She went in. Much to her disappointment, Rivers did not appear. Only an attendant was on duty. After a few minutes of prying, Oreo learned that she had been right about the choir robe. Rivers had been an itinerant gospel singer for many years. He had sung so many choruses about washing sins away that, taking the gospels as gospel, he began to follow the letter and not the spirit of the spirituals. He left most of the work of running the business to his employees, devoting himself almost full time to purification. Dividing his lustral day in half, he sweltered in a sauna the first four hours, soaked in a tub another four. “He looks like Moby Prune,” the attendant informed Oreo. Jordan Rivers was not his real name, and he had taken his nickname, “Deep,” from one of his favorite spirituals. No one knew his real name. Whenever he lost favor with his employees, they called him “Muddy Waters” for spite. Oreo saw that Rivers carried his convictions about the redemptive powers of bath water to the extent of labeling the entrance to his domain SINNERS and the exit SAINTS.
Oreo in the sauna
Her eyeballs were hot globes of tapioca. She breathed in flues of fire without flame, exhaled dragon blasts, stirring up sultry harmattans in her private sudatorium. The wax in her ears was turning to honey. Liquid threads were in conflux at her belly button (an “inny”), which held a pondlet of sweat. Pores of unknown provenance opened and emptied, sending deltas of dross toward her navel’s shore. When she judged she had nothing more to give, she stepped into a cold shower, which felt warm because of her sauna heat. When the chill deepened finally, she made the water hot, soaping and resoaping herself, finishing her ablutions with a vigorous shampoo. She combed out her afro to its fullest circumference, put on her dress, her new sandals, and her mezuzah (it felt cool in her clĕvice — a word Jimmie C. used to mean a cross between cleavage and crevice). Last, she chose her black headband because of the solemnity of the occasion. Her skin pinged with cleanliness. She felt godlike. Perhaps Jordan Rivers was on to something.
Oreo on 125th Street
She walked along swinging her cane. Workmen were changing the marquee of the Apollo, temple of soul.
NOW APPEARING
THE DOLPHINS
EXTRA ADDED ATTRAC
As Oreo passed the theater, the man at the top of the ladder dropped his T. “Jesus H. Christ!” he exclaimed, obviously obsessed with letters. He pointed to Oreo. “Is that a fox or is that a fox!”
The man holding the ladder said, “Absofuckinglutely,” and began making fox-calling noises. “Where you going, sister? ’Cause whither thou goest, I will definitely go — you can believe that!”
Oreo was in no mood to spoil her good mood. She merely hooked her walking stick under the fallen T and flung it as far as she could over the marquee. It landed on a rooftop, but the men, heads thrown back in wonder, seemed to be awaiting its return as if it were a boomerang.
Oreo continued down the street, her cane resting on her shoulder like a club.
13 Medea, Aegeus
Oreo on the subway
She was too preoccupied to observe noses, mouths, and shoes and award prizes. She did overhear someone say impatiently, “No, no, Mondrian’s the lines, the boxes. Modigliani’s the long necks.”
And: “She a Jew’s poker. Take care the sinnygogue fo’ ’em on Sat’d’ys.”
This last gave her an idea whose ramifications she considered during the ride. Distractedly, she doodled on her clue list. Her basic doodles were silhouettes of men facing left and five-lobed leaves. Her subconscious view of her father as mystery man? A pointless, quinquefoliolate gesture to the Star of David? No. Silhouettes and leaves were what she drew best. Next to her profiles and palmates, she made a line of scythelike question marks. Next to that, she sketched an aerial view of a cloverleaf highway, her gunmetal-gray divisions making a cloisonné of the ground. Then with offhand but decisive sweeps, she crossed “Kicks,” “Pretzel,” “Fitting,” “Down by the river,” and “Temple” off her list. How else to interpret the adventures involving Parnell, Kirk (he certainly had twisted himself every which way), Sidney of Kropotkin’s Shoes (she was perhaps stretching a point on this one), Jordan Rivers’s sauna, and the Apollo?
She did not notice that the subway had come to her stop until it was almost too late. She jumped to her feet and barely had time to get her trailing walking stick through the door before it closed. (Some of you who have noticed that Oreo has been shlepping a long stick will interpret said stick as a penis substitute. Wrong, Sibyl, it’s a long stick.)
Oreo around the corner from her father’s apartment building
It was, she realized, quite close to the very first place in which she had looked for her father when she arrived in New York — the street of the Chinese-lady Schwartz.
Oreo on her father’s street
Left-right, left-right, left-right went her heart. Thump/tap-thump, thump/tap-thump, thump/tap-thump, went her feet and cane.
Oreo in the foyer of her father’s lobby
She looked down the ladder of names next to the line of black buttons. She pressed the button next to the slot marked 2-C. A strip of black plastic with white incised lettering announced: S. SCHWARTZ. A woman’s voice squawked over the intercom. Oreo did not understand what she said. She assumed it was “Who is it?” or some other similar question. Oreo, with perfect diction and the precise British accent of Abba Eban, made up a sentence in grammatical gibberish. It sounded good even to her. A few seconds later, the buzzer buzzed, releasing the lock on the lobby door.
Oreo in the elevator
A short vertical leap, a settling jounce, a lighted 2, a suck-slide. Oreo stepped into the hallway. It had an acrid odor.
Oreo at her father’s door
The odor was stronger. A tall, broad-browed woman appeared at the door. Oreo could not decide whether she looked more like Judith Anderson or the Statue of Liberty. After a few moments, she judged that the resemblance to the spike-headed Mother of Exiles was closer, the more so because the woman had one arm aloft, her fingers circling air. Just enough room for an invisible torch, thought Oreo. The woman seemed disinclined to lower it. Incipient catatonia or a painful underarm boil, Oreo diagnosed.
The woman’s deep-set eyes narrowed at the sight of Oreo. “Yes, what is it?”
“Mr. Jenkins sent me.” Oreo had noticed the superintendent’s name on one of the first-floor mailboxes. “May I come in, Mrs. Schwartz?”
The woman opened the door a little wider. “I hope it is about fixing the intercom. I could not understand a word you said,” she complained in a precise but heavily accented voice.
A Georgia Jew if Oreo had ever heard one. But the Georgia of Mingrelia and Tiflis, not Atlanta and (coincidence) Warm Springs. (A Mdivani, perhaps?) And she doubted whether peaches were native to the Caucasus. Her mother’s information was only a few thousand miles off. “It’s about proposed maid service for the building,” Oreo said, adapting the Jew’s poker idea she had gotten on the subway.
The woman narrowed her eyes at Oreo again. “I suppose it is all right. Come in, I cannot stand in the doorway all day.”