Manhattan 62 by Reggie Nadelson

he’s been right in there fighting for freedom.
    One man stops into the station house and tells me the girl is Miss La Prensa, Gladys Feijoo, the girl Castro kissed when he was in New York in ’59. I dig out some clippings from his trip. It’s true. A picture in the Daily News shows the girl, long dark hair, kissing Fidel on the cheek while he writes in her autograph book. Castro is smoking a cigar. He hired a public relations firm to show him how, and he was a star, charming, talking to everyone, visiting the zoo, visiting Columbia University.
    Then I think: maybe Saul Rudnick, Nancy’s father, knows something. Rudnick used to teach at Columbia, and I’m guessing he loves Castro like the rest of them. It’s a long shot, but I don’t have much else, so I call him. Saul says come on over, though he doesn’t like me much.
    Saul opens the door himself. “Hello, Pat,” he says, “Come in.”
    In baggy brown corduroy pants, and a red sweater, he’s a big balding man, about sixty, a lawyer, an ex-football player, long fiercely intelligent face, like a Jewish Abe Lincoln.
    In Saul’s hand is a copy of the New York Times, and I’m hardly in the living room when he says, “Did you see what fucking Bobby Kennedy is doing? What’s his business with Cuba? Has his people trying to mine the Havana harbor. Jesus Christ. What can I do for you, Pat. Can I get you a cup of coffee. Sit down, for heaven’s sake.”
    Times I’ve been in the house, Saul lectured me on the evils of JFK’s containment policy, the sadness of the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, and why goddamn Rudolph Bing wrecked his favorite operas at the Met. He was also interested in my views; and we had agreed about the rapacity of the damn Yankees. I hated them as much as he did. First few times, when I started dating Nancy, I picked her up at the redbrick house on Charlton Street. Rudnick liked her dates to call for her. I could see he didn’t much like me; his idea of a suitor for his princess was not an Irish Catholic cop. But he offered me some of his good malt whisky and made nice. After all, I was his baby’s friend.
    â€œIs this about Nancy?” says Saul, leaning against the shining black grand piano. “I didn’t know you were still seeing her.”
    I want him sweet because I need help, so I nod, and, him thinking his baby is safe from me, he sits, gestures to another armchair. I sit, too.
    It’s a rich handsome room, old Oriental carpets, fine polished wooden floors, good furniture, old sofas, books everywhere. Art, too. Good pictures on the walls. On the piano are clusters of photographs, all in silver frames, many of them of Nancy, of family, even of Saul in his Marine uniform during the war. It’s a room with a ripe comfortable feel, and the truth is, deep down, I like it here. I’d like to have this. To belong.
    The Rudnicks’ Village is a different place from mine, a place of pretty tree-lined streets and redbrick houses that date back to before the Civil War; of nineteenth-century brownstones, where old ladies still live behind lace curtains; of little theatres, and arthouse movies; of prosperous people like her father, and their children.
    Last I heard, Saul Rudnick was fighting for a union on behalf of the Mohawk Indians building the Verrazano Bridge. Saul’s pretty keen on the working class, except for me. Fordham is not what he has in mind for his daughter; he prefers Columbia boys for his little girl.
    Truth is, I like Saul Rudnick. Admire him, too. Sure, he’s a Communist, but you have to give it to him, he’s a straight arrow. Back during McCarthy, when he’s called to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, he tells them to shove it, more or less; he says what he believes, tells them he’s a Communist straight out; also he never rats out his friends, goes to jail for it. This gives Saul the moral high ground,