Rustin Levenson

Thank you to Michael and Paula. Before, during, and after, New York Write to Pitch was a true learning experience.

Chapter 1 Hand Surgeon’s Office, Tuesday afternoon, October 5 Katherine Bradford, Miami socialite and advice columnist Katherine plunged her working hand into her tote and extracted the paperback she’d brought to the doctor’s office, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Who was the oddball in their book group who had picked this one? Written almost a hundred years ago about random travelers whose destiny had intersected when a bridge collapsed in Peru in 1714. Strangers and fate!? Too much. She pushed the novel back into her Coach carryall with a sigh. Speaking of strangers, check out what this hand surgeon’s waiting room offered up. The other two other Miamians sharing the cramped space certainly qualified as strange, even by South Florida standards. First, in the identical chair across from her slouched that thirty-ish character. For sure something was way off there. Anxious brown eyes darted around from beneath snarled hair. And his outfit. He was wrapped in some kind of toga, held together by a fraying bungee cord. An unbuttoned Guayabera topped the outlandish robe. As if such an accessory camouflaged the fact that he was wearing a bedsheet? It did not. She checked his hands. Encased in blood-stained gauze he was shielding them against his body. What in heaven’s name had he done to himself? She side-eyed the other occupant coughing by the entrance, his right arm suspended in a sling. He seemed to be around her age, maybe mid-fifties or a little older, with groomed, graying hair. Way more respectable and wearing actual clothes. But to her astonishment, he was engaged in an unholy wrestling match with a People Magazine. As he grappled with the magazine, he stopped to cough. Again. Wait. Could he have Covid? Was that still a thing now? He was well dressed, so maybe not. Although good clothes didn’t repel the virus. Katherine’s friend down the street proved that; haut couture, but dead as a doornail. His clumsy left hand continued to tear at the magazine. No doubt it was full of germs. Maybe blood. She gave him a hard stare. Behave! That’s not your magazine. But with a fierce jerk, a handful of pages burst free. What the hell was he up to? Ugh. She checked her watch. She would be tapping impatient right fingers--if only she could make them function. Damn. When it came to operations, she wanted them to be by choice. But now, here in the hand surgeon’s waiting room, she knew there wasn’t one. After the requisite number of days, the fingers on her braced hand felt worse, not better. And her fingers, her hand…her whole arm…hurt. She was destined for surgery. Ha, fate!The inner door burst open. At last! But it wasn’t the chubby nurse. It was a young man, handsome, she couldn’t help but notice, despite his aura of chaos. He staggered across the room, twisting into a paint-spattered Dolphins sweatshirt and swearing a blue streak. “INFECTION!!?” he howled, falling into the seat just down from her. She leaned away from his swirl of panic. “Vic! I’m sure the antibiotics will work.” His partner, an earnest woman wearing a black T-shirt imprinted with a palm crisscrossed with multicolored lines, followed him into the waiting room. Balancing backpacks, phones, and papers she sank into the last available chair next to Katherine. “What about SEPSIS?” “Try not to worry. It’s a rare complication, ” his companion tried to sooth him. “NOT RARE ENOUGH! How about RICKY? He was my TWIN. We have the same blood. He had an infection; he got SEPSIS. And he’s DEAD,” he railed. He’d captured the attention of the other two strangers across the room. On the word DEAD, their heads jerked up in unison. There was no way not to eavesdrop. “DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!” He shouted to the room; in case no one had heard him the first time. “I know, sweetie,” the woman murmured. “I’m so sorry.” She reached over and eased the trapped sleeve of his sweatshirt over the gauze encircling his hand. Katherine noted a fresh bandage, enveloping the infection that he had disclosed to everyone within earshot. “You’re not going to die.” The woman picked up his undamaged hand and traced the lines on his palm. What was she doing? “Oh my God,” he groaned, snatching his hand away. “Di! Palm reading? Not now.” Of course, that explained what the weird hand design on her T-shirt was about: palmistry. “No honey, this looks good, ” she reached again for his hand. “No, I’m serious. Your creative line on your left hand is faint. Look. But here…” She lifted the corner of bandage on his right hand. “The accident changed this and now you have a deep, bold creative line.”Glancing over despite herself, all Katherine could see was the tip of a festering furrow under the gauze. “It’s a scar, not a line, Di! Anyway, I’m already creative! I’m an ARTIST,” he insisted with a fierce glare. “Well, now you’re even more creative. Stop worrying. You’ll live. The cut didn’t affect your life line at all.” At that, the unkempt toga guy with the double bloody bandages careened toward them, almost falling into Katherine’s lap. “Wait a minute, Miss, are you a palm reader?” he demanded. “Well, yes, yes I am,” the young woman replied, shrinking away. “Can you look at mine?” He thrust out his bandaged hands. “Well, no, not easily.” Obviously! Katherine lifted one brow. “Please, just take a look,” he begged, swinging a mummy-wrapped hand under the palm reader’s face. “Did my accident change my fate?” “Not now!” She cast a horrified look at his bandages. To Katherine’s alarm he began a clumsy effort to unwrap one of the dressings. The woman shook her head, appalled. “No! Not here!!” Crowded against her seat, Katherine rolled her eyes in agreement. “But maybe sometime? Can we meet up later?” he pressed. “Maybe another time,” the palm reader placated. “Excuse me!” Pressed against the waiting room wall, Katherine tried to assert herself. This was too much! The stained bandage on his right hand hovered within centimeters of her arm. Her corner was overpopulated. No one moved. Shrinking further into her seat, with nowhere to look, Katherine glanced down at her own palm. She was pretty sure that the surgery was going to be just below her fingers. Would it create a new palm line? No. Never mind. That palm stuff was silly. In college, the girl in the room nextdoor had been infatuated with palmistry for a hot minute. After rushing up and down the hall, reading everyone’s hand, she had decided it was all hokum. Which, of course, it was. Still, she checked her life line. She still remembered where it was, arcing around the mound of her thumb. Far from her fingers it was free from any intrusion of Dr. Ellis’s scalpel. So she was safe. The operation wouldn’t affect her life at all. Would it? What could a scar under her fingers mean in palm-reading land? Nothing. For sure. The inner door opened again. “Mr. Brother Egret?” What? The nurse sang it out, as if it was a real name. “That’s me. Brother Egret,” The bedsheet-clad, bloody-mitts guy proclaimed, at last backing away from her. Brother what? He paused to plead with the palm lady. “Please. Do you have a card?” “A card? Okay, sure, sure. Here.” She attempted to hand him one from her purse, then realizing it was impossible with his bound hands, she tucked it into the top pocket of his guayabera. “Thanks, thank you!” He turned to stumble after the nurse. “I should leave some cards here!” She laughed to her companion. “Dr. Ellis is changing people’s futures!” “Shut up, Di, not funny,” he scowled, rising. “You never know…” Katherine watched her as she placed a couple bright yellow business cards on the side table and followed him out the door. Wait - that name, Brother Egret, Katherine knew it. Yes, that’s who that man was. Brother Egret. That con-man preacher. There’d been an article in the Miami Herald about Egret and his rag-tag band of followers. After it appeared, the “Angels of the Everglades” had gained a sheen of spiritual legitimacy which had attracted more followers, and the promise of unseemly financial success.Well, he didn’t look very successful now, Katherine thought. He looked like he hadn’t washed or combed his hair for days. To be fair, with two confined hands, maybe he hadn’t. And the sheet! Couldn’t one of his followers gotten him into a pair of pants? Now it was just Katherine and the gentleman with the sling and the torn-up People Magazine left waiting. She had to be next. She’d arrived moments before him. She had been seated by the time he came in. And for certain, she was richer than he was. She knew she looked good. A blond chignon and a complexion as smooth as Botox could make it. Her Chanel jacket and her Christian Louboutins trumped his a half-on tweedy jacket and some sort of slip-on leather shoes. She would be next, hands down. Hands. Yeah, hands! Anyway, it was now 4:15 and her appointment had been for 3:45. Come on! Finally, the nurse returned. “Jeeezzus?” she called. No one rose. “Jeezzusss?” Again. “Hey-soos?” The sling-man man queried. “Hey-soos Santos?” “Well, maybe?” The nurse squinted at her clipboard. Katherine winced. Even she knew the Spanish pronunciation of Jesús. 2024 Miami was almost seventy percent Hispanic, for heaven’s sake. Dr. Ellis’s office staff had better get with the program. Wait!? How had that happened? The magazine-maiming Hispanic guy was called before her! She couldn’t believe she was still sitting there. She took a moment to bolster her outrage. The panicky guy, Vic, with the dead twin brother, had been in the treatment room when she arrived. And that ponzi-preacher Egret had already been in the waiting room. Right. But for certain she assured herself again, she had beaten Hey-soos into the waiting room by several minutes. Well, maybe she should just leave! Her fingers weren’t so bad. To convince herself, she attempted to flex them. Pain rocketed down her palm. Okay, yes, she’d better wait. But really! For distraction, she picked up her phone, hoping to get a game going. She hadn’t done Wordle yet today. She always started with the word “arise.” Nothing! There had to be at least one letter. A total lack of appropriate tiles mocked her effort at distraction. Ouch! She dropped the phone to her lap. She couldn’t even hold it for two minutes! This was ridiculous. This surgery had better work. The door clicked open. “Katherine Bartlett?”At last. Who else? She was the only one left! She rose and raised her chin at the nurse as she led her into a cubicle. Yes, I’m Katherine Bartlett and your doctor has kept me waiting. Inexcusable. Huff. The People shredding guy, Jesús, already on the way out, passed by the open door of her treatment room, minus his sling. That was a good sign. That maybe Doctor Ellis knew his stuff. In Miami-Dade County there were over two million residents and about a hundred hand surgeons. She’d checked. Of them, Dr. Ellis and his wife inhabited her social circle, so she’d come to him. But that did not provide an accurate read on his surgical skills. She hoped she hadn’t made a mistake. “Hello, Doctor,” she purred at his entrance. She knew she could be rude to the nurse, but she’d better butter up the doctor. “Hello Katherine. How is Robert?” “He’s fine, busy with his law practice. How’s Gretchen?” La, la, la. Whatever. Let’s get this show on the road. “Lovely as usual.” “Mmmm.” “Let’s take a look at your hand.” Katherine held out her right hand, flinching as the doctor began to move her fingers. “I see there is no improvement. I think we should go ahead with the surgery as discussed.” “I guess so.” She was out of options. “I have an opening Friday at 11:00. Be here at 10:30. Nothing to eat after midnight. Plan to have someone here to pick you up around 3:00 in the afternoon. Does that work?” “Yes,” she hesitated. “Will there be a scar?” “Yes, just under your fingers. But there are lots of lines on your palm, it will blend right in once it heals.” “Oh, okay.” So yes, maybe a new line, but far from her life line. What made her think that? Hand lines. Palm reading. Foolishness. “See you Friday, then?“Sure, thanks.” There went her luncheon date. As he bustled out of the room, she absorbed his instructions. No food, 10:30, 3:00. Well, this was it. Too bad that it wouldn’t improve her looks like her two tightening and lifting forays into other operating rooms. Okay, maybe it would a bit. At least a working hand would mean more effective management of her hair and make-up. She sighed and collected her things. Passing back through the waiting room she noticed the palm reader’s business card on the table across from where she had been sitting. The room was vacant. One last yellow business card remained. What could be the harm? With her good hand, she picked it up and slipped it into her purse. Chapter 2 Hand surgeon’s office, Tuesday afternoon, October 5 Brother Egret, con-man and Deity to the Angels of the Everglades The pain in his hands was unbearable. What had he been thinking? Somehow, he had believed his own hype. And look where it had landed him. Brother Egret. Ha. Risen from the Everglades. Yeah. It had been a fluke. Last year, ahead of the Florida Python Challenge, he had secreted a cache of snakes that he’d bagged-up in a cypress dome where he’d camped as a teenager. After the obligatory training, signing up, showing up, and looking innocent, he’d gotten back to the place where he’d hidden the pythons he’d caught earlier. He’d hung around, smoking dope, cursing the oppressive August heat and humidity, and waiting the appropriate amount of time to have nabbed them for real. Then on the way out of the swamp, he’d tripped over another python. Literally tripped, capturing the snake with both hands and falling face first into raspy sawgrass. He’d been out of bags, so dripping with slime, he’d draped his latest find around his neck and kept going. Then he’d lost his way a bit, trying to get back to the road, to where the Florida Fish and Wildlife wardens would assess his catch. Stomping through a dank patch of bioluminescence he’d come across a camp of stoned neo-hippies who saw him “walking on water” with a snake draped around his neck. Well, he’d fit the description of the Deity of their dreams. Even he could see that there was more money in being a Deity than in the remote possibility of winning the ten- thousand-dollar Python Challenge Prize. So, he’d ditched the snakes and become Brother Egret. As his following grew, they expected things. Bits of excitement here and there. No problem. He knew lots of magic tricks. He had years of shenanigans up his sleeve. But then he’d gotten ahead of himself. He’d seen a gag on the internet on the Naranja Branch Library computer. “Amazing tricks with a coin and a glass.” It had looked like a piece of cake when the teenager in the baseball cap on YouTube did it. But despite the kid’s warnings Egret had chosen the wrong sizedglass and when he was trying to palm the coin and hold the glass, there’d been too much pressure. Boom! It had all gone to hell. There had been a lot of damage to his left hand, but he’d kept trying to look cool. Then picking out the shards of glass, a big piece had gotten stuck in his other palm. From there it all became an agonizing bloody mess, and it was off to the Jackson Hospital Emergency Room. Today he’d been following up in Dr. Ellis’s office, hoping for a miraculous cure. Something was wrong with one of his tendons. Maybe both of his tendons. Now, according to Dr. Ellis, the remedy was time. Which he didn’t have. His hands were useless, and he needed to get back to his magic. Keep his flock enraptured. Before Dr. Ellis’s nurse had called him in, he’d been pretty sure that the Palm Reading dame who came out into the waiting room with her screaming boyfriend could be of some kind of benefit. For certain his palms were majorly damaged. What could that mean? Some big change? Something good? He’d had a strong hunch about her, and Egret always trusted his hunches. Those types of charlatans could have insights. Anyway, she’d refused to look at his screwed-up hands. For now, anyway. Yeah. Maybe just hype, but you never knew. She’d slipped her card into his front pocket where hope sprang eternal. Chapter 3 Hand surgeon’s office, Tuesday afternoon, October 5 Jesús Santos, father and manager for his daughter Caro, “The Latina Songbird” Diós! Jesús coughed into his good hand. Here it was again. That damned issue of People magazine. Yep, it was Tina Turner on the cover and his daughter on page thirty-six. This was the one. It had to be at least a month, maybe six weeks old. It was clear that Dr. Ellis’s office staff had neglected to update the offerings in the waiting room. And here was the magazine he never wanted to see again. Trying look casual, he ripped at the pages that referred to his daughter, Caro, and her ill- advised outing to Miami Beach. Enough! Not one other person needed to see this! It had always been the two of them. Caro and Jesús. Jesús and Caro. Caro’s mom, his wife Flora, had passed away when Caro was four. Passed away really described the way she had just kind of given up and faded like an old, sad flower, a daisy with the petals fluttering off, or better, a rosebud that stayed in a tight knot and refused to bloom. From then on, he’d had to be both mother and father to Caro. And here in People was his beloved daughter. In color. The Latina Songbird. Available for speculation. Did she look a little paunchy? Ninety-nine percent of women should look that good. But in the time since the pictures appeared and then reappeared elsewhere, conjecture had been rife. Was she letting herself go? Was she going to stop performing? Was she pregnant? On and on and on. Maldito social media. Ha. It was just a bad camera angle. And maybe that unflattering polka-dot swimsuit. Jesús was pretty sure that was all. She hadn’t said anything about it since the story came out, even though he had asked her over and over. In truth, he admitted to himself that in the last months she he had pretty much stopped talking to him altogether. Going out all the time, rather than working on her songs or spending time in her home recording studio. Hurrying past him on the rare occasion that they were in the same room in their cavernous Star Island mansion. What was going on with all her distant moodiness? It was so unlike her. Growing up she had shared everything with him. And now nothing. Of course, he hoped she understood that as her father, he always had her best interests at heart. Didn’t she? He could spin this beach fiasco if/when it came up again. But he needed the whole story from her. Then he could make it go away for good. Fat was one thing, but as much as he tried, he couldn’t ignore the other, more concerning part of the article. The black rapper. No, he didn’t want to think about that at all. A guy named Provi. No one Jesús had heard of before. He’d looked him up on the internet and it seemed he was a big deal in the rapping world. They’d been way too cozy in the photos. Cozy meaning that Provi’s hands were all over her. His daughter! He had the same question as the newsmongers; what was going on there? Again, she wasn’t saying. He tried to harness a cough, but it burst out. It had been six months, and he couldn’t get rid of it. He felt a twinge of anxiety. Two weeks ago, his general practitioner had been concerned and had ordered X-rays and tests. Once he had the test results, there was an immediate referral to a specialist whose office had scheduled more tests and an appointment for the middle of the next month. Many weeks away, so maybe it wasn’t so urgent. But a specialist? And he hadn’t stopped coughing. Would Tina Turner’s face appear on a magazine in that waiting room? God forbid. Anyway, the gossip from the article was finally dying down. Jesús was grateful to the moralizing senator from Florida who had been caught in a threesome. Stupid move. And the conflagration of a long-term Hollywood couple in the throes of a “friendly” divorce. It took a while, but public attention had been diverted. But just in case, these pages in People were coming out. He used his good hand to crumple them, wedging the rest of the magazine under his arm in the sling. It was awkward to get a good gripunder his elbow. His wrestling with the slippery magazine was raising the eyebrows of the haughty lady across the way. He gave her an “oh, how clumsy of me” shrug and a challenging stare. You try to handle a magazine with one arm in a sling, senora. Now she was staring back. You try to manage a recalcitrant daughter who is making every effort to tank her singing career. Try that! He sighed and coughed again. Pain twisted into his wrist as the periodical went one way and the offending pages the other. Careful of your hand, he reminded himself, trying to maintain a neutral expression, as if he wasn’t bent on destruction. “Still healing,” he nodded at the woman, trying to maintain innocence as the remainder of the magazine fell to the floor. He kicked it under his chair, secreting the torn pages into his muslin sling. Done. The door from the treatment area burst open and a deranged guy bolted into the waiting room. Loco. Screaming about an infection. His girlfriend was trying to calm him down, yammering about lines in his hand. Interesting. Caro was into that. Seances, palm reading, crystal balls, Tarot cards. A lot of nonsense if you asked him. The scruffy guy wearing some kind of toga who lurched over to her seemed to believe in it. Look at his hands. Something bad must have happened. Malo. Brother Egret? Si, that’s what the nurse called him. Jesús watched as he vanished into the doctor’s office, tripping over his bizarre, draping sheets. Now the senora and he were the only ones left in the waiting room. He pulled his phone out of his briefcase and studied it, feigning a stream of urgent messages. The door snicked. The nurse was back, “Jeezusss?” “Jeezusss?” Again. He pretended not to understand. He was nobody’s Anglo-savior. “Hey-soos?” he corrected, standing up. “Hey-soos Santos?” He didn’t understand the surgical procedure that Dr. Ellis had performed ten days before. Something about carpal tunnel along with the reason that his thumb wouldn’t do its opposable thing anymore. It had been painful and clumsy, doing the things with his left hand that he used to be able to do with his right. So the surgery had been necessary. But Ellis’s explanation of the whys and hows in rapid medical English went way over his head. Now he was left with a scar on his palm that curved all the way around the back of his thumb, his hand locked up in a brace, and the whole mess in a sling around his neck. Dr. Ellis’s promise was that he would untangle it all today and that with physical therapy, Jesus’s thumb would go back to doing its normal job.Now, seated in the treatment room with the doctor and holding out his hand, he could see the cut from the surgery was almost healed. The scar echoed of the strong line that had always been around his thumb. Long, but not too noticeable. Sure enough, after lots of painful probing, Dr. Ellis pronounced that with caution and a set of exercises, Jesús could begin to resume normal activities. At last, the brace was off and the sling secreting the rumpled People pages slid into the trash bin. Freedom. He couldn’t wait to get out of there. He passed back into the waiting room. The palm reading lady had scattered a couple cards on the table displaying her name, “Di Mason” and her profession “Palm Reader” with a three-oh-five telephone number inscribed below. Si, a lot of nonsense. Despite his name, he wasn’t a religious man looking for the hand of God in his life or his fate in his palm. But still, there were moments when he wondered. Catholic upbringing and all. He picked up a card, marveling that now he could kind of use his right thumb. Maybe he’d ask Caro if she wanted attend to a palm-reading. Get her talking. “Palms and Palms; Know your Future,” the card read. Chapter 4 Hand Surgeon’s Office, Tuesday afternoon, October 5 Vic Hernandez, an artist, and his girlfriend Di Mason, a palm reader The half-hour wait back in Dr. Ellis’s antiseptic treatment room was sheer torture. By now, Vic was sure there were other people waiting. Why couldn’t he leave? He checked the clock on the wall again. Something must be wrong, or it wouldn’t be taking so long. The doctor came and went. The nurse took blood. Took blood!? Why?? What the hell was going on? Unbound, his scar didn’t look great, even to him, raised and red, slanting down into his palm from his fingers. Instead of disappearing, as Dr. Ellis had promised, the stitches had produced raised, crimson pustules all along the injury. None of it seemed like any kind of healing to him. “What’s going on, Di?” he asked his girlfriend. “I don’t know, honey.” Her weak smile was not encouraging. “Isn’t that your jam? Knowing things?” “Stop being mean.” He hadn’t intended to be. He knew she didn’t deserve it. Through it all, she’d been there for him. It was just that he felt so jumpy about medical stuff, with good reason after what happened to Ricky. One day his twin had been well, then a little infection. Then not so well and a week laterragingly ill. Vic had taken him to the Baptist clinic, and they’d hustled him over to the hospital. But it was too late. One day later he was dead. Vic knew he shouldn’t take it out on Di. But with all her palm stuff, her sixth sense, shouldn’t she have known what was going to happen? Didn’t her business card say, “Palms and Palms…Know your future?” Shouldn’t she have received some message? “Get to the doctor, Ricky!” “Sepsis is coming for you!” The parade of ladies presenting their palms in the front room of his studio relied on her. Paid her. Even tipped her when things went their way. Why couldn’t she have helped Ricky? The doctor was back. Solemn. “What was that chemical smell on your bandages?” “I dunno, why?” Vic sniffed at his hand. “Turpentine maybe?” “From cleaning your palette or brushes?” Di offered. “Turpentine, ah, I think that was it.” Dr. Ellis looked nonplussed. “It’s an unusual smell for a sterile bandage. I wondered. Well, it didn’t help the healing. It looks like you picked up an infection.” “WHAT?” Giving Di a desperate look, he leapt up, grabbed his sweatshirt, and rushed out into the waiting room.

Chapters Palms (5).pdfChapters Palms (5).pdf

Palms Write to Pitch.docx