.
"And Robbie, where is he now?"
"Oh, out hunting and gathering. I suppose. He should be back before evening. He does most of the weekly shopping on Sunday afternoon. Some weekends he takes time out to see a movie or have a drink or two at a watering hole downtown. Taking care of me is quite a burdensome occupation, as you might imagine. So I don't begrudge him his little escapades now and then."
Austin turned a shrewd eye on Reese.
"My dear boy, you came here with a purpose. Now is the time to divulge it. I am quite sure you won't shock me, whatever it is."
Reese was hesitant to speak bluntly, but couldn't think of a way to sugar-coat his message.
"I have information that you are in danger, Mr. Austin. This information suggests that you may be killed or injured sometime in the near future."
He felt sheepish for not having more details to support his wild claim, but then he didn't really know any more than he had just offered. Finch's data was as frustratingly sparse as usual and the ultimate source of the information remained obscured.
To his surprise, this assertion set Austin off on another round of hearty laughter. The old man clapped his graceful hands together and leaned back in his chair so far that Reese feared he would tumble over.
"That is marvelous, Mr. Reese, just marvelous!"
Reese scowled in a way he hoped would restore some sobriety to the conversation.
"I don't see what's so funny."
"Of course you don't, dear boy. The fact is, I do know that I may be killed in the near future.
"In truth, I am counting on it!"
Austin's laughter filled the room. Brick and Maggie were startled out of their naps by the outburst, but quickly entangled again and sank back into sleep.
"Go on."
"I had decided about six months ago that the present arrangements were really intolerable for any number of reasons. I am not in the best of health…"
"You look fine to me." Reese knew he sounded petulant, but he couldn't help it.
"Yes, well thank you. But my doctor assures me I have at least twelve more months of excruciating agony ahead of me before I die. Dr. Krishna Patel, last man in the city to make house calls, perhaps you know him."
Reese started at the name because in fact he did know Dr. Patel. The internist had discreetly treated him on several occasions through the intervention of his landlady, Mrs. Soni, who was some sort of relative.
"I don't want to put myself through that prolonged torture. And I certainly don't want to impose such a gruesome experience on Robbie. So I asked Dr. Patel if he had another way. Long story short, Hippocratic Oath notwithstanding, the good doctor has devised a lovely cocktail of drugs he claims will do away with me in no time flat whenever I am ready."
"What does Robbie say about this plan?"
"At first he was against it. Lots of wailing and rending of garments, like in some kind of Greek tragedy. He always tries to stomp on my fun, doesn't he? But after more phone and email exchanges with Dr. Patel, he has come around to it in these last few days."
Austin paused to consider the next chapter of his account.
"You know, if I am going to tell you the rest of this story, I will need more sweets. Please bring out the entire cake, Mr. Reese, and we will fortify ourselves in good fashion. More milk too, if you please."
Reese followed orders silently and returned to the library with the still massive cake on its stand, a knife, and the carton of milk. The cats, who had followed him into the kitchen with great hope, settled on the sofa once again and resigned themselves to more conversation.
After eating a second piece of cake, Austin leaped back into the narrative in full stride like the star sprinter he once had been.
"I have found the perfect spot for it. My idea is to take Patel's delicious cocktail some evening soon and with Robbie's help make my way to St. Nicholas Park. There is a spectacular outcropping of Manhattan schist near the center of the park. I will have Robbie deposit me on a bench in front of the rock formation and I can just drift off during the night.
"I have enjoyed a marvelous life, Mr. Reese, and an equally fine death. Now it is time to move on to the next adventure."
Reese felt anxious, like he had to do something – anything - to intervene.
"It won't work, Mr. Austin. Someone will find you. They will identify you and Robbie will be in trouble with the law. Your plan has some major holes in it."
Reese knew he sounded like a co-conspirator and he decided he didn't mind the comparison.
"Well then, help me, Mr. Reese. Since you have a gun, I assume you know how to use it. And with it, you must have mastered all the other dark arts that accompany that kind of violent career. So now you can give me some professional counsel on how to prevent the calamities you have foreseen."
Reese was glad that Finch could not listen in on this part of the conversation as he plunged ahead with more enthusiasm than he had anticipated.
"You can be identified by your teeth and by your fingerprints. So you have to get rid of those."
Austin tapped the bright white incisor on his left side. Then he popped out the dentures and returned them quickly to his mouth.
"The orthodontist who crafted these, Dr. Rogers, bless his soul, died along with his records in an office fire over thirty years ago. No chance of identifying these.
"Finger prints, now, are a bit more difficult to deal with. Do you have any practical suggestions?"
Reese did. He described a mixture of caustic acids which, when painted on the finger tips, would blur and eventually erase the identifying whorls.
"It will hurt, you know. Not just sting. Really burn. But you have to let those acids sit on your fingers long enough to completely get rid of the prints."
Austin held out his long hands in front of him chest high, slowly rotating them so that the tobacco brown palms faced up.
"My dear, I stopped playing piano about five years ago because I could not feel the keys. Such a hard thing to give up. My grandmother Althea taught me to play when I was four and even after all these years, I felt like I was disappointing her when I stopped.
"So I don't believe a little thing like an acid burn will be much of a problem at all at this point."
The two men talked on until dusk.
At first they continued in the established pattern: Austin spoke expansively, Reese responded in monosyllables. But gradually the structure reversed itself. Reese found he had stories and images and experiences he wanted to share with the strange old man.
He felt an urgency to keep talking, to keep Austin in his grasp a few hours more.
Reese expected his host's energy or attention to flag as the day faded, but neither did. The man must have been a champion work horse in his first century.
Just before nightfall, the front door opened and Austin's companion appeared at last, lugging several burlap bags filled with groceries.
A pale, pot-bellied man with tufts of sandy hair above each ear and across the top of his head, Robbie Unger was certainly surprised to find a stranger being entertained in his home for the first time in over twenty-five years.
After quick introductions were accomplished, Reese retreated to the bathroom to allow the two men a private moment for explanatory conversation.
He put the discarded earwig back into his jacket pocket. He checked his cell, noting several texts from Finch and a missed phone call from Joss. What could he tell them about this extraordinary client? How could he explain this afternoon? Lacking an immediate answer, he decided to delete their messages. He stowed the darkened phone in his pocket next to the earpiece.
When he returned to the kitchen he found the two partners standing side by side shelving the groceries Robbie had purchased.
He wanted to slip away, but he had a final request of the old man.
"Before you… I mean before too long, I would like to bring a friend to meet you. She would love it, I'm sure. If you could give us the time, we could come whenever it is convenient for you."
Austin grinned broadly.
"I have all the time in the world, Mr. Reese, all the time in the world now."
Reese brought Joss to visit Andrew Austin the following Sunday.
She wore a dress for the second time since he had met her. He liked the yellow dress she wore the first night they made love. And he liked this one too, with its folds of peach lace floating softly around her legs.
This time Austin's caftan was a simple blue and white stripe with orange embroidery framing the neck.
As he had imagined, the old man charmed her, astounded her, and made her cry several times over the course of the lively afternoon. Austin had baked a devil's food layer cake and a frothy lemon meringue pie for the occasion. He said that he had wanted to make an angel food cake too, but the symbolism was so unbearably obvious he resisted.
The cats made their appearance early: Brick inspected Joss with disdain and Maggie worked her seductive stylings on Reese once again. After a brief encounter the animals departed, leaving the humans to their mysterious communing. Robbie was absent on his errands as was his Sunday habit.
Joss knew every one of the names Austin mentioned and spurred the conversation with questions or detailed observations that made their host's eyes widen in disbelief or admiration. Reese was content to sit in silence watching the two of them talk on deep into the afternoon.
At her insistence, Austin drew from the library shelves several slim volumes of his own poetry. Bound in sober navy blue cloth, he called them love poems, so Reese thought they would be of the flowery romantic variety.
Instead their host regaled them with verse after verse of sexual descriptions, some shimmering with elegant heat, some fond and humorous, others extravagantly rude and designed to shock.
"I gave up being polite when I turned seventy," Austin explained cheerfully. "It seemed like such a huge waste of energy."
The poetry was arrestingly beautiful and erotic. As they read it out loud, Joss and Austin laughed, looking at each other and then at him. He sensed the heat rising from his neck to his face and assumed his cheeks had turned red. He thought they must be laughing at him.
But as they continued laughing, he felt it was as if they had entered a glamorous conspiracy and he saw that their glances invited him to join in the fun too.
On and on the bawdy words flowed in the old man's clear tenor voice. After the climax of the third poem on orgasms, Reese began to laugh. The melancholy, the elation, the plain craziness of the day swept through him, washing away his native reticence.
This burst of laughter felt good – strange for sure, but so good.
He knew Austin felt the giddy enchantment too when he invited them to the front parlor and insisted on playing a round of Scott Joplin rags on the neglected grand piano.
Reese sat next to Joss on the white folding chairs. As they listened to the rollicking concert, she took his hand and squeezed it.
The jaunty music, the piano player's thumping foot taps, the press of her hand against his. These simple sensations surged inside him, intertwined in a knot of longing and contentment. He felt filled up; completed and absolved of duty the way he felt at the end of a job well done.
When it was finally time to go, Austin enfolded Joss in his long arms for a moment and kissed her brow. At the red door the three allies paused one last time in the gathering shadows.
Austin caught Reese's eye over her head and winked.
From the gray stone apartment building, Reese led her the three blocks to St. Nicholas Park. There they wandered through the cool lanes until they found the rock formation Austin had called Manhattan schist. The outcropping rose more than twenty feet above its bed of moss and discarded leaves, the irregular surfaces glinting dully in the fading twilight.
They sat in silence for a long time on the bench opposite the massive boulder, holding hands.
Two days later, Robbie called Reese to say that Austin had passed away quietly in the park, precisely as planned.
Author's note: The fictional character of Andrew Austin is based upon the admirable life and inspiring career of Quaker activist, author, and political strategist Bayard Rustin, a true American hero. An excellent introduction to this civil rights pioneer is the film biography, "Brother Outsider." You can read about it here: /?page_id=2
A brief biographical introduction to Rustin (1912-1987) is located here: quak_
I have, of course, taken many liberties with the facts of Bayard Rustin's life in creating my imaginary character for the purposes of telling the story of Reese's encounter with a man who chose his own style of life and death. While the grace notes in Andrew Austin's character may belong to his real life inspiration, any faults in rendering his portrait are entirely my own.