Legally Bond

The Mex Mysteries, Book 8

Chapter 1          

            Why is it that at the precise trice one is manicure-paralyzed, one’s cell phone is guaranteed to ring? Can someone please explain that? Please.

            At Julie Nail in Davis Square, my fingers carefully splayed under the nail dryer after my first French manicure in Somerville, slightly northwest of Boston proper, Christiane had done an excellent job with fussy, fussy me. I can’t talk without my hands, you see, so they have to be perfect. Gypsy, and the wrong half Jewish, and a New Yorker by heritage. No way.

            So when the original Bewitched theme song echoed loudly enough through the crude salon to sway the bamboo plant in the prosperity shrine with the Lucky Cats at the front of the welcome desk, I sat manicure-hamstrung and could not answer the damn thing.

            Mex!

            I know, Spirit, I know.

            That’s Spirit, the loving VOG in my head who runs my life when I let her. Ah, VOG? Voice of God/dess. A hundred years ago, I quit swearing for Lent and Spirit made the sacrifice permanent. Every single da—, uh, darn time I swear, she slaps my wrist. Ridiculous.

            Is it, Mexy?

            I happened to know that Gareth owned that particular ringtone on my cell. He had spent some rainy afternoon entertaining himself by choosing ringtones to match persons. I think he changes them for every case.

            “So nu?” I queried. Yiddish for … Well?

            “We’ve had an interesting call, Mex.”

            “From?”

            “The Broadway producers of Legally Blonde. Well, from Kelley who got a call from them. They’re taking the show on the road for a national tour and doing a few sit-down companies. One is planned for Boston.”

            Not unusual. “And?”

            “There’s some concern about the stint in Boston.”

            “Why?”

            “Because the show takes place at Harvard Law School.” That fact I already possessed. It’s a fabulous young-woman-coming-of-age show. “Harvard’s in Cambridge near Boston.” That I also knew. I still didn’t see the problem. When I kept silent, he said, “Did you know that the producers received some threats when the show was on Broadway?”

            “No, was there any publicity?”

            “None. They masked it quite well, but a boy in the office is my acquaintance.”

            Naturally. “Threats, right?”

            “Well, Harvard Law School might be considered a moderately …,” he coughed gently, “litigious place.”

            “Uh-huh,” I said. Sometimes life is reduced to the obvious. Often.

            “They were never too pleased that Legally Blonde the musical presents HLS as, shall we say, less-than-welcoming to their female students, or some of their female One Ls.”

            “One Ls?”

            “First year law students.”

            “Okay, I’ll buy that.”

            “Several law school alumni felt that Legally Blonde had to be stopped, or they’d have a feminist lawsuit on their hands, so they applied some heavy-duty pressure on the producers.”

            “What did the producers do?”

            “They went to their own lawyers at Saul, Meiss, and their lawyers went to NZN/QK’s lawyers and asked for help.”

            “And?”

            He snickered. “They’re still writing mean letters.” That sounded right, lawyers being what they are. “One of the producers in New York knows Mike, so she called him to ask if he knew anyone in Boston who might scope things out for them on the sly, and Kelley did know the perfect someone.”

            That would be me.

            “Ah,” I said. “Did you agree that we’d do it?”

            He gulped audibly.

            “Yes.”

            We were still working out this Associate thing. It’s one thing to change the names of positions, and it’s a whole other matter to live ourselves into those names. We were still doing the living, Gareth and me. Xennie and me as well. Xennie and Gareth had their dance worked out. Which made me think that they’d been working on it a lot longer than had officially been disclosed to me.

            “Cool,” I said, “it’ll give me an excuse to stay in Boston. When does the show open here?”

            “Previews start next week. The Tuesday after Labor Day.”

            “Who’s our contact at the show?”

            “I don’t know yet,” he answered. “What I know is that we’ve got Kelley.”

            “I’ll call him later.”

            Seraphim and I had planned to meet for lunch a few doors down at the Diesel Café, the place for gathering, especially if one is of the LGBTQIA persuasion, in Davis Square, which fills the function of “town” for Tufts University. Davis Square is in Somerville, MA. Tufts is in Medford, MA. No explaining that, except this is Boston. Get used to it.

            Because of Seraphim’s gig as Madame Morrible in the sit-down company of Wicked, we’d spent some time together in Beantown over the summer, and we learned of the Diesel because of a share she sub-let in a bedraggled communal house on Willow Avenue to save on living expenses.

            Her schedule was rigid so I was the one traveling to and fro for the most part. Let’s put it this way: I knew the names of the flight attendants on the shuttle. More, they knew mine.

            My nails, as they always do, dried eventually. I had to be especially careful at this time of year. We’d hit the final day of August, for what it’s worth, Amelia’s birthday. Mama. Had she been Earthside, she would have been seventy-three, and I missed her like a toothache.

            The Boston suburbs in August were a humid bargain, beautiful, but the air hung sagging and wet in the air, if you can imagine that. My French manicure is complicated and multi-layered, and a smudge, even one, is simply unacceptable. No matter, they were finished and dry at long last so I skipped down Elm to the Diesel.

            Seraphim, good egg that she is, sat on the edge of one of the Diesel’s extremely hard, lime green plastic chairs guarding one of the two-tops in the front floor-to-ceiling windows of the café, making absolutely guaranteed that I’d have an equally uncomfortable place to sit whilst she went to the counter to order our usual sandwiches: a Monkey Wrench and a Lil’ Piston.

            We always had the same things at the Diesel. Mine was turkey with avocado and smoked gouda on a heavenly baguette. Hers was mozzarella and tomato with pesto on same. With this weather, I got the biggest, iciest mocha possible. Seraphim usually had Snapple iced tea which wired her. As we settled in to our respective repasts, her cell phone rang.

            “What?! You want what? … I don’t see how, Manny, I have the show to do eight times a week and a life to live otherwise. … Yes, I know, but … oh, alright, it can’t hurt. Tomorrow? What time? … And where? Alright. Yes, I’ll see you at 11:30 in front of the theatre. Thanks. Bye.”

            I said nothing.

            “You’re not gonna believe this, Mex.”

            “Try me, sweetie.” I sat patiently.

            Seraphim shook her head again and again. “That was Manny Carlini, you know my, uh, friend? Is he a friend? Nah, my acquaintance, who teaches at Tufts?”

            “Oh, right,” I said. Nothing further was required.

            “He wants me to teach at Tufts for a year.”

            v“A year?”

            “Well, a school year. A year-long gig teaching acting in a university setting.” She let her mind wander on that one a bit. “Part-time employment … plus Wicked. It doesn’t conflict, Mex.”

            “How many days a week will you teach?”

            “Two. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and since I’d be a guest artist, I wouldn’t have to do any of the internal university bullshit.”

            “Meetings, you mean?” I asked.

            “He said I wouldn’t.”

            “Who are you going to meet with tomorrow?”

            She checked her scribbles for she would never have been able to pull up the name. “Kendra Wallach Goodman, the …, uh, Chair of the Department of Drama and Dance.”

            “I’m glad. Wicked is fab, darling, but a long, long run can get to be dull, and here’s a wonderful opportunity to work with young actors. You’ll go, you’ll talk to her, and you’ll decide.”

            “Have you always rolled with the punches like this?”

            “You mean so flexibly?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Oh, no, not at all,” I giggled. “When I was younger, I excelled at temper tantrums when things didn’t go the way I wanted.” She cringed. “My granny let them take their course. I was seventeen when I learned that tantrums don’t change anything.”

            “Nope, they don’t,” Seraphim shook her head again. “Well, it’ll keep me out of trouble during the week. I’ll be crazy busy.”

            “Yeah, and you will still need one day off a week. No matter what,” I said as threateningly as I could muster.

            I still had some rough news to deliver to her that afternoon, and I wasn’t exactly thrilled about being the messenger. As a complete coincidence, if you believe in that sort of thing, which I do not, I’d been talking to my best high school friend, then living in Hollywood, who was in the process of creating a real estate empire for her retirement. You know how that works, right? You buy places, rent them out, and hopefully, live off the income.

            No matter, Peri (rhymes with faerie) and I were talking one day and the subject of Seraphim’s New York City jewel-box of an apartment arose.

            “How long has she owned it?” asked Peri, her real estate hat glowing over the fiber optics.

            “I don’t know. Five years, I think,” I said.

            “Has she lived in it for two of those five years contiguously?”

            “I don’t know, sweetie,” I said, feeling slightly interrogated. “Why?”

            “Well, Mex, if she hasn’t, she has to sell it at once or face a whopping capital gains tax when she does!”

            “How much?”

            “Somewhere between thirty-three and forty-five percent depending upon its value.”

            I wished again for the ability to whistle.

            “Wow, Per, that’s a lot.”

           “Mexy, get the deets on how long she’s been there. Exactly. And how long she’s rented it. Call me if you want, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

           “Thanks, sweetie,” I said. “I will.”

           Long, long story slightly shorter. She’d had the place for days shy of five years exactly, and because of various jobs, she’s an itinerant arts worker by her own report, had not lived in it for two contiguous years.

           “Sweetie,” I said, now, as Seraphim took a bite of her sandwich, “we have to get real about your New York apartment.”

           Real estate does that to a girl.

           Seraphim flashed her big-navy-blue-eyed agreement.

           “Do you have any idea what the place is worth?”

           She shook her head no.

           “Do you know a realtor?”

           No, again.

           “Do you want to keep it?”

           A shrug.

           “Do you care if you have to pay the capital gains?”

           She swallowed at once and said adamantly, “Yes! Why should I give away so much profit?”

           “That means that you’re going to have to sell the place in the next month. Can we do that?”

           I didn’t need an answer from her.

           Without doubt we could. I had Gareth B. Hawkins, and Xennie Kaldera, Associate and Assistant, respectively, to Mex Stone, Intuitive Investigator, and if those two couldn’t sell a tiny jewel-box apartment in midtown Manhattan in one month’s time in a booming (read: sellers’) real estate market, well, then my name isn’t Mexicali Rose Stone, and, honest, it really is.

           I know, it’s a mouthful. Despite Mama’s very good sentiment for landing it on me, I don’t often like it, so, between us, it’s Mex. Just Mex.

           Oh, alright, I’ll tell you. Mexicali Rose was Mama’s cabaret theme song for decades. It’s an unbelievably sappy lament made popular by none other than Singing Cowboy Gene Autry, and on the gorgeous autumnal afternoon of my birth, Mama, I guess, missed The Stage so she named me after her signature song.

           If you’re going to guffaw, get it done right away because I can’t always tolerate it. The hilarity; I have no choice on the name.

           You always have a choice, Beloved.

           “Sweetie, are you thinking what that means?”

           She swigged her iced tea, and slid her eyes away from my face. “I think so.”

           “Do you realize that means you won’t have your own home in the City?”

           Her Muppet face fell into a solemn mien.

           “Wow,” she said, putting down her tea. “Wow.”

           I was relentless. “Which means we’ll be living together.”

           Which we had not done formally despite the age-old joke of lesbians bringing a U-Haul on a second date. A U-Haul would never have done for me. I would have hired Moishe’s. And Seraphim, ascetic that she’d been for ten long years, would have needed only a taxi ride or two.

           “Uh, babe?” she drew my attention to herself. “That’s serious.”

           “Aren’t we?” I asked.

           “Well, yeah, but …,” she hesitated, swallowed hard, and said, “doesn’t that mean we have to get married?”

           I’d told Seraphim in our faux getting-to-know-you conversation on the flight from Dallas to Albuquerque in January that I wanted to be a bride. She’d given me a glance like I was from Planet Q.

           “Have to?” I asked, my voice falling and my left eyebrow rising dangerously. “Think carefully before you answer.”

           “Have to, get to, whatever.”

           “Seraphim, yes, I definitely want to get married. We’re in Massachusetts, after all. But I don’t want to get married because you feel like we have to. Let’s deal with one thing at a time, shall we?”

           She dipped her face away from mine like a wee boy. So dear. Her face said whew, escaped from the brink of trouble.

           “So, first we need to consider your current living requirements. You’re on Willow until it changes, are you not?”

           “Yep,” she said.

           “Wicked isn’t closing any time soon, is it?”

           “Not that I’ve heard.”

           “Me either. So you don’t need housing in New York City for the time being.”

           “That’s correct,” she wiped her mouth.

           “Now, wanting housing in the City is a whole other matter.”

           My Chelsea brownstone, Temenos, was edging agonizingly slowly toward done and it would have been simplicity itself for Seraphim to move in there. She could have her own apartment within it, but I understood completely how that would mean a commitment and a dependency between us that she might not like, no matter how well she liked proximity to me.

           I also had The Pink House upstate where I’d appreciably spent the summer in between Boston junkets. We’d discovered a tiny, private airport that ferried upstate New Yorkers to and fro Boston so it mandated only a quickie plane ride from Willow Avenue to The Pink House. On Sunday nights, Seraphim would get the last flight out and she’d take a tea time puddle-jumper to Beantown in time for the Tuesday show.

           Lesley and Jax, my long-term contractors-of-all-trades, had outdone themselves with Susannah’s garden design. I’ll never forget the day my talented interior (and, I suppose, now, exterior) designer told me that if I wanted to pay for it, instant flowering gardens could be supplied for the Park, and supply them they did.

           My garden held a riot of color and genus. I discovered things in it on every walk that summer. Gorgeous and so restful for the eyes. We enjoyed our time in the country.

           “Sweetheart,” I said, “let’s put this down for a bit. We need to decide before I go home, but we don’t have to decide this minute.”

           The tears began.

           “I know, sweetheart,” I soothed. “I know.”

           “Mexy,” she said, “no wonder I love you.”     

           “And well you might,” I returned saucily, making her chuckle and doing my best to lighten our mood which had, you can no doubt ascertain, gotten unusually heavy.

           Getting married demanded a big commitment, but not having a room of one’s own as an artist was a way tougher reality to face. Virginia Woolf was correct.

           Every woman artist needs five hundred pounds a year and a room of her own. Seraphim did a brilliant one-woman show as the eccentric, ultimately tragic, Miss Woolf.

           We bopped along Elm and crossed through the Rite Aid parking lot to take the bike path the few short blocks to Willow Avenue. Seraphim had her own room in a communal household. It suited her Aquarian self fine. I held a dissenting opinion.

           No bona fide privacy, not even in the loo. This did not, does not, and will not ever work for me. Possibly an only child thing.

           We shlepped the loose, deosil spiral of the first-floor staircase, then the direct staircase to the third floor to “our” room. I reached into a pile of books on my side of the bed and pulled out my latest manuscript version of the wise Tao Te Ching.

           “Shall we?” I held the make-shift book open toward Seraphim.

           “Lucky dipping again?” she mugged at me. That’s what my ex-mother-in-law called it.

           “Why not?” I sounded defensive to myself.

           “Why not indeed, babe,” she soothed.

           I closed my eyes, not yet aware of what I wanted to ask.

           Questions, Beloved, matter. How you ask what you ask will affect the answers you get every time.

           Should Seraphim sell her apartment? Should we get married? Was it for the highest good that we live together? Would she be blessed with that?

           “The issue is selling Seraphim’s New York City apartment.”

            I stated it aloud. Seraphim’s breath whooshed out as if I’d punched her in the gut. I couldn’t have been more direct in the ask.

           Then I opened the Tao Te Ching. The manuscript opened to Pseudo-Chapter 27: The Cost of Giving. I scanned the page till my eyes fell on these words: 

Therefore the Wisest
receive everyone and reject no one.
They receive everything and reject nothing.
This is giving.
So the good person educates the less good,
and the less good is
the good person’s example.
Value the educator.
Value the curriculum.
Both teach value. 

Don’t you see?
The cost of giving is receiving.

           “That’s enlightening.” Seraphim’s words brought me out of my meditative place.

           “It is?”

           “Yep. That’s an unequivocal yes, which I take to mean that wherever I live in Manhattan will be valuable.”

           “Good,” I said. “Are we agreed?”

           “Let me sleep on it, babe. You know the family remorse pattern.”

           “I do.” Discretion is truly, madly, deeply the better part of valor. Best to sleep on big decisions. I reached for my novel to snuggle into the bed and relax. Seraphim’s cell phone rang.

           I withdrew into myself, and The Palace of Illusions, a retelling of the Mahabharata from the viewpoint of the women in the story, similar to the treatment that The Mists of Avalon gave the Arthurian legends. A nice breeze came through the upstairs window at the treetops. Full tummy, warm, breezy, fragrant, summer afternoon.

Legally Blonde
Music and Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and
Nell Benjamin
Copyright © 2007 Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin
Filthy Freak Music and Useful Yak Music
Administered by Williamson Music Company
c/o Concord Music Publishing
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC

© 2018-2021 by Susan Corso
All rights reserved.

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