Oreo (18 page)

She was more distressed over accident than essence—the flukiness, not the
fact of Samuel’s death. The jive mirror of the new people moving into his building, his
landing on the carrying case. The fall alone, from the second floor, would not have killed
him. No bones had been broken, but his plummet had split the carrier and squashed poor Toro,
whose rhinestone collar had left an intaglio coronet on Samuel’s brow. Unmarked except for
his baron’s band, he was dead nevertheless and (dear, fatherless Jimmie C.) winnie-the-pooh.
Oreo was sad but not
too
. She felt about as she would if someone told her that
Walter Cronkite had said his last “Febewary” or that a fine old character actor she had
thought for years was dead was dead.

When it happened, Oreo knew she had two unpleasant things to do: break the news (banner
head) to Mildred Schwartz and, worse, break the news (sidebar) to Bovina Minotti. She left
worse for last. After the ambulance took Samuel away and the ASPCA claimed what was left of
Toro, Oreo waited for Mrs. Schwartz outside her apartment until she and the boys came back
from their track meet in the park. Mrs. Schwartz said nothing when she heard the news.
Slowly, as if in benediction, her torch arm declined until it was level with her shoulder.
One of the fingers that had encircled the invisible torch peeled off from her thumb and
pointed to the telephone, to which she went directly and began dialing Samuel’s
mishpocheh
. Marvin and Edgar cowered in a corner with their suitcases.

While Mrs. Schwartz was still talking to Samuel’s relatives, Oreo went outside to find a
pay phone and call the Minottis. She was relieved when Adriana answered. Oreo told her what
had happened.

“Oh, God, poor Mr. Schwartz—how am I going to tell Mother about Toro?”

“I don’t envy you.”

“Listen, do you have the collar?”

“The what?”

“Toro’s dog collar,” said Adriana. “Do you have it?”

“Yes, the ambulance driver put it in a paper bag and gave it to me.”

“Thank God. Call Dominic and give it to him.”

“I don’t have his number,” Oreo said.

“I thought you were with the agency.”

“What agency?”

“Dominic’s agency. The ad agency. You know—Lovin’ Cola.”

“I don’t know what the ham-fat you’re talking about.”

Adriana laughed. “Oh, wow, those people are really off the wall. They don’t even tell their
own couriers what’s happening.” After a few more chuckles, she said, “Look in the dog
collar.”

Odd choice of prepositions, Oreo thought. They talked a few more minutes, then Oreo called
Dominic at the number Adriana had given her. A half hour later, he met her on the corner and
took the paper bag. He did not look too happy as he rolled away. She did not know whether
his gloom stemmed from Samuel’s death or from the fact that he faced the prospect of
building a campaign around a new Voice of Lovin’ Cola.

Adriana had cleared up the mystery about Dominic, Toro, and the Minottis. Samuel had been
mixed up not with gangsters (Oreo’s surmise) but with industrial spies—or, rather, fear of
industrial spies. He was to be the Voice of Lovin’ Cola, a new soft drink its makers thought
would flatten Dr. Pepper, Coke, and Pepsi. Keystone of the introduction of Lovin’ Cola was
the jingle Adriana had written about the beverage—a jingle the ad agency hoped could be
adapted and released as a pop tune that would have pop heads fizzing Lovin’ Cola’s message,
sub- or supraliminally, until the national fever for carbonation defervesced—around the
thirty-third of Juvember. The agency did not want to break wind until it knew which way the
breeze was blowing. One of the other gas companies might pull the old switcherino on the
music and lyrics and come out with a carbonated copy before the Lovin’ Cola people were
ready to open the silo and push the button for their blitz spritz in the media.

Before Dominic trundled into view, Oreo snapped open the back of Toro’s dog collar and
found Adriana’s demo tape and an onionskin with the typed lyrics of the jingle:

Oh, well, thought Oreo, the
tune
is probably unabashedly addictive:

She had spent the night in the park. In the morning, she waited outside
of Samuel’s apartment building until she saw Mildred Schwartz leave for the funeral. The sun
glanced away from the dragon hood ornament as the limousine turned the corner. The children
were not with her. Oreo assumed that someone had been assigned to prevent their escape from
the apartment. She had to get inside to go through her father’s bookshelf. She was still a
bit pissed off at Samuel for falling out of the fool window before he had told her the
secret of her birth.

She heard gay laughter in 2-C. Her knock switched it off.

The door opened and before her stood a woman whose smooth facial planes gave her an
expression so benign that she made Aunt Jemima look like a grouch. “Won’t expecting
nobody,” the woman said. “Who you?” Her voice was soothing too. Marvin and Edgar had
given up their death grip on their suitcases to garrote her skirts. After one lemur-look at
Oreo, they hid behind the woman.

“I’m the . . . mother’s helper,” said Oreo.

“Madam didn’t tell me, but come on in, chile. These kids running me crazy.” The woman was
wearing a starched white uniform and apron. She motioned Oreo to a seat. “Name’s Hap. I’ll
be in the kitchen yet a while.”

“Mine’s Anna, Miss Hap,” Oreo said politely, eyeing the voles.

Hap tried to shoo the children toward Oreo, but they bobbed around that rich broth of a
woman like dumplings.

Oreo’s eyes went to the bookshelf her father had pointed out. Before she was half the
distance to it, the phone rang. Hap stepped out of the kitchen to answer it. “Schwartz
residence,” she said solemnly. Then she smiled sunnily and said, “How you, Nola?” She sat
down in a straight chair just under the bookshelf. The spines of the volumes were just out
of Oreo’s reading range.

“Yeah, it right sad,” said Hap into the phone. “Madam at the funeral now. . . .
Naw
, she just asked me to fix a little something, case anybody drop ’round after
the burial. I’ll cook it, but ain’t nobody gon eat it. Don’t nobody never come here, chile.
You should see this living room, the mess she got ’round here. No wonder the children ’fraid
of her. . . . Yeah, chile, scared to
death
. . . . The Millers?
Chile, them people much rich. The madam in Florida now, and mister in Chicago on business.
The two girls in Europe with they husbands. . . . Oh, sure, they ain’t got nothing
better to do than travel ’round.”

It was too early for Oreo to tell whether Hap was of the this-job-is-a-piece-of-cake school
or the these-people-are-stone-slave-drivers faction, but she was already dropping the time-honored phrases of the my-people-are-richer-than-yours bloc.

“
Who
?” Hap challenged the caller in outraged tones. “Are you kidding! I don’t do
no
cleaning! I don’t get down on my knees for
nobody
. No, chile. I don’t
even have no downstairs cleaning to do. They got a girl comes in to do that. Colored girl.
She even clean
my
apartment for me every day. . . . No, Nola, I told you
before, I only go out there the first two weeks in every month. I told the boss, ‘Mr.
Miller,’ I say, ‘I can’t be staying out here all the time.’ I say, ‘Times have changed. You
can have two weeks of my time, but the rest of my time have to be for other folks need me
much as you do.’ . . . I most certainly did. . . . Well-sir, I thought I
would die when I caught that laundress down in that basement just filling up a box with
meats and veg’tables. . . .
Naw
, she Irish woman. You know she always
hinting ’round to the madam that I order extry food so I can take it home to my
fam’ly. . . .
Who
? She bet’ not say nothing to me ’bout it. Who they gon
get to go way out there and stay even for two weeks the way I do? . . . Yeah, is
that
so
? Is that
so
? That’s the trouble with day work. They work you to
death for six fifty and carfare. I ain’t done no day work—no
cleaning
day work—for
twenny years, chile. . . . No, I’m a cook, and I
rule
my kitchen. If they
come in
my
kitchen, they
tiptoe
around. . . . What’s that?
. . .
Naw
, you don’t mean it? Well, these people are cheap too, chile.
Guess that’s why they got so much. My sister Bessie been working for the old man for how
long now? You know as well as I do. . . .
Naw
, it’s longer than that. But
whatever it is, it’s umpteen years. She been working for old man Schwartz since Hector was a
puppy—and he an
old
dog now. Been dusting them plastic plants since before his wife
died. And you know what he give her last Christmas? A pair of sixty-nine-cent stockings. He
haven’t even noticed after all these years that she don’t even
wear
no stockings.
What she need stockings for? Now, the Millers, they give me ten dollars extry and a fifth.
The girls gave me perfume. One time they gave me a pocketbook. . . .
What
? And as long as you been with them! . . .
Naw
, chile, all
they care ’bout is that
work
. . . . Retire? How can I retire? I got my
bills
to pay. But I tell you one thing: I ain’t gon die in no kitchen like poor
Henrietta did. No, sir. They ain’t gon work
me
to death. . . . Oh, she’s
a caution. She’s really something. You know she won’t let that man have more than
one
egg for breakfast? When she home, he eat like any
bird
. She won’t
let him eat! Say she don’t want no fat slob for a husband! Can you beat that! But when she
not around, I fix him a nice breakfast. He just
gobble
it up. That’s why he so nice
to me. But her, she something. I think she a little off. Yessir. You know, she fell off a
horse once. Yeah, fractured her skull. I think it made her a little bit
screwy. . . . Yeah? . . . Well, when I’m gon see you, Nola? Why don’t
you stop by the house next Thursday. . . . Yeah, after that, I be out to the
Millers for two weeks, so come on over. I’ll have something good for you. . . .
Naw
, I’m not gon tell you. You guess. . . . Yeah, that’s right.” Hap
laughed. “I’ll look for you Thursday, then, Nola. . . . Yeah, so long.”

When Hap got off the phone, Oreo knew that here was a mother lode of information that, properly
worked, could grout together some of the odd bits of information she had about her father.
Oreo sidled over to the kitchen. She glanced with just the right look of longing at the
arrangement of canapés Hap was making.

Hap’s hearty laughter was surrender. Her generous breasts, transformed by her uniform into
giant marshmallows, heaved, sweetening the air above her apron. “Take one, chile, ’fore you
break my heart.” (She meant a canapé, not a breast.)

Oreo popped a caviar cracker into her mouth. She praised it overmuch for itself but just
enough for her purposes. She went on to sample and laud the other hors d’oeuvres Hap was
preparing. A Louise she wasn’t, but good enough for any
Almanach de Gotha
kitchen
below the rank of marquis—viscount would be about right.

A few leading questions about the Schwartzes and Hap offered a verbal tidbit: “His first
wife was a colored girl, chile.”

“Naw,” said Oreo.

“Um-hm,” confirmed Marvin and Edgar, who, Oreo found out within the next few minutes,
gossiped like
yentas
.

On Hap’s return from her biweekly stints at the Howard Millers, her sister would fill her
in on Jacob Schwartz’s every burp; the boys outdid Bessie in scope with detailed reports on
Mildred, Samuel, and the rest of the second floor. In this pincers of prattle, the
Schwartzes were squeezed dry.

Oreo had only one thing left to do. “I have to go to the bathroom. Is it okay if I take a
book in with me, Miss Hap?”

“Sure, chile, go on. Be a while yet ’fore she be back.”

Oreo stood in front of the bookshelf. She took her time. She looked long and hard. Finally, keeping in mind her late father’s penchant for dumb clues,
she narrowed the likely volumes down to two. “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, catch a cracker by
the toe . . .” She realized how unfair that was and revised the parochial rhyme.
“Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, catch a honky by the toe . . .” She still could not
decide. In a fit of impatience, she grabbed both books from the shelf and went into the
bathroom.
Left-right
,
left-right
,
left-right
went her heart for
the second time in two days.

She made her first choice:
The Queen of Spades and Other
Stories
. She riffled through Pushkin’s pages. Nothing. She went through the book more
slowly, this time looking for printed clues. Did the Table of Contents form an anagram, the
first lines of the stories a coherent paragraph meant for her alone? Still nothing. She
sighed and picked up the other book. This time she decided to leaf through page by page.
Between pages 99 and 100 (symbolism again?), she found the sheet of paper. On it were two
numbers—a telephone number and a span of nine digits, the latter separated, like a social
security number, by dashes after the third and fifth integers. Under the numbers was one
word: “Aegeus.” She looked ruefully at the book title again. She had to face it. Samuel’s
brains had been in his
tuchis
. He had just had no class. The book was
The Egg
and I
.