The Saint Louisans (25 page)

A hearty laugh fluttered from Doc as his arms wrapped around me. “So, the wise nurse has uncertainties. Look Lee, come with me. See for yourself. I'll show you my home.”

“Visit South Africa?”

His fingers closed in, soft and massaging. “Share it with me. Bring Pierce. He's a clever lad. Would do him good. And Jama.”

“Oh God,” I muttered, “the Childe Fantastical.”

“There are plenty of elephants. She'd be right at home.”

Back in the Desouche mansion, the room darkened in its wintery way, a growth of shadows that covered and dulled the delicacy of its beauty. It recalled the emptiness of Saul's Persepolis. Winter can take away the living, entice them that the barrenness of what is before you is all there is. The sick die so easily in these months of the solstice hangover. I sighed.

“I remember laughing at that, at Doc's comment about Jama and the elephants. He was so understanding. So kind. Generous. And when we slept together that night, the words of Sara's poem whispered to me as the moon glowed in the window: Oh are you asleep, or lying awake, my lover? / Open your dreams to my love and your heart to my words …

I turned to Margot. She had fallen asleep sometime during my reverie. I looked at her weary face and its wrinkled valleys. There were traces of me, of what I would become. She was my mother. But it was hard to say the word, to call her mother because I was also her nurse, and I had to help her die.

For a moment, I felt my breath shorten; a slow beginning of tears. It wasn't Margot I was almost ready to cry for, but Doc. I'd lost him, and he'd come back for just a moment—decent, urbane, compassionate. He was dead. Killed. He had become his own Australia.

I blinked as the lights came on. Looking up, Rainer sternly stood by the switch.

“Mrs. Bridger. It is time to go home.”

I slowly pulled myself to my feet.

The next day I went about my business, trying to be optimistic, as St. Louisans need to do in January. You see the days grow longer as light peeps around buildings, the sun at rooftop level where two weeks ago it sunk without so much as a goodbye. Winter light here is bleak or blinding. Your natural clock anticipates more sun, like a kid does seconds. That's because St.
Louisans are southerners at heart. We like one good snowfall at Christmas, a nippy spell a week after, then bring on spring.

The snow receded and was shoveled into piles of gray slush. I walked briskly.

“Hey there!”

I frowned and turned as the man, smartly decked out in a fedora and camel's hair overcoat, closed in. His face beamed with a Denzel Washington confidence.

“Hey there back,” I said, and kept walking. He marched alongside me, making us a parade of two.

“You're Lee Bridger, right?”

“Sure am.”

“I knew it! Lucky day.”

My smile and frown made a civil shield. “Do I know you?”

He stood tall, hands jauntily thrust in pockets. “Me? I'm nobody. Mr. Nobody. This is for you.”

He pressed a stiff white envelope into my hand.

“Got to say you were an easy one,” he winked. “Sometimes I gotta run 'em down. You're okay. Hey, gotta go.”

I frowned and ripped open the envelope. Its official paper like the kind a butcher wraps chops in, making you expect to find a scorpion in legalese.

I read it and my jaw dropped. I'd just been subpoenaed.

The City Courts building is a 386-foot tower of civic gravitas. It's called the St. Louis Pyramid because the summit of its milk carton like sleekness is a replica of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Sphinxes guard its west and east approaches, its 1923 completion another example of King Tut's magic upon our fair city. I admire it, but not as I glumly walked to its pillared entrance and bas-relief statues of justice, because today I was summoned.

“She issued a restraining order against me,” I complained to Tad Woloziak, my attorney, walking beside me. I clutched my purse, looking at the swastikas girdling the building's waist, built when they were still totems of luck, not Hitlerian claws.

“It'll be short and sweet,” he said as we entered.

The interior's black pillars matched the security desk, a shiny bunker flanked by electronic barriers, all a quasi-Egyptian temple. Tad nodded to the guards as he led me to the elevator, our footsteps echoing on the marble and high ceilings. The Mummy Man would have loved to have been on display here. It was made to order for him.

“Come on, Lee. Relax.”

“I feel like one of those nuts my ex dates. The waitress from Pascagoula who kept bugging me. Sending orders of pizza to the apartment, telephoning and hanging up. As if I was trying to hold onto Sky.” I blinked at that sordid memory.

Tad nodded, an attorney's usual dutiful empathy. “We got Judge Fosdick.”

“Is that his real name?”

“What?”

“Don't you remember Lil' Abner? Fearless Fosdick?'”

His frown meant I was dating myself.

“I'm post baby boomer, so it's ancient history to me, but might not be to Fos. I'll do the talking.”

The elevator doors swished open. We glided past a squad of jurors. People slouched on wooden benches like commuters waiting for an overdue train. The letters to the courtroom stood before us in black and white titles, like Class A Hollywood credits. Division 26. Judge Henry Fosdick.

“Okay, Lee. Say nothing. Look blank as Velveeta. Fos is not a happy camper when the defendant tries to sing an aria. If you try to argue, that means time, time means money, and Terri and Pierre have deep pockets. They can afford a few weeks of justice. How much can you afford?”

I bit my lip. “I'll be a good girl.”

He opened the door. “It'll be short and sweet.”

“Bittersweet,” I muttered.

The charges were read. I'd been rude, intrusive, stalked Ms. Praxos, etc., and so forth. Said Velveeta look kicked in, and I held my face as impassive as an empty canvas. It reminded me when patients accuse you of causing pain, stealing, refusing to come quick enough to the buzzer. You shrug and accept. Terri was, after all, a kind of patient in need of a cure.

I was dutifully admonished to keep eighty feet away from Ms. Praxos, and only to consult her through my attorney. I was thankful there was no crowd except two print guys from the Fourth Estate, dutifully scratching in their pads, disappointed there was no judicial cat fight. One bored retiree urged his chum to come on, they were going to miss the murder trial next door.

The gavel pounded, and there it was.

Terri sat through all this, stern and wounded. After justice was served she glanced at me, her contented smile meaning she'd put Big Sis in her place. Tad and I ducked the reporters as they homed in on Terri. We hurried to the elevator. I had things to do.

On the tattered border of the near south side lies what was once Billie Goat Hill. When the circus came to town and was on its way out, it was where the elephants turned to lead the departing parade onto the trains. Now it's an urban Sahara, with a bar here and there as a neon oasis. Except for today, because the show must go on.

I made my way past a vast caravan of trailers huddled together as if bracing for an attack from the natives. The city block, a wasted quarter of abandoned shops and shoe-box factories, was lined with props and cables crisscrossing the street like a python convention and teeming with techies dressed in grunge and toting lights while trying to navigate around girls decked out in fashionable skank-and-skinny with cell phones clamped to their ears while they ticked off lists on clipboards. Every other person had a radio, all squawking at once.

Bloodwreck
was on location, and I ducked a prop dude toting a ladder. Then a second duck as a girl brushed past with a clutch of plastic flamingos. Twelve feet ahead was Dickie, and I aimed for him.

Dickie Keach does it all: from onstage spear carrier to roadie, and last summer his Parolles was one of the delights of our Shakespeare in Forest Park. His soft leather jacket wrinkled like a second skin. Dickie's cheeks sprouted the obligatory three-day stubble and coffee steamed from his Styrofoam cup. He nodded to a clipboard girl, then saw me and shook his head.

“Hey, Lee. Closed set.”

Dickie shot off quick orders to a set guy holding up something scrawled on pasteboard. I closed in.

“I need to see Jama.”

“No can do. Her scene's coming up.”

“Come on. You owe me.”

“Christ, what's that, our national motto?”

“I think
E Pluribus Unum
got outsourced.”

What Dickie owed me for was the gig I got him a couple of years ago at the med school at Washington University. They need actors to do symptoms for med students. I tipped Dickie off, coached him. Now, he's always in demand, especially for liver disease and the tertiary stages of bursitis. Those are real Olivier roles, and the paycheck is good. I blocked him and he sighed.

“Fucking Jama. She missed the cattle call two months ago, just bops in
to the Sheraton where Metrovski's holed up, gets to him, and comes out with eight lines. Since she's SAG, she makes the rate.”

“What can I say? My lovely daughter majored in gate crashing.”

Only a few hundred feet away the urban death continued unabated, but this block was a one-day beehive.

The leading man and woman had assembly line beauty straight out of the soaps. My heart jumped as Jama walked up, wearing a long leather coat, knee boots, hair semi-bunned with loose strands. She played a hooker. I hoped it wasn't an ominous prepping for a future part in Rasheed Productions.

A brief huddle as Metrovski, the director, gestured his wants, and Jama stepped back into an entrance whose faded brass doors once opened into a restaurant. Metrovski picked up his radio. The camera readied themselves.

“Okay,” Dickie shouted. “Camera! Background action!”

Extras came to life and filled the street with a hustle it hadn't seen in decades.

“Action!”

The clapper slapped like a wooden guillotine.

The man and woman walked together. I couldn't make out their lines, but body language meant a lover's quarrel. Jama slinked and edged between them, her lines with the leading man gave the leading lady a case of the green-eyed shits. Jama's smile showed a sidewalk victory. She tossed her head and catted away.

“Cut!”

The scene was repeated over and over. After each cut, make-up babes streaked out like medics on the battlefield, daubed the actors, and retreated as if under fire.

I didn't mind the cold. It was moderately sunny, light and shadow adding a dimension of sadness to the block. The film was on a shoestring budget, and St. Louis is a cheap shoot. Our saving grace is our awfulness. All the decades-old, rundown housing is perfect for a Depression era film, with alleys only mobsters could love. If you want to relive your bad dreams, come here. Our crowning achievement in film locations was
Escape From New York
, when St. Louis filled in for a rotted Big Apple of the future. Take eight concluded.

“Cut! Print!”

The set resumed its bustle, my feet numb from the cold. Jama slanged with some actors, glanced at me, and tried to escape. Too late. I closed in.

“Let's talk,” I said.

Jama tossed her hair. Strands danced. “I got another scene coming up, so I—” Dickie marched past.

“Break for lunch!”

She lied again. I folded my arms. “Look, kiddo, neither of us are each other's favorite drop-in, but this is important.”

The main cast and first unit got a catered meal in a nearby restaurant. Everybody else got Imo's pizza in a plastic tent. Jama and I sat as extras huddled in packs around steaming pizza with its unforgettable, effluvium of Provel. Space heaters blew waves of heat, but doing no good for my numb toes. I motioned to the stars entering their limo.

“Anyone I should know?”

Jama shook her head and scooped up a slice. “Still B list. She held us up for a few minutes. Didn't like the bottled water. Had to get another brand.”

“That's picky.”

She shrugged it off. The star is the star. Jama would have been no different. My fingers scraped a slice of pizza, its cheese almost gluing it to the cardboard. “I've information—”

“God,” muttered Jama, looking around. “St. Louis. This place is Stupidtown in the land of stupid.”

“Rasheed's with Al Qaeda. Saul found out from sources.”

“So, this ‘source' is a guy you used to bang?”

I pursed my lips. “Rasheed's dangerous, but we think we can put him on the defensive. Get Homeland Security's interest, then wrangle our hired muscle a deportation hearing.”

Jama went after a slice of pizza. “Yeah, great job. Good show. Got 'em running, Mom.” All of this in as bored a tone as when she was a teenager, ready to bolt the table or apartment for mischief making. I continued.

“I can tap Gunderson. He used to be FBI but teaches at Case Western, poor S.O.B. He might have some hints on getting Rasheed.”

She looked away and waved to one of the clipboard girls, who waved back. I stared at her, tapping my fingers on the table. “Am I boring you?”

Jama kept eating. “I'm taking care of this, okay? I don't need the boyfriend militia.”

Elbows on the table, I leaned forward, voice set on icy. “Look, kiddo, I'm trying to save your ass from a very bad dude, and I'd appreciate a little concern on your part. You owe this son of a camel a hundred grand.”

“Eighty thou. He's skimming, I'm telling you. Look, I'll tough this out. I'm coming up with something.”

“Jama, this is bad shit. It's the worst thing you've ever been in.”

“I've been in worse.” She wiped her hand. “Of course, there is a simpler way.”

“I'm listening.”

“Ask Grandma.”