“I guess so. Do you need help, Mom?”
“No. I’m good. Run along, dear. I want some coffee first.”
When Fancy left the kitchen, Angelica Dancer maneuvered her wheelchair so that she had easy access to the counter on which the coffeepot rested. She poured with trembling hands. Lord, she hated how crippled she’d become. It wouldn’t be long now before her hands would betray her, and she’d have to eat foods she could grasp in both hands. She could walk, and at times she did, but the pain was so excruciating, she opted for the chair most of the time. She struggled to put on what she called her game face as she stared off into space.
She worried about her daughter just the way any mother would worry about her child. Fancy was... bitter. She was also angry. She cried at night, and Angelica knew this because her room was right next to Fancy’s. She herself had gone through all the emotions her daughter was going through. But somewhere along the way she’d lost the anger and the bitterness because she knew it wasn’t healthy to harbor such hatred. Fancy, she told herself, just isn’t at that point yet.
The moment she’d set eyes on Jake St. Cloud, her thoughts had whizzed forward like a freight train out of control. Maybe he was the one for Fancy. She’d seen the gentleness in his eyes and knew somehow that he was a kind man. When she’d relayed her observations about Jake to her daughter, Fancy had reared back and spewed all kinds of things about his being a rich, no-account playboy, a selfish individual who thought the law didn’t apply to him. Then she’d said, Did you see that Rolex on his wrist? Well, let me tell you how much that cost. That watch goes for over a hundred thousand dollars. I just saw a picture of it in one of those magazines we get. We could run this place for two years on what he squandered on a stupid watch. Angel had been appalled at the venom in her daughter’s voice and dropped the issue of Jake St. Cloud.
Angel’s eyes filled with tears. How many hours had she spent in the beginning, listening to her daughter during the long nights as she tried unsuccessfully to work the ballet bar because she was determined to dance again. It was so heartbreaking to listen through the walls or outside the door as she would stumble and fall only to get up and stumble and fall again until her body was black-and-blue. Even then, she hadn’t given up. The night she’d fractured her hip and had to be transported to the hospital by the EMTs was when she gave up. When the orthopedic specialists had told her that arthritis would set in at some point and raised the possibility she could end up like her mother, that was all she finally needed to give up her dream of being a prima ballerina. At her suggestion that Fancy talk to a therapist, her daughter had gone ballistic, saying she didn’t need to talk to anyone. They never spoke of it again.
It was strange to Angel that the scar on Fancy’s face didn’t seem to bother her. She wasn’t vain, never had been, even as a young girl. Beauty, she’d said, was in the eye of the beholder. And yet, she had seen Fancy’s hand go to her face in a reflexive motion when Jake St. Cloud entered their lives ever so briefly. The very next day, Fancy had loosened her hair so that it draped over her cheek whenever she felt the need to hide the scar.
Angel sighed as she set her coffee cup on the counter and wheeled herself out of the room and down the hall to her own room. All she could do was pray that her daughter would come to terms with her capabilities and deal with them in a rational manner. Nine years was just way too long to wallow in self-pity. Just way too long.
Chapter 7
Alex Rosario threw on an old pair of sweats and a tattered workout shirt. His feet went into equally battered sneakers. He didn’t bother to tie the laces. He galloped through the house and ran smack into his mother in the kitchen. Startled, she backed up and stared at her son. “Do you know what time it is? Where are you going at this hour of the morning, Alex? Is something wrong?” she asked anxiously.
“Miss Dancer called me and said that the court terminated Jake’s probation at the foundation, and he had to leave the premises. With his father. She seemed very upset. She wants me to see the court papers. I guess she couldn’t sleep and decided to call me. I don’t know, Mom, but that’s why I’m going there.”
“I guess that makes sense. Call me if there’s anything I can do.”
“I will, Mom.” Alex gave his mother a bone-crushing hug and ran out to his car.
With no traffic on the road, Alex arrived at the Dancer home in twenty-three minutes. Lights outside and on the first floor blazed in the darkness. He drove around to the back of the property, near the rear entrance, and parked his car. Fancy Dancer was standing in the doorway. He could see her mother in her wheelchair behind her. Why does crap always happen to nice people?
When no answer was forthcoming, Alex bounded up the steps. Angelica Dancer held out a cup of coffee. He reached for it gratefully. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two pieces of paper on the kitchen table.
“Jake just left with him? Did he say anything?”
Fancy shook her head. “Well, yes, he did. He apologized to me for his father’s obnoxious behavior. He was angry at his father, I can tell you that. He did not want to go with him.”
“But he went, that’s the bottom line.” Alex reached for the papers on the table and read through them. Then he threw his hands in the air. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do. I’m willing to try but . . .”
“Jake said to call you. I assume that means he wants you to try,” Fancy said as she kneaded her hands together. “What will happen to you if you try?”
Alex shrugged. “Sometimes you just can’t fight the politics of a small town. Judge Spindler is a crony of Jonah St. Cloud’s. Everyone within a hundred-mile radius of Slidell knows that oil controls everything around here. You say the word oil, and in the next breath the name Jonah St. Cloud pops out of your mouth. No one is going to go up against that. This is a wild guess on my part, but something serious must have happened on the rig for the old man to call in markers and spring Jake like that.”
“Jake wasn’t happy to be going with his father. He was doing very well here. He didn’t cause one bit of trouble, and he did everything we told him to do plus a little extra. The kids liked him, and it appeared to us that he liked them.” This last was said so grudgingly that Alex stared at Fancy in disbelief.
Fancy turned defensive. “I had... what I mean is . . .”
“What my daughter is trying to say is that she had preconceived ideas about Jake, owing to the press coverage he’s had over the years. The young man who reported in to us is nothing like what we read about him. He didn’t expect anything; nor did he ask for anything. He refused to take my room, and when my daughter offered hers, he refused that, too, and even apologized for creating a fuss on the day of his arrival. He’s been sleeping on a rickety cot with a sleeping bag and showering up here at the house. To me, that says a lot about that young man.”
“So now you’re shorthanded with Jake gone?”
“We’ll get by. We did before he came. Each time we have the newspapers run a story on us, we get a new wave of volunteers. We have it under control, at least for now,” Fancy said.
“This is just my opinion, but only a fool would have turned down whatever Mr. St. Cloud’s offer was. I’m thinking it was some kind of oil emergency, and when that’s over and done with, Jake is a free agent. Staying here, he was locked into a full year with that ankle monitor and loss of his driving privileges. I’m being honest here. I would have done the same thing,” Angel said.
“Mom, Jake didn’t want to go with his father. He had no choice,” Fancy snapped. “You saw him; you heard him; he wasn’t thinking long-term. He didn’t want to go, period.”
Alex thought Fancy was sounding more agitated by the moment. Maybe agitated was the wrong word. Maybe frustrated was the word he was looking for. The question at the moment, though, was why would she be expressing either emotion, considering her initial reaction to Jake? Definitely something to think about when he had more time. At present, though, he had to get home and get showered and
changed so he could head to the courthouse to see what he could do for Jake. If anything.
Alex folded the papers and jammed them into the pocket of his sweatpants. “I don’t know what, if anything, I can do, but I’m more than willing to take a shot at doing something. Jake didn’t say what he wanted me to do, did he?”
“No, just to call you,” Fancy said. “Will you let us know what happens?”
“Of course. Sorry you got your night’s sleep ruined.”
“Sleep? What’s that?” Angel smiled. “It’s not something to worry about, young man.”
“Well then, I guess I’d better get going, because I’ll have to go into the office first. I’ll call you when I know something.”
Fancy walked Alex to the door. “Thank you for coming out, Mr. Rosario. I’m sorry about all of this. For whatever this is worth, Jake did not want to go with his father. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell that Jake was very angry with that man when they left the house. Parents and their children should not be adversaries, and that’s what it looked like to me from where I was standing. My mother thought the same thing.”
Alex nodded. Not for all the oil in the Gulf of Mexico would he divulge Jake’s feelings about his father to this young woman and her mother. He simply nodded and left the house.
It was still dark out as Alex drove home. His mother had probably left already for the restaurant. He felt a pang of guilt that she had to go to work so early in the morning, when it was still dark out, to get ready for the breakfast crowd. He felt a new appreciation for his mother.
There was a little more traffic on his return than when he had left. The early birds who had to be at work by six were on the road and looking for a place to stop to fuel up on coffee before starting the daily grind.
Fifteen minutes later, Alex was sprinting from his car to the back door. He smiled when he saw that his mother had left the porch light on for him. Once inside, he turned it off, a rule of his mother’s. We do not live to make the electric company happy. Translation: turn off the lights when you leave a room. After long years of practice, it was an ingrained habit.
The kitchen smelled good. His mother had baked him some cinnamon buns. They were still warm. The coffeemaker was ready—he just had to press the button.
Alex sat down at the table to wait for the coffee to drip into the pot. Damnation, he needed to think. Think! What was it Jake expected him to do? More to the point, what could he do? Obviously, Jake thought that there was something he could do; otherwise he would not have told Fancy Dancer to call him. What? He wasn’t a high-dollar attorney people listened to. He was a simple storefront lawyer who would never get rich practicing his kind of law. A month ago, he’d thought about moonlighting just to get a little ahead, so he could have a cushion if he fell on hard times.
Alex was off his chair the moment he heard the last gurgle of coffee dripping into the pot.
He barely noticed that he’d scalded his tongue or even how tasty the cinnamon buns were, because his head was buzzing like an angry beehive. He needed a diversion. He turned on the small television set his mother kept on the kitchen counter so that before she went to bed she could watch the soaps she was addicted to. He suffered through the weather report—overcast and cloudy with the temperatures in the low sixties. To him, the low sixties was shiver weather. He tucked the thought into his mind to dress accordingly, as the heating system in the storefront was less than desirable.
The weather guy drifted off, and the early-morning newsperson, makeup intact, his hair blow-dried, appeared, his expression solemn as he said, “While this has not been one-hundred-percent confirmed, reliable sources are telling us that there’s been an oil spill at the St. Cloud oil rig.” Mr. Pretty Boy News Anchor looked down at what Alex presumed was a monitor of some sort, and said, “This is just coming in now, and, again, not confirmed, that Jake St. Cloud, the son of Jonah St. Cloud, has been seen going out to the rig. The only reason this could be happening, I’m told by a source, is that there is, indeed, an oil spill. We have calls in to the Coast Guard, but so far nothing has been confirmed from them, either.”
Alex felt his stomach clench into a tight knot. He remembered only too well how the BP oil explosion and the disaster that followed had hurt the people and the state of Louisiana and the whole Gulf region. He’d heard back then, when the rumblings were so fierce, that Jake had been called in months earlier and had warned the oil company of an imminent explosion. He hadn’t paid that much attention at the time because Jake St. Cloud was on his shit list, right up there in the number one spot. Now, he had to pay attention.
Alex continued to gulp at his coffee, getting up to refill his cup. He looked down at the tray of cinnamon buns and realized he’d eaten six of them, which meant he was going to have to run ten miles instead of five after work. He continued to listen as the news anchor started rehashing all the things that had gone wrong with BP and pointing fingers and making veiled accusations.
Alex turned off the coffeemaker and wrapped the remaining sticky buns in plastic wrap. Satisfied that the kitchen was tidy, he rinsed his cup and put it in the dishwasher before sprinting up the stairs to take his morning shower.
Forty minutes later, Alex locked the door and headed for his car. His watch said that it was six forty-five. Fifteen more minutes and he’d have hit rush-hour traffic. By leaving at this time, he’d make it to the office at exactly seven o’clock if he hit every traffic light just right. If not, he’d be strolling into his office at ten after. Time to do what he had to do to get ready for his day, then head off to the courthouse to get his body pounded into the ground by some damn cranky judge who was probably on Jonah St. Cloud’s payroll.
At precisely three minutes to eight, Alex Rosario walked through the courthouse doors and stood patiently behind a long line of lawyers, defendants, and plaintiffs waiting to go through security. When it was his turn, he plopped his briefcase down and emptied his pockets. “No, I don’t have a cell phone on me,” he said to one of the security guards.
On the other side of the scanner, Alex pocketed his keys and loose change and swept his briefcase off the conveyor belt. He strode down the hall in search of the court clerk’s office, where he planned to ask for a ten-minute meeting with St. Tammany Parish Judge Porter Spindler. In the world of the law, ten minutes was a lifetime, or so judges would have you believe.
Alex slowed down as he approached the clerk’s office. He looked around and wondered if all courthouses looked like this one. He’d never tried a case, because he wasn’t a litigator. While he was no stranger to this particular courthouse, he wasn’t all that familiar with it, either. He’d appeared before judges on behalf of his clients and taken his prizes and his lumps like every other lawyer walking around the halls. He sniffed and thought about the different schools he’d attended and how they all smelled the same, of chalk and paper and that green stuff the janitors poured on the floor, whatever it was called. Every day was the same—the smell had never intensified nor lessened all during his school years. The courthouse was the same way, but he couldn’t identify this smell, and it bothered him. He was just being nervous, he told himself, because he knew that if Spindler agreed to see him, the judge would smack him down hard. First rule: never argue with a judge unless you want contempt charges filed against you. The other unwritten rule was you sucked it up, you smiled, then you headed to the men’s room to lick your wounds. Well, that damn well isn’t going to happen. Not today.
Alex opened the door to the clerk’s office to see a dour-looking woman with glasses perched on the end of her nose. Just eight o’clock, and she already looked like she’d eaten two lawyers for breakfast and spit out two others. She looked up at Alex and said, “Speak!”
“I’m Alex Rosario. I represent Jake St. Cloud. I need to speak with Judge Spindler as soon as possible. It’s important, or I wouldn’t be here,” Alex said as forcefully as he could.
Maybe it was the name St. Cloud, maybe it was his own
good looks, or maybe the dragon in the clerk had a soft spot, because she eyed him a moment longer, told him to sit down, and said she’d be right back. Before she opened the door, she asked, “How much time do you need, Mr. Rosario, assuming Judge Spindler has some free time?”
Alex almost swallowed his tongue. “Ten minutes! Five if I talk fast.”
A small smile stretched across the dragon’s face. “Five might work.”
Alex felt as though there were an army of ants crawling around inside his stomach as he waited for the clerk to return. When she did, he was relieved to see the smile on her face. “The judge said he can see you right now for five minutes. When he says five minutes, he means five minutes. Do you understand that, Mr. Rosario?”
“I do, ma’am, and thank you.” This was just too damn easy. It had to be the St. Cloud name. Five minutes. Crap, it will take that long to get my tongue to work.
“I’m waiting, Mr. Rosario,” the clerk snapped. “Follow me, please. And let me warn you ahead of time, the judge does not appear to be in a good mood this morning.”
“Neither am I, ma’am,” Alex said boldly. “Neither am I.” He repeated the words more for himself than the court clerk.
Chapter 8
It was the first time Alex had ever been in a judge’s chambers. He looked around and admitted to himself that he was impressed: dark paneling on the walls polished to a high sheen; the one-of-a-kind coatrack where the judge’s robe hung on a padded hanger; pictures on the wall, of the judge and the governor, the judge and the vice president of the United States, the judge and the secretary of state, the judge and everyone and anyone. On the shelf behind his massive desk were pictures that appeared to be of family, all in the same kind of ornate frames. Two easy chairs sat nestled across the room, with a small table in front of them, legal magazines stacked neatly upon it. A lush green ficus tree looked so perfect as it reached toward the overhead fluorescent lighting that Alex wondered if it was real. He was tempted to pinch one of the leaves but then remembered why he was here.
Fancy Dancer Page 8
