82 Desire

bill, just put it in his pocket as if a dollar would have been enough—and she cordially wished that was what she’d offered. He gave her a name. “Report to this guy first thing in the morning. They liked you last time.”
    She gave him a smile that was almost flirtatious. “I’m good at what I do.”
    And then she went off to talk to a high-school class, feeling on top of the world. The Baroness de Pontalba, she thought, poet and detective. What if these kids knew what I do for a day job?
    Sure enough, the first thing they asked her was how much money she made.
    And that was after she had hit them with the name poem, which hadn’t seemed to affect them at all.
    “How much money do I make? Is that all y’all care about? Tell me the truth, is there a single person in this room who’s interested in anything else?”
    No one raised their hand.
    “You want to get out of school and just make money, you don’t care how? Well, I’ve got a poem for you. Listen up, now.” She gave it full-tilt histrionics.
Money, money, money,
    That runs all coppery through your fingers;
    Sparkles all silvery
    In other people’s cash registers.
    Crinkles all green and wrinkly in your wallet—
    And in your dreams.
    What can you do with that shit?
    Why, you can buy yourself a house and a maid to clean it—
    You can buy a boat and a man to sail it—
    You can buy clothes and cars and fifty-three pairs of
    Reebok running shoes.
    And then what? You gonna run in fifty-three races all at the same time?
    Now, I love money and I want some so bad
    I want it so bad my nose hurts and my teeth hurt and
    the bottoms of my feet hurt.
    But the best thing I ever did was make this poem—
    Well, maybe not this poem—
    But any poem at all—any way at all of wiggling two
    words and jiggering two sounds,
    Any way at all to get that glow-all-over feeling—
    That dreamy old warm kind of head-reeling—
    It’s better than sex—
    Y’all know that?
    She stopped and bowed deeply, as if they were The Baroness and she were the commoners, and looked at a sea of absolutely befuddled faces.
    Finally a fat boy stood up, a boy in a baseball cap and a pair of the maligned Reeboks. “Hey, I want to ax you somethin’—you ever had sex?”
    And when they had all stopped laughing some ten minutes later, she spoke to the kid in the cap. “Now that’s what I mean. What’s your name?”
    “They call me Two-Ton.”
    “Okay, Two-Ton, what you just got was a taste of the joy of creation. You made a good joke and everyone enjoyed it, and you felt fine, now didn’t you? What I’m talking about is work that always makes you feel fine. And good about yourself. And happy. Is anybody here happy?”
    Two or three kids raised their hands. Talba pointed to one.
    “Okay, what makes you happy?”
    The girl shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    She moved on to another. “Okay, you. What makes you happy?”
    “My baby boy.”
    “Okay, love. Love is a good thing, and that makes us happy. And money does—we already talked about that. Don’t look at me like that—I’m not going to pretend you can be just as happy poor as rich. They tell y’all that in church? Well, this is school, and we’re supposed to know things here. Think I’m not happier writing my poems at my golden desk, sittin’ on my ivory chair, wearing my silk and damask robes than at some formica kitchen table, wearing an old beat-up sweatsuit?”
    And miraculously, a kid in the back of the class said, “No, you’re not—because when you’re writing your poems, you don’t care what else is going on. You don’t even care, ‘cause you’re happy already.”
    Talba stared at the girl in utter astonishment. “Now, how on earth do you know that?”
    “ ‘Cause I sing in a choir. I’m just as happy at choir practice as when we have on our robes and all the candles are lit, and you can smell incense, and everywhere you look in the church, everything’s real pretty and real… expensive.”
    Talba stuck both thumbs up in the air. “Yes!” she hollered. “That’s it! Does anybody else know what she’s talking about?”
    “I’ve got a question,” Darryl said. “Did you make up that poem just now—in class?”
    “It was that raw, huh?”
    “No, it just seemed appropriate.”
    “Well, yeah. I guess I kind of did.”
    A murmur went up. “You did? You did that right here, now?”
    Talba bowed again. “ That is why I am a Baroness.”
    By now, she had them. Somehow, she wasn’t sure how,