Flower of Fire

By Lisa Ann Gallagher

Thirty-three year old Gala is in the midst of a personal vacation when she discovers she is wanted by the authorities. She is believed to be a healthy carrier of a deadly disease running rampant. This modern-day Typhoid Mary panics and makes a spontaneous decision that may have cataclysmic consequences for those around her. Over the course of one terrible summer, Gala must learn to face her own personal demons during the worst tragedy and find a way to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisa Ann Gallagher
• Release date: Jan 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310384455

Lisa Ann Gallagher

Lisa Ann Gallagher was born in Detroit, Michigan on December 7, 1967. She grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and became a part of the thriving mid-80s Detroit alternative music scene during her teens - as the lead singer of an all-girl band and editor of a punk fanzine, then later as a supporter and friend to many other bands. Lisa Ann left Detroit in 1991 and spent the next 14 years exploring a variety of jobs (including as a product trainer for Cadillac), traveling the world and writing. She settled down in 2005 in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where she lives today. Her first novel, "Flower of Fire", a thriller about a modern-day Typhoid Mary, was published in October 2010. A collection of 18 poems, "Incantations" followed in 2011. Her newest book, a memoir of her early adulthood in Detroit, was published in the summer of 2013 and is available in both paperback and e-book on Kindle. She is at work currently on her fourth book - a novel about Detroit, organized crime and family.

Book preview

Prologue

I am supposed to be on vacation. I should be lying on the beach right now, facing the Mediterranean Sea. My toes would be curled into the sugar-white sand and I’d be getting the best tan in years. Instead, I am on the run, hiding out in a high school wrestling room. I am a fugitive. I have never been this scared. But, if I am very careful, I will not be caught and I will not endanger any more lives than I already have.

I have been here for a couple of days now. I still have a little bit of food and I have two things going in my favor: I am not where they think I am and I look different than they think I do. I know I will need to leave soon and face the consequences, but I dread it. The news is bad. More than thirty-nine hundred people are dead already - and that is just here in the States. Europe’s numbers may be twice as high.

God, I just want to go back to Los Angeles. I want to be home in my little cottage, safe and sound. I want to curl up by the pool with Bo and Bradford, drinking martinis. To put the last two weeks behind me. However, that isn’t an option now and I am starting to worry if I will ever make it home again.

I was supposed to be taking a little pleasure trip this summer. I sold my business last fall - a pricey lingerie shop in Silver Lake. I was bored, a bit restless and thought I would go to Cyprus for a couple of weeks. I have the means. I paid off my rent for the full year after the sale. I have had three vacations in the last year and a half. My apartment is stocked full of mini bottles of shampoo, booze, mouthwash. I have LAX shuttle service as speed dial 1 on my cell. I purchased my ticket to Cyprus nearly six months ago.

Nothing since, however, has gone according to plan.

In March, I received a wedding invitation from my college roommate. The wedding was three days before my flight, and in Sioux Falls, South Dakota of all places. I sent my regrets. Then, my nephew Michael in Salt Lake City had a rock-climbing accident on May 19th - exactly fifteen days before my scheduled flight. He broke both legs, three ribs and his collarbone. He called me three times from the hospital asking if I might be able to come out to visit him. I did have that two-week window to change my flight with minimum penalty.

The call with Michael made me homesick for my mother. Teeny was a successful real estate agent in Chicago and we had not seen one another in more than a year. Michael’s call stirred up a flurry of emotions. I started second-guessing my solitary vacation plans and I quickly changed my itinerary.

Instead of flying out of LAX and connecting through Detroit, I changed my outbound flight to connect through O’Hare. I could just start my trip from what should have been from first connection, but still return to Los Angeles at the completion of my vacation plans. I asked Bo and Bradford if they would watch the cottage while I was gone. I e-mailed Melanie to see if she still had room for me at the wedding and reception. She did and was thrilled for me to meet her fiancé and his family. I called Michael, who was loaded on Vicodin or something at the hospital, to let him know I would come to Salt Lake for a couple days. I called my mother who said it would be perfect to have me there with her and that she could arrange to have my car returned to Los Angeles while I was overseas.

It took some creativity, but was a workable arrangement nonetheless. It is not as if I had any other commitments in my life. I was flexible. I was, in fact, quite bored and looking for something to do this summer.

I left Los Angeles early morning Monday, May 24th, driving my 1983 jade-green Carrera. I arrived in Salt Lake after 7:00 that evening. Michael was laid up at his loft apartment downtown. He was thrilled to see me and ordered in from a nearby Japanese steak house. He had a special bed installed in the center of the loft, facing the plasma television. A hospital bed. I curled up on the sectional a few feet away. He was out of traction but still miserable. He had two casts - one for each leg - and was taped up around his right shoulder where he had broken his collarbone. I cut his meat for him and we chatted.

So, work is cool with you being out so long? I asked. Michael is a loan officer at a bank downtown. They better be he chuckled. I can’t show up this way. I popped soybeans from their shell. I could see him eyeing me, suspiciously, as I looked for something to put the pods into. I settled on a near-empty water bottle, slipping them into the neck.

Where is Consuela? I teased him. Consuela is his maid. Consuela is not her name, but I can never remember what it is. Some Puerto Rican woman who had worked for him since his move to SLC nearly a decade before. Roughly three hundred pounds of hot Latin lovin’, or so I loved to tease him about. Needlessly. Michael only had sex with nineteen year old bimbos, and usually only once. Her daughter is in town, he mumbled through a mouthful of steak. I reassured him, Don’t worry – I’ll tidy up after myself.

Michael is my nephew but we are like brother and sister – he is only six months younger than I am. We had a good time that evening. He made fun of my hair. I called him the gayest straight man on the planet. He got loopy on pain meds and started reminiscing. Remember when we used to play doctor? He asked. Um, yes! I playfully slapped him on his good shoulder. My dad spanked me for that hickey you gave me.

We were seven when we played doctor. We played post office when we were six. Cowboys and Indians when we were eight. He is my nephew, my brother and best childhood friend.

I tucked him in when he nodded off, doped up. Turned off the television. Threw out the soybean pods, water bottles, garbage and spent an hour cleaning the loft before curling up in his platform bed to sleep.

I spent all day Tuesday in the apartment with Michael. The nurse came at 9am and I helped him sponge-bathe Michael and dress him in sweat shorts and a t-shirt. Gave him a back massage. Got his meds for him. Watch him nod in and out all day while I read Vanity Fair and watched reality shows on Bravo. On Wednesday afternoon, I went to Target and the grocery store for him. He needed food, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, hand sanitizers, bottled water and fresh batteries for all of his remote controls. Consuela was due back that next Friday, but I knew he would keep her busy scrubbing the apartment silly and she would not have time to get his supplies.

By Wednesday night, he was making me cranky. I decided to depart the next morning even though the wedding was not until Friday evening. I left early Thursday just before 6am. Off to Sioux Falls with thoughts in my head of the blue-blue Mediterranean and a much-desired retreat from hopped-up bedridden relatives and frankly, the rest of the world.

The drive northeast from Salt Lake to the I-80 is spectacular. Even in late May, you see the touch of white snow on the mountain peaks, tall spruces and desert columns rising into the air. Then Park City and the Sundance resort area. However, once you get into Wyoming and onto the I-80, it was not as pretty a drive. By the time I hit Rawlins I was bored and ready for a nicer landscape to look at.

I switched and went north, connecting northeast on highway 220 to Casper. North on I-25, another really dull stretch of road, and east on highway 18 up and into the Black Hills of South Dakota. That was a much prettier drive.

I kept along the mountain roads until the mountains leveled to dark green hills and continued northeast, hoping to hit the I-90 and eastward from there. I figured I would find somewhere near the highway to stay that night. I was somewhere north of Custer and I think I missed my turn toward Rapid City and wound up north of where I wanted to be, heading east on a gravel drive approximately a mile west of I-90. That is where I saw the sign for Nativity Cave. It was around four in the afternoon. Caving sounded like fun.

I turned onto a paved lot, past a weedy horse pasture on the right. An outcropping of brown, dull buildings lay ahead, to my right and I pulled into a parking space adjoining. The skies were clear and I could hear the swish of long grasses against the nearby rocks.

I switched my sunglasses for my regular pair and put my wallet in my back pocket. Walked up the stairs to the A-framed building. Inside, I looked around. It was a commissary for camping items, yet I had seen no campers. Boxes of matches. Rain ponchos. A couple of white plastic buckets. Sodas, energy drinks, and bottled water in the wall cooler. The woman at the counter seemed to be around fifty, with gray hair and a pair of crutches leaning against the wall beside her.

She leaned forward on the counter toward me as I turned back, toward her. You want to take a tour?

Ummm, what’s involved? I inquired.

Just a walk through. This is one of the oldest-known caves in the Dakotas and we have a real colorful history here. I’d take you on the tour myself, but… She shrugged at the crutches. Lucy can take you, instead. Let me call her up.

She reached for a walkie-talkie, paged for someone, and then pulled herself farther over the counter to peek at my Pumas. You’ve got good shoes. Got a bottle of water?

No, I don’t.

Well, go grab one from the cooler. $2.75 plus $14.50 for the tour.

I fished a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet. I was wearing cargo pants, a white v-necked t-shirt and a headband was holding my curly black hair back from my face. I paid up, got my change back and put the wallet back in my pocket along with my keys.

A young woman came up the stairs behind the register. About nineteen years old, maybe. Thin dark hair parted in the middle, hanging not quite halfway down her back. Jean shorts and a white tank top. Short hiking boots and white socks.

She smiled, said hello, and introduced herself. I did the same. Hi, my name is Gala. Nice to meet you. She led me to a long display table with helmets and flashlights scattered across. She handed me a yellow helmet and a large yellow flashlight. I put the helmet on and tested the flashlight as we headed back out the door and around the side.

We walked through an archway of stone to a narrow ledge of gray rock along a cliff edge. A wire fence protected us from falling below, where the spindly dead trunks of aspen trees lay scattered around old railroad tracks and a dried-up creek bed.

We approached a wooden door, at the mouth of the cave. The door faced west. Lucy stopped in front of the door and said, So, the family that owned this property around nineteen-hundred discovered the cave. She died first and was buried back east. He died in the nineteen-forties and willed the property to the Catholic Church, as long as they would later ship his wife's body back so they could be buried together. See… She pointed to the large rock face to our right. Pink-hued granite. Here are their names. The names of a married couple, engraved in stone in bold type. They’re actually buried in the wall of the cave. Then the Catholic Church owned the property and operated a silent retreat here. They had monks living here, and a dog, too. They used to do Midnight Mass in the chapel as well as other services. They sold the property a couple of years ago to a family of snowbirds. Lives in Mexico in the winter, comes here for a couple months each summer. Don’t really stick around. The guide chewed gum and spoke quickly, without inflection. Like an oft-used speech.

She opened the door and we walked into the cave. Dust flickered in, mixed with beams of flickering sunlight, as we crossed the threshold. I felt a coolness, a stillness. We entered what did indeed resemble a chapel. Steps blasted into the floor surrounded an altar, facing the door. There was a piece of rose quartz larger than a beanbag supporting the center of the altar. A string of multi-colored lights hung down over the altar from overhead. A few plastic plants scattered about.

I gazed around in wonder. Wow it’s cool in here! The guide snapped her gum. There used to be all these statues of Jesus in here and when the Church told the monks the property had been sold and they had to leave, the monks took the statues and threw them over the side of the cliff. Come on this way. Lucy led on through the chapel to a narrow opening where the cave walls expanded like a labyrinth. There were strings of lights illuminating our way. An iron railing was bracketed into the cave on our right.

The monks threw status of Jesus off the cliff? I asked, incredulous. Yup. They were pissed. The monks destroyed whatever they could and then they left. Them and their little dog, too. We tiptoed down a decline in the rock, to a flat spot. She paused and looked upward. Look up there. She pointed out the different kinds of rock as I walked behind her. Stalactites and stalagmites and explained the difference. Box work, living crystals, cave pearls. Graffiti etched into rocks dating back to 1892. A room that Calvin Coolidge passed out in during a tour in the 1930s. Oddly shaped rocks that look like cavorting dolphins in a gray sea of stone.

After thirty minutes into the tour, the string of lights ended and we each switched our flashlights on. Twenty paces down she flashed up the palm of her hand and stopped me, whispering. Shhhhh. She slowly turned her flashlight above us, and held it with both hands, steadying the light as it illuminated a shadowy crevasse above us. Look there. I peered up and saw a round little brown bump. Oh I sucked in my breath. Is that a bat?

Lucy leaned one foot against a swelling of rock. She teetered up to get a closer look. Yeah. We won’t see many of them. This little guy is sleeping. Do you want to touch it?

I looked at the tiny bat, half the size of my fist. Its gray-brown fur seemed almost silver. For a second I shuddered, imagining a bat’s face. The pig-like snout and pointy rat teeth. But, I said Yes instead and reached up to stroke its back, its furry back. It swayed a little, sleeping and dreaming. The fur was so smooth, so incredibly soft. The softest thing I had ever felt. Lucy stepped down again from her perch.

She continued to lead me through the ropy labyrinth of the cave, through the deeper caverns where the pale walls leaked seminal fluid around us. It was like embalming fluid in the cave, sealing us inside the Earth. There were the most amazing formations. Living crystals, forming before our eyes.

Have you worked here long, I asked her at one point. She spit her gum into a darkened recess to her left. No, a few months. I might be moving away soon though. Do you live here in the Hills?

I paused to take several gulps from my water bottle. Just passing through. I’m going to a wedding in Sioux Falls and then flying out in just a few days for a vacation overseas.

She paused, steadying herself on an uneven path, against the rock. Where are you going?

Cyprus in the Mediterranean.

She seemed puzzled. I figured she’d never heard of the place before.

That’s cool. She pulled her hair up in a ponytail with a band that was wrapped around her wrist. She appeared even younger now. Maybe only about sixteen or seventeen. So She asked me with a half-smile. Are you claustrophobic?

I thought about it. No, not really.

She walked to her right, her shadow cast large in front of us from the lights. She set her flashlight on the ground, facing the wall. There was a hole in the ground, about twice as large as a turkey platter. She planted either foot on the side of the hole, leaned over and placed her palms flat in front of the hole and slowly, one foot at a time, stepped inside. She turned away from me, only her upper half above ground and then ducked down, immersing herself completely. Out of sight.

Come on in! Her voice wasn’t muffled, but muted. Almost less than a voice. I didn’t feel scared but a bit uncertain.

How deep is it? I asked, leaning over. I felt a tinge of fear, creeping cold and jelly-like on the back of my neck, and then it quickly dissipated.

Her head poked up. Smiling. I’m standing right here. And there’s a step here when you can climb easily up. Don’t forget, I have the radio. I can always call for help if we need it.

Okay, I decided –- why not? This day was full of new things. Certainly never been in a cave before, why not go all the way, right?

I finished all but a few sips of my water then followed Lucy into wonderland. Creamy light walls glistening as if they were spun of cotton candy. A soft, almost lilac iridescent light where her flashlight shone. The sound of water, not dripping, not running but… lapping. Somewhere behind me. A column hung from ceiling to floor nearly twelve paces ahead. It reminded me of a bridal veil. All of it, just magnificent.

It was truly the most beautiful thing I have ever looked at. Greater than all the art hanging in the Getty. More breathtaking than the Grand Canyon. Wow.

Watch this. Lucy was a few feet from me, near a pool of water in the shallow white rock. She turned her light off. Turn yours off, too, Gala. I glanced at the yellow glow from my light, and then switched it off. Total darkness. Darkness you cannot even describe. Nothing. I waited for my eyes to adjust and they did not. I fumbled again for the switch and the precious light returned. The cave glowed and shone around me.

Then, I started to feel dizzy. I reached out toward one of the cave walls, a great buzzing sound in my ears. I woke up lying on my back. The column, the walls looked so much farther away suddenly. Did I pass out? I sat up, inch by inch, resting my head on my knees. Lucy was crouched beside me. Yeah. Sometimes that can happen down here.

She was holding my bottle of water, and then she leaned over to her right. A short distance away. Into a dark alcove. I couldn’t see what she was doing. I heard the sound of bubbles as she submerged the bottle in a pool of water, letting it fill. She brought the water back to me as I rested and tried to shake off the otherworldly feeling around me. Drink up. I drank half the bottle down. It was cool, clean, and sweet.

It took a minute or two to get my energy back in my legs enough to stand. Lucy helped me. We wound our way back, in reverse, the way we came. Up the rock steps and through the opening, back to the mazelike configuration of rock; white rock, gray rock, brown. Into the chapel again and out the door. I took the water with me and fumbled for my keys. Lucy gave me directions toward the highway, and then sang out Have a fun trip! She went into the store.

I marched down the steps to my car. I was tired and slightly ravenous. It was about six-thirty. I drove off from the cave, east toward to the highway, along a gravel road. I saw a family of turkeys walk the edge of the drive, a mother and ten itty-bitty babies toddling after her. I made it to Rapid City thirty or forty minutes later and found a hotel by the freeway. There was a Denny’s right there and I strolled across the parking lot. I sat at the bar, next to an Indian family, with two small kids - one still in diapers. I ordered a BLT and decaf. I watched the kids draw on their placemats while I read the local newspaper then headed back to my room.

I washed my face, moisturized carelessly and crawled into bed. I had the most recent issue of Los Angeles Magazine in my suitcase and read from it for a few minutes. Then, I switched out the light and turned on my side, away from the door, to sleep. I lay awake in the dark for ten minutes then I remembered that bottle of water. Turned the light back on, picked up my backpack and pulled out the bottle. I finished it off, switched off the lamp and fell soundly asleep.

I did not know at that moment what I had become. I will never fathom the strange and terrible things I would do to live through the past weeks. I do not know if I will survive this. I only know, at this moment, that I am alive and that I had better stay hidden and isolated. My survival – and everyone else’s – depends on it.

Book One

May 28th through June 30th

Day One - Friday May 28th

I woke up early the next morning feeling as if I had dreamt, but no recollection of such. I showered in soft water. I hated the feel of soft water, but it sure did do wonders for my naturally frizzy corkscrew curls.

I stopped first at a Starbucks at the nearby mall around ten that morning for iced coffee then hit a gas station. I bought a copy of the weekend edition of USA Today while filling the tank. There were many people around me, gassing up trucks and minivans and motorhomes. I ignored them and filled up the tank. The drive east along I-90 was long and rather dull, but I found myself entertained by the happy thoughts of seeing Teeny again in a couple days.

My father died when I was nineteen, right after starting college. He was nearly forty-five years old when I was born and he dropped dead of a stroke two days before his sixty-second birthday. I was with my ex-husband (boyfriend at the time) in his dorm room and Walter’s dorm monitor came knocking at his door on a Sunday night. I had my shirt off and my bra unhooked at just that moment and was left to fumble in the near dark to fix myself up before the door was opened. The DM immediately switched on the overhead light. I squinted toward two silhouettes, including a heavy dude, panting, wearing sweats. Looking, as it turned out, for me.

My mother had called my dorm room. Not finding me or my dippy Wiccan dorm mate, Teeny then had called my own dorm monitor who had asked around and… tracked me down like the guilty horny teen that I was.

The DM wouldn’t tell me what was going on, though by the way he was looking at me I still suspect that he had been told. I got to the phone at the front lobby to hear my mother tell me that Dad was gone.

My mother is like two people - no, maybe three. She was very different in my childhood than she is now. And for that brief stretch of time, she was something else entirely. She was essentially a mail-order bride who discovered real love in an arranged marriage to a middle-aged widower with two near-adult children. The odds were not in their favor. They just shrugged their shoulders at those odds, did a shot of Ouzo and recalculated their fates. My parents were truly in love with one another and in the months following my father’s sudden death I really didn’t know how my mother would make it.

She did, however. She went to a social one night at church and met a woman who went by the name of Pinky. Pinky was a southern belle and a social butterfly and she dragged my mother everywhere, until she divorced her Greek Orthodox husband after meeting the fourth rich bastard she’d marry and moved to the south of France. No kidding. In the meantime, however, she not only convinced my mother to get out, kick up her heels, even date a little – she also encouraged her to get a job.

So, Teeny (my mother’s given name is Athene but she’s 4’10" and has always been called Teeny) studied and obtained her real estate license and has been incredibly successful. She owns a cozy but glamorous apartment a block west of Lake Shore Drive; she gets her black (well, now gray) hair highlighted every three weeks without fail. It has a lovely cotton-candy effect that I am forever teasing her about. She has tons of clients and friends and her social calendar is always full. Except when I’m in town, of course. I am her only child and the world comes to a quick stop when I come to town.

On the road, I stopped once for snacks in Chamberlain and arrived at the Sheraton in Sioux Falls just before three that afternoon. Most of the wedding party was staying there and I had a reservation. I checked in. There were dozens of people milling around the lobby and reservation desk, most of them older. Back at my room, I called Melanie before laying down for an hour-long nap.

Melanie told me to meet some of the party down by the bar around six o’clock, including her brother Billy who was walking her down the aisle. Their father bailed years ago, from what I remember. I showered and dressed after my nap. I wore this cool grey and navy kimono dress with navy peep-toe pumps. I headed down to the hotel bar where Billy and three of the groomsmen were having a beer. I slid up to the bar and Billy gave me a lopsided hug, introducing me to the other guys. Steven, Sullivan and Marley. They bought me a vodka-tonic and then I rode over with Steven and Sullivan in their rental car.

The wedding was simple. Ceremony at 7pm – red roses, white candles – without the traditional dividing of the chapel into bride/groom. Melanie doesn’t have much family – her mother, brother and grandmother were the only relatives present. I sat with two of the groom’s cousins – twins in their early twenties. Both wore a shitload of makeup and spent the ceremony whispering about the single guys.

After the wedding, I joined the two cousins for the ride to the Ivy, where the reception was held. I ordered the filet and lots of wine. DJ, dancing, etc. I didn’t stay long though - Melanie and her new husband were out the door at ten o’clock and so I rode with Billy and the best man back to the hotel. We ordered beer from the bar and headed to the Jacuzzi where all of us bathed in our underwear except for the two cousins who thought to bring their swimsuits. I had mine in the car in the larger suitcase but didn’t feel like going out to get it.

I kind of made out with Marley in the jacuzzi after everyone else wandered off to swim or smoke. He was cool. Around thirty-five, I think he said. He told me he had his own landscaping business in some town called Blue Earth over the state line in Minnesota. Had a five-year old daughter that lived with him part time. He looked just like Richard Ashcroft from Verve. Dark tousled curls and full lips. He told me he played on a bowling league and was jonesing for a cigarette, having just quit the week before. After four beers and thirty minutes of messing around, I felt a headache coming on and shimmied out of the spa to head for bed.

It was about midnight. I peeled off my dress and shoes and scrubbed the makeup from my face, put my hair in a bun and fell into a restful sleep.

Day Two - Saturday May 29th

I made it to Chicago around seven-thirty that evening. I left the Porsche with the valet service and brought my big suitcase inside with me, leaving the smaller duffel bag with the clothes I’d worn the last five days inside. I marched through the garage to the inside entrance. The doorman whisked open the door. A new guy – it’s been two years since I was last here. I sauntered ‘round the corner to the elevator and poked the 15 key for my mother’s floor.

She was waiting at the door, open, for me. Gala, hriso mou. She kissed my cheek with the side of her lips, careful not to mess up her creamy lipstick.

We embraced and I followed her into the living room. I set my suitcase against the northern wall and plopped down on the cream silk sofa beneath the gold-framed round mirror opposite. Mom, you’ve put on a little weight! I meant that in the most flattering of ways. She was always so slender. Teeny patted her tiny tummy, clad in a silvery-beige trendy tracksuit. I know – isn’t it fab?!

She sat on the chaise across from me. It was new, black velvet, a different look for her tastes. Going goth on me now? I gestured toward it. Teeny ran her hand along the grain of the supple fabric. Isn’t it fun? I saw it at Champagne last Christmas and became koo-koo for it. There’s another one in the bedroom in chartreuse. Why not? She seemed to be asking herself more than me.

I unpacked several items in the guest bathroom and changed into a casual black dress. Teeny wanted to go out for a drink. I put on some makeup, some hair stuff and cleaned my glasses and met her in the foyer. She had put on a smart brown dress, shiny taffeta and shorter than I’m used to seeing my mother in. Gold wedge heels and a rose-gold watch. She still wore her wedding ring – not the original one, but a later one my father bought her. It’s chunky with diamonds and a large tanzanite stone in the center of it. She wore my father’s simple gold band on a short chain around her neck with a cross.

There was a wine bar around the corner from her apartment. A new place, she told me, as she locked the apartment door and slipped her arm into mine. We strolled down the hallway, to the elevator, together. Gala, I’m so happy you grew your hair out! She purred. It is a bit long – not quite halfway down my back. Why, thank you! I fluffed the curls up. I don’t have particularly good hair. Black, super curly, a bit frizzy and I should own stock in silicone gel.

She made small talk with the doorman and he let us out, into the street. It was a warm summer night and there were people all around. I heard the sounds of music, from cars going by, and honking off in the distance. We crossed the street, kiddy-corner, to the wine bar.

It was a moody, cozy place. Snifters full of spent corks in the center of each table. We grabbed a two-top near the windows and ordered a bottle of $80 Argentine Malbec. I spied a distinguished-looking silver-haired man, out with two Asian businessmen. He was looking very suave and conspicuously eying my mother. I hissed at her. Go for it, Teeny. She demurred, with a shake of her head. I know for all of her dating and active social life, there has been no romantic interest for any other man since my father’s death.

We nibbled on cheese straws and strawberries with our wine. Our server was a girl from South Africa. A live jazz band, with a stand-up bass, came in around ten o’clock. It was a small place and not packed, but lively. Probably about forty people inside. I danced with the silver-haired man, who looked at my mother as he dipped me Gracefully. She smiled and waved at us from her table by the window.

We strolled back to the apartment about eleven-thirty. I changed into a t-shirt and shorts to sleep in. Teeny put on another tracksuit. We each grabbed a silver spoon from the kitchen and a pint of ice cream to snack on together in her king-sized bed. The television was on, tuned to a Woody Allen movie. The sound was off, and we talked and giggled long into the evening.

Day Three - Sunday May 30th

I only had one full day in Chicago with Teeny and wanted to make the most of it. We were up early to breakfast at Ann Sather’s. I piled lingonberries on my Swedish pancakes. Teeny opted for the smoked salmon Benedict. We drank tons of coffee and laughed and laughed until we hurt. We talked up the idea of her visiting me in LA, maybe early fall.

She had to run a quick errand over to her office late morning, and then we drove to the Botanical Gardens. I haven’t much of a green thumb – I keep hardy succulents inside my cottage back home. Teeny had a small collection plants in her apartment, ferns and jade. But she had a real love for bright flowers.

There is a very unique attraction at the Gardens – something they call the Bee Line. Thousands of bees housed under a glass dome. A man in a bucket hat and a young redheaded boy were standing beside us, and the old guy was telling the boy about the disappearing bees. Cell phone towers he said. I’m convinced the cell phones are making the bees lose their way. He nodded at Teeny and