Steve Cash - The Meq

“Don’t worry about me, Miss Covington,” he yelled, but his voice was already behind us. I looked back; he had stopped and was standing in the street and staring at the receding image of Carolina on a bicycle. We rode on a bit and I asked who that was and how he knew her.

“His name is Thomas Eliot,” she said. “He’s a nice boy — wants to be a writer.” She stopped her bicycle and I pulled up alongside her.

“Well, I think you’ve already inspired him to write something,” I said.

She laughed and pointed toward the brick and stone mansion in front of her. “Look at this place, Z. Just look at it.”

I looked at it and it was magnificent, with three stories, climbing vines, big leaded windows, stone verandas, and a driveway that led under a brick arch back to a carriage house half the size of the main house.

“Thomas told me the family that owns it has it quietly up for sale,” she said.

I was still confused. “How do you and Thomas know each other?”

She leaned her bicycle against a tree and started pacing back and forth, looking over the property. “I’ve been riding through here and thinking, Z, about a lot of things. One day, he just came up to me, right here where I’m standing, and we started talking. He’s home from boarding school and I think he was just lonely. He and his family live back there where we saw him and he told me about most of the families in the neighborhood. Most of the things I need to know.”

“You need to know for what?”

“To start a new life. Right here.”

I turned in a circle and looked around at where we were. I saw nothing but wealth couched in castles of abstinence, discipline, and propriety — very conservative, very Victorian.

“Doing what?” I asked and Carolina looked right at me. Her eyes were bright and her freckles stood out.

“I thought about it, Z. It came to me the other day when I read in the newspaper that there’s going to be two national political conventions in St. Louis this summer, and Union Station’s got more railroads coming in and out than any other point in the United States, and ‘old money’ like their vices close by, they don’t like the risk in risqué, and then, at the opera, I was sure of it; I studied the faces around me and I knew, I knew, this was the right place.”

“The right place for what?”

“A whorehouse.”

I looked around again. “Here? In this house? On this street?”

“Yes. That’s the beauty of it. What they can’t get at home, they can get right next door, or at least down the street, or down the street from someone they know. Private. Expensive. Very discreet and filled with beautiful, intelligent women who want to be there, not have to be there.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“Yes.”

“And Solomon agrees?”

“Yes.”

“Does Thomas Eliot know he’s going to be living in a red-light district?”

She laughed and said, “No, and don’t tell him either. He’ll think we’re the Muses. And we will be.”

We got back on our bicycles and rode until we turned on McPherson and stopped for chocolate at Bissinger’s. I was still thinking about her plan, seeing only disadvantages. “Seriously, Carolina, is this what you want to do? It is against the law, you know?”

“It’s what I know how to do, Z. It’s what Georgia and I learned. I can’t just quit because Georgia’s gone and it’s illegal. I never make anyone do anything they don’t want to do and I won’t allow anyone around who does. I’ll have Li close by to make sure of that. I’ll also bet ‘the law’ is our best customer.”

“I guess it is better than having babies.”

“Don’t make fun of me, Z. Just because I’m for one thing doesn’t mean I’m against another.”

“I’m sorry, that was stupid.”

“I love babies,” she said.

There was an awkward moment that passed between us. It happened rarely, but it did happen; the unspoken knowledge and fact that our difference wasn’t just in our remarks, it was deeper in the blood, further back in time. It was a difference that we ignored, but would forever keep us apart, a difference we could not change. Carolina used the tension to tell me more.

“Another thing, Z. I know you’ve been thinking about that evil one, that one that did those things to Mrs. Bennings and Georgia. I want you to stop. I want you to let it go and remember Georgia, not avenge her. I know Sailor wants you to do something, not about that, but about something else. I don’t know what it is, but I think you ought to do it. For your own good.”

Her words hit me hard. Inside, underneath everything else, I knew she was right. I was changing, but all I was really changing was one obsession for another. In my heart of hearts, chasing Sailor had turned into chasing the Fleur-du-Mal, and for all the wrong reasons. I knew she was right about Sailor too. I knew he wanted me to do something, but he hadn’t mentioned his “offer” since that first day.

“I hope you have lots of babies,” I said, “and I hereby bestow Mama’s baseball glove upon your firstborn.”

“You’re crazy,” she said.

We rode our bicycles back the way we came and turned them in at Forest Park. We walked back to the Statler Hotel in the twilight, a long walk, but a good one at that time of year. The next day Sailor made his “offer.”

We took the train west out of Union Station to the Meramec Highlands, an amusement park that the Frisco Railroad had a direct line to, hauling five hundred passengers a day. Once there, you could ride horses, pedal bicycles, row boats, or swim in the Meramec River. “Privacy in Public” was their motto.

Solomon, Carolina, and Ray chose horseback riding. Sailor said he wanted to row a boat and he asked for my company. As we launched our boat, I asked him if he didn’t think the name “Mera-mec” was ironic, considering the circumstances. He said no, he hadn’t thought about it, but that was in the area of what he wanted to discuss. We set out on the water, Sailor rowing easily, gracefully, better than any twelve-year-old in the world.

Several minutes passed. I watched his concentration and the way every stroke was complete, none more important than the other, each with a meaning all its own. While still rowing, he said, “I am reminded of the first time I rowed with passion. It was 2,737 years ago, 841 BC by the Roman calendar. It was the time of ‘Those-Who-Fled.’ ” He stopped rowing and looked at me, trying to catch my reaction. I sat still. I hadn’t asked him about these things, but I wanted to know. He started rowing again and went on. “I was escaping a Phoenician ship in what is now the Bay of La Concha, near the Basque village of Gipuzkoa. We left in the dark when the tide was right so we could float in silence before we had to row. There were forty-three of us, all that would fit in the tiny boat. Others had to stay behind. Choices had to be made. It was decided that the five Egizahar families carrying the Stones would leave and the rest would escape later, somewhere, somehow. There was someone very important to me that we left behind on that ship. Someone whose absence from me made me row with hatred for the Phoenicians and fury against any power that would let this happen. They had violated my family, betrayed our Basque protectors, and stolen my Ameq.”

“What is Ameq?” I interrupted.

“My beloved. the one for whom I waited. Deza was her name. I tell you this now because you feel hatred for the Fleur-du-Mal and the way he has violated your family, your Giza family. I want you to go with me and meet some of your real family, your own blood, your own protectors, and then make a decision about the Fleur-du-Mal. You may still seek revenge. It will be your decision, but I ask you now, Zianno, to go with me first. There is another way to defeat the Fleur-du-Mal. He knows something we need to know and he thinks we are unable to find it without him. You may have the power within you to find it yourself.”