I stopped at a traffic light and hailed a cab which was slowing to a stop there. It was only after the cab had come to a halt that I saw that there was a passenger in the back, a woman. But the cabby, a black man with gray hair, leaned over and turned down the window. 'Which way you going, Mister?' he asked.
'State.'
'Get in,' the cabby said. 'The lady is on the way.'
I opened the back door. 'Do you mind if I get in with you, ma'am?' I asked.
'I certainly do,' the woman said. She was quite young, no more than thirty, and rather pretty, in a blonde, sharp way, less pretty at the moment than she might ordinarily have been, because of the tight, angry set of her lips.
'I'm sorry,' I said apologetically and closed the door. I was about to step back on the curb, when the cabby opened the ' front door. 'Get in, suh,' the cabby said.
Serves the bitch right. I thought, and, without looking at the woman, got in beside the driver. There was a bitter rustle from the back seat, but neither the cabby nor I turned around. We drove in silence.
When the cab stopped in front of a pillared government building, the woman leaned forward. 'One dollar and forty-five cents?' she said.
'Yes ma'am,' the cabby said.
The woman yanked open her purse, took out a dollar bill and some change, and put it down on the back seat. 'Don't expect to find a tip,' she said as she got out. She walked towards the big front doors, her back furious. She had nice legs, I noted.
The cabby chuckled as he reached back and scooped up his fare. 'Civil servant.' he said.
'Spelled c-u-n-t,' I said.
The cabby chuckled again. 'Oh, in this town you learn to take the fat with the lean,' he said.
As he drove, he shook his head, chuckling to himself, over and over again.
At State, I gave the man a dollar tip. 'I tell you, suh,' the cabby said, 'that little blonde lady done made my day.'
I went into the lobby of the building and up to the information desk.
'I'd like to see Mr. Jeremy Hale, please,' I said to the girl at the desk.
'Do you know what room he's in?'
'I'm afraid not.'
The girl sighed. Washington, I saw, was full of tight-assed women. While the girl thumbed through a thick alphabetical list for Jeremy Hale, I remembered how I had once said to Hale, long ago, 'With a name like that. Jerry, you had to wind up in the State Department.' I smiled at the memory.
'Is Mr. Hale expecting you?'
‘No.' I hadn't spoken to Hale or written him in years. Hale certainly wasn't expecting me. We had been in the same class at Ohio State and had been good friends. After I took the job in Vermont we had skied together several winters, when Hale wasn't on a post overseas.
'Your name, please?' the girl was saying.
I gave her my name and she dialed a number on the desk telephone.
The girl spoke briefly on the phone, put it down, scribbled out a pass. 'Mr. Hale can see you now.' She handed me the pass and I saw she had written on it the number of the room I was to go to.
'Thank you, miss,' I said. Too late, I saw the wedding ring on her finger. I have made another enemy in Washington, I thought.
I went up in the elevator. The elevator was nearly full, but it rose in decorous silence. The secrets of state were being well-guarded.
Hale's name was on a door that was exactly the same as a long row of identical doors that disappeared in diminishing perspective down a seemingly endless corridor. What can all these people possibly be doing for the United States of America eight hours a day, two hundred days a year? I wondered, as I knocked.
'Come in,' a woman's voice called.
I pushed the door open and entered a small room where a beautiful young woman was typing. Good old Jeremy Hale. The beautiful young woman smiled radiantly at me. I wondered how she behaved in taxicabs. 'Are you Mr. Grimes?' she said, rising. She was even more beautiful standing than sitting down. tall and dark, lissome in a tight blue sweater.
'I am indeed,' I said.
'Mr. Hale is delighted you could come. Go right in, please.' She held the door to the inner office open for me.
Hale was seated at a cluttered desk, peering down at a sheaf of papers in front of him. He had put on weight since I had last seen him. and had added statesmanlike solidity to the mild polite face. On the desk, in a silver frame, was a family group, a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. Everything in moderation. Zero population growth. An example to the heathen. Hale looked up when I came in and stood, smiling widely. 'Doug,' he said, 'You don't know how glad I am to see you.'
As we shook hands. I was surprised at how moved I was by my friend's greeting. For three years now, no one had been genuinely glad to see me.
'Where've you been. where've you been, man?' Hale said. He waved to a leather sofa along one side of the spacious office and, as I sat down. pulled a wooden armchair close to the sofa and sat down himself. 'I thought you'd disappeared from the face of the earth. I wrote three times and each time the letters came back. Haven't you learned anything about forwarding addresses yet? And I wrote your girl friend. Pat, asking about you and she wrote back and said she didn't know where you'd gone.' He scowled at me. He was agreeable-looking, tall, comfortably built, soft-faced, and the scowl was incongruous on him. 'And you don't look so almighty great, either. You look as though you haven't been out in the open air for years.'
'Okay, okay,' I said, 'one thing at a time, Jerry. I just decided I didn't like flying anymore and I moved on. Here and there.'
'I wanted to ski with you last winter. I had two weeks off and I heard the snow was great... '
'I haven't been doing much skiing, to tell the truth,' I said.
Impulsively, Hale touched my shoulder. 'All right,' he said. 'I won't ask any questions.' Even as a boy in college he had always been quick and sensitive. 'Well, anyway, just one question. Where're you coming from and what're you doing in Washington?' He laughed. 'I guess that's two questions.'
'I'm coming from New York,' I said, 'and I'm m Washington to ask you to do a little favor for me.'
The government is at your disposal, lad. Ask and ye shall receive.'
'I need a passport.'
'You mean you never had a passport?'
No.'
'You've never been out of the country?' Hale sounded amazed. Everybody he knew was out of the country most of the time.
'I've been in Canada,' I said. That's all. And you don't need a passport for Canada.'
'You said you were in New York.' Hale looked puzzled. 'Why didn't you get it there? Not that I'm not delighted you finally had an excuse to visit me,' he added hastily. 'But all you had to do was go to the office on Six thirty....'
'I know,' I said. 'I just didn't feel like waiting. I'm in a hurry and I thought I'd come to the fountainhead, from which all good things flow.'
"They are swamped there,' Hale said. 'Where do you intend to go?'
'I thought Europe, first. I came into a little dough and I thought maybe it was time I ought to get a dose of Old World culture. Those postcards you used to send me from Paris and Athens gave me the itch.' Deception. I found was coming easily.
'I think I can run the passport through for you in a day,' Hale said. 'Just give me your birth certificate....' He stopped when he saw the frown on my face. 'Don't you have it with you?'
'I didn't realize I needed it.'
'You sure do,' Hale said. 'Where were you born - Scranton, wasn't it?'
‘Yes.'
He made a face.
What's the matter?' I asked.
Pennsylvania's a bore,' he said. 'All the birth certificates are kept in Harrisburg, the state capital. You'd have to write there. It'd take at least two weeks. If you're lucky.'
'Balls,' I said. I didn't want to wait anywhere for two weeks.
'Didn't you get your birth certificate when you applied for your first driver's license?'
Yes,' I said.