The Saint Louisans (20 page)

Margot's smile increased. “Jama?”

“She liked spitting and watching it spiral and drop.” I sipped. “Back in St. Louis, one of the local theater groups put on a play.
You Look Egyptian, Dear
. It was described as a ‘champagne comedy.' Some of us at Barnes saw it, Doc and I among the playgoers, and when the hospital did its talent show, we went Egyptian. Doc even pulled strings by using his urbane accent to schmooze the owners, and had us put it on in the old Hadley building on St. Charles Street.”

“A massive double brick structure,” Saul said as he controlled a rising sadness, “because they used it to store glass. Inside …” He stopped, already in semi pain.

I continued. “The lobby had these wonderful Egyptian frescoes done in Vitrolite.”

“It was a special glass invented in the twenties,” Saul said, “and it was breathtaking. Like being in a temple. All of it shimmered like a butterfly's wings in the sun …”

He smiled, but it only hid pain, as Margot's smile hid hers.

Sometimes it's just as painful to remember the good times as the bad. That night, the combo had banged and tootled away as our chorus bopped onto the improvised stage, dressed (or undressed … the Egyptian mode was skimpy for both genders, the medical community always ready for a heady display of anatomy), and warbled on:

‘In Old King Tut …Tut …Tut … Tutamen's day;

There was no Mr. Heinz

With fifty-seven different kinds …'

It was an old song by a duo called The Happiness Boys, dug up by Threlkeld, one of our bacteriologists. All of us danced and shimmied. I played Queen Nefertitty. Lois, a chum in OB, was Queen Hotshitshep. Doc was togaed as an officious Caesar. Our dialogue was cobbled from the old Carry-On films—Caesar: ‘Where are my laurels?' Nefertitty: ‘You're sitting on them'.

During our hijinks, I was stunned by the beauty of the foyer. The gods and goddesses of Egypt were perfect imitations of their originals. The Vitrolite made colors on the tiles shine and glisten like splashed-on water. Neon without electricity that made the blues, greens and reds almost psychedelic.

Doc and I did a last spurt of snappy patter before we exited to a wave of chuckles and the band's playing as Jama pranced on. Yes, she was in the show. We had two drop outs, and Jama became a flower girl, aiming petals at cast and audience with deadly aim. She got laughs. Intentional ones.

During our rehearsal, we looked through a book on Egypt Pierce made me buy when we were in Chicago. In the background the chorus twanged out Cleopatterer. Jama smoothed down her costume as it was being fitted, looking at the Vitrolite.

“Egyptians are so stiff.”

I glanced at my lines as I stuck pins in her hemline. Outside it was dark, but the Vitrolite made things glow brighter. “It was their way of representing gods. They don't bend, nor face us. They're fixed for all time.”

Doc sat down beside me. “Even today, they're like that. I've seen the temples. Must show them to you someday.”

I smiled as Jama cast a sly look at Doc and I. “Were you on a secret mission for a King Farouk wannabe?”

“I was doing my bit in a clinic,” Doc smiled benignly. “Much dengue
fever there, and infections courtesy of Lady Nile. Africa's a bonanza for disease. Not to mention those dead cows one sees in the Nile. Thankfully, your Mississippi only has catfish, hmm?”

His hand touched the curve of my back. I tingled, but was uneasy at Doc touching me in front of Jama. She looked at the book, but she's no reader and has eyes in the back of her head.

“I've heard the nights there are beautiful.”

“They're quite splendid,” Doc replied. “Come and see them.”

“Will you provide a pith helmet?”

He stroked my neck. “I have a fascinating array.” His voice lowered. “Please.”

I reluctantly inched away. Doc smiled politely, then turned to Jama. He nodded at the medallion around her neck.

“See you're fond of Ganesh.”

She'd found the medallion of the Indian elephant god on a trip to Frisco. “Yeah,” she said, fingering it. “Ganny's my good luck charm.”

“The god of prosperity,” Doc said with a knowing nod.

She returned to the book. I knew he was trying to ingratiate himself with my kids. He'd gotten on well with Pierce, but Jama was a stone wall.

“You know, a couple of years ago, Pierce was rapping with some of his friends. ‘My mom's contemporary,' he said, ‘but not that contemporary.' Not that contemporary mom roared with laughter.”

Doc nodded, and I wanted to hug him. Instead, I inhaled and kept pinning Jama's hem.

“Hey, Mom. That one. Who's he?”

I nuzzled Jama as I looked where her finger pointed. “You know him. We talked about them all.”

“I forget. Too many of 'em.”

Doc, always looking for an opening to get on Jama's mostly nonexistent good side, leaned forward. “That fellow is called Anubis.”

Jama stared, her lips making the unfamiliar. A-nu-bis. “He's a dog.”

“Not at all,” smiled Doc. “He's a jackal, actually. Got them where I come from. Particularly nasty beasts who dig up graves and scavenge. To the Gyppos they were sacred. Anubis took the dead and conveyed them to the underworld, where their souls would be judged.”

“Also,” I said, “he guarded the tombs. But no doggie bag for him.”

Jama stared at the picture and her lips formed again. Jack-al. To her, Anubis was three syllables. A broccoli word. Jackal was two. French fries. Her head nodded in slow glee. “He's a jackal. A real jackal.”

Light in the drawing room shone through the windows in magisterial, sedate beams. I noticed Saul's discomfort hearing about Doc, still seeing him as a rival, even now. But I knew it would pass. Margot's nod was thoughtful. “So Jama's right. You do conduct the dead from one world to another. As you will do for me.”

I started to say something, but she went on. “I'd forgotten all of that King Tut stuff,” she sighed. “People were mad for it. Pierre and Lucas especially. Pierre, you know, was fascinated by mummification. All of this reminds me of the Mummy Man. Poor Mr. Marconnet. Our family knew him. He was fascinated with Egypt.”

She meant Joseph Marconnet. The Marconnets were one of the early French families. He left instructions that after death, his body was to be preserved and kept for public display. There were no immediate relatives to challenge this, and his tomb at Mt. Olive cemetery quickly filled with lines of the curious ready to see ‘The Mummy Man.'

“Like Mr. Toad and the motorcars. It all became morbidly absurd in a grotesque, in a St. Louis sort of way.”

“I actually saw him,” said a bemused Margot, “when I was a child. Papa thought Mr. Marconnet mad and that such a thing was disgusting, but like most people disgusted, he had a secret fascination with what he abhorred. I remember Papa holding my hand as a fat lady, perhaps more portly than fat, in a flowered dress stepped aside with her brood, and there he was. Mr. Marconnet, upright in full evening dress. He always had fox-like eyes; a face that seemed to have a punch line behind it.” Margot smiled. “He was a shy little man, but the shy often possess enormous desires.”

“How long did it last?” I asked.

“Oh, for a few years. The Church never liked it, the cemetery owners were worried about crowds, as if the residents would complain about the peace being disturbed. Distant relatives were found and coaxed, so six months after
I saw him, the show was over and the tomb closed up.”

Margot nestled deeper into her cushions. “I should be depressed by all this, but I'm almost amused recalling it. I'm certain Mr. Marconnet would have made a lovely Pharaoh, ready to be on display for all time. Some people, when they plan for eternity, can be very calculating.”

Margot nodded to me, indicating she needed another pill. I gave her one, and she lay back. “I should see this Hadley lobby. You say the Vitrolite shimmers?”

“Like when you pour water on pavement and the streetlights hit it.”

“It sounds captivating.”

Saul leaned back and stared. “It's all gone. Destroyed. A few years ago, the building was bought, and someone put a restaurant in the lobby. The Vitrolite became part of the decor, then it changed hands.” Saul heaved. “The jerk didn't like it. I guess it clashed with his pasta or something. He destroyed them.”

It was said deep and tragically.

“Oh, Saul,” Margot lamented. “Really?”

“Yes. That's St. Louis for you. We do wonders saving building exteriors, but don't do jack with interiors. Many of us talked to the guy. Pleaded.” His hand gestured like an actor's soliloquy. “He took the Vitrolite and threw them away. In his dumpster. Those wonderful, priceless, beautiful …”

Saul's pause worried me. He absently toyed with his napkin, a sign his anger was rising. “I could stare at those walls for hours. They really glowed, Margot. Like a dream. Like dreams we have, and when we wake from them, we're sad.” His eyes darkened like coals. “I called that guy every name I could think of. I was younger, and I had the passion, and I sure as hell had the names. I pointed my finger at him and called him a murderer, that what he did was a cultural abortion.”

Saul shook his head and stroked his brow. “He's a friend of the Mayor, this yahoo. Well, now you see why I have no friends at City Hall. I didn't care.” He recovered, again offered the face of a prince and took Margot's hand. “But that's not going to happen to this mansion.”

She smiled her débutante's smile, graced by pain and life.

“Of course not, Saul. The three of us will stop this, and when I'm gone—”

Our moment of solidarity ended with Rainer's entrance. He was neither
imperious nor stiff, but leaned forward, a messenger in a tragedy.

“Madam, the cook was watching television. You should turn it on. Now.” Margot frowned. I spoke. “What's wrong?”

Rainer offered his arm to lead Margot to the television in the study.

The TV was tuned to one of the eye-witless news programs. A newscaster posed in front of the art museum, her delivery urgent.

“A breaking development. The skeletal remains of a body have been discovered below the grounds of the Desouche mansion off South Grand. In a press release issued by Therese Praxos and Pierre Desouche, heirs of the Desouche estate, it has been revealed a possible tomb lies beneath the mansion, one with artifacts that may prove to be the burial grounds of a woman considered by ancient Native Americans to be a goddess. Dr. Sonia Sauvage, the renowned archaeologist—”

“Tomb raider,” gruffed Saul.

“—has detected what might be one of Missouri's greatest archaeological finds. One expert at the scene says this archaeological find may rival the discovery of King Tut's tomb.”

The camera cuts to Sonia, dressed in a severe business suit. Obviously her getting-a-grant garb. Next to her, a machine mounted on a tripod kept ringing out
Ping! Ping! Ping!

“Dr. Sauvage, how did you make this thrilling discovery?” Sonia's eyebrow raised at ‘thrilling.' She gestured to the machine.

“This device is a RE-45. It can “see” below the surface, and I have used it in many of my expeditions, especially in the jungle. I have long been searching for the tomb of the Corn Mother, and the RE-45 detected an oblong form buried below the grounds. It can only be a tomb.”

“Sonia,” hissed Saul. “She was the one creeping around here.” The telephone rang. Rainer picked up the receiver. The reporter continued.

“And who or what exactly is the ‘Corn Mother?'”

Sonia smiled in cold victory. “The primary fertility goddess of the ancient Cahokians. Many of your viewers are no doubt familiar with the Egyptian goddess Isis, or the Sumerian goddess Ishtar. Corn Mother is the Native American equivalent.”

The reporter turned away. Sonia had her in-depth twenty seconds. “The heirs of the estate, along with St. Louis activist Vess Moot and developer Dan Smatters, have appealed to the mayor to enact eminent domain so the search for this archaeological treasure may begin in earnest.”

Sonia snatched back the mic. “Furthermore, Corn Mother's discovery will prove Cahokia was more developed in its theological and social symbiosis than any comparable civilization in the New World.”

The reporter didn't like Sonia horning in, but made a quick smile. “Yes, Dr. Sauvage. That's extremely interesting.”

Sonia was icy. “It is momentous, not ‘interesting.'”

Ping!

The cameraman took the opportunity to cut from the scene and back to the studio. “Next up, the latest trade the Cards had made with Houston.”

Margot frowned. “Eminent domain. The vultures are showing their talons. Lee, you've met this Sauvage person. Is she as bad as I suspect?”

I shrugged. “After the Bastille fell, I'm sure her ancestors ran a booking agency for the guillotine.”

Rainer put down the receiver. “That was the press, Madame. I said you have no comment.”

“Thank you,” said Margot.

Saul's shoulders rose and fell with a long sigh as he looked out the window. Over his shoulder, I saw news vans arrive.

“They've come to see the elephant.”

The next day I lost Mr. Daimus.

Clyde Daimus was in a nursing home in the nether world of mid-suburbia, where car dealerships dribble off into strip malls and subdivisions of
west county. He had prostate cancer, and after two weeks of pain came the morphine. He began to shut down. Wednesday at 10:32 p.m. my fingers closed Clyde's glassy eyes. Nurse aides slipped him into the body bag, then ambulance attendants wheeled him out to the back door past darkened rooms where TVs chattered.

An hour before his heart stopped, Clyde cried out. And then he was gone.

The mansion's west windows glowed with sunlight, edges of frost on the corners, like the half-moons of fingernails. Margot leaned forward after I told her Clyde's story.