Life Everlasting

by Robert Whitlow

  “Sweetheart, it’s Rena. Remember that I love you very, very much. You can’t trust everyone, but you know that I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  Baxter’s head jerked slightly so that his ear brushed against Rena’s lips. The physical contact overloaded her circuits. Rena fled from the room.

  6

  Eat to live, and not live to eat.

  POOR RICHARD’S ALMANAC

  Shortly before noon, Alexia called Leggitt & Freeman and asked to speak to Gwen Jones. The receptionist put Alexia on hold. Anyone waiting to speak to a lawyer or staff member at Leggitt & Freeman listened to a random series of beeps and tones. Alexia once suggested Rachmaninoff might be a sophisticated alternative, but Ralph Leggitt dismissed her idea as snobby.

  In a minute, her former secretary answered in a harried voice.

  “Hold, please.”

  Before Alexia could protest, she returned to the never-never land of beeps. She was about to hang up and try later when Gwen’s voice returned.

  “Gwen Jones. How may I help you?”

  “You can tell the office manager to get rid of the infuriating sounds that play when a person is on hold. Are you too busy to talk?”

  “I’m swamped. Leonard has been trying to make up for goofing off the past two weeks, and the new lawyer wants all his correspondence to go through three drafts. How many times can you change a cover letter for a client receiving a draft copy of a simple will?”

  “Can you sneak away for lunch?” Alexia asked.

  “Isn’t there a federal law that gives me an hour for lunch?”

  “No, but you’ll not be able to type one hundred words a minute if you don’t keep up your strength.”

  “I can squeeze in an hour. Are you willing to feed my soul as well as my stomach?”

  Alexia knew what that meant. “Yes, but we’d better leave now if we want to get a table.”

  “I’m already turning off my computer.”

  Gwen loved soul food, and when she and Alexia went to lunch, she often insisted they go to Cousin Bert’s. Having lived all her life in South Carolina, Gwen recalled with bliss old-fashioned Southern dinners at her grandmother’s house, and Cousin Bert’s capably fed her childhood memories.

  Owned by an African-American family, Cousin Bert’s was located behind Main Street in a low concrete-block building painted white. For many years it had been one of the special places where blacks and whites came together to sit down in mutual respect for perfectly seasoned collard greens, expertly fried chicken, and sweet tea garnished with a thick slice of lemon. Few tourists stumbled upon the hidden culinary glory, and local residents didn’t reveal the secret to strangers. An old Pepsi sign on a rusty iron pole beside the front door announced the name of the eating establishment.

  Alexia arrived before Gwen and parked carefully in Bert’s small gravel lot so that she would be able to exit unhindered. By 12:30 PM cars would pack themselves in so tightly that it might be hard to find a path back to the street. She opened her car door, careful not to nick Judge Garland’s new white Lincoln. A van with the name of a local plumbing company stenciled on the side rested at an angle on the other side of the judge’s sedan.

  Inside, the tide of lunchtime patrons was beginning to rise. Waitresses carrying plates heaped with food scurried from the kitchen into the brightly lit dining area filled with simple tables and plain chairs. Alexia saw Judge Garland sitting in a back corner with two men she didn’t know. He didn’t look up when she entered.

  Alexia selected a table for two against the wall next to a narrow window and sat so she could watch the door for Gwen. Pictures of Bert and members of his extended family decorated the walls, along with photos of other members of the community. A picture of a white brick mason hung beside a photo of a distinguished-looking black man in a dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie. Alexia didn’t know the rationale behind the eclectic collection but suspected each picture was the beginning or end of a story. An older, dark-skinned waitress came up to her. Alexia recognized her face.

  “Just you today?” she asked.

  “No, Gwen Jones is coming.”

  The waitress nodded and scribbled on her pad.

  “I’ll bring out two teas—sweet for Gwen and unsweet with extra lemon for you.”

  Alexia glanced over at Judge Garland. This time he saw her, smiled, and nodded in greeting. Alexia was relieved. She’d not been sure how the judge would view her since she’d left Leggitt & Freeman. She’d worked hard to earn his respect, but his long-standing personal relationships with other attorneys and judges could trump her competency. Since she was no longer associated with an established firm, Alexia worried she might be viewed by the local bar as a maverick.

  Gwen entered just as the tea and two small cornbread cakes arrived at the table. In the few days since Alexia had last seen her, Gwen had changed her hair color from a reddish-blonde to brown with auburn tips. Gwen loved brightly colored clothes and kept a perpetual tan. She hurried over and sat down.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” she said. “Leonard gave me a document that had to be changed before a closing scheduled this afternoon.”

  “Had you made a mistake?”

  Gwen picked up a steamy cornbread cake and broke it in two. “No, he miscalculated and dropped the last zero for the proceeds to the seller. It would have been ugly.”

  “Ouch.”

  Gwen put a generous swath of whipped butter on the cornbread and took her first bite. She closed her eyes.

  “That’s the ultimate,” she said.

  Alexia also liked the cornbread. Bert’s rendition was sweeter than typical cornpone.

  “He’s going to make a mistake someday and cost the firm a bunch of money,” Alexia said.

  Gwen sipped her tea. “When he does and gets booted out, promise me you won’t take him under your wing.”

  Alexia laughed. “I won’t be on his radar screen. Leonard will forget my name in six months.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think he knew me when I showed up on Monday with my new hair.”

  “It’s nice.”

  Gwen fluffed it gently. “It’s close to my natural color.”

  “Liar. Your hair has forgotten its original color.”

  They ordered lunch. Gwen selected dark-meat fried chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans. At Cousin Bert’s, the green beans were cooked with tiny pieces of bacon and brown sugar for an hour before the lunchtime crowd arrived. Alexia preferred green beans steamed for two minutes and covered with toasted almonds. She chose the soup of the day, which was always a seafood gumbo seasoned with a generous touch of cayenne pepper.

  “That gumbo is more than I can handle,” Gwen said after the waitress left. “It’s potent enough to raise the dead. If I ate a bowl for lunch, I’d be miserable all afternoon.”

  “Maybe a bowl is just what Baxter Richardson needs to bring him all the way back to consciousness.”

  “What do you mean?” Gwen asked in surprise.

  Alexia told her about Rena’s call.

  “He opened his eyes,” Gwen repeated. “What do the doctors say?”

  “Nothing yet. The local neurologist may come by this afternoon. If he does, Rena is going to call me so I can be there to listen.”

  Gwen shook her head. “I guess Rena feels terrible about trying to cut off Baxter’s life support.”

  “It’s hard to know what she thinks,” Alexia said. “That seems to depend on how she feels at any given moment. She still faces the possibility that Baxter will be a total invalid with significant brain damage. Even if he wakes up, he’ll be a quadriplegic. On top of it all, she’s got that wild card of a father-in-law. He’s the ultimate control freak.”

  Gwen nodded. “It might have been better if Baxter had slipped quietly away.”

  The waitress brought their food. The mashed potatoes were flecked with tiny pieces of brown peel that conclusively established their link with potatoes harvested from the ground rather than poured from a box. Alexia too
k a sip of soup. It made the edge of her tongue sizzle.

  “Ted Morgan and I went to see Baxter yesterday,” she said after they’d eaten in silence for a few moments. “He wanted to pray for him, and Rena agreed to let me take him in.”

  Gwen nodded. “Rachel told me.”

  Alexia stopped her spoon between her bowl and her mouth. “What else did Rachel tell you?”

  “I hope everything.”

  “You’ve never had me under such an intense microscope. Did you talk this much about Jason and me when we were engaged?”

  “Not with Rachel. Jason was always a long way off, and I only met him once. I kept my thoughts to myself.”

  “Really? Let’s hear them.”

  “You asked me at the time. Don’t you remember my response?”

  It had been more than a year since Jason Favreau last visited Santee on his way to a job in southern France. Alexia was scheduled to join him a short time afterward for a week in Marseilles to finalize wedding plans. The day before she left, he called and broke off the engagement. Barely a month passed before he married a French girl.

  “No.”

  “That’s because you weren’t paying attention. I grunted twice, which meant I was as concerned for you as a mother bear is for her cubs when a hunter comes tromping through the woods.”

  “Why didn’t you speak up?”

  “Would it have done any good? You thought Jason was a perfect match. Your head was filled with a lifetime of exotic trips to places I’ve never heard of.”

  “Ouch.”

  Gwen leaned forward and patted her hand. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Alexia. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”

  “And I’m glad to know how you really felt. Promise not to keep your thoughts to yourself in the future.”

  “But I can be wrong.”

  “Sure. However, I respect your opinion,” Alexia paused. “What about Ted Morgan? What do you think about the difference in our ages?”

  “His age is a plus in my book. Most men don’t know how to walk through a door before they’re thirty-five. Ted is in his midforties, right?”

  “Yes, forty-four.”

  “Then you have a clearer picture of who he really is than if he were wandering around in a typical male postcollege identity crisis.”

  “Well, I’m comfortable with the age difference. It’s not something I think about when I’m with him, and he’s more tuned in to how I feel than anyone I’ve met. We’re not too serious, but there’s potential.”

  Gwen slowly chewed a piece of chicken before continuing. “I’ve never met him, and there’s no substitute for looking a man in the eye, so I’ll reserve final judgment. But I have to know, are you attracted to the man or the music?”

  Alexia’s quick answer died on her lips. She ate a spoonful of soup before responding.

  “I love the music, and he has a unique gift,” she admitted. “But it’s more complicated than that. There’s also the influence he’s had on what I believe. He’s been my spiritual guide. Until I met him, Christianity was on the fringe of my world. Now it’s become much more important, and Ted is at the center of what’s happening to me in that area of my life.”

  “All of which means you need to take your foot off the romance pedal. He may be a great piano player and a good counselor, but it’s hard for me to see you happy with a minister. You’re too ambitious to sign up for that kind of lifestyle.”

  Alexia shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “It looks to me like the pendulum may have swung the other way. With Jason, you would have been hopping all over the world, never knowing where you’d be from month to month. Ted Morgan might not even have time to take you to Charleston for a weekend.”

  Alexia sipped her tea. “You’re right. I’ve been too narrow with him. I need to understand the bigger picture of his life.”

  “And where a woman like you would fit into it.”

  The two women split dessert, a massive piece of coconut cream pie that towered at least four inches above the plate.

  “How could one person eat all this?” Alexia asked.

  Gwen carefully carved out another sliver and sighed with content. “One heavenly bite at a time.”

  Alexia left the last crumbs for Gwen and grabbed both checks when the waitress set them down.

  “We always pay our own way,” Gwen protested.

  “I invited you,” Alexia replied.

  Gwen withdrew her hand. “Okay, but I need to talk to you about more than Ted Morgan.”

  “What is it?”

  Gwen’s face became serious. “I think my neck is on the chopping block at Leggitt & Freeman. You know I can hack into Ned’s computer?”

  Alexia nodded.

  “I was reading Ned’s interoffice e-mail, and I’m on the agenda for the partner’s meeting tomorrow.”

  “That could mean a lot of things.”

  “Name a good one.”

  Alexia thought for a moment. “I can’t. But why would they want to fire you? Leonard would commit monthly malpractice if you weren’t there to clean up his messes.”

  “It may be a youth movement. I know they’re interviewing clerical people in their early twenties. They can pay them thousands less than I’m making—”

  “And lose more than that in productivity.”

  Gwen shrugged. “Go figure. I know it will be a while before your new office is ready, but if it happens, do I still have a place to land with you?”

  “Of course. I’m not sure Rachel has an extra office, but we could set you up at home.”

  “Rachel has an office. She’s willing to clean out the storage room across the hall from you.”

  Alexia smiled. “You talked about more than Ted Morgan and me last night.”

  Gwen held her thumb and forefinger close together. “Just a little bit. She can give me some work and pay part of my salary for a while if it puts a strain on you to do it all.”

  Alexia motioned to the empty plate. “We’ll find a way to keep you in coconut cream pie.”

  Gwen once again touched her hair. “And color. I’d be afraid to find out what’s really lurking inside my scalp.”

  Detective Rick Bridges passed the city limits sign for Santee. On the seat beside him, a manila folder held a criminal arrest photograph of Henry L. Quinton. Nothing about Quinton’s appearance signaled anything sinister. Even though he wasn’t smiling for the camera, his clean-shaven face and carefully combed dark hair made him look more like a twenty-something corporate business trainee than a professional hit man.

  Bridges stopped at three convenience stores with no success before turning into the parking lot for a liquor store on the south side of town. He took the photograph inside and put it on the counter in front of a middle-aged man, who deposited a cigarette into an ashtray beside the cash register. The detective placed his badge beside the picture and introduced himself. Several customers milled about. Two immediately left at the sight of the badge.

  “Have you ever seen this man?” Bridges asked the clerk. “He would have a New Jersey accent.”

  The man held the picture close to his eyes and squinted.

  “Can’t say that I have, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve only been working here a week. Before that I was living in Georgia.”

  “Is anyone else here?” the detective asked.

  “Yeah, the manager is in back paying bills.”

  “I’d like to check with him.”

  The clerk led Bridges past a long rack of cheap wines and opened a thin wooden door. “The office is the second door down the hall on the left. I need to stay here with the customers.”

  The detective rapped twice on the closed door. A gruff female voice answered. “What is it?”

  “Detective Bridges with the Charleston County Sheriff’s Department. Please open the door so I can show you a picture of a man I’m trying to locate.”

  Bridges heard someone sneeze, the
sound of a drawer being closed, and a chair or other piece of furniture being knocked over. The door opened, revealing a large, overweight woman wearing blue jeans and a bulky sweater. She was rubbing her right shin and holding a tissue to her nose.

  “Ran into the chair,” she said, not moving away from the door.

  “Sorry to bother you. I just have a quick question.”

  “Yeah, let me see.”

  The detective handed her the photograph and looked past her into the office.

  “He’s not from around here,” he said, surveying the room. “Probably New York or New Jersey. The picture was taken about eight years ago, so he’d be around thirty-four by now.”

  The woman stuffed the tissue in her pocket. “A lot of people with faces like that come in here. I can’t remember anyone in particular.”

  She handed the photograph back to the detective. When she did, he saw a white, powdery smudge on the side of her right index finger. She saw his glance and quickly stuck the dirty finger in her mouth.

  “Taking a powder for a headache?” Bridges asked.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  Bridges stared at her face for a second longer than necessary. The woman’s nostrils were red and inflamed. Without permission, a search warrant, or illegal drugs in plain view, he couldn’t take another step. But he could send a message.

  “I’d rather not come back later,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t know who this might be?”

  The woman glanced over her shoulder at the desk. “You might want to ask at the Beachcomber Club on Highway 17. People from up north like to go there at night.”

  “Who should I talk to?”

  “Uh, Harry is the main bartender. He’s been there a long time.”

  7

  The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

  ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, ACT 4, SCENE 3

  Alexia was about to call Ted and invite him to the benefit concert when the receptionist buzzed her. Rena again.

  “Dr. Leoni is going to be here in thirty minutes,” Rena said over the phone.