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an insult. St. Louis is a peculiar city. Its arts and education circles were surprisingly liberal. So were its middle classes. But the city was saddled with too many so-called civic leaders who were sexist, racist, and homophobic. Many men who were Babe’s age—fifty and up—still weren’t out of the closet because it could hurt them at their brokerage firm, law firm, or other old-line St. Louis institution. Most of these in-the-closet types were married with children. They played around on their wives with pretty boys.
    I found this out the strangest way. Richard, a gay friend who worked at a society hair salon, came to me with a peculiar problem. He’d fallen in love with a beautiful male prostitute. At least, my friend Richard thought the boy was beautiful. To me, he looked like a pouty kid with a good body and a bad attitude.Anyway, the beautiful boy lived in my South Side neighborhood and used to hold Wednesday night parties. He invited his other working friends, their clients, and Richard. “I went to a few,” Richard said, “and I saw some of the biggest names in St. Louis cruising. Prominent men with prep school accents standing around this dingy South Side flat, eating Kas potato chips and drinking Busch beer. They were so well bred they always showed up at the door with a bottle of wine. Imagine bringing a hostess gift to an orgy. But what really bothered me was that several were the husbands of my clients. I’m sure these women hadn’t a clue their husbands were gay. After all, they had children. It made me angry. My innocent customers could get AIDS because their husbands were too cowardly to come out. So now I’m asking you: Should I tell my women customers their husbands see gay prostitutes?”
    I didn’t know how to answer that, although my instincts were to keep quiet. I was glad this wasn’t my decision. Richard agonized for weeks and finally decided to say nothing. He figured his clients would rather die than have someone else know their husbands were cheating on them with other men. One Wednesday night I went by the pretty boy’s flat and noticed the black Lexuses and BMWs parked nearby. Just for the heck of it, I wrote down the license plate numbers and ran them on the state drivers license program on the paper’s computer. The list read like the
Social Register.
    Babe wasn’t through assassinating the good name of the Vander Venter family. “Well, if that bitch Sydney isn’t gay, her son is. I heard he was kicked out ofcollege for drugs. Now he’s living with another boy. Kid’s a fagola. But what can you expect with a mother like that?”
    “It takes two to make a child, Babe,” I reminded him. “Her husband contributed half.”
    “Hudson contributed more than his share,” Babe said piously, and I knew who had the major money in that family. I wondered why I was defending Sydney. The only time I saw the woman was tonight, and she acted like a jerk. Of course, if jerky behavior got you the death penalty, we’d all be dead.
    Enough of this. I grabbed Babe’s cell phone and called the special city desk number, the one not hooked up to the answering machine that protects us from bothersome readers. I told the night city editor where I was and what I’d seen. “Just tell Babe, Fran-cesca,” he said. “He knows these people. He can handle this story. You go home and rest.”
    This was a bright boy indeed. Smart enough to know I was currently out of favor with the management at the
Gazette.
This night city editor definitely would see sunlight soon. So would I, for that matter. It was after 3:00 A.M . I was so cold and tired, I couldn’t stop shivering, even with the heat turned up full blast. I drove home, fuming at the idiocy of editors and the loss of my story. I’d find a way to write it yet.
    When I got home, my thin suede boots were soaked through and probably ruined. I unzipped them and wiggled my toes to see if they still moved. My toes were dyed black from the wet boots.