Lousiana Hotshot

throw her own daughter out; Talba hadn’t the least fear of that. Somehow, she’d manage to stop herself on a technicality. But Talba sure wasn’t ever going to bring up the man again.
    She went to bed and dreamed she had a baby and it was crying.
Too trite,
she thought.
Too damn trite for words. If I had a shrink, I wouldn’t even tell him.
In the morning, she picked a white blouse and blue skirt out of her closet and headed out to exercise her demographic advantage.
    ***
    Baronial Records was huge, much larger than she expected, something like a campus way out in New Orleans East. She had imagined one dingy building, but this place looked like some kind of African-American Skywalker Ranch. It was a veritable anthill of activity, which excited her. Everybody looked jazzed, and almost everybody was black. She liked that a lot until she realized that almost everybody was male as well.
    Wondering what her job was (but guessing it was filing), she made her way to the legal department, and announced herself as Liza’s replacement, poor Liza having awakened with the stomach flu.
    As it developed, she was the assistant of a Ms. Jackson, Ms. Jackson being a lawyer, apparently. Ah— she was a legal secretary. Well, she could do it. If it involved a computer, there was no question she could do it. It and lots of other things. She practically smacked her lips.
    She had a plan— a plan so simple it couldn’t go wrong. All she had to do was find out who Toes was, then get a picture of him, and get the kids to I.D. it. And they’d given her a computer to play with. If the word “toes” was in it anywhere she’d find it.
    She went in and prowled. Ah, yes. Toes. Toes and more Toes. Though never as a word— always as a syllable. As in tomatoes, potatoes, even pimientoes. Certainly not as a proper noun.
    Well, hell. Toes had to be a friend of the Baron’s, didn’t he? He might even work for him. Therefore, somebody must know him. She got herself invited to go to lunch with a bunch of clerical workers and tried it out on them: “Ya’ll know anybody named Toes?”
    Hilarity followed. Appendage jokes. Remarks about the things parents name kids. One woman had known an “Ears,” and someone else a “Sweet-eyes.” The one who knew a “Brown Nose” was probably joking.
    The conversation was flying out of control. Talba tried to rein it back in: “No, really. He’s a good friend of the Baron’s— they call each other T and T. My sister met him at a party.”
    More hilarity. “Girlfriend,” one of the ladies confided, “every stud in the state claims to be a friend of the Baron’s, black
or
white. Which color’s this dude? Or is he that soft creamy color I could eat with a spoon— you know, that color that’s mostly gold, with just a little red in it? Mmmmmm. Yeah.”
    Evidently nobody in the group knew the gentleman. But maybe the legal department wasn’t the best for picking up on who did and didn’t know the Baron. After lunch Talba took a quick tour of the building, approaching the receptionist in each department with “a fax for Toes.” She failed to score, but it was barely a start— there were plenty more buildings, plenty more departments. She just had to be patient. Had to keep working there a few more days, asking around. Something might happen.
    But they probably wouldn’t keep her. She had a pile of work when she got back to her desk, and it wasn’t computer work— she was very slow at plain old typing, which is what it mostly was. She was behind and probably wouldn’t be asked back. She had to think of something before the gig blew up in her face.
    Somewhere near quitting time, she thought of it. The key was the Baron. He did know Toes, had actually been seen with him. The thing was to get to the Baron. And it could be done. All she needed was his schedule, which was sure to be in the computer somewhere.
    Excited, she thought,
I wonder if there’s something tonight?
    And then it occurred to her that if there was something big and public, it would be on his website. She went there first, and wasn’t disappointed. There were three good opportunities, the first of which indeed was that night, and it was something she’d probably be able to get into, even this late.
    But wait, she thought, I could have done this without wasting a whole day working here. So she went looking for his nonpublic schedule again, and found plenty of other opportunities. She printed it out and went back to her