Forever Odd

the pineapple-cheese Danish with a fork.
        I needed to leave. I needed to do something. Sitting still another moment seemed intolerable.
        I nibbled some Danish.
        We seldom sit in silence. He’s never at a loss for words; I can usually find a few of my own.
        After a minute or two, I realized that Ozzie was staring at me no less intently than was Terrible Chester.
        I had attributed this lull in the conversation to his need to chew. Now I realized this could not be the case.
        Brioche is made with eggs, yeast, and butter. It melts in your mouth with very little chewing.
        Ozzie had fallen silent because he was brooding. And he was brooding about me.
        “What?” I asked.
        “You didn’t come here for breakfast,” he said.
        “Certainly not for this much breakfast.”
        “And you didn’t come here to tell me about Wilbur Jessup, or about Danny.”
        “Well, yes, that is why I came, sir.”
        “Then you’ve told me, and you obviously don’t want that Danish, so I suppose you’ll be going now.”
        “Yes, sir,” I said, “I should be going,” but I didn’t get up from my chair.
        Pouring a fragrant Colombian blend from a thermos shaped like a coffeepot, Ozzie did not once shift his eyes from me.
        “I’ve never known you to be deceitful with anyone, Odd.”
        “I assure you I can dissemble with the best of them, sir.”
        “No, you can’t. You’re a poster boy for sincerity. You have all the guile of a lamb.”
        I looked away from him-and discovered that Terrible Chester had descended from the roof beams. The cat sat on the top porch step, still staring intently at me.
        “But more amazing still,” Ozzie continued, “I’ve seldom known you to indulge in self -deceit.”
        “When will I be canonized, sir?”
        “Smart-mouthing your elders will forever keep you out of the company of saints.”
        “Darn. I was looking forward to having a halo. It would make such a convenient reading lamp.”
        “As for self-deceit, most people find it as essential for survival as air. You rarely indulge in it. Yet you insist you came here just to tell me about Wilbur and Danny.”
        “Have I been insisting?”
        “Not with conviction.”
        “Why do you think I came here?” I asked.
        “You’ve always mistaken my absolute self-assurance for profound thought,” he said without hesitation, “so when you’re looking for deep insight, you seek an audience with me.”
        “You mean all the profound insights you’ve given me over the years were actually shallow?”
        “Of course they were, dear Odd. Like you, I’m only human, even if I have eleven fingers.”
        He does have eleven, six on his left hand. He says one in ninety thousand babies is born with this affliction. Surgeons routinely amputate the unneeded digit.
        For some reason that Ozzie has never shared with me, his parents refused permission for the surgery. He was the fascination of other children: the eleven-fingered boy; eventually, the eleven-fingered fat boy; and then the eleven-fingered fat boy with the withering wit.
        “As shallow as my insights might have been,” he said, “they were sincerely offered.”
        “That’s some comfort, I guess.”
        “Anyway you came here today with a burning philosophical question that’s troubling you, but it troubles you so much you don’t want to ask, after all.”
        “No, that isn’t it,” I said.
        I looked at the congealing remains of my lobster omelet. At Terrible Chester. At the lawn. At the small woods so green in the morning sun.
        Ozzie’s moon-round face could be smug and loving at the same time. His eyes twinkled with an expectation of being proved right.
        At last I said, “You know Ernie and Pooka Ying.”
        “Lovely people.”
        “The tree in their backyard…”
        “The brugmansia. It’s a magnificent specimen.”
        “Everything about it is deadly, every root and leaf.”
        Ozzie smiled as Buddha would have smiled if Buddha had written mystery novels and had relished exotic methods of murder. He nodded approvingly. “Exquisitely poisonous, yes.”
        “Why would nice people like Ernie and Pooka want to grow such a deadly tree?”
        “For one thing, because it’s beautiful, especially when it’s in flower.”
        “The flowers are toxic,