Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“She sings and dances,” I said. “Acts, too. Acts up a storm.”

“Not here, please ” Birdie said. “Save it for Mrs. B. If you'll just take a seat, I'll inquire as to the state of her calendar.”

“It's in California,” Jessica said.

“Quick-witted, too,” Birdie said acidly. “Just what Johnny Carson is looking for.” He pushed a button under his desk and the door behind him slid open. “It's so Flash Gordon, isn't it?” he said, leaving us. He couldn't have been more than five-four, and he waddled.

“Put you in your place, didn't he, Jewel?” Jewel collapsed resentfully onto a couch, and I took a closer look at Birdie's desk. It was empty of any personal touches except for a Lucite frame holding a color picture of a little Yorkshire terrier, a breed I've always despised. “Purse dogs,” a friend of mine calls them, “society ladies put them in their purses to bite anyone who tries to steal their wallet.” There was also a little plaster-of-paris paperweight with the impression of a tiny dog's paw pressed into it. Below the paw, it said in shaky pencil, “Woofers, June 1988.”

I swiveled the computer workscreen toward me. I was looking at some kind of data base, a single record, idaho, it said, and then the date, fingers: 2000 orders. Then there were a couple of names, followed by five-digit numbers. Last request, the screen said: fingers: 1200 orders, special orders: it said: page down . Lacking the nerve to push page down because I wasn't sure I could get back to the first record, I swiveled the screen back into its original position. “Fingers are a boom market in Idaho,” I said.

“They've got a lot to give the finger to in Idaho,” Jessica said from a maroon plush couch where she was staring in dismay at a copy of JackandJill magazine. ” ’PeeWee to Marry,’ ” she read aloud. “Who the hell is PeeWee?”

I ignored her. Most of the furniture in the waiting room was half-size, perfect for children. Toys glimmered in the corners like the refuse of an overenthusiastic Christmas. There were wooden ducks with pull-ropes for the newly mobile and, at the other end of the spectrum, electronic baseball games and computerized time-wasters that were StarWars ripoffs. Most of the books and magazines were profusely illustrated with pictures of squirrels and other sanctioned rodents wearing hairbows and bow ties.

“Well,” I said, folding myself into a chair so small that my knees hit my chin, “isn't this nice?”

“Simeon,” Jessica said, “you look like a paper clip.”

“Call me Dwight,” I said. “You Jewel, me Dwight, okay?”

“You ridiculous,” she said, giving up on JackandJill . “Can't you find someplace else to sit?”

“Jewel. Try to behave. This could be the place.”

She sat up, looking apprehensive. “Really? Why?”

The room didn't seem to be miked, and I couldn't see a hidden camera, but that didn't mean there wasn't one. Any- way, I wasn't sure I could explain why. I reached over affectionately and pinched her wrist, hard enough to get her attention. “For your career, Jewel,” I said, between my teeth, “this looks like the big time.”

“Bug time, you mean,” she said. I pinched her harder. “ Yowk ,” she said. “Okay, okay. If it looks good to you, Dwight, it looks good to me.”

We passed what seemed like a decade in silence, if you didn't count the electronic beeps of a StarWars game, which Jessica beat the bejesus out of in three consecutive passes. The phone blinked eight or nine times, but it was answered from inside. “They design these for cretins,” Jessica said, tossing the game aside.

“There's nothing wrong with Crete, honey,” Birdie said, coming back into the room. The door sighed closed behind him. “Very lovely, all mountains and ocean and fishermen.”

“Oceans and fishermen usually go together,” Jessica said sourly.

“Well,” Birdie said archly, seating himself, “there are fishermen and fishermen.”

“They all smell like fish,” Jessica said.

“What’re you, a lactovegetarian?” Birdie asked, exposing a nasty streak and half an inch of swollen gum.

“Will she see us?” I asked.

“A few minutes,” he said, pulling himself up to the computer and tapping a couple of keys. “She's on the phone now.” He looked over at the instrument on his desk. “She's on three phones,” he said proudly.

“She must have a lot of ears,” Jessica said.

“Witty child,” Birdie said, staring at the computer screen. “Perhaps you'll excuse me.”

With my face partially hidden by Jessica's discarded edition of JackandJill , I watched Birdie futzing around with the computer. What I saw was a middle-aged male secretary, a homosexual member of the lost generation, the last generation that was uncomfortable with the idea of coming out of the closet. I saw a prissy, probably obsessively neat little man who went through life feeling short-sheeted, a man who counted his change in supermarkets and felt grieved when it was right, a man who doubted the advertised beef content of wieners. Presented with a bill in a restaurant, he would have added it twice and then fudged on the tip. His party lost the election. His disposable razors wore out too soon. He never had enough money. Handed the daughter of the Pork King, he might have looked on her as a one-way airline ticket to Crete. The question was, who the hell was Mrs. Brussels?

He caught me staring twice and smiled in happy misunderstanding. I smiled back. We were getting along great. The phone rang a few more times, and he weeded out the unwanted from the wanted callers in a voice that had all the regret of a funeral director learning that the client was dead. Finally, his phone buzzed discreetly, and he rose the four inches that marked the difference between his sitting and standing heights and rubbed his hands in the best Uriah Heep imitation I'd seen in months.

“She'll see you now,” he said.

“Just don't tell us to walk this way,” Jessica said unwisely. “I don't think I could do it.”

“Honey,” Birdie said, but this time he said it to me, “you're going to earn your money.” We followed him through the Flash Gordon door.

Mrs. Brussels stood up to greet us. Her suit was brilliantly tailored, but it had nothing on her manner. “Mr. Ward,” she said, echoing the name I'd given to Birdie, “and this is Jewel. Jewel Ward?” she asked.

“Not actually,” I said, choosing the larger of the two chairs in front of her desk. The other was sized for a child, and Jessica climbed grumpily into it. “Jewel Smith,” I said.

“Smith,” she said, sitting down. “Jewel Smith. We'll have to do something about that. If we come to an arrangement, of course.” She gave me a radiant smile, and I gave her the best I had in return.

“How did you get my name, if you don't mind my asking?” she asked, beaming with democratic impartiality on both Jessica and me.

“Through the Actors'Directory:’

The smile went a little rigid and her gaze wavered. “How ingenious. How did you ever think of doing that?” She was sitting up straighter than she had been a moment earlier.

“A friend suggested it.”

“A friend,” she said with the same smile fixed in place. It did nothing to her eyes. “Is he in the business?”

“He's a teacher,” I said.

“What level does he teach?” It was a question I hadn't anticipated.

“College,” I improvised.

She blinked at me. For the first time since we'd entered the room I felt that she was at a loss for words. Something, for her, didn't add up, and she didn't know where to go next.

“It makes good sense,” I said, to fill the silence. “Where else could you go through pages of kids and get their agents' names and addresses?”