Martin is sitting at a window table already — this is the kind of day I’m having — with a salmon-colored legal pad in front of him, looking out over the harbor, which today has a kind of low-wattage electric sheen, and talking into his BlackBerry as I sit down. Tell him that’s clever, he’s saying, and turns to me and mouths sorry—it’s clever as a negotiating tactic, but we don’t do things that way. You’re talking about a currency that lost thirty-five percent of its — yeah. Right. Sheila has the routing number. You don’t even have to call HSBC. Just take care of it and email me the confirmation. Got it. Okay. Later. You’re not late, he says to me, I’m early. And I apologize. I should have waited at the bar. It’s an unfair advantage, sitting down first.
Advantage for what?
He opens his arms wide, so that I can see, at either end of the wingspan of his taupe suit, an immaculate French cuff with an onyx period for a cuff link. You’re right, he says. You’re absolutely right. I just, you know, I think like a businessman. Instinctively. Like you think like a reporter.
I’m not a reporter.
For good?
Never was. There’s no money in it.
He snorts and rubs the corner of his eye with his pinkie, as if bothered by a contact lens or a sudden itch. You work in the nonprofit realm, he says. There’s no money in any of it, is there? Wouldn’t you like to jump ship to corporate, ultimately?
Corporate radio? I thought it was all run by computers now.
What about, say, MSNBC?
Why is it, I always want to ask, that strangers assume I’m just waiting for my chance to move to the big time, that promised media-land of fame, wall-to-wall exposure, the news zippers, the endless symphony of dings, bleeps, swooshes, texts, pings, updates, alerts? No one wants a job to keep anymore: I get that. We’re all free agents. But do I, in particular, look like I want to be on that treadmill, do I have that look of perpetual dissatisfaction, the hungry one, the up-and-comer? No. It’s become a default, I suppose, an assumption, the question that always has to follow what do you do?
No, I say, look, I mean, public radio is different. It’s a mission. It’s about what you want out of your life, I guess you could say. Nobody does it for the money. Really it’s a kind of self-flattery, when you get right down to it. But whatever — I fell into it because I need a steady job. It beats pumping gas.
Or working for Fox News.
Right, I say, with a weak laugh. As if that were an option.
It occurs to me that this would be the place where I could clarify what it means to be on the programming side, the administrative side, of radio. But, on the other hand, I’m just enough of an operator not to. It’s an old habit, this self-promotion that dares not speak its name. That’s how you get into Amherst with an A average.
So what, you just wanted a promotion? That’s what this is about, moving back to Baltimore, taking this job?
His BlackBerry buzzes, conveniently, and he checks the screen before shutting it off. I find myself staring, for no good reason, at his ears: perfectly ordinary, like all ears, fascinatingly shell-shaped, overly detailed, a kind of virtuosic molding of cartilage with no obvious rationale. Why do we have earlobes, for example? To be tugged, tickled, pierced? I remember nothing about Martin’s ears other than they seemed a little too large for his head, and that he was always tucking his chin-length bangs behind them, especially on the right side. These are the same ears, presumably, only the color has changed.
He’s done it; it’s real. Here, in the soft mood lighting of an expensive restaurant, and the high, flat light of the sky over the water, in public, framed by two potted olive trees and a trellis of fake grapes, he is inarguable; there are no cracks, no fissures; he is unquestionably a black man. All at once I feel an intense, pressurized pain in my sinuses, my forehead, eye sockets, across the bridge of my nose: as if my own face has become inflatable and is about to lift off.
You okay? he asks. Hey. Kelly. Look at me. You need a Tylenol or something?
No. I’m all right. Already the pain is receding; I wet my napkin, rub it across my forehead, and it’s gone, just as fast as it came.
Thought you were having a panic attack there or something. He laughs, a deep, reverberating belly laugh. Heck, I knew you NPR people don’t like to talk money, but this is something else.
No, I say, really, it’s not about money at all, Martin. I came here because I needed to start over. So to speak. I needed something; this was what came up. I was grieving. That’s how it is. Sometimes you have to make quick decisions.
Was it a mistake, coming back to the old town? Too many memories, something like that?
I don’t remember nearly as much as I ought to.
Maybe that’s a good thing.
I feel bad that we never kept up, I say, trying to sound as loose, as conversational, as possible. It wasn’t right, to end things the way we did.
When was that?
When was that? After Alan died, of course. After the funeral. What was that sushi place called, in Towson, the place we ate afterward?
He laughs, weakly, as if I’ve said something mildly funny, and then stretches out his chin and rotates his head ninety degrees in each direction, a calisthenic stretch, only his eyes are open, peering, checking out the room.
I’m sorry.
Don’t be sorry, he says. It’s not your problem, is it? Why shouldn’t you want to catch up? But listen, here’s the thing: if you were me, who would you trust with this kind of information, with this particular secret? It’s not like I got one of those scanners and stole someone’s Social Security number off a phone call. The way real people do, the standard way. It’s not criminal. Lord, if it were that easy. Listen, Robin’s a good woman. You’ll meet her. But she’s got a family to protect now. She wouldn’t believe it if I told her today. She’d think I’d gone schizophrenic.
You have kids?
Adopted. Twins. Sherry and Tamika. They’ll be eight in December. What’s wrong? You look skeptical.
I mean, because, biologically—
I’m officially infertile. Unofficially, vasectomized. Those genes are staying put. But look, what I want to talk about right now is you.
What about me?
Well, why do you want to get into this mess? Why not just be a good public-radio guy, station director, whatever it is? If it’s not the money, then what?