Doom Fox (6 page)

She stoops with a grunt, and jerks up his right pajama leg. A circular chain gang shackle scar blackens his ankle.

She looks up into his face, says in a deadly monotone, 'We better make it 'cause you mine, slick Mister Sweet Man. I tried to give you your last chance. Now ain't no more. When I catch you with her I'm gonna send you to get your leg jewelry back.'

She straightens up, glares at him. Her blood pressure sky rockets. She clutches her chest, gasps for air before she staggers away to leave him alone, paralyzed by the doomsday import of her threat.

4

A warrior Sunday morning sun pierces a pall of smog with a volley of golden spears, illuminating the high-walled Beverly Hills estate of the interracial Sternbergs, Pretty Melvin's parents. Reba Rambeau, asleep in a sky blue stucco guest cottage behind the opulent French Castle styled main house, is awakened by the spastic gymnastics of her captive fetus.

She grimaces as she massages the top of her abdomen with the heels of her hands to assuage discomfort from the Flamenco stomp of the fetus' feet inside her ribcage. She glances about the lavish gold and lavender motifed bedroom. She stares at sleeping Melvin's face framed by a tousled mop of silky sable hair on the pillow beside her.

She remembers the myriad times since she was twelve that she had orgasmed in secret shadows with Melvin in the black ghetto home of the Sternbergs' when his doctor father and receptionist-R.N. Eurasian-Black mother were working long hours in their Central Avenue office.

Hatred twinges her for the exquisitely fashioned face of the promiscuous humper that hooked her, and broke her heart a score of times. She rummages her mind for the eclectic term that fits his affliction. She grabs and mashes his testicles to awaken him when she recalls it. Satyriasis. He knuckles his great startled hazel eyes open like a little kid, reflexively swoops his head to suck her nipple like a ravenous baby.

He groans ecstatically, 'Oh! I love you Ice Cream Cone.'

She finger-combs his hair, thinks Damn! I love this rotten sweet sonuvabitch. He licks a trail to her pubic enclave.

She whispers, 'Darling please, I'm not fresh' as she gently pushes his head away.

He scoops her up into his arms, carries her to the bathroom. They brush their teeth, make love in the mammoth black marble bathtub before they return to bed.

Her yellow fawn face is serious as she asks, 'Mel sugar, we can be so happy if we're true and faithful to each other. I vow and promise now because I know I will ... will you promise?'

He shapes his chippie rutting lopsided little boy smile.

'I've had my run and I'm ready for pasture in the tall sweet clover with you and whatsit's name. I promise to be true always, sweetmeat.'

He uses an intercom phone to order a breakfast of crepes suzette and Bavarian sausage. A white thatched twig of a Scotsman serves them on a silver service.

In lounging robes they go to don bathing suits in the cabana at the edge of the kidney shaped pool. Their laughter, as they frolic, shrills the morning air, attracts the critical eyes of the elder Sternbergs, breakfasting in the second story master bedroom above the pool.

Their faces are permanently etched haggard by the twenty-three years of their daily ten to sixteen hours treating multitudes of black patients and delivering their offspring at ungodly hours in ghetto hospitals. Often without pay.

Once voluptuously junoesque Mai Ling Sternberg, Hong Kong exotic dancer in her teens, is an emaciated semi invalid. Ironically, diabetes struck her near the peak of the Sternbergs' stress ridden climb to riches and a white socialite practice second to none.

She muses in a soft soprano voice, crisped by a faint British accent, 'Saul, Reba has certainly grown into an attractive young woman ... prettier I think than she was when we delivered her ... I'm sure I'd like her as a daughter in-law ... are you certain their marriage is unviable for Melvin's future, our own best career and social interests?'

His corrugated L.B.J. lookalike face is pained as he stares at the cavorting couple through an open louvered window for a long moment before he says, 'Mai, you know my affection for Reba and my empathy for her rocky childhood, torn between two neurotic parents. Now Mai, as you know I've got no claim to pristine roots. My mother was a rag picker when top price was two cents a pound. My old man was the only Jewish wino bum it has ever been my great displeasure to know.'

'Neither have I that claim' Mai says sadly. 'My father a hanged opium smuggler, my mother a permanent asylum inmate before my seventh birthday.'

He says, 'Mai, aside from the basic disadvantage of marriage at this time to Melvin's launching into pre-med school this fall, candidly, I must say, I'm reluctant to inflict Melvin as a husband on her. I'm convinced the boy is just not emotionally ready to handle the responsibilities and strictures of husband and father.'

He pauses to lift their breakfast trays off the bed to the carpet. He reaches into a humidor atop a blond Chippendale nightstand near the window. He takes a lighter from the pocket of his gold brocade smoking jacket, lights the panatella. He sighs pleasure as he exhales a gust of aromatic smoke.

She smiles, kisses his blue stubbled jaw. Phantom vestiges of her almond eyed cafe-au-lait splendor mystiques through the drawn mask of her illness in the soft maize blush of infant sun.

She says, 'Have you had a chance to finish the investigator's reports?'

He says, 'Yes, late last night and they depressed me.'

'Why?' she asks. Then, in the same breath, 'Does Mel know about the reports?'

He shakes his head to the second question. He says, 'Well, Baptiste, poor guy, got only an ace-deuce shot at life from the beginning ... his father appeared as a prosecution witness in the murder conviction of the leader of a New Orleans Voodoo sect. Three-year-old Baptiste saw the execution of his mother and father and six older brothers and sisters. He was kidnapped by the killers and forced into a life of transvestism, perhaps perversion, certainly crime by the new homosexual "Fagin" leader of the sect.

'At fifteen, he was an accomplished card sharp, pickpocket and ravishing female impersonator baiting tourist tricks for muggers in the French Quarter. There he met Phillipa, an orphaned teenage whiz at the badger game played with a Baton Rouge based pimp and con man on johns during Mardi Gras. Her mentor got swept up in a police net. Phillipa and Baptiste fled, in tandem, to hustle the golden west, San Francisco.

'At twenty-two, in L.A., he married Phillipa, pregnant with Reba, to dramatically prove that against all odds he was heterosexual with a heart still miraculously vulnerable to the grand passion. After we delivered Reba, he retired Phillipa as strictly mother and housewife. Since then he has earned their living as a journey man card swindler with only an occasional dip into an unsuspecting pocket. He lost Phillipa last year, as you know, to that Williams kid after gun play ... all these years we thought the guy sold roofing and siding contracts.'

Mai Ling heaves a heavy sigh. 'Baptiste is certainly no paragon father-in-law for Melvin ... but I'm thinking it's unfair that Reba should suffer the consequences of her father's flaws. I cast my vote loud and clear for Reba as our daughter-in-law. She and the baby can be cared for here while Melvin is in pre-med. Perhaps Baptiste has reformed.'

Maximal irritation flickers Saul's face. 'Sweetheart, it can't work. Baptiste had his throat cut up in San Francisco last year while plying his craft. The guy is a predator in concrete. Why, if we brought him into our lives, he'd leech onto our friends and associates to infiltrate their card games. He'd fleece them and sooner or later be unmasked as a cheat. We would be excommunicated and disgraced with him.'

She says, 'But they love each other!'

He smiles wryly. 'She loves Melvin, you mean. He loves to go to bed with her as he does with any exceptionally endowed female that catches his Don Juan eye. Face it, Mai, we love the boy and I suspect we cushioned him too much, gave him too much. I think we ruined him in the ghetto with tailored clothes and fancy cars. He was like a despot king of teenagers with his pick of the choicest girls, and the ego-bloating worship of his subjects. I repeat, Reba does not deserve having our adored mixed up son inflicted on her as a husband.'

Mai says, 'Perhaps she would accept care and support here unmarried ... since Melvin decided to join our church last month he seems less flighty. He could be on a moral turnabout. I've always believed he wasn't hopeless ... perhaps the influence of the church will result in his maturity to become Reba's husband in the near future.'

Saul shakes his grizzled head. 'Love, I don't think Melvin's church motivation was spiritual redemption but rather because I convinced him that his future medical practice needed the bedrock of a church congregation ... and I think it may be too late to indefinitely defer the wedding, after the ring and her expectations ... her Creole pride, you know, and the predictable shock of disappointment with fallout resentment for us as guiding culprits.' He gnaws his bottom lip in thoughtful speculation. 'There are two possible equitable solutions.'

'Yes, like what?' Mai asks with a skeptical face.

Saul says, 'I'm going to test Melvin's gut feelings about Reba and the marriage. I'm not planning to sacrifice my dream that he become a physician. Purely to test him, I'm going to tell him we've decided that pre-med school and marriage is not a good mix, that if he chooses marriage, then our only support will be the gift of a modest house that he must maintain on his own and a job changing tires for Greyhound that I will arrange with Murray, the foreman, down there ... well Dear, would you bet that diamond pendant on your lovely throat that he'll choose Reba or choose employment as a nine to five tire technician? Of course, we won't really force him to that.'

She sighs. 'That's a helluva test and choice to make for a man who gets a manicure every Friday ... I hope he comes through with colors flying, love.'

'And you know I feel the same. I'm pulling for him to take Reba but I wouldn't bet on him to go that way.' Saul glances at his diamond dial Patek Phillippe wristwatch. He kisses Mai and gets out of bed. He does ten push-ups on the carpet before he will shave and shower for his usual Sunday visit to the black ghetto Holiness Church of elder Reverend Felix and his child prodigy preaching son, Reverend Felix, Junior. It is Saul's practice to mingle with and communicate with old friends there and slip generous checks to those in need.

Mai says, 'I feel great, doctor darling! May I go with you?'

Saul rises from the carpet and goes to the bed, kisses her upturned face. 'Next Sunday, Pet, for sure.' Then, as he turns to go to the bathroom, adds, 'If you're still feeling chipper later I'll take you to evening services at Saint Mark's.'

She puckers her lips and makes a kissy sound to his back.

At 8:50 a.m. Baptiste Rambeau walks Erica Swenson to a backyard gate. He dips his head toward the carton of marked new decks of playing cards she carries. He says, 'Now honey pie, be sure to double staple the decks of cards into a sack that one of my poker guests will come to buy. That way I'll know up front if he's switched in bust-out cards of his own. Give me a call right after he gets back. That way I can cancel the game off your call as an emergency without tipping that I'm hustler wise, that I'm not a mark.'

They kiss.

'Will do, Da Dee' she says as he opens the gate.

As she steps into the alley he says 'Oh say, as a double block against hanky-panky with the package, step out to the sidewalk and watch him all the way until he gets back here. He could have decks and a staple gun on him or stashed in a car.'

She nods, glances at his throat scar, livid in the light, says 'Do be careful with your ... uh, guests' as she goes down the alley.

Baptiste watches the morning sun explode platinum fireworks from her tail bone length mane until her girlish figure disappears. He goes to his living room, yanks open heavy red velvet front window drapes to a shower of bright sunlight. His hands are jammed into the pockets of his red silk dressing robe as he paces the snow white carpet of the dazzling red and white furnished room.

All of it, the entire house furnishings, forfeits collateral if delinquent payments on a loan from a finance company are not made soon, he reminds himself with a painful scowl. He brakes his pacing, smiles satisfaction as he watches Pretty Melvin Sternberg's black Jag sedan pull to a stop in front of the house, behind the Rambeau dove grey Packard. He almost trots through the front door down the walk to the car. He warmly embraces black mohair suited Melvin. Then he kisses Reba as she emerges through the car door held open by Melvin.

'How you doing, Mel?' he exclaims as Melvin pumps his extended hand.

'Fine, just fine, Mister Rambeau, and you?' He kisses Reba's upturned lips before she goes up the walk.

'I'm doing wonderfully well, Son, thank you ... how about coffee or something?' Baptiste croons as he beams the beatific smile reserved for fat marks.

'Thanks, Mister Rambeau, but not this time. I'll be late for a bible class I teach at Saint Mark's Church across town' Melvin says as he goes to get under the Jag's wheel.

Baptiste watches him sprint the Jag to the corner drug store before he returns to the house. He finds Reba at her machine in her sewing room at the rear of the house.

'Have the muckety-muck rich folks set the date for the wedding?' he asks with gleaming eyes.

'Not yet' she says. 'Melvin and his folks are finalizing the reception plans.'

He watches as she completes the final stitching on her new choir robe. A craft her mother, Phillipa, taught her. A half-dozen neatly bagged and tagged garments hang on a rack beside her to be picked up by well-paying customers of her newly-launched enterprise.

Baptiste glowers behind her as she starts to rehem one of the taller Phillipa's daringly cleavaged dresses. 'Baby dear, what are you doing with that vulgar dress?' he says in an echo chamber voice.

The reek of suppressed outrage in his voice swivels her on her chair to face him with enormous green eyes wide and quizzical. 'I'm shortening this elegant dress of Mother's to wear ... it's from Saks and awfully expensive.'