Happy Never After by Trocheck Kathy Hogan

Author:Trocheck, Kathy Hogan [Trocheck, Kathy Hogan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-02T08:26:39.925000+00:00

18

I WOKE UP MATT GORDON to get Junebug’s address. “Late night,” he said sleepily. “Wait a minute.”

The phone fell to the floor with a clatter, then I heard water running and a toilet flushing.

“Okay,” he said when he came back. “That’s better. What did you say you wanted?”

“Junebug’s address,” I said patiently. “Do you know how I can get it?”

“Everybody in Atlanta knows he lives at Peachtree Palisades,” Matt said. “He’s on the fourteenth floor. Just follow the music.”

The Palisades was one of those glossy new high-rise buildings that were sprouting along Peachtree Street in Buckhead like a particularly pernicious fungus. It makes me cranky to see these buildings where once had been some of Atlanta’s most gracious homes. The Palisades made me especially cranky because to build it the developers had torn down Edith Wellman’s house. Miss Edith, as generations of children called her, had been a drama teacher who gave acting lessons and put on children’s plays in the big ballroom of the white-columned Greek revival home she’d inherited from her parents.

She was a true Southern eccentric, Miss Edith was, dressing in flowing chiffon pants outfits with matching turbans and smoking skinny black cigarillos in a spangly cigarette holder. She’d come from a prominent Atlanta family, but Edna said Miss Edith taught drama because she was so poor she otherwise didn’t have a pot to pee in.

One of Edna’s socially connected friends had arranged for all the neighborhood kids to take acting lessons from Miss Edith, not because we had any aspirations for the stage but, Edna said, to give us poise. So I’d spent many a Saturday morning not watching cartoons, as I would have preferred, but reciting the likes of “The Song of Hiawatha” dressed in a brown fringed crepe paper Indian dress, with the other children ringed around beating on oatmeal box tomtoms. I don’t think I acquired much poise, but I can still remember the hand motions I learned to conjure up visions of the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. The Palisades had a uniformed doorman outside, and an imposing marble security desk just inside the big glass double doors leading into the lobby.

I changed into a clean House Mouse smock in the van, and pulled right up to the doorman. The van chugged to a stop, but then the engine knocked for a full minute before backfiring and cutting out.

“Can I help you?” He gave me the look doormen in that part of town are trained to give people like me.

“Is this valet parking?” I asked, trying to look humble. He made a waving, dismissive motion with his hand. “The entrance to the garage is in the back. Park in a visitor slot. And it’s five dollars for nonresidents.”

He obviously didn’t think I had five bucks.

“Okay,” I said. I started the van and drove around to the basement entrance.

There was another security desk blocking the elevator. These people were serious about security.

I got a cleaning caddy out of the back

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