“Hey.” La Costa had already pulled herself together. “You mean, us—you and I. We’ll do it! We’ll manage this like everything else we ever have. Look, I don’t know that much, but I do know that you can’t go killing your baby and just do away with it. Hon, it doesn’t work that way. Trust me, it won’t be over.”
Panther shook her head in disbelief. “Oh God, Cos. I don’t know . . . it’s so much to ask. You have no idea how much I want to do the right thing.” She had large tears dripping down her face. “That’s all I want.”
“And you will.” La Costa smiled, handing over the blanket. “I promise, you won’t be alone. I am going to help you.”
Panther took the blanket gingerly, as if it were a thing of gold.
In the big picture, it was easy for La Costa to do the right thing. After all, Panther was her only true friend in all the world. And while it could never bring back the loss of sins past, La Costa had faith in the future that doing this promised. She had a good feeling about it.
“It won’t be easy,” Panther warned, almost more for herself than to La Costa, wiping her face with the back of her hand, warming to the idea.
“I’m used to ‘not easy,’” La Costa countered. “That never changes!”
“Thanks. You’re like a sister to me.” Panther smiled, relieved.
“You’re welcome, Kitty Kat.” The words lifted her in a way that assured that she had just done the right thing.
It wasn’t a large price to pay for true friendship, she thought. Not in the least. La Costa would only need to help Panther and the baby until they could get on their feet. She could sacrifice a bit more and make that happen.
Panther, on the other hand, saw things much differently. She could not believe how fortunate she was to have a friend as gullible as La Costa. She was like no friend Panther had ever had, all right. And that was exactly what she was counting on.
Chapter Eighteen
At first it was easy, but soon got progressively harder. Panther’s addiction to cigarettes and weed was compelling. She needed either just to get up and through the day. She only permitted herself to drink wine instead of the hard stuff and rationalized that was “safe” for the baby. Pot was her “natural” solution to sleep deprivation and nervousness, she reasoned, averaging a minimum of three to four sober hours during any given day. Consequently, the baby was growing slowly, and she did not even start showing until well into her fifth month.
Once La Costa was on to the situation, she was rightfully fearful for the baby’s chances of coming to full term with a mother so hell-bent on self-destruction. She had seen it a thousand times back home when she was growing up. Crack babies and preemies born of booze-infused indigents and junkies. Things far worse and horrifying than that even, in the filthy shelters and halfway houses she was forced to stay at when she left home. Panther was no different than many of the others, just a good measure prettier, and that counted for something in life. But it wasn’t everything. She was frivolous and fearless in the face of danger, and used everything she could to numb the pain of having to face herself—her real self—in the mirror each day. La Costa reasoned, well aware of her friend’s inevitable demise, If I can’t help her to change for the better, then maybe God can.
So, she prayed for Panther’s soul and begged for Him to protect her unborn baby while Panther was doing everything in her power to destroy it, along with herself.
“Come with me to church next Sunday and talk with Pastor Mark,” La Costa pleaded, until Panther was loath to refuse.
The worship was at Second Baptist, otherwise known as the “Miracle on Madison Avenue.” Eventually, La Costa persuaded Panther to come along with her on Wednesday nights as well, for bible study. It was all part of La Costa’s plan to rescue Panther’s wayward soul.
Surprisingly, Panther found that she actually liked the services. She found the hymns peculiarly sensual and ancient; seeming to soothe a well of emotion buried deep inside. And in a strange way, the church did make her feel welcome.
As a result, Panther began to frequent the church with La Costa on Sunday mornings, no matter how rough of an evening preceded the eleven o’clock service. It was Pastor Mark’s sermons that interested Panther most. His flamboyant gestures were menacing, but the message of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness was enthralling.
While she wanted to believe that a heavenly God had a plan and purpose for her life, Panther found it far more difficult to accept for herself. The “high road,” she reasoned, was for the chosen ones, like La Costa, who found the secrets of happiness, which she continued to grapple for. It was like God was a powerful and mighty entity who wagged his finger at her in disgust, much like the ominous images she held of her own father, an avowed atheist, who later became Born Again, and who chastised her for her doubt of the divine deity and for the wayward lifestyle of which she had embraced—wearing short skirts and listening to the devil’s music. He died when she was fifteen, proving to her just how merciful cancer could be on a man who followed his religion, at the end, at least, to the letter, yet ended up dying well before his time. A father who ended up leaving them hard up on one hundred twenty acres of a failing farm and unpaid notes to satisfy. When her mother suffered a nervous breakdown from the trauma, Panther dashed before social services could find her. She had not stopped running ever since. She rode her thumb all the way from Missouri to LA, until a trucker deposited her in front of a posh hotel, where she had said that her father was waiting for her. Then she walked from there, straight to the very first gentlemen’s club she could find—Lucy Dumont’s Mink Kitty, which was still being renovated at the time.
“So that’s how you met Lucy?” La Costa once asked, curious as to life’s penchant for serendipitous parings.
Panther shrugged. “It was meant to be. I just walked in off the street, and she hired me to dance. No audition. No questions. I guess she just saw something. She said, ‘Yeah, sure. You can start tomorrow, hon.’”
“You’ve got a guardian angel, Panth. Don’t you see?” La Costa said, right there in the church pew. “Someone out there is watching out for you, no doubt. So, please, I am begging you. Stop the partying—the booze, the drugs. Give this baby every chance to be healthy.”
Together, they gazed up at the cross, and Panther squeezed La Costa’s hand and vowed, “I will.”
Two months later, Panther gave birth to an incredibly small but perfect baby boy with flawless mocha skin like Panther’s, and a mane of frizzy dark hair. His lips were heart-shaped like Panther’s, and thankfully, he had escaped the curse of acquiring AJ’s broad, flat nose. It was, instead, small and pert, and he had a perfectly round head, giving him an edge over the bevy of smashed-faced newborn infants.
Panther named him Louis, after her grandfather, who smelled like Copenhagen cologne and whom she loved, but hardly knew. He had died when she was nine, but held a huge place in her heart, redeeming in some small way, the belief that not all men were disappointments.
It was no ordinary premature birth, and no coincidence that Panther labored twenty-nine
hours—just long enough to push the clock into the early morning hour, causing Louis to be born at exactly twelve ten a.m., Christmas Day. An appropriate statement in testament to the miracle of birth. The birth of a seemingly perfect child in spite of dicey odds and the most adverse conditions imaginable. It was truly a miracle.
The baby’s lungs required the assistance of a respirator, and he would have to remain on a machine for a short duration of several days, just until they would be strong enough to function on their own.
La Costa served as Panther’s coach through it all, having attended the prenatal sessions. She talked to Panther confidently through the merciless torment of mounting contractions with commands to breathe like a steam engine, while La Costa massaged her enormous swollen belly and hoisted her back from the mattress when it finally came time to push.
Not two hours after giving birth, Panther was out of bed, fum
bling through her purse for a cigarette, already thinking about how she could score something stronger. Louis was down the hall in the NICU.
“Aren’t you breastfeeding?” La Costa asked in an accusatory tone, addressing the pack of menthols in her hand. “And, incidentally, where are you planning on smoking that? This isn’t exactly a bar, you know.”
Panther smirked, pulling her blue jeans on beneath the crumpled hospital gown, clenching the unlit cigarette between her pale lips. “I know.” She masterfully slipped into her bra beneath the gown, then gathered and tucked the excess of it into her jeans. “Damn!” She had forgotten to pack a spare T-shirt as the one she had been wearing when she came into the hospital was nowhere to be found. Hospital chic was not her best look.
She slipped her bare feet into her athletic shoes and fumbled for her jewelry from a Styrofoam cup on the bedside table. She fished out her cheap gold hoop earrings and gave La Costa a disregarding glance.
“Oh, R-E-L-A-X, Cos! I’m just going to be more comfortable at home. I hate hospitals. They give me the creeps. Let’s go.”
* * *
AJ had disappeared, seemingly for good. Panther’s letters were returned “undeliverable.” Each month she grew more and more desperate, frantically calling contacts and acquaintances throughout the West Coast in hopes of finding him. He was Louis’s father, and he was in the wind.
Word on the street had placed AJ in a small import/export business down in Miami, but Panther could not know for sure. Any hopes that she previously had for cashing in on AJ’s paternity, earning her at least child support, dissolved, as harsh reality quickly took center stage.
Her job at the hotel had been replaced, and sporadic trade show work and modeling stints from Prestige were hardly enough to keep the baby in diapers and formula. La Costa did what she could to help, but she was already paying the rent and utilities for all of them, along with the weekly grocery bill and incidentals. She even watched after Louis on weekends, when Panther supposedly was waiting tables again, this time at Nickel Buck’s, a local casino just off the Strip.
La Costa was suspicious of the fact that, in spite of all the extra side work she was able to get for Panther at the agency, along with her tips from the bar, Panther was almost always flat broke. It was not evident at first that Panther’s evenings spent at the bar working, was simply a cover for a mounting obsession growing more serious by the day, gambling.
Every chance she got, Panther fled to the casino, to the shiny bank of blinking, clinking, mesmerizing slot machines to gorge her obsessive fixation with the silver demons, which had fast turned into her newest replacement-addiction. If AJ’s paternity would not provide the means for her to breakaway to LA and her dream of becoming a celebrated film actress, then she would just have to find another way, she reasoned.
Gambling with more than her paltry paychecks, she began risking everything she had, week after week, of hitting the jackpot—just once—and claiming for herself the gold, so to speak. For the chance of winning enough money to free herself from the mess she had made of her life. Somehow, in her delusional, self-effaced insanity, she figured that La Costa and her son would understand. They would be, she figured convincingly, much better without her.
Panther continued to gamble recklessly, taking large, uncalculated risks, sinking an incredible seven thousand dollars into the local casinos, betting primarily on the cyclical returns of the dollar slots and the law of average probabilities that governed the gods of the lucky sevens and triple cherries. When dividends reigned high, she placed her winnings judiciously at the blackjack tables, where four to six hands most typically doubled her money. And, most critical to her success, she stuck to her number one cardinal rule when she was winning. She would then stop and walk away for the evening. A practice that proved truly lucrative, as in just six months’ time, Panther had amassed and managed to stash away nearly thirty thousand dollars—enough for an airline ticket to LA, and a brand-new life—for one.
* * *
Phyllis Jean Baker left a photograph of herself in Louis’s crib, along with a stuffed toy black panther and the receiving blanket that La Costa had once given her. The note left for La Costa on the kitchen table contained a hollow apology and a one thousand-dollar bill with simply the words, You’d be a better mother than I could have ever been. God knows this too. I ask you both to forgive me. It was simply signed, Panther.
Chapter Nineteen
Fall 1999
Three months before Louis turned two, Georgia announced that she was shutting the doors to Prestige forever. A larger firm out of New York had bought the agency from her for far more than it was worth, according to Georgia’s lawyers, so she took the money and ran.
“I’m going to try my hand at writing a memoir.” Georgia threw a waft of smoke from her ultra-thin cigarette, of which too many over the years had permanently pummeled her vocal cords to gravel.
“Oh?” La Costa seemed surprised at her soon-to-be former boss’s newest ambition. “And what are you going to write about?” She asked this, while continuing to pack a large cardboard shipping box with stacks of files that would soon be sent to the new agency.
“Why, my life!” she trilled.
The company who purchased Prestige was a conglomerate called Imperial Casting, and they represented some of the most famous faces on the New York runways and in fashion magazines throughout the world.
Georgia could have never competed with such muscle. “The independent businessman is a dying breed,” she would say dishearteningly, as she smoothed the creases on her skirt. Ever proper, ever perfect, that was Georgia. A lovely and cultured creature from a time where little girls went to charm school instead of to the mall, to learn how to do things like balance teacups and saucers on their knees; how to extend one’s hand to a gentleman, curtsy like a lady, and of course, to master the finer art of blushing.
Georgia was a dinosaur, and she knew it. Prestige did not even have a computerized system of operations. They did everything the old-fashioned way, by hand. That’s what made Georgia so remarkable. She kept everything in her head. All the figures, clients’ names . . . their needs, preferences, models’ names and stats . . . wages, dates . . . trends.
She knew it all, and despite the rise of big-name outfits through the years, such as Kelly Enterprises and Ramerez Modeling Agency, out on the West Coast, she managed to hold her own in the trade show and pageant markets. Until now. After thirty-seven years, Prestige was finally and officially, closing its doors.
Now, Starlight Publishing wanted her story, and a tenacious agent named Leo Monk had been pressuring her for months to consider writing it after seeing her featured on a local news segment about the agency. It was Georgia’s biography and unique back-to-basics approach to life in modern times that most interested the publisher. A candid and feeling memoir on the life and times of former charm schoolteacher-turned modeling agent. A former beauty queen herself, Georgia then was a Southern Debutante heralding from none other than the Palmetto State, where her family, the stoic Applewhites, raised, among citrus and cotton crops, four generations of daughters—two of which won the crown of state and national pageants. Georgia was one of them.
“Why’d you do it, Georgia?” La Costa had to know. “Why sell the agency?”
“Because, my dear, and you should know this yourself by now, it becomes time to do the next thing. To move on. To turn the next page, so to speak.”
La Costa seemed satisfied with the answer, but nonetheless, unsure as to where her own “next life-page” was going to take her. Little did she know just how poignant Georgia’s words would turn out to be.
La Costa knew she wasn’t young and ignorant anymore. She was wise beyond her years, and now, she was not alone. She had Louis to think about, and that made the prospect of starting over again more than simply a matter of self-survival. She had choices to make that would affect both of them. She had a family to protect now. Because of this, and how far she had come, La Costa knew
that they would be all right, thanks to the good graces of Georgia, who would keep her secret of how Louis had come to be hers. She was sure of Georgia’s loyalty. Georgia had given her so much, enabling her to prove her skills and talents as an invaluable assistant. For once in her life, La Costa now had a solid resume and marketable skills. She would have some control of the future, or so she’d hoped.
Most unexpectedly, Georgia, once again, decided to throw a curve her way. “Come join me, won’t you? There’s plenty of room in the beach house for you both. Louis would love the ocean!”
La Costa could hardly believe her ears. Was Georgia seriously inviting them to move with her all the way to South Carolina? “Thank you, Georgia, but I—we couldn’t.”
It was unthinkable. Being that close to her old stomping grounds again was not in the cards for La Costa. She liked Nevada, but thought about the possibly of exploring New Mexico, as good a place as any, to start over and raise a son.
“What? You couldn’t use a job offer to be my editorial assistant? I need one, La Costa. You know how bad I am with punctuation and spelling. Dreadful! You once said so yourself.” Then, she closed in for the kill. “And you know, dear, I’m not getting any younger. With so much to do—the shopping, the cooking, driving from here to there . . . it’s all so very much for someone like me, you know. Not to mention the memoir. So much to research and to write. I was thinking about investing in one of those desktop computers. You know, on which to write the manuscript. Only, I don’t know the first thing about such things. But, you do, right?”
She knew full well that La Costa had been taking English classes at the University, and also classes in computer fundamentals. That, plus she was a voracious reader. La Costa had edited all of their marketing materials and collateral on a regular basis. Georgia knew first-hand, and better than anyone, La Costa’s gift for words.
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