Because it was about politics. By which it immediately became clear that he meant political indoctrination and recruitment for international revolution, any involvement with which required a degree of loyalty that exceeded the strictest religious devotion known to most Americans, if you were not for the organization you couldn’t possibly be neutral or politically uninvolved, you were against it and might even be a special espionage agent whose purpose was to collect names for some sort of blacklist for investigation by some wing of the federal government.
You remember me telling you about those party girls and those pamphlets? he said. And about how I got myself mistaken for a likely prospect, because instead of throwing that crap in the trash can en route to the subway the next morning, I read it?! I told you about that. Well man, I’m not sure that that crew don’t have me tagged as an active enemy of the goddamn cause. I do think I have reason to believe that they are checking me out for some reason. Now it could be to find out whether or not I’m worth intensifying their drive to recruit me since I’ve published several little pieces of attempts at few basic definitions, nothing polemical, no clear cut position taken or specific political alignment, just attempts at elementary clarification. But you never know what they might make of it. They might see it for what it is and write me off for an academic which I’m not. Or they might decide that it is some sort of cover device for my underground mission. Anyway I’m pretty damn sure they’re checking me out, and I don’t know what the hell they’re up to.
Man, he said, if this sounds paranoid, hell, maybe I am paranoid. But damn if I’m hallucinating—as I think I’m going to be able to show you before you head back downtown. Maybe I’m exaggerating but not out of thin air I assure you. I’m a suspicious son of a bitch I admit, but I’m not that suspicious.
And that was when he said what he said about being more of a loner than anything else and reminded me that if I remembered anything about him from that year when we were on the campus down in Alabama at the same time, I couldn’t possibly have missed noticing that he kept to himself most of the time when he was not with the band or in class. And I agreed. Not that he ever struck me as being out of touch with what the hip crowd was up to.
I made a reasonable share of the dance parties and the seasonal balls, he said. But I never was a joiner of any kind. Not even back in Oklahoma City. I had my contacts, but I didn’t belong to any gang. My only club on campus was really a scholarship club that also had its own socials from time to time.
Then he got the waiter’s attention, and as we were waiting for the tab he nudged me and nodded toward a pedestrian strolling along the sidewalk outside the plate glass window and said, Whether you noticed it or not he’s been passing back and forth and looking in here ever since we came in. Sometimes on this side of the street and sometimes on the other, and I’m pretty sure that he’s not going any further east than Seventh Avenue and no further west than St. Nicholas.
And I said, Now that you mention it. But after all I am not familiar enough with this part of town to make anything of what he might be up to. What do you make of it?
And that’s when he said, Well now he could be a pimp keeping tab on his chippie or chippies. Or he could be in the numbers racket. Maybe. But I don’t think so, unless they’re just breaking him in, and I doubt that the numbers wheels would put a novice in this area. You earn your way up to territory like this. And of course he could be a greenhorn out on his own trying to peddle some cheap light stuff. But I don’t think so. No, this just might be something else. I have my suspicions. The question is whether this guy is as obvious as I think he is because he’s supposed to be obvious.
So let’s find out, he said as we came outside and headed for the subway stop at 125th and St. Nicholas Avenue. He didn’t look back to see if we were being followed but he steered me to the uptown entrance instead of the downtown side. He still didn’t look back to see if we were being followed. But when we pulled into the 145th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue station, we crossed over to the downtown platform and took the express to Columbus Circle, from where he said he was taking the bus back uptown, and I continued on downtown on the express to West Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue.
Well, that was that, he said on the phone when he called after I came home from class that night. I think he may have given up on it when we switched over on 145th. Anyway, my guess as of now is that the organization is spot-checking me. They evidently think that this writing involvement makes me somewhat special. On the one hand it’s something they can utilize in a number of ways in propaganda operations, not just as a journalist or a theorist working on one of their own publications, but as one of their agents working as a regular
