“That’s a bummer,” Jimmy said, looking up from his third plateful of food.
“Yes, that’s what it is,” Violet said. “Especially since to this day I have not been able to find that child. So there’s a lesson for you, Camellia. Go see your mother.”
“It’s not that easy, Violet. Even if I wanted to. She lives in New York.”
“New York City?” Violet said, picking up the envelope. “That’s where that detective thinks my Jonny might be. Said his father might have taken him there when they ran away from Chicago. That was back when they were hunting the Communists.”
“Who’s Jonny?” Jimmy said.
“My grandson, of course,” Violet said. “You could at least write to her, Camellia.” She patted the letter before pushing it in Camilla’s direction.
“I’ll get the chocolate pudding,” Camilla said.
“Chocolate is full of caffeine,” Jimmy said.
“My friend Sol used to love his chocolate,” Violet said. “He used to smuggle it into the rest home. The real dark, imported kind. He always bought the best. Shared it with all of us. He knew how to live well, that old man. Shouldn’t have been eating it, though. Always said sweets would be the death of him, and I suppose they were.”
Jimmy didn’t so much eat his pudding as inhale it. Camilla suspected this was not as much a compliment to her pudding as a desire to escape another monologue.
“Gotta go fix that chair,” he said, swallowing his last bite. “I’d better get back to your place and start working on it. Got the key?”
“That sounds like a fine idea,” Violet said. “Now Camellia, you go help him.”
“I’ll help you with these dishes first.”
“No, you won’t, young lady. At my age I should know how to wash dishes all by myself. You go over there with Jamey and have a good talk. I don’t know how you’re going to patch things up if you don’t talk.”
~
Back in Camilla’s apartment, Jimmy said nothing as he attached the chair leg with a few practiced twists of a screwdriver. The new leg didn’t match the other three in any way but height, but the chair appeared to be sturdy as Jimmy set it right side up and gave it a firm pat.
“Good as new,” he said, breaking the silence. “I’ll be looking around for another chair and maybe a chest of drawers. You could use some lamps, too.”
“Thanks, but—you’ve done so much already. I’m fine. I don’t know how to thank you.” She was having terrible visions of lava lamps and plastic beanbag chairs.
“No problem.” Jimmy was at the door. “I’m outta here before that old lady shows up again. What a motor mouth! She drives my aunt crazy. Anything you want me to tell Wave? I’m gonna try and sneak in there tonight—maybe cheer her up.”
“Is she totally depressed about being grounded?”
“Yeah. And now this murder thing has her all weirded out. I told her this morning there’s nothing she can do, so she might as well relax, but her old man is such an—”
“What murder thing?” Was Violet’s conversational manner catching?
“You know. Jon-Don Parker. You work for a newspaper. Don’t you ever read it?”
“I haven’t had time.”
“Me neither. I get my news on TV. Everybody’s been talking about it all day. The coroner said Jon-Don couldn’t have been an accidental O.D. because there was enough pure cocaine and heroin in him to kill an elephant.”
“How do they know he didn’t—you know—do it himself?” Camilla knew this was unlikely. Jon-Don had not seemed even a little suicidal that night.
“I guess because of the angle of the needle or something.” Jimmy said. “Anyway, Wave’s getting paranoid thinking maybe the murderer was at your party and if her name gets dragged into it, her old man’s gonna shit.”
“A murderer? At our house?” This was horrible.
“You got a message for her? I gotta run.”
“No. Just tell her I’m—fine.”
Murder. Suicide. Camilla didn’t want to think about either one. She collapsed on the newly fixed chair. It was actually very comfortable. As she rested her head on a faded green eagle, she remembered that she’d left her mother’s letter on Violet’s table, but she was too tired to brave another bout of Violet’s ramblings. She was also too tired to read about her mother and Lester Stokes. All she wanted was to go to bed early.
After all, she had a job now. At least for a month.
Chapter 16—The Doctor is In
Camilla sat at her desk reading today’s Sentinel. There, next to the article by C. S. Randall titled “Penguins Encounter Immigration Troubles at Sea World,” was an article by Bob Ishido about the coroner’s report on Jon-Don Parker. Bob’s article confirmed everything Jimmy had said last night: Jon-Don’s body had been injected with a combination of cocaine and heroin, both of a purity rarely found on the street, and although they had not ruled out the possibility of suicide, the police suspected foul play.
Camilla shuddered.
“Don’t do that to yourself, Randy,” Bob said. “I never read my own stuff once it’s in print. I always see the things I could have done better. But that’s a good piece. Don’t worry. Kahn wouldn’t have made it a lead story it if it weren’t.” He paused to give her a grin as he rummaged through the chaotic drawers of his desk. Bob was a lot younger than she’d first thought, maybe only in his twenties. She liked him, in spite of his all-business attitude.
“I love Fred and Ginger!” Julie said as she passed Camilla’s desk. “This paper needs more reporters with a sense of humor.”
Today Julie wore a T-shirt with a row of teddy bears printed across the front. Each bear held a small machine gun. Underneath was printed the message “I support the right to arm bears.”
Julie dropped an envelope on Camilla’s desk.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Payday.” Julie handed another envelope to Bob. “We don’t actually expect you to do this for nothing.”
“Not absolutely nothing,” Bob said, opening his envelope. “But close to it.” He stuffed the check, along with several notebooks and a quantity of Bic pens, into the pocket of his shiny polyester jacket. “Goodbye all. See you in a couple of days. Keep up the good work, Randy.”
Bob dashed out of the newsroom, nearly colliding with Stuart on his way out.
Julie giggled. “Bob gets so excited when he’s on a new story,” she said. “He always thinks he’s onto the next Watergate.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t look now, Randy, but I think you’re about to have a close encounter with Mr. Preppie. Excuse me if I don’t hang around. I’m allergic to trust funds.”
A Styrofoam cup of milky brown liquid appeared on Camilla’s desk.
“I hope you take cream and sugar,” Stuart said, “It’s the only way I can drink this swill.”
Camilla took a sip and tried to smile.
“Bob can be rude, but he’s a solid investigative reporter. He has a fascinating theory about the Parker case.”
“You mean about who murdered him?” She tried to sound nonchalant.
“There you go, throwing around the word ‘murder’ like all those TV guys. If you’d read Bob’s story, you’d have noticed that the police haven’t ruled out the possibility of suicide.”
“But Jon-Don wasn’t depressed…” She stopped herself. “That is—from what I’ve heard about him.”
Stuart sat on the corner of her desk. “Of course—from what you’ve heard about him. But how do we know we’ve been given the facts?” He lowered his voice and leaned close to her ear. “Bob’s theory is that Mr. TV star killed himself because he was about to be popped by the FBI.”
“The FBI?” She was not sure she wanted to hear this.
“Right. They love to make examples of celebrities. And Bob has a source who said that one of the people really close to Parker was an undercover FBI man. So if anybody could be accused of ‘murdering’ the poor bastard, it’s our friends from the federal government.
”
“Sounds like Bob has some fascinating ideas, but I’d better get back to work.” Camilla’s mind raced back to the night of the ill-fated party, wondering if this undercover FBI person could possibly have been at her house that night.
She was happy to be rescued by Julie.
“Have you finished that story on the contaminated raw milk?” Julie said, rushing by Camilla’s desk.
“Not quite.”
“You may have to work it into the ‘Living Well’ column. We’ve lost Dr. Lavinia.”
“Don’t tell me Sunshine is having a bad karma day again?” said Stuart.
“Yes, but this time the boss isn’t buying it. She’s being replaced.” Julie gave Camilla’s shoulder a pat.
“He could have run this by me,” said Stuart. “I don’t like losing you in the news department, Randy.” He patted Camilla’s other shoulder.
“You mean—I’m going to write the health food column?” Camilla said. “But I don’t know anything about…”
“Tell it to the boss.” Julie was already on her way down the aisle. “He wants to see you right away.”
“I’m free for dinner tonight, Randy,” Stuart said.
Camilla waited while Mr. Kahn finished his telephone call. She wished she had taken the time to retouch her makeup. She would be more comfortable dealing with him if she knew she looked all right. She smoothed the skirt of her pink linen suit.
Mr. Kahn turned to her and hung up the phone. He had a small blue ink stain on his shirt. For some reason it made her feel better.
“Has Julie explained that you are to be our new Dr. Lavinia?”
“Sort of,” Camilla said slowly. “But I’m not sure I’m really qualified for—”
“You’re not really qualified for much, Ms. Randall,” he said. “But you learn fast. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it. At least you can read and write, which is more than Sunshine could do. And if you can’t handle it, I’ll have a good excuse to drop the column, which I’ve wanted to do from the beginning. When Angela bought the Sentinel, it was pretty much just an advertising circular, but it had its core of loyal readers, so we kept a few of the original columns. Sunshine had been writing the “Living Well” column for years, so we tried to keep her on. It wasn’t easy.”
Camilla looked out of the office as Sunshine stomped toward the stairs, scarves flying, clutching a half-dead philodendron to her ample bosom.
A gray-haired woman peeked in the door. “Everything’s calmed down now, Mr. Kahn,” she said. “But I’m afraid the typewriter will have to be repaired. She dropped a plant on it when she was packing up, and mud seems to have got in the works.”
“Meet our new Dr. Lavinia,” Mr. Kahn said. “I hope she won’t be throwing potted plants at the office machinery.”
His phone rang and he waved them out of the office.
“You don’t have to look as if you’d been banished to Siberia, dear,” the woman said when they were out of the office. “Features isn’t a bad place for a young reporter to get some experience.” She led Camilla to a cubicle containing a large desk covered with stacks of books on diet and health. A faded black and white photo of a severe-faced woman with an old-fashioned hairstyle sat in a frame on the desk.
“Oh, I love doing lifestyle stories,” Camilla said. “But I don’t know the first thing about health food, and posing as a doctor...”
The woman laughed and picked up the photo. “I doubt that the original Lavinia was a doctor, either, and I’m sure you’ll do better than poor Sunshine.”
“There was a real Dr. Lavinia?” Camilla looked at the picture. The woman looked a little like Miss Gulch from the Wizard of Oz.
“Yes, back in the ’50’s, when the Sentinel began. When Lavinia of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three, they kept the name and got somebody else to write the column, since she’d been preaching how eating health food would make you live to be a hundred. You’re probably Dr. Lavinia number eight or nine.”
Camilla stared at the stacks of books. She felt like the princess in the fairy tale who had to spin a room full of straw into gold.
“I’m afraid I don’t know where to start.”
“I’d start by opening the mail. It’s a question and answer column, so you pick out the questions you want to use. Then look up the answers in those books. I’ll get you some of Sunshine’s old columns so you can copy the format. But do us a favor and don’t copy the grammar, OK? And I’m sorry about the portable typewriter. IBM will be here tomorrow to clean the mud out of the Selectric. Poor Sunshine had temper issues. Drug flashbacks, probably. We’ll be so glad to have somebody like you in the department.”
“Like me?”
“Mr. Kahn said you’re classy but tough as nails.”
“‘Classy and tough?’ Mr. Kahn said that about me?” Camilla contemplated this as the woman went back to her own cubicle.
She flipped through the stack of letters on the desk. Her desk. Mr. Kahn must really have liked the penguin story. He had given her a column. Her own column. She felt a rush of excitement as she attacked the stack of mail.
~
At break time, Stuart appeared in the doorway.
“Dr. Lavinia, I presume?” he said. “I got you more coffee.” He handed her the cup. “So you’ve incurred the wrath of Kahn? So, what terrible offense did you commit? Must have been a biggie. Health food! Give me a break.” He picked up a stack of mail and began to leaf through it.
She fought the urge to say something rude.
“So what did you do, huh?” Stuart said, dropping the letters as if they smelled bad. “Did he put the moves on you and you turned him down? If he did, don’t tell Julie. She’s been trying to get into his shorts for months.”
“Thanks for the coffee, but I have work to do, Stuart,” Camilla said.
“Right,” he said, with heavy sarcasm. “You’ve got an important column to write. You can tell me about it at dinner. Maybe some tofu pizza, now you’re a health-food guru? They do make it here, if you can believe…”
She clutched the sides of the old Smith-Corona and imagined smashing the machine over Stuart’s head. But she didn’t suppose that was a thing that a Dr. Lavinia would do.
She had to become Dr. Lavinia. Classy but tough as nails.
“I’m afraid dinner isn’t possible.” She turned her attention to the doctor’s mail
“Hey, that was a joke—about the tofu pizza…”
“Perhaps some other time,” said Dr. Lavinia.
Chapter 17—A Birthday Party
On an afternoon in November, Camilla sat at her desk listening to her stomach growl over the clicking drone of the office typewriters. She checked the lighted green numbers on her new digital watch. The time was 12:47. She was ravenous, but she had agreed to have lunch with Julie, who didn’t take her lunch break until one. Julie was taking her to a local cafe called Ernie’s Joint to celebrate Camilla’s birthday.
Actually, her birthday had been two days ago, and she hadn’t told anyone about it, but Julie had apparently ferreted the information out of her personnel file.
Violet, in some mysterious way of her own, had discovered the date too. On Sunday morning, she woke Camilla from a sound sleep to take her to a birthday brunch at the Del. Over Eggs Florentine, Violet presented her with the digital watch, saying, “I hate them myself, but I know you young people love ’em.”
The large plastic instrument was truly hideous, but it did tell the time, as well as the date, and a vast number of other things she hadn’t figured out yet, and she had almost begun to get used to its hourly beeping for attention. Violet had been sweet to remember she needed a watch. In fact, Violet had been entirely too sweet, much sweeter than an old woman of limited means could afford to be. In addition to the brunch and the watch, a dozen red roses had been waiting at the apartment when they returned from Coronado. The card with the flowers read, “Have a wonderful twentieth, my only love.” It had no signature, but the telltale envelope was
addressed to “Camellia”, so she found it hard to suppress giggles as Violet performed an elaborate charade exclaiming over “Jamey’s” generosity.
“I might have known there was a Scorpio hiding under that angelic exterior,” Julie said, arriving at the door to Camilla’s cube. Today’s T-shirt showed a cartoon of a weeping woman saying “Oh, my God! I forgot to have children!”
“I’m a Scorpio, too,” Julie said as Camilla grabbed her coat. “My birthday is in a couple of weeks. But I’m not exactly going to be twenty. How come you didn’t tell anybody? Nobody needs to keep her twentieth birthday a secret.”
“I didn’t want people to make a big deal,” Camilla said. “Especially Stuart. I’ve been dodging him for the past couple of weeks, but he doesn’t give up easily.”
“‘No’ is a great word. Try it sometime,” Julie said. She led them down the stairs to the street.
“But I’m the new kid. I don’t want to alienate anybody.”
“You’re not so new anymore.” Julie steered her around a corner. “So start telling off the people who bug you. Except me, of course. I write the checks.”
“And Genghis Kahn,” Camilla said with a laugh.
“Don’t be so sure. At the moment Mr. Kahn can’t afford to lose you. Our circulation has tripled in the past two months, and even though he pretends it’s all because of Bob’s Jon-Don Parker investigation, he knows the ‘Living Well’ column is drawing just as many readers.”
“Really?” Camilla had felt the column was going smoothly, and she knew that Mr. Kahn didn’t hate it, since he had kept her on after the one-month trial period, but she hadn’t dreamed it might actually be important to the paper.
“Of course,” Julie said. “In fact, you may even be up for a raise. I shouldn’t say anything, but Mr. Kahn had me pull your records today, which is a real good sign. That’s when I noticed your birth date. I hope you’re hungry.”
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