Shakespeare’s Champion

Yeah, you could see your reflection now. “Good,” I said.

“Listen, are you put off by my being mixed race?”

“What you are is none of my business.” Why did people always want to talk about every little thing? Even before a gang had held me down and drawn pictures on my chest with a knife, I hadn’t been one for chatter.

“I didn’t know you were going to be white.”

“Yeah.”

“So, can we make this work?” she persisted.

“I am working,” I said, trying to make a point, and began to strip the sheets off her bed. What I wanted Mookie Preston to get out of this was that if I’d seriously objected to her parentage, I would’ve hopped back in my Skylark and gone home to try the next name on my standby list.

Whether she got the point or not, I don’t know. After waiting for me to say something else, she drifted back to her computer, to my relief.

She left once, to go to the grocery store. Other than that one period of peace, my new employer was in constant motion, jumping up to go to the toilet, drifting down the hall to get a drink from the refrigerator, always making some passing remark. Apparently, Mookie Preston was one of those people who can’t be still when someone else is working. When she told me for the third time she was leaving for the grocery, I decided it would be a good opportunity to clean the office area without her hovering presence.

At a closer examination of the nearly bare, dusty room, I realized the strips of paper fixed to the walls were genealogical charts. Some of them were printed really fancy with Gothic lettering, and some of them were dull- looking computer readouts. I shrugged. Not my thing, but harmless. There were a few books arranged on the old student standby of boards and cement blocks; three of them were about a woman named Sally Hemmings. I’d have to look her up at the library. There were stacks of software boxes, bearing titles like Family Tree Maker and Family Origins. I saw a list of Web sites taped beside the computer, and a list of phone numbers to places like the Family History Library and the Hidden Child Foundation.

But the more I dusted and straightened and vacuumed, the more questions I had about this woman. She’d been living here for at least five weeks, if she’d called me to get on my list right after she’d moved into this house. Why would a young woman like Mookie Preston move to a small southern town if she had no friends or relations in place here? If Mookie Preston was only a genealogical researcher, I was a sweet young thing.

She was gone a long time, which was fine with me. By the time she was toting in her plastic bags of Diet Pepsi and Healthy Choice microwave meals, I had the house looking much better. It would take a couple more sessions to finish clearing up the backlog of dirt and scrub down to a regular weekly accumulation, but I’d made a fighting start.

She looked around with her mouth a little open, stiff reddish hair brushing her shoulders as her head turned.

“This is really great,” she said, and she meant it, but she wasn’t as enthusiastic about cleanliness as she was pretending to be. “Can you come every week?”

I nodded.

“How do you prefer to be paid?” she asked, and we talked about that for a while.

“You work for a lot of the local upper crust, I bet?” she asked me, just when I thought she had about finished chattering. “Like the Winthrops, and the Elgins?”

I regarded her steadily. “I work for lots of different kinds of people,” I said. I turned to go, and this time Mookie Preston didn’t detain me.

As I was assembling cheese, crackers, and fruit for a quick lunch in my own-thank God, spotless and silent- kitchen, the doorbell rang. I glanced out my living room window before answering the door. A pink van was parked in my driveway, with FANCY FLOWERS painted on the side.

It was surely the first time that particular vehicle had been to my place.

I opened the door, ready to tell the delivery person that she needed the apartment building next door, and the perky young woman on my doorstep said, “Miss Bard?”

“Yes?”

“These are for you.”

“These” were a beautiful arrangement of pink roses, baby’s breath, greenery, and white carnations.

“Are you sure?” I said doubtfully.

“ ‘Lily Bard, Ten Track Street,’ ” the woman read from the back of the envelope, her smile fading a bit.

“Thank you.” I took the bowl and turned away, shutting the door behind me with one foot. I hadn’t gotten flowers in… well, I just couldn’t remember. Carefully, I set the bowl on my kitchen table and pulled the gift envelope out of the pronged plastic holder. I noticed it had been licked and shut rather carefully, and after I extracted the card and read it I appreciated the discretion. “I miss you. Claude,” it read, in a slanted, sprawling hand.

I searched inside myself for a reaction and found I had no idea how to feel. I touched a pink rose with one fingertip. Though I wear plastic gloves when I work, my hands still get rough, and I was anxious I would damage the delicate smoothness of the flower. Next I touched a white ball of baby’s breath. I slowly positioned the bowl in the exact middle of the table, and reached up a hand to wipe my cheeks.

I fought an impulse to call the florist and send some flowers right back to him, to show him how he’d touched me. But Claude wanted this to be a purely masculine gesture, and I would let it be.

When I left to bring order into the Winthrops’ chaos, I could feel a faint smile on my face.

Luck continued with me-up to a point-that afternoon. Since the weather was clear, I parked in front of the Winthrop house on the street. I only used the garage when it was snowing or raining, because my car had an apparently incurable oil leak and I didn’t want to spot the immaculate Winthrop garage floor. I’d driven by the garage, which opened onto a side street, and seen it was empty. Good. None of the Winthrops were home.

Beanie, a lean, attractive woman somewhere in her mid-forties, was likely to be playing tennis or doing volunteer work. Howell Winthrop, Jr., would be at Winthrop Sporting Goods or Winthrop Lumber and Home Supply, or even at Winthrop Oil. Amber Jean and Howell Three (that was what the family called him) were in junior high and high school. Bobo was at work at Body Time, or attending classes in the U of A extension thirty-five minutes away in Montrose. Though the Winthrops were very wealthy, no Winthrop child would consider going anywhere but the University of Arkansas, and my only surprise was that Bobo was going to the Montrose campus rather than the mother ship up north in Fayetteville. The razorback hog, symbol of the University of Arkansas, featured prominently in the Winthrops’ design scheme.

On Fridays, I dusted, mopped, and vacuumed. I’d already done the laundry, ironing, and bathrooms on my first visit of the week on Tuesday morning. The Winthrop kids had gotten pretty good about washing any clothing item they just had to have between my visits, but they’d never learn to pick up their rooms properly. Beanie was pretty neat with her things, and Howell wasn’t home enough to make a mess.

I paused in my dusting to examine the portrait of Beanie and Howell Jr. that had been their most recent anniversary present to each other. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’d seen Howell at home during the three years I’d worked for the family. He was balding, pleasantly good-looking, and perhaps twenty pounds overweight. The artist had concealed that nicely. Howell was the same age as his wife, but not working quite as hard at concealing it. He spent a lot of time at the even more impressive home of his parents, Howell Sr. and Arnita, the uncrowned king and queen of Shakespeare. Howell Sr., though nominally retired, still had a say in every Winthrop enterprise, and the Seniors still led a very active role in the social and political life of the town. They had a full-time black housemaid, Callie Gandy.

As if thinking of Howell Jr. had conjured him up, I heard a key in the lock and he came in from the carport. Following behind him was the man who’d been out walking last night.

Now that I saw him in the daylight, I was sure he was also the man who’d been working out with Darcy Orchard the day Raphael had left Body Time.

The two men were each carrying a long, heavy black bag with a shoulder strap.

Howell stopped in his tracks. His face reddened, and he was obviously flustered.

“I’m sorry to disturb you at your work,” he said. “I didn’t see your car.”