Queen of the Underworld (27 page)

“Take it to the night city editor,” he replied gruffly. “That’s the chain of command here.”

The night city editor was Vince, from the tornado night. Well, at least he knew who I was.

“I know this is probably too long.” I handed him my two pages of copy. “But there was so much interesting stuff about her in our files I decided to risk it.”

“Working late again, are you?” He took my obit without so much as glancing at it. “I’ll get to it, but not now. It won’t run till Sunday, anyway.”

“I know. Just so her friends and clients know about the funeral on Monday.”

I returned to the women’s cage, planning to thank Marge for her hospitality and beat a thin-soled retreat to the Julia Tuttle.

“In the hopper?” She smiled up at me from her copy, which had lots of lines x’d out.

“It’s wending its way down the chain of command. Vince says it’ll run Sunday.”

“Were you happy with it?”

“Such as it was, though he’ll probably kill a third of it. At least I can assure the family she’s in for Sunday. Which is why I came back to the office.”

I tucked my notepad inside my purse and heaved the purse over my shoulder with a sigh.

“It’s been a long day for you, hasn’t it Emma? Are you tired?”

“No. More like
thwarted.
”

“Really? How?”

“I could have gone on much longer. She had an interesting life. From all she told me and then what I read in the clips tonight, I could have done a good piece if I’d had more space to work with.”

“Say, twelve inches under a three-column picture?”

“Well,
yes,
but they only allow a one-column head shot. Even for a lead obit.”

“I had in mind more of a feature on her life. Liggett’s has just pulled a half-page ad on hair care scheduled to run Monday because a shipment of conditioner didn’t arrive. That’s why I’m working late, to remake Monday’s pages. If you felt up to tackling a piece on Stella tonight, I could make it my lead story on Monday. Her friends would be sure to see it then, and still have time to make it to the funeral.”

“Twelve inches is . . . ?”

“Four pages of triple-spaced copy. I’d run the photo across the top, under our logo, and have three columns of four inches underneath.”

“How much time do I have?”

“Oh, why not just start writing? I’ll go upstairs to the photo lab and see what pics are available.”

“There’s that one where she’s posed with her portable organ—”

“I was thinking of that one, too.”

A
LONE IN
the women’s cage, I rolled a sheet of copy paper into Darcy’s typewriter.

Just start writing.

I’d had no problem tossing off that lead for my woman weather forecaster—Lord, was that also today?—that made Rod Reynolds happy: “When it rains, Martha Seawell looks out the window and says stoically: ‘Hmmm . . . low-pressure area.’ ”

Now, just do the same for Stella.

Stella Rossignol, who . . .

“Under our logo” meant top right-hand front page, the spot that first attracts the eye of the browser, as we learned in Layout Lab.

The popular Miami Beach perfumer, Stella Rossignol, who . . .

Paul would be surprised and pleased. “Hey, kid, you’ve got clout.”

Glad Stella didn’t die on my birthday, or he’d always connect the two events. “I’ve never seen him so torn up,” Bev had said.

Stella Rossignol, Miami Beach’s popular creator of signature scents for her clients, many of them household names . . .

Don’t panic, Emma. What needs to be accomplished here? “More of a feature on her life,” Marge said.

Stella’s life. Germany, France, the United States. Leipzig, Paris, Miami Beach. Three countries, three languages—four, counting Yiddish.

Sixty-five. Loney was seventy-three, but much less wrinkled.

Stella Rossignol, the custom perfumer about whom one of her famous clients said . . .

Stella Rossignol, the Miami Beach scent sorceress described by Morris Lapidus as “a character designer who uses scent to define her clients to themselves” . . .

Calm
down.
Stop x-ing out. Write something, anything, whatever comes to mind, and
leave
it, even if you paste it somewhere else in the copy later on.

discovered her perfect pitch for scent while in an internment camp for Jews in Nazi-occupied France . . .

Marge came back with our photo.

“How’s it going, Emma?”

“Oh, I haven’t hit my stride yet, but I’m getting there.”

“Good girl. Big excitement on the front desk. Joelle’s just delivered her firstborn from the new Cuba, so we’re not the only ones remaking a front page tonight, only theirs is for tomorrow. I ran into Vince up in the photo lab looking for a halftone of a plow to go inside the box head.”

“What’s it about?”

“The reaction from different levels of society to Castro’s land reform. I grazed the wire copy while we waited up in photo. I had my order in first, but of course Vince took precedence because his deadline is in twenty minutes.”

“So, what did you think of it?”

Marge gave me the same equivocal smile as when I had asked about Alma Olsen. “It’s the quintessential Cutter-Crane recipe for success. First paragraph describes the wealthy, arrogant landowner playing roulette at the Hilton casino and cursing Castro’s landgrab; second paragraph describes the dirt-poor couple who’ve been tilling other people’s land for centuries; next paragraph quotes their joy and humility at the prospect of having sixty-six acres of their own. ‘Now we will be rich’—followed by alternating pro and con quotes from an unnamed Cuban businessman friendly to America’s interests, an unnamed official in Washington who sees gradual land reform as preferable to chaos and Communism, and a final quote from an unnamed spokesman for an American sugar corporation hinting at a possible right-wing counterrevolution being plotted right now. Plus some historical filler about mankind’s attempts at redistributing wealth since the French Revolution.”

“But why did he need a halftone? She took a photographer with her.”

“Oh, there’s a nice Don Kingsley shot of the smiling dirt-poor couple. The halftone of the plow will go inside the box head as a logo for the series, ‘Cuba’s Great Experiment.’ ”

The positive thing about my envy of others was that it could be depended upon to rev up my incentive motor. I sat up straighter at Darcy’s Remington, pounded its keys harder, and mentally steamrollered over my picky inner critic holding out for the perfect lead. The day would come when, like Joelle, I could effortlessly knock out a story—an Emma Gant story—and everyone would run around remaking the front page.

16.

A
T
10:26
P.M., HAVING
finished the piece on Stella to my satisfaction and Marge’s, I stood in the humid dark outside the
Star
building, waiting for the presses to roll.

Five nights ago, Paul’s car was pulling up directly across the street. Five nights ago, Aunt Stella was up in Carolina, flitting about the Inn, helping out. She had three days to go before overhearing the chef complain about “Hymie cuisine,” and two more days on this earth after that.

The folder spews the first complete paper onto the belt, the foreman does his quick page-through, then signals for the presses to accelerate to full speed. Faster and faster chop the folder knives until the beat merges with the roar of the presses into a screaming blur of sound. The pavement vibrates beneath my thin soles and last Sunday’s Paul cups my knee with his hand.

“Seventy thousand newspapers an hour. Just think, kid, your byline hitting the streets seventy thousand times.”

My rapturous flight took an abrupt plunge as someone touched my elbow.

“Yikes!
Alex.
”

“Oh, Emma, you were watching the presses?”

“I
was.
”

“Sorry if I startled you.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I phoned your room. Then I phoned the paper. They said you’d just left.”

“Who’s they?”

“First a man, then he transferred me to a woman. She said you’d just left.”

“What’s up? Is Lídia’s party still going on?”

“The food and the drink are finished, but they are still dancing and talking. Everyone is very excited. Don Waldo Navarro and his new bride came down to the pool and now the women are busy taking apart Altagracia’s traveling dress and liberating the note cards that will be Don Waldo’s new book. Listen, Emma, I’m starved. The tapas were long gone when it was Enrique’s turn at the desk. Will you join me for a
medianoche
at La Bodega?”

“A
LEJITO,
señorita
Gant! As you see, my
clientela
has abandon me for a party at your hotel. ¿
Qué pasa, Alex?
Your lovely mother—she has just telephone for us to send over six dozen empanadas and two cases of beer. What is the occasion of this party?”

“Probably she is organizing a new
movimiento.
We’ll take that booth by the window, Victor.”

“Not your
abuelo
’s usual table?”

“I think not. Tonight I am slightly overdosed on
la familia.
”

“Ah,
sí . . .
ha, ha . . .
entiendo.
And how is the newspaper business,
señorita?
”

“W
HY WERE
you working so late at the paper, Emma?”

Though I was dying to hear more about the interesting old man who had smuggled out his book inside the dress of his bride, I explained about Aunt Stella and the feature I’d written that would run on Monday.

“Ah, so that was your phone call from Mrs. Nightingale. To tell you her aunt had died.”

“
His
aunt. Stella was his mother’s sister. He’s bringing the body back to Miami on the morning plane. Bev asked me as a personal favor if I could help him go through Stella’s things and sort of bolster him up over the weekend. Bev says he’s really cut up about it, Stella was closer to him than his mother.” Two “Bevs,” three “Stellas,” and a smattering of mere pronouns for him. Way to go, Emma.

“A little woman with dyed hair and an old-fashioned suit?”

“That’s her. The suits were Chanels. She worked for Guerlain in Paris.” I was offended by his description of one of the first female perfumers in the country.

“Yes, I’ve seen her over at Nightingale’s, running up and down stairs, making herself useful.”

“That was in her spare time. She was a very renowned perfumer on the Beach; she created custom scents for famous people like Arthur Godfrey and Morris Lapidus.”

“I met Morris Lapidus once, at Joe’s Stone Crab. I was with Abuelito, he introduced us.”

As he fitted together the missing pieces of my itinerary and found connections to his, Alex’s mood was improving noticeably, even before Victor brought our lagers.

“It’s a good thing you don’t drink the Mexican
cerveza,
Alejito, because I just send over my last cases to your mother’s party. Your
medianoches
are on the grill.
Es mi ronda, amigo.
”

“No, no, Victor, gracias, pero—”

“De nada, de nada. La próxima la pagas.”

“Well, thank you, Victor.”

“My pleasure. Enjoy,
señorita.
”

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“Victor insisted on buying our lagers.
Salud,
Emma.”

We clicked our glasses and sipped.

“It has been an extremely turbulent day,” declared Alex with his vehement rolled
r’
s. “It is a relief, having you across from me, Emma. Being around my mother gave me asthma as a boy; now she gives me vertigo. You remember our
más mío
conversation from last time?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, Lídia, when she is at full force, makes me
menos mío.
”

“I also have people who make me
menos mío.
”

“Do you really, Emma?”

“Sure, though I didn’t think of it in those terms until you said it just now. My first close-range
menos mío
person was my stepfather, Earl. He could make me feel really stupid. He could even cause me to make the mistakes he predicted I was going to make. And now at the
Star,
there’s Lou Norbright, the assistant managing editor, who really runs everything. He is a master confidence-leacher. He has a way of
gleaming
at you so you see yourself in his mirror and you can read his reservations about you in a sort of subliminal text. Is that anything like what Lídia does to
you
?”

“It is difficult to describe. When I am in my mother’s presence, I stop thinking of myself as the main person in my own life. It is
Lídia
who is the author
and
the central character. I am there to carry out her wishes, to facilitate the things she has decided must happen next.”

“Somebody needs to invent a kind of spray-on
menos mío
diffuser. Maybe an aftershave for you and a cologne for me. I’d call mine ‘Get Thee behind Me, Satan.’ They actually do call him ‘Lucifer’ in the newsroom. What would you call yours?”

“You’re so agile with words, Emma. I must think.
‘Déjeme,’
perhaps? Leave Me Alone. Or
‘Mejor que no’:
I’d Rather Not. Wait! What was the phrase Bartleby the Scrivener used in the Melville story?”

“ ‘I would prefer not to.’ ”

“Yes! Until I come up with something better, dear Emma, I shall think of my spray simply as ‘I Would Prefer Not To.’ ”

“Or just ‘Bartleby.’ And, on second thought, ‘Satan’ is a giveaway, so I’ll call mine, let’s see, ‘Deviled Egg.’ ‘Bartleby’ and ‘Deviled Egg.’ Code names to cover our tracks if we need to warn each other in the proximity of the enemy.”

Seeing Alex de Costa laugh gave you a glimpse of the boy he may have been before he got all entangled in separate selves. It was the laugh of a boy who was part of an insider gang and could let himself erupt naturally. It attracted me, just as I had been attracted when he was being so managerial on the night of the tornado, switching languages and taking charge of the fallen palm tree and the well-being of his guests.