The Gift by John Klawitter

The Gift

Florie studied the middle-aged white man in the black Cadillac that had pulled over to the curb. Banker, she thought to herself. Or maybe a doctor. Her lips were red, her short leather skirt was skin-tight, and she was standing with her hand on her hip in the customary rakish attitude.

"Hey, John," she said automatically, "are you lonely tonight?"

For a moment he looked like he might pull away, but then he gave her a wan smile. "Get in back," he said.

They drove to a wooded area just out of town, and he treated her gently, if not exactly lovingly. It was an easy gig and if she hadn't been so burned out by life and drugs, she might have appreciated it. But things being what they were, she recognized the small stack of hundred dollar bills he gave her as far more than her regular rate. That she could appreciate.

"I've never done this before," he said as the Caddy purred through the darkness.

"Nothing to it," Florie said, her mind already racing ahead to the possibilities of a dope score before the street went dry for the night.

"I was going to chicken out and drive on," he added as he dropped her off at the corner where she did her business, "but my name is John."

"Lucky guess on my part," she said, not bothering to tell him every prospect was a john.

This was in Cleveland in the 70's, and, long-story-short, John-the-john had gotten her pregnant. The extra money she'd hidden from her pimp let her cruise for a while, and she was six months along before she gave it a second thought.

The baby, an undersized little girl, was born while Florie was in a detox ward. She named the squalling thing Caraba, and took one last look at her daughter before they took her away. Six weeks later Florie was back on the mean streets of Cleveland , and that fall they found her stiff and overdosed in an alley near her business corner.

So that was the beginning of Caraba Wolftack. She was born poor, of unloving parents, in a beat up section of Cleveland . Her mother looked to be of mixed Polynesian, Negro and Asiatic origin, and from the one blurred photo Caraba had of her, the lady was not without beauty. Caraba had no idea who her father might be. Caucasian, probably.

The entire mix gave the lean young girl a look that was very much in vogue. The talent agents called it 'cosmopolitan.' Some modeling agent picking up his daughters after soccer spotted her, and the rest was history. They didn't care that she'd been a pouting juvenile delinquent or that her rail-thin body was the result of a few addictions she'd picked up along the way. By the time she was nineteen, she was on the cover of every magazine in America.

Hard to believe, but the first thing Caraba did when she had enough money was to kick her cocaine habit. And then she began to save her earnings. Money represented food, shelter, security. Money was love, she told herself. She lived on a tight budget and the money grew and grew.

When it looks like you're making plenty of cash, it's hard not to have friends. They're everywhere; they come out of the woodwork. But Caraba had graduated from the mean streets by way of a dozen or so foster homes where she'd been alternately tolerated and abused. She had a great smile, but she knew how to hold people at a distance. She had no friends. She had contacts, agents, managers, and business acquaintances. A dinner with Caraba, men said, was like dining on ice. They said the same thing about the sex.

Freddie March, a hot young sax player had the balls to complain about it. "You just lie there," he said.

"I don't give a crap about your expectations," Caraba said. "There are plenty of girls willing to wiggle for you."

It was true; Caraba didn't care what any of them said. By the time she was thirty, she could see the modeling gig wasn't going to last forever. She took acting lessons, voice and diction. She got rid of the last vestiges of her street slang. And she got lucky, sort of. A director looking for a new look cast her as the Polynesian beauty in a film somewhere south of an X rating. At least, she thought distastefully, it didn't involve barnyard animals. But it was a start, and she learned fast. She considered herself in the entertainment business.

Cable was booming then, and she came up with an idea for a show, hosting local celebs. She took it to a banker named Harvey Jacobs, a big frog in their small pond who had made a pile in the shoe business and was known to take a flier every now and then.

"It's a loser," Harvey said. "How about you and me go to dinner?"

Caraba figured out how to do it herself. She funded a pilot and--a second stroke of luck--a local network affiliate liked it. So she leapfrogged over cable and became a local legend, ice princess of the air, the grand madam spider of the airwaves. The show went national and Caraba became a national icon with national guests on a national show.

"I always liked your idea," Harvey said.

"No," Caraba said.

"I didn't ask you anything yet."

"No to everything."

The show seemed to get bigger and bigger, and now the money grew in heaps and piles, so much she didn't know what to do with it.

Late one Friday night when leaving the studio (which she owned, bought and paid for), she was roughed up in the parking lot and then sexually assaulted by four punks who had scaled the wall and lay in wait. Words cannot describe the horror. The four took turns raping her, and two came back for seconds. The punks, suddenly frightened for their own safety, left her for dead.

Some hours later, Caraba dragged herself to her car and managed to drive herself home. She washed and bathed and steamed and screamed her rage at the blank walls around her. But she didn't go to the police. It wouldn't do to have the rape of America 's icon splashed across the front page on every scandal rag in the world. She told herself she had known worse outrage in her life. After all, family rape is not unknown in foster homes. She would endure.

By Monday, with the careful help of heavy makeup and her own courage, she threw back her shoulders and walked into her studio.

"Someone had a wild weekend," her assistant Peter chirped as she breezed past and shut the door to her office.

"Shut up, Peter," she said.

She was ready for taping, which began on Wednesday, and the week carried on as usual. And the next. And the next. But on the fifth week, Caraba found out she was pregnant. Of course, it would have to go.

The only problem was, she had a month to do her show before she could take a break. Millions were at stake. There was no way. So one month became two, and then three.

Caraba could hardly stand the abomination growing in her belly. She wanted to beat her stomach, to knock the foul offering out of her body. But contracts were contracts, and it was April before she could get away. In a way, she was lucky; four months along, and it didn't show. At least, she didn't think it did.

She had Peter set up a trip to New York City . Almost as an aside, she had him arrange an appointment with a gynecologist. Peter raised his eyes, but he knew better than to say anything other than, "Yes, ma'am."

She was waiting in the airport lounge when the news flashed on the overhead screens. The weather was clear, there was a slow speed chase on one of the freeways, and four teenage punks had been gunned to death in the typical gang street fight. She recognized their pictures, and it filled her with a sense of justice. She only wished she'd been the one with the gun in her hand. Still, it was a little weird, the way the universe worked. Like a wheel, what went around came around.

She felt sweaty and uncomfortable. She had time before her flight, so she went and got a Coke and a piece of over-fried pizza. It made her feel bloated and uncomfortable. In the airport and on the plane, she had a strange feeling everyone was watching her. She'd never had such a feeling before, not even when she was on a runway wearing a high fashion gown that clung as if she was naked. She lectured herself. She didn't need people, she didn't need friends, she didn't need criticism, she didn't need anything or anybody. Still, the feeling persisted. People were watching her.

In New York, she couldn't rid herself of similar odd notions and bothersome thoughts that kept buzzing like bees in her head. She felt off her game. She hung out in her hotel room and avoided any place where she might be recognized. Instead of visiting her favorite cafes and nightclubs and meeting old acquaintances from her modeling days, she threw on a shawl and dark glasses and walked the streets aimlessly, trying to find some sense of inner direction.

One night, wandering on foot on a gritty sidewalk near the Old Italian section, a huge, dirty man with a large butcher knife leapt in front of her and blocked her path. He was big and ugly, with sallow skin, a pock-marked face and a scar across his nose.

"Give me your purse," he said.

Caraba looked at the filthy, desperate man, and said the first thing that popped out of her head. "I'm pregnant," she said hopelessly. "I came here to have an abortion. But...but I don't know what to do!"

The man looked at her, seemingly taken aback. "I'm trying to rob you and you want to know if you should have an abortion?"

"Yes!"

"That's stupid! Give me your purse!" he shouted.

He grabbed it and pulled hard, but she held the shoulder strap and a tug of war ensued. He was much larger and stronger than Caraba, and the outcome was certain to go against her until two policemen rounded the corner, sized up the situation, and took him down with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.

They rushed up to her, and one of them kicked the purse-snatcher over and put a rough foot on his chest. Caraba heard air whistling and bubbling out of him.

The dying thief gasped, staring at her. His lips moved soundlessly.

"He's trying to say something," Caraba said.

"Who gives a screw?" the cop asked.

"I do," Caraba said.

She leaned close to the thief.

"Remember, it's a gift," were his last words.

"Right, a gift," she repeated, the sarcasm quick to her lips. She felt like punching him, but she could see he was already gone.

The police asked if she was all right. She said she was, and they gave her a ride back to her hotel. Outwardly she seemed okay, but inside everything was jumbled. The next day she paced the street in front of the doctor's office for a half hour, but in the end she walked away. She told herself she could always have it done back home.

The plane was full and she couldn't get first class. She had a glass of wine and cursed the crying baby two seats from her. She still didn't know what to do, and she was puzzled over why the thief would have chosen those as his dying words. She fell into a fitful sleep, and in her sleep she had a stupid, crazy dream.

She was hanging on a cross next to Christ, right beside the good and the bad thief, only her clothes were in tatters and she was nearly naked, as she had been in the parking lot. The thieves had the smirking faces of her rapists.

To Caraba, religion had always been a nice fiction, convenient for the weak of heart. But in her dream, Jesus hanging there next to her looked awfully real. He turned and smiled at her, and she saw, through his cuts and bruises, that it wasn't Jesus after all. It was the unlucky would-be purse-snatcher the police had shot and killed.

"It's just life," the man with the pock-marked face and the slashed nose said. "But it's all we've got."

"I didn't ask for it."

"Who knows, maybe you did."

"Did not!" she shouted in her dream.

The man just smiled and shook his head slightly.

"Don't you pity me!" she railed. "Don't you look down on me!"

"I'm not," he said. "You're a grown person. You make your own decisions."

And then he turned and said something to the thief on the other side of him, something that Caraba didn't catch.

She woke to the thunder of the jets reversing as they put down on the runway in Cleveland . That was a strange and crazy dream, she thought, and if it was supposed to help her sort out her thoughts, it hadn't done a very good job.

The annoying baby had been sleeping, but now it woke and started yelling, and the mother went on reading her magazine and pretty much ignored it. That irritated Caraba. People had children and they were unfit to take care of them. There ought to be a sterilization patrol, or something similar, she thought. The baby screamed on and on. It was more than she could stand.

"Aren't you going to take care of your baby?" Caraba asked, yelling across the aisle that separated them in a loud voice she hoped would shame the mother into action.

"Mind your own business," the mother snapped.

Without thinking, Caraba's hand went protectively to her own abdomen. Somehow in her sleep, in spite of that crazy dream, she had come to an understanding. Maybe it was something she'd always known, deep and hidden in her own heart. Or something that she never knew she wanted. She had been given a choice, and it was hers alone to make. And in spite of everything, she knew what she was going to do.

The End

John Klawitter works as a film and television writer, producer and director. He is also a published author. Based in Hollywood, he's written and produced for CBS, NBC, Disney, The Disney Channel, Paramount, Universal, Atlantis Productions, Warner Bros, and his own Dancing Bear Entertainment.

His film writing includes the political documentary Scene: Politic (EMMY AWARD); the Television Specials The Great American Dreammobile, Le Mans, The Adventures of Sports Goofy, and Here comes Sam (The Olympic Eagle). He has adapted several novels to screenplay format, most notably HOBBERDY DICK, by K.M. Briggs, STYX, by Christopher Hyde and MONSTER TALES by Phil Mendez, and his own novels CRAZYHEAD, PURPLE HEARTS and HEART OF DESIRE.

One of his short stories, Jack's Boat, won a prize at the Key West Hemingway Days festival. A collection of his short stories, TOUCHED, won a special mention from the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Awards. Klawitter's first novel, an action/thriller titled CRAZYHEAD, came out in 1990 as an Ivy imprint published by Ballantine Books. He wrote HEADSLAP, the "as told to" biography of the life and times of Deacon Jones (the NFL Hall of Famer and self-proclaimed King of Sacks), published in 1996 by Prometheus Books. This was followed with the inspirational "The Book of Deacon" (Seven Locks Press, 2000). He also edited a book of short recollections by intelligence members of the military, "TANS", for The Old Spooks & Spies organization, published in 2003.

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