Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

IX

Reading over what I have written so far, I see I have given the impression that the events I described were the only ones that transpired. This is not the case. In fact, there were many unimportant events in a crowded story, which, until much later, had absorbed me infinitely less than others. Treat my memoir like a detective novel wherein only the main clues are in italic. For instance: I never told you that every Friday Hamilton went to the city to take lunch with Burr. That is, every Friday he left the house, and given his unwillingness to discuss even the most casual affairs, never told me why. I learned the truth later, one Friday morning in mid November, when he suddenly said to me:

"We're having a meeting with Mr. Jefferson today and I thought we'd ride up to lunch with Mr. Burr together."

Roaring afternoon. Theater District. We met Burr In a well-fanned West 40th Street cellar. I remember as a student in distant Buffalo gloating over a map of New York City that had "Broadway" boldly running from State Street up to Mount Pleasant, so that the whole region it spanned—Manhattan, Bronx, Yonkers and Tarrytown, appeared to my imagination as a gigantic theater, all projectors, glorious velvet seat upon seat, giant stages, an enchanted kingdom where people spoke in jazz, and between the numbers were doing stunts all over the place. That it all boiled down to a measly affair of drug stores, restaurants, 'Officer, officer, I am not the man,' The Western Union, and smoking garbage incinerators, was appalling.

"This is a nice restaurant here," said Burr, looking at the tangle of water-pipes on the ceiling. "But I like across the street better!"

"Yes," agreed Hamilton. "This place makes me feel uncivilized."

Burr laughed, and in the half-dark his broad teeth glistened like pinkish poker chips. I was sitting quietly and politely at a separate table, almost asprawl, dying of boredom, swinging one leg crossed over the other, listening to the portentous jazz chords coming from a ball-room above. Perhaps I could love New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and automobiles gives to the restless eye. But I didn't belong there. Each time I tried to imagine myself strolling down Madison Avenue, Hamilton and Burr pulled me back, as if with ropes, back into my chair.

"You know, I think you ought to move to the city," Burr proposed on his second mint julep."You've been living in that miserable village as long as I can remember."

"No, thanks, I'm absolutely a Northport man," said Hamilton to a glass of straight bourbon in front of him. "I'd be a god damned fool if I lived anywhere else. I can do real business on Long Island, I have the entry. All I need is a good name." His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented, " 'A. Hamilton and Partners Law Firm' or something like that."

He grabbed an orange from a large bowl of fruit and began peeling it with a knife. His side of the tablecloth was already flooded with orange peels. It annoyed me. My eyes followed him every step of the way as if ready to pounce on the blade and slit his throat with it.

"Never heard of them!" Burr joked.

"You will once you move East."

Burr took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass.

"I just don't see how you live all alone in that palace of yours."

"Why, I thought you liked my house."

"It's splendid. I like how the whole front of it catches the light during the day. But it must be a bit lonely in there. Is it not, Mr. Lauens?"

I was caught sharply by his attempt to engage me in a cater-cornered conversation.

"Abso-lutely," I said harshly. It was the first word I had uttered since I came into the room. "His Excellency likes quiet. He might as well move into a morgue."