The Saint Louisans

by Steven Clark

  “What?” I almost smiled, “you think I’m a target?”

  “Probably not, but Terri and Pierre could have some kind of agenda. There might be dirty tricks.” He frowned. “I should go inside with you.”

  “Come on. I’m perfectly safe.”

  “Just to be on the safe side—”

  My fingers touched his cheek. “No. You’ve been great this evening. Really, I’m safe and secure. I have an attack Siamese, and I’ve bribed him with copious amounts of salmon. You need to do your skat with Abby. Call me later.”

  I waved to Saul as he drove off, barely balancing my shopping bags.

  The pass card came out of my purse and waved before the reader. The red dots greened, and the door clicked open.

  I walked down the hall, ripe with evergreen wreaths on doors, except the Seidel’s, whose dull brass mezuzah was bordered in cheerful blue. A saxophone jaunted up and down the scales, courtesy of Kenyatta.

  I stared at my door as the sax died. There was loud rustling on the other side. Oh, my God.

  Another bump, and my heart pumped a gusher. I swallowed and stepped back, fishing for my cell phone. A third bump must have been in my drawer next to the door. I jumped back into Ken’s door. That thump made the sax stop. He opened the door.

  “What the hell you doing?” He scowled.

  “There’s someone in my apartment.”

  “Sonsofbitches in this place?” He was ready to erupt. “Motherfuckers in here?” He stepped back, reached into a drawer. I gaped at the snub nose in his hand. I saw a red star just above the grip, matching Macys.

  “What the hell? You carry?”

  Ken almost sneered, eyes on the door. “This is St. Louis. Everyone carries.” Another bump in my apartment.

  “I’m calling the cops.”

  “Right now, I am the cops.”

  Ken firmly moved me back along the wall. I kneeled down, calling 911 as he slowly unlocked the door. The rustling inside changed to a dull thump. As I whispered my address to the dispatcher, he swung open the door and shouted.

  “Freeze!”

  A shiny object sailed past Ken and dented his door. It was a fruitcake sent to me. He charged. “Get the fuck outta here!” He roared.

  My apartment exploded in what sounded like a tag team match between two rhinos. I waited for the gun to go off. It didn’t. As I cowered, Yul came out and rubbed against my leg, quite used to anarchy. I peeked around, and through a shaft of light saw the Christmas tree sprawled on the floor as if it was sleeping one off.

  I caught a flash of blue and red lights bleeding into my front window, car doors slamming. Cops.

  Ken had the intruder cornered. “Settle the fuck down!” He commanded. I switched on the lights as Yul rolled in the hallway.

  Ken raised his eyebrows. Mine shot to the ceiling.

  There, snarling, and wild-haired, was Jama.

  15

  A Streetcar Named Jama

  “What the fuck? What’s the big idea pulling a gun on me?”

  This the Childe Fantastical’s greeting after two year’s silence. She writhed and shook her mass of thick brown hair, a firecracker dressed in black. I simmered, no less explosive.

  “What’s the big idea trying to rob me?”

  Jama rolled her eyes. “You think I’m ripping you off? You’re sick.” Boots clumped on the stairwell to the door. Cops.

  “Ken, ditch the gun. Yourself, too.”

  He scowled but shoved the pistol back into his pocket, knowing that cops responding to a burglary and seeing an armed black man would only throw gasoline on an already bright fire.

  Having once bragged to me of his noisy youth in the Civil Rights movement, Ken was hardly a cop lover.

  Jama advanced. “You called the cops on me? The fucking cops on me?”

  “Shut up.” I stared back at Jama, who almost snarled, hair over her eyes.

  A bitter Ken snarled. “So, the kid’s back, huh? When am I gonna see my three bills, huh?”

  “Hey,” Jama said to Ken, “did you a favor.”

  His aimed, sharpened eyes showed me Ken wanted to say more. A lot more, but three cops, like uniformed Magi were advancing down the hall. He picked up the tin.

  “I oughta keep this. You got enough fruitcakes in your pad.”

  With that he slammed his door. Yul in my arms, I waved to the cops. They stopped and stared as I explained it was all a silly mistake, ha-ha-ha; that sort of thing.

  They’d file no report, which was for the best. When cops have to do paperwork, they really get pissed, and that means an obligatory bust. They looked into the apartment just to be sure, Ma’am, facing Jama’s cheery little wave. Their radios crackled about juveniles raising hell in a Chinese take-out joint two blocks down. They stomped out the exit as tenants peeked out their doors.

  I locked the door, dropped Yul on the couch as I straightened the tree. Jama plopped on the couch, boots settling into one of my throw pillows, naturally.

  Jama said as she stretched on the couch. “That was Shantelle, not me. She took him to the cleaners.”

  I searched for the angel. It was under the couch, and I stood on tiptoes to place it back on top. “You did get three hundred out of him.”

  “Old guys are so easy,” she sighed. “Hey, Nerisha put a curse on him, and I had to get him in touch with Shantelle. I was only the go-between.” She reached for an orange in the fruit bowl. “Getting rid of curses don’t come cheap.”

  I righted the easy chair, then turned to face Jama’s obscenely calm face.

  “I don’t know who or what you’re running from this time, but I want you out. I’m trying to be as civil as I can, but leave.”

  Her eyes glittered at my genteel hostility, if hostility can be that. “Just passing through, Mom. I won’t bother your happy little home.”

  “Where’s your luggage?”

  “It’s someplace,” she said casually. “Guess I’ll take my chances at the shelter.”

  “Spend a night there, you’d be fencing the blankets and cots.” I sighed and dropped into my easy chair. “Okay, but I want you out in the morning. First thing.”

  “Yeah, right.” Jama sighed. “Crack of dawn and all that.”

  There was the usual arctic silence between said Childe and myself. I wondered what fantastic tale of life in the film industry she’d regale me with this time. “Pierce said you were in Berlin.”

  “I was passing through. Antje’s really getting that watermelon belly look.” Jama fished in my box of gift holiday chocolates, and settled for a hazelnut nougat. “Two months ago, I got off that Lifetime gig. HBO was shooting a Virginia Dare film in India, and I hooked up with the assistant of production at a party in Sloane Square, and did courier work. I’d take the dailies from location to Mumbai, jet to London and get them to the studio and print them out, then jet back the Beta tape to the set.”

  As I searched the fridge for a strong adult beverage, I wondered about the story. “Don’t they have Bollywood for the tech stuff?”

  “Sure, half a day away in Delhi, but the director’s paranoid about losing the film. The Babus get careless.” She looked up. “Any vodka?”

  I took the bottle of Liebfraumilch and a glass with me as I prepared to go up stairs. “Help yourself to what’s in the fridge, but I want you out of here before I’m up. If anything is missing, I’ll press charges, and the computer’s upstairs. No, you can’t use it.”

  “Mind if I use the phone?”

  I took the phone from its receiver and cradled it next to the wine. Jama leaned back and sneered at me. “Of course not.”

  In bed, I caught up on my messages, made a quick check-in call to Margot, then called Saul. Downstairs, the TV burbled a quick dialogue of channel surfing.

  I wombed and fetaled my way into the blankets as the Liebfraumilch kicked in and took me in its arms.

  The next morning I faced Margot in the drawing room. She reclined on the couch. Saul sat next to us. Margot leaned closer.
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br />   “Then?” she asked.

  I stretched and inhaled the aroma of the bean. “Then, Yul jumped in my face for the feline alarm clock thing. When I went downstairs, the kitchen was a mess of empty eggshells as if we’d had an omelet seminar.”

  “On the counter, all the spoons were laid out in careful order, Post-its listing them to let me know she hadn’t stolen them. A Jama joke, har-de-har-har. On the paper were the words: ‘for the Jackal.’” I sipped, observing Margot’s quiet introspection. After all, Jama is her new semi-granddaughter, God help me. My eyes turned to Saul as he crunched a biscotti. Margot forced a polite smile.

  “Oh, I’ve seen and heard worse, and I’m quite fond of sordid gossip. It’s almost an emetic for me. Why does Jama call you a jackal?”

  I set the cup and saucer down. “It’s an old thing.”

  “A deep wound? I want to know. After all, she is my granddaughter.”

  Margot’s kind voice seemed to plead for a grandchild. The less Jama got involved in the Desouche family, the better. “It’s best you have nothing to do with her.”

  A quick wince in her eyes reminded us of her increasing pain, but she waved off my approach, anxious for history.

  “Tell me,” her voice soft and genteel as velvet, “why you are a jackal.”

  “It started with King Tut. Back in the seventies, and flamed when the exhibit came to Chicago. I Amtraked the kids up, and we gorged on Tuttery.”

  Margot smiled. “Yes, Philip and I went there.”

  “Also, I discovered the Chicago skyline at night. It was like smooth jazz. I’m a view person, and I loved staring at canyons of light from the 96th floor of the Hancock building. Pierce was absorbed in Lake Michigan’s sea of ink. The sky looked like it dropped to earth.”

  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.”