Mr. Soundman, Inc., was in a renovated brownstone on Lenox Avenue. Oreo could hear the strange permutations of words speeded up and slowed down, rushed backward and whisked forward, the barbaric yawp of words cut off in mid-syllable (the choked consonants, the disavowed vowels), burdened with excessive volume, affecting elusive portent. Words were all over the floor. Words and time. What word was that there in the corner, curled up like a fetus? And this umbilicus of sound, what caesarean intervention had ripped it untimely from its mother root? Sound boomed off the walls, rocketing around the hallways as it charged out of an open door marked Control Room B.
Reep-warf-shuh, reep-warf-shuh, reep-warf-shuh, repeated some backward sounds as Oreo stuck her head in the door. An engineer in a desk chair wheeled among three machines — two tape decks and a master-control console — his ropy arms whipping about like licorice twists. Two pencils stuck out at forty-five-degree angles from his hedgelike natural, pruned to topiary perfection and so bulbous that, along with his dark, chitinous skin and his sunglasses with huge brown convex lenses, he had the look of an undersized mock-up of a movie monster — the grasshopper that spritzed on Las Vegas.
The soundman noticed Oreo on one of his whirls and motioned her into a chair. He stopped the two tape machines. Then he deftly unreeled a three-foot length of tape from one end of a reel, pulled it back and forth between the sound heads (Raugh-vooff-skunge, raugh-vooff-skunge, it went as it sawed between the heads), found the spot he wanted, and made a quick slice with a razor. The piece fell to the floor amidst the curly riot of words previously dispatched. How many reep-warf-shuhs and raugh-vooff-skunges that piece represented, Oreo couldn’t guess. The engineer then laid a loose end of the tape still on the reel in a groove at the front of his machine, stripped in a piece of white leader from another reel with Scotch tape and a razor, whirled the gray reels of his tape deck a few times, then stopped. He walked out of the control room, motioning Oreo to follow him.
They walked down the hall to a small office. So far neither of them had said a word. The engineer pointed to a chair next to a desk piled with a stack of oddly shaped cardboards. Oreo sat down. Since the man didn’t say anything but merely looked at her expectantly — or, rather, his glasses were turned toward her — she said, “I’m Christine Clark. Is Slim Jackson around?”
The man pointed to himself, then shuffled through the pile of cardboards next to him on the desk. He held one up. It was shaped like a cartoon balloon, and the message read: YOU’RE LOOKING AT HIM.
“Can’t you talk?” Oreo asked. He shook his head. After establishing that Slim was neither antisocial nor laryngitic but mute, Oreo asked permission to look through his balloons so that she would know the range of answers he was prepared to give. She found the usuaclass="underline"
FORGET IT, CLYDE
RUN IT DOWN FOR ME
RIGHT ON
YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING
LATER FOR THAT
GROOVY
TOUGH TITTY
I CAN DIG IT
WATCH YOUR MOUTH
DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS
She saw that he had translated the typical cartoon asterisk-spiral-star-exclamation point-scribble as a straightforward FUCK YOU, YOU MUTHA. He had a pile of blank balloons and a stack of balloons with drawings: a cocktail glass with an olive followed by a question mark; a Star of David followed by a question mark; an egg-shaped cartoon character with a surprised look on its face (the “That’s funny — you don’t look Jewish” follow-up to the Star of David? Oreo wondered); an inverted pyramid of three dots and an upcurving line; the three dots again with a downcurving line; a clenched fist with the middle finger raised in the “up yours” position. These last Oreo thought redundant, since Slim could easily pantomime them or use an available word balloon. True, the drawings gave him shades of translation that might be lost in the original gesture. Besides, his blank cards indicated that he was not unaware of the limitations of form balloons. Oreo conceded her argument with herself to herself. Yes, both the words and the drawings had a place.
“I was told I might be able to find Sam Schwartz here,” Oreo said.
Slim pulled one of his pencil antennas out of his hair, printed something on a balloon, and held it up: TRY NEXT DOOR TONIGHT.
“What’s next door?”
He wrote and crossed out, wrote and crossed out. Then held up his cardboard voice: A 
A 
A HOUSE OF JOY.
“Oh, a whorehouse,” said Oreo.
Slim looked at her appraisingly. He shuffled through his standard balloons and pulled out a cartoon of a bibbed man with his tongue hanging out, knife and fork at the ready over a turkey drumstick.
“Likes women with big legs?” Oreo guessed.
Slim looked disappointed. He shook his head as he printed and held up: LIKES DARK MEAT.
So, dear old Dad is already two-timing his second wife. “Do you know where I could find him now? Do you have his address?”
Slim shook his head. I DON’T TRY TO KEEP TRACK OF WHITEY, he ballooned. She started to get up, but Slim held up his hand, SAY SOMETHING, another balloon demanded.
“Like what?”
He shrugged.
“Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean.”
Slim rotated his wrists, his hands indicating “keep going.”
Oreo switched to something more appropriate for a soundman. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”
Slim held up his hand, COULD YOU RECORD A FEW LINES FOR ME? he printed.
Oreo shrugged. “I guess so.”
He beckoned her as he went out of the office and back into Control Room B. He did his Shiva routine with the reels of tape on his machines, taking some off, putting some on, twirling his dials. He had her go through a door into the soundproof studio. He disappeared for a few minutes and came back carrying some sheets of paper and a stack of his balloons. He put the papers down on the table in front of her, adjusted her mike, then went back into the control room. She watched him through the glass partition. He held up a balloon that said: GIVE ME A LEVEL, PLEASE. He pointed to the script he had left with her.
In a loud voice, she read what was written at the top of the sheet. “Mr. Soundman, Incorporated. Account Number 3051478.”
Slim held one finger to his lips. Oreo read the same thing in a normal voice. Slim made the “okay” sign with thumb and index finger and gestured for her to continue reading.
Oreo cleared her throat and read. “In these busy days of rush, rush, rush, it’s nice to have friends you can depend on when you need them. We at Tante Ruchel’s Kosher Kitchens want you to know you can depend on us. I was saying to my tante just the other day — and my tante is your tante—I said to her, ‘What won’t you think of next?’ And she told me. I want to share with you the wisdom of this marvelous woman. You know her by her prizewinning tchulent, you’ve marveled over her kasha varnishkes, and thrilled to her kugel. Now she has outdone even herself. Now Tante Ruchel brings you a product that will revolutionize your holiday dinners. So sit down, pull up a chair, and be the first to hear over the miracle of the airwaves about a miracle of a product—”
Slim waved her to a stop. YOU’RE POPPING YOUR P’s.
Oreo quickly looked over what she had read. She saw a “prizewinning,” a couple of “products,” and a “pull.” She said these aloud tentatively. They all popped. She could not figure out how to get her mouth around a p without a little explosion of air. Behind the glass, Slim moved his lips in what Oreo assumed was a non-p-popping demonstration. Of course his p’s didn’t pop. Besides, it seemed to her he was mouthing m’s, not p’s. She’d sound pretty silly talking about “mroducts,” “mull,” and “mrizewinning.” She tried again, imitating Slim’s lip movements. After a little practice, she noticed that even to her ears there were fewer rags of breath catching at the grille as she pushed the pesky words past the microphone, which Slim had placed slightly to her left.