Heartbalm

by Malachi Stone

  The interview had been scheduled for nine AM and I was running late. The Santa Claus parade was due to kick off at ten and the best sidewalk vantage points went fast. That was one reason I was pleased to see a comely young female parked outside my office in a vintage Pontiac Trans Am that evidenced a history of battery rivaling her own. Sure enough, I had no sooner unlocked the door and flipped on the lights and heat than I heard the front door behind me scrape and groan against the sill. I turned from the thermostat to behold Heart Robbins herself, expectantly offering her delicate right hand in greeting.

  May I speak frankly? The first two things I noticed about Heart were her breasts. She was hired before she could so much as hand me her résumé.

  “Mr. Galeer?” she inquired.

  “Congratulations,” I replied rapid-fire. “You got the job. When can you start? By the way, can you type? If not, don’t worry about it; I do all my own typing.” Big ones, D-cups at least, belying her slender frame and cherubic face. She was at least as tall as I am and looked me confidently in the eye as she spoke.

  “You have a terrific telephone voice,” I went on. “If the phone rings just pick it up and say ‘law office.’ Think you can handle that?” My arms may have been at my sides, but both my wrists were cocked with impudent anticipation, fingers anxiously twiddling, already cradling the weight of those breasts in my mind’s eye. I should have called my sponsor right then, but I remembered he had no phone and no permanent address most of the time.

  “I’m your gal, Mister,” Heart said. For some reason those four words made me think of black and white movies on the late late show with dames and guns, passion and betrayal. The feeling lasted only for a moment and then it was gone. “But I can also type and use a word processor,” she went on. “Draft pleadings and documents. Heavy on the client contact. All that good stuff. And I can start right away if you need me to.”

  “I need you to. As a matter of fact, Heart—may I call you Heart?”

  She nodded eagerly. So did they.

  “I’m due elsewhere for a previous commitment, so why don’t you take your coat off and make yourself at home for about an hour, familiarize yourself with the place, answer the phone if it rings. I’ll be back before you know it to talk about boring things like salary and benefits package. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds cool.”

  Moving for the door, I watched her slip her coat off. That’s when those ding dong bells began playing me a tune in the key of D. I did the pistol-popping thing with thumb and forefinger and said, “Catch you on the rebound.” I hadn’t used that expression since college and it had sounded dumb even back then.

  My Diane was waiting for me along the parade route across from the fountain, which had been drained, covered for winter and decorated with Santa’s house, elves and candy canes, and for today only was equipped with a gallows-height review stand. She was dressed in her white parka, the one that made her look like a Christmas snow bunny. To complete the picture, her nose was pink from the cold, and moist when I kissed her. Our younger daughter Tatiana faked self-induced vomiting at our public display of affection. Our sons Nick and Wolf stood staring down West Main like they were waiting for a bus.

  “How’s my favorite antique dealer?”

  “Freezing and starving, if you must know. The smell of those donuts is driving me absolutely crazy.” The icy air for a block in either direction was redolent with the scents emanating from Ye Olde Donut Shoppe across the street.

  “Try and content yourself with the observation that you’ve never looked lovelier.” It was true: my Diane had succeeded in losing forty pounds over the last six months thanks to a military regimen of Pilates, regular trips to the health club and rigorous dieting.

  “How’d the meeting go?”

  “You know I can’t discuss confidential matters like that,” I said. “That’s why they call it anonymous.”

  “Just keeping you honest. I know they don’t take attendance or anything.”

  “If it’s meetings you’re after, there’s always the ladies’ auxiliary.” COSI COSA, speaking of acronyms, which stands for Chapter of Southern Illinois Codependents of Sex Addicts, met every other Wednesday, proving once again the old adage: Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

  “Too many sad stories,” Diane said.

  “See how lucky you are?”

  She slipped her mittened hands into the crook of my arm and leaned against me where I stood on the windward side. “They would have to pick the coldest day of the year,” she said. “Poor Anna will freeze in that little skirt, even with the cold weather tights they fitted the squad with.”

  “She likes the cold; it’s the Russian blood in her.”

  Diane stamped her feet against the cold. “Wish I could get some of this Russian blood to circulate down into my toes.”

  “That’s why they invented vodka,” I offered.

  Diane was not amused, given my history. “Not even in jest,” she said, staring me directly in the face. The howl of a police siren saved me, heralding the parade’s beginning. There were Optimist and Kiwanis floats with fat high school girls dressed like plus-sized elves throwing fistfuls of candy into the crowd, then a brace of mounted policemen, their horses bridling and snorting mist in the cold air. There was a Belleville fire truck and a Swansea fire truck, both “decked out in holiday finery,” as the local paper would later report, followed by a fleet of emergency vehicles from nearby communities. There were drum and bugle corps from two different state juvenile correctional facilities attended on either side by solemn “juvenile justice specialists” with slack pockmarked jailor faces and black nightsticks dangling from their gun belts: gun belts that holstered forty-five automatic sidearms. It made me wonder how many pee wee league murderers they had playing in the flugelhorn section.

  Diane and I applauded when Anna’s dance troop passed the review stand on the square and went into their flash routine. Diane video’d the whole thing on her cell phone. Pro that she is, our Anna didn’t look into the camera even once. After that, everything was anticlimactic, at least for me. Even the kids seemed to sense the letdown; with Diane’s permission they took their leave of us to warm up with the free cocoa being served at the YMCA.

  There were the usual local dignitaries riding past in closed cars coasting along in first gear, and, after a gap, the Marching Maroons—the high school marching band. There were restored flivvers with big aa-oo-gah horns blaring, and Shriner clowns trick-driving go-carts in figure eights. Dwarfing Santa’s eight tiny reindeer was a hitch of eight Budweiser Clydesdales towing the familiar red white and gold beer wagon, always the penultimate entry in the annual parade. Two impassive Dalmatian dogs flanked the driver and the guy riding shotgun.

  Everyone leaned over the curb and gawked down Main Street looking for the Santa Claus float that heralded the end of the parade and blessed relief from the arctic weather. The big guy’s sleigh rounded the corner a block away. In the middle distance, like Santa Claus’s advance man, a lone figure approached, trudging down the street clad in a trench coat, waving to the crowd. The closer he came, the more familiar he seemed. Parade Marshal? St. Louis media guest celebrity?

  “Isn’t that your sponsor?” Diane asked me.

  Kevin, striding along the center line of the parade route like the mayor himself, nodded left and right at the crowds lining the street, hands raised as though acknowledging applause and cheers. Then once he was even with Diane and me, he faced the parade stand and whipped open his trench coat to reveal no pants, no undershorts, only cut-off trick pant legs held up with rubber bands at his thighs, his exposed penis dangling free like a rubber chicken. “Merry Christmas to all,” he called out, hands on his hips, “and to all a good night!”

  “Oh my word!” Diane exclaimed.

  Nestled in my sponsor’s brillo pubic hair was a single sprig of mistletoe.

  “Holy Smoke! Sinkers!” Heart greeted me upon my return. She had efficiently organized the front desk as her
personal workstation and now sat behind it, her form-fitting cable-knit sweater exhibiting more curves than the space-time continuum. On her blotter I placed the box of fresh donuts I had picked up on my way back to the office.

  “Now there’s an old-fashioned expression. A pair of them, actually,” I remarked, focusing on an altogether different pair.

  “I’m an old-fashioned gal.”

  “An old-fashioned woman. Ever since law school I’ve been struggling to call every woman Ms. and to avoid using diminutive pronouns when referring to the fair sex. I’m getting pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.”

  “How was the parade?” Heart asked.

  “Memorable. And my compliments on your discernment. I don’t recall mentioning where I was going.”

  “You look like a man who’s spent the past hour standing out in the cold. Plus, you have four kids, right? And the oldest is in the dance troop? And Ye Olde Donut Shoppe where you bought these fattening temptations is just off the square? Doesn’t take much intuition to put two and two together, now, does it?”

  “You’ve done your homework,” I said, frankly admiring her twin fattening temptations. She didn’t seem to notice. Or to mind the attention.

  “I confess; I Googled you while I was waiting. Am I fired?”

  “Not at all. Initiative deserves to be rewarded. Remind me to Google you in return. One good Google deserves another.”

  “Be my guest. I’ve nothing to hide.”

  “But I do. And if you Googled me, you may have run across a few other, shall we say, unsavory details?”

  “You’re a man with a past. Big deal. It is in the past, right?”

  “One day at a time is my motto.”

  “Oh, and there was a new call; I almost forgot.”

  “Somehow I would have doubted anyone as perfect as you could forget anything, Heart.”

  She rolled her eyes and smiled sheepishly. “You might be surprised at some of the things I’ve had to forget.”

  “I’d love to discuss it with you. Shall we compare ouches over coffee and fattening temptations?”

  She smiled more broadly, acknowledging the flirtation. “Anyway, she and I had a nice long conversation. I don’t know your preferences yet, whether you want the office help discussing legal issues with prospective clients or not, but you weren’t here and she seemed very nice. She reminded me quite a bit of my own mother, as a matter of fact. I hope you can help her.”

  “What’s her problem?”

  “It’s not her; it’s her daughter. The daughter’s up in Dwight doing a fourteen-year stretch for kiddie porn.”

  “Pass.”

  “No, wait, listen. She says it wasn’t her daughter doing it; it was the daughter’s husband. The daughter got a bad rap, is all. A Mitchell county judge wanted to single her out and punish her simply for being a woman, to make an example of her, even though they couldn’t prove she did anything wrong. It was all guilt by association. She wants you to appeal the conviction.”

  “The thing is, Heart, the thrust of my practice is child advocacy. If I were to take on a case involving a charge as unsavory as this—”

  “She specifically made mention of twenty thousand dollars.”

  That stopped me short. For the past two years I had been limping along on less than fifty thousand per, gross. Not to mention my overhead was too high and was about to go even higher as soon as Heart and I reached an understanding about salary and benefits. Twenty would allow me to afford her for maybe a year with what COBAW was promising to throw in. I could do a lot in a year. I sat down on the edge of Heart’s desk.

  “Tell me more.”

  “To start with,” Heart began, her hazel eyes holding mine without referring to her notes, “her name is Beatrice. Beatrice Russell. The mother’s name is Ruth Holstein.”

  “Black or white?”

  Heart paused. “Why on earth should it matter?”

  “Good point. I’m just trying to visualize the clients, form a mental picture.”

  “Do you always color your pictures even before the lines are drawn in?”

  I started to form a mental picture of those perfect tits stalking out the door in civil-righteous indignation when the phone rang. Heart answered. For all I knew, she had been romantically involved with black men her whole adult life, preferred the company of black men. That fleeting thought made her somehow more exotic to me, so after she put the call on hold I said, “Don’t get me wrong, Heart; probably half my clientele is black.” That would be the COBAW half, the steady-paying work that sustained me. I could have bought a new house for the uncollectible court-approved guardian ad litem fees I had billed the other half over the past two years.

  Without breaking eye contact Heart said, “Your wife on line one.”

  I jumped to attention and took the call standing behind Heart’s desk.

  “Hi Babe.”

  “Who’s that answering the phone?”

  “Why didn’t you ask her that question yourself? I thought it was the boss’s wife’s prerogative to inquire.”

  “Because it would have been rude. I always hate it when anybody asks me ‘who’s this?’ over the telephone. It’s an ignorant thing to do.”

  “Well, then, Hon, allow me to introduce you to Heart Robbins, the new COBAW hire. I’d put her back on the line but at the moment she’s busy making herself indispensable.”

  “Tell her hi for me.”

  “Diane says hi.”

  Heart said ‘Hi” and held up her right hand in a tiny wave. I loved the way she had her legs and ankles crossed. Gorgeous legs that seemed to go on forever, creamy and flawless even without pantyhose. There was a delicate gold bracelet clinging to her left ankle. And those viewmaster breasts so close I could have reached out and touched them. I pictured myself standing behind Heart in the days and weeks to come, massaging those generous breasts with the phone cradled under one ear as I casually conversed with my unsuspecting wife.

  “Do you have me on speaker?”

  “No.”

  “Tell her she has a cute name,” Diane added. “Rhymes with tart.”

  “Darling, perhaps you and I might amuse ourselves composing dirty limericks over dinner.” This last for Heart’s benefit, a little Nick and Nora Charles banter from the charming new employer.

  “Diane says you have a cute name,” I said to Heart. “How did you get it, by the way?”

  “From my mother.”

  “Ask a silly question,” I said.

  “Am I to assume from your eager, show-off tone of voice that she’s young and attractive?” Diane asked. “And that on the sole basis of her looks you’ve arrived at the rash and impulsive decision to hire her without availing yourself of my tempering input? My advice and consent, as it were?”

  You could always tell Diane was getting steamed at me when she started trying to talk like a lawyer.

  “Can’t say right now,” I said.

  “I know you don’t have me on speaker; there’s no echo. So tell me, how would you rate her on a scale of one to ten? Be honest, I won’t get mad.”

  “Hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Bullshit.” More lawyer talk.

  “You know what? There’s a new call I have to return. Criminal appeal. It’s a little out of my bailiwick but low five figure retainer.”

  “What? What’d they do, kill somebody?”

  “Nothing that rash or impulsive.”

  “And you haven’t succeeded in changing the subject, Richard.”

  “Actually the party in question is protesting their innocence of the charges.”

  “Isn’t that rather to be expected?”

  “It’s just that I need to return the call before the party under discussion lets their fingers do the walking to one of my myriad competitors. As you know, Darling, I have many competitors but no peers.” That last one might have done Hammett proud, I thought.

  “Watch yourself, Ricky. Watch yourself.” Diane hung up without saying goodbye.<
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  CHAPTER TWO - THE ITALIANATE PRONUNCIATION

  I headed back into my private office, saying, “Heart, get this Ruth person back on the line.”

  “Ruth Holstein?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She punched in the number from memory. After a moment she called out, “Shall I leave her a message?”

  “Shit, shit, shit! Isn’t she answering the phone?” I took a deep breath and picked up just as I heard the beep. Lowering my voice an interval and trying to sound calm, caring and professional I spoke into the receiver, expressing my deep concern and my willingness to discuss the particulars of her daughter’s case at her earliest convenience. And collect the twenty k retainer.

  Before I had finished, she picked up and said, “Mr. Galeer?”

  “Yes. Speaking. Is this Ms. Holstein?”

  “Thank you so much for promptly returning my call.” A cultured middle-aged woman’s voice, an art instructor or a music teacher, perhaps. The kind of woman who would pronounce the word fellatio in the Italianate before bestowing a treasured and unforgettable experience.

  “Ruth Holstein, Mr. Galeer.”

  “Ricky, please, Ms. Holstein. Mr. Galeer was my father.” And an asshole he was indeed, but more on that later.

  “Then by all means call me Ruth, Ricky. All my friends do.”

  “Well that’s fine, Ruth.”

  “My friends know me to be a woman who believes in coming directly to the point, Ricky, so I’ll do so now: can you help my daughter or can’t you?”

  “You are direct, I’ll give you that. First I’ll need to hear a few more facts. Your daughter was convicted in Mitchell County?”

  “Yes. More than four months ago.”

  “And she’s in Dwight?” Easily a four-hour drive each way with the meter running and Heart riding shotgun, close enough to reach out and touch.