Everything but the Squeal

“So what's your percentage?” Jessica asked meanly.

“Twenty-five,” he said with a negligent little hand gesture. “Plus expenses.”

“Who's the photographer?” I said, putting my foot on top of Jessica's.

“Ah-ah,” he said, chiding me in a leaden fashion. The relatively smaller of his nostrils flared unappealingly. “Papers first.” Whimsy was not his strong suit. It was hard to imagine what might be. The room swam in front of me.

“Mr. Okra,” I said, without thinking. Jessica made a snicking noise and spit her gum into her lap.

“Okra?” he said, looking bewildered. “Who's Okra? Kale's the name, Homer Kale.”

“Mr. Kale,” I amended. “We can't do business unless we know you're really top-notch. What's the photographer's name?”

He gave me a con man's look, full of honesty and candor. The man could have dealt three-card monte one- handed. “Fink,” he said. “Norman Fink.”

Jessica gave up searching her lap for her gum, threw up her hands, and just laughed. “This is the pits” she said.

“Jewel,” I said, “shut up. On Melrose?” I asked Mr. Kale.

It was over for Jessica. “Jewel?” she said, choking. “Excuse me.” She got up and left the office. I heard her laughter even after the door closed.

“Excitable little girl,” Mr. Kale said, licking his lips with a tongue a Komodo Dragon would have envied. “But lovely.” He wiped his brow. He was wearing more rings than I would have thought he could have lifted.

“On Melrose?” I said again.

“Naw,” he said, waving the rings at me. “Way down. South. On Olympic.”

I got up. “Mr. Kale,” I said. “You'll hear from us.”

“It could be on Melrose,” Mr. Kale said, sounding surprised. “You want Melrose, maybe I could find one on Melrose.” I let the door swing closed while he was still speaking. Outside, I grabbed Jessica by the elbow and marched her into the daylight.

Brussels' Sprouts was something else again. It occupied the entire lower floor of a two-story ersatz Greek building tucked just above Sunset on Sunset Plaza. Doric columns guarded the door like erect concrete watchdogs. The door whispered inward as we stepped on the mat in front of it. The mat had little blue and yellow puppies frisking on it.

“Shit,” Jessica said, looking down at the mat. Air conditioning rolled over us through the open door.

“Try Jeez-o-crips,” I suggested. “You're a little girl here.”

She gave me an arch look. “I'm a little girl everywhere. Ask my mom.”

“Yessss?” someone hissed. It sounded like Kaaa the Python in TheJungleBook.

“Where are you?” I said defensively. The sheer sibilance of it unnerved me.

“Over here,” the someone said as I blinked into the dark. “Behind the desk.”

“Jeez-o-crips,” Jessica said obediently as the door closed behind us.

The waiting room was bigger than the Nina and the Pinta combined. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I saw that its walls were lined with enormous black-and-white photographs, pictures of the kind of little kids who go through life just begging for a pie in the face. They had freckles. They had missing teeth. They had straw in their hair. They featured suspenders, gingham neckerchiefs, and catcher's mitts. One or two had a burnt-cork black eye. All in all, they were about as cute as an advanced case of bubonic plague, but less contagious.

“Oh, good, you've got the door closed. May I help you?” the voice said.

The voice belonged to a tiny man in the kind of pleated linen shirt that's been popular for inexplicable decades in the Philippines. He was seated behind a big desk at the far corner of the office. No, I decided, he was standing. He had a pinched little face, topped off by a widow's peak that was pronounced enough to symbolize all the wives bereaved by World War One. He also had very hairy forearms. Short as he was, he could have traded forearms with Bluto, and Bluto wouldn't have noticed the difference. On top of it all was the kind of haircut that a friend of mine had dubbed turban renewal: to cover the fact that he was balding on top, he'd grown the hair on the back of his head about a yard long and combed it forward. It sat on his forehead like a knickknack shelf from which someone had stolen the knickknacks.

“Help me?” I said. Jessica nudged me. “Of course you can help me. We'd like to see Miss Brussels.”

“Mrs. Brussels,” he hissed. The phrase offered a lot of opportunity for hissing.

“Well, sure,” I said, feeling larger than I was by about two feet. His widow's peak hit me at the nipples. “That's what I said. Mrs. Brussels.”

He gave me a bright, cockeyed little bird's stare. “You didn't, of course,” he said. “What you said was Miss. Have you got an appointment?”

“Yes,” Jessica said bravely.

“No,” I said.

“Darlings,” he said, “make up your minds. I always have a headache on Mondays. You could be a tumor or you could be an aspirin. Personally, of course, I'd rather you were an aspirin. For one thing, you can get a refund on aspirin.”

“No,” I said, taking the frank, honest approach. “We don't have an appointment.”

“Well,” he said, looking at a book in front of him, “of course you realize that Mondays are very busy.”

“You'll be Birdie,” I said, reading the nameplate on his desk. That's what it said, Birdie. Other than the nameplate and the appointment book, which was the size of the average aircraft carrier, the desk was nearly barren. At one end of it stood a computer terminal, swiveled so that the screen was turned away from us.

“I'll be Birdie when the headache fades,” he said. “Until then I'll just be miserable. What would your business be with Mrs. Brussels?”

“This little darling here,” I said. “We're looking for representation.”

“Are we,” he said. “You realize that the usual method is to make an appointment first.”

“You couldn't see her on the phone,” I said. “You might have said no. So we decided to take a chance. Make a dimple, darling,” I said to Jessica.

Jessica put one finger to her cheek and smirked terribly. “My name is Jewel,” she said in a passable imitation of a Chinese singsong girl.

“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