Although I was an average talent, I always possessed a great love of sport, competition, game. In high school, I was mildly athletic, the kind of boy who could run the expected number of laps without complaint or deploy any number of defenses in a chess club match to keep my king out of serfdom for a reasonable time. But my love of competition outstripped my talent: I couldn’t outrun the speedsters, and my deflections rarely led to victory over my young masters.
I played, for a single season, on our basketball team, the Chickenhawks. Hootie hoo! I wasn’t particularly tall, fast, or agile. I certainly didn’t have the hidden ankle wings of my fellow airmen that allowed them to dunk the ball from the concession stand. However, I was blessed with a facility for ball control. I became the team’s point guard after the starting senior was arrested on possession charges and died of a rare and undiagnosed heart problem while in custody. A terrible loss, as he’d already got an offer to go pro. I remained Chickenhawk number one until I blew out a knee while blocking the shot that would have knocked us out of the state playoffs. My sacrifice was all for naught. Three nights later I sat on the bench, my leg in a black brace, while Royceland, a crew of upstaters that preferred three-pointers over dunks, bombed my beloved Chickenhawks to smithereens, 114 to 81. What was the Royceland Red Roosters’ cheer? Ah. “Death from Above,” son.
“If you could have played on crutches, you would have,” Nigel said.
“You’ve heard this story before, eh?” I tugged his baseball cap down.
“Just once.” He smirked and pulled the cap back up. “Or a million times.”
The Monday after Nigel’s plantation bath, he and I were in the bowels of the City’s professional b-ball arena, Secret Nine Arena. There were two reasons I had never brought Nigel until that night. First, I almost always had to work late.
Second, Nigel had always shown an innate ability as a young sportsman. At age six, he could cartwheel and leapfrog like any other American boy, but he could also drive a soccer ball like a transplanted Brazilian. Whatever gene existed in me had combined with Penny’s fairer ones and amplified Nigel’s sportiness, even in informal settings. I was disturbed no end that whenever he visited my office, he’d stand as far away from my wastebasket as possible and plunk crumpled balls of paper into the receptacle like so many pennies into a well. The last time I brought him to my office, I snapped at him to stop, and he did. I felt guilty, of course, but for the love of Meadowlark Lemon, did the world really need another child of the diaspora with highly developed ball skills? The answer was in the question, and I made all indirect efforts to discourage his growing love of sports. America could cheer someone else’s brown boy down a field and, after he’d wrecked body and mind, into an early grave.
It was an irresistible magnet that drew us to the cavernous arena that weekday evening. Octavia pinged me with a message: “Meet at the firm suite and bring your kid. Seven-thirty P.M. Gate seven. Suite 342. Do not miss.”
We breached the building through a restricted side entrance reserved for kings and their retainers. We were early and wandered the semiprivate corridor, where workmen sped by in motorized carts and vendors offered frozen drinks, pretzels, and gaudy, glossy pamphlets. My son fairly hummed with electricity. He was dumbstruck by the many people milling about, the glowing advertisements floating above, the echo of the arena announcer’s voice telling us not to miss our shot at a photo with the team mascot. Nigel’s joy flowed into me, and we carried his awe in tandem.
As we rounded the base of the arena, we came to a darkened tunnel. At the far end of that tunnel was a clear view of the bright, marqueted hardwood floor where players in warm-up suits dribbled basketballs in and out of view. Faint holographic shapes—circles, lozenges, clouds—appeared on the floor and vanished to a rhythm I couldn’t catch. Nigel paused midstep and watched. It was during this reverie that I bought him an oversize We’re Number One foam hand and a veggie hot dog. In retrospect, I probably should have purchased the foam hand after the hot dog because my son refused to put down the one in order to eat the other. I found some amusement in watching him solve this puzzle by using the foam hand as a food tray.
I also noticed that his baseball cap had disappeared.
“Where is your hat?” I asked. Nigel shrugged. He said he must have lost it. “How is it possible that you lose every hat I buy you?”
He shrugged again. “There’s not even any sunlight in here,” he said. “It’s nighttime.” I realized he was right.
Across from the tunnel where we stood, an older white woman in chintz smeared balm on her lips with a pinky. “Do you know where the garbage cans are?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Oh. Well, can you take this?” She offered her plate of picked-over crab claws to me. She thought I worked for the arena, that I was a janitor.
I glanced down at my T-shirt and immediately regretted my choice to dress like a normal person going to a basketball game rather than wear a top hat and tails. Of course, then she would have thought I was the doorman. I shoved my hands into my pockets.
“That’s nice team spirit you have,” the woman said to Nigel.
“Thank you, ma’am.” My polite boy. I placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Where did you get it?” she asked.
“Right over there. I think.” It was about then that I noticed she was concentrating quite deliberately on Nigel to the exclusion of me, but this wasn’t about his birthmark. The woman wasn’t judging the composition of his face so much as his relationship to me. She was a Good Samaritan. I’d participated in this puppet show before, too. It wasn’t the first time someone, thrown off by the variance in our physical appearances, thought that I’d kidnapped my own child.
“Did this man buy it for you?” she asked. She had a booger of garlic on her lip.
“Uh-huh,” Nigel said, dropping a bit of veggie chili on the smooth concrete below.
I nudged him. “Don’t speak with your mouth full, son.”
“Sorry, Dad,” Nigel said.
A giant security guard, possibly a failed player himself, seemed to be trying to decide whether to cross over from his comfortable post on the far side of the corridor.
The woman knelt and grabbed Nigel’s wrist. “You can trust me.”
“Don’t touch my son,” I said.
The woman ignored me. “Are you okay, young man?”
Nigel looked at her, his eyes wide. For a blink, I worried he might say that he wasn’t. “Miss, can you let go of me?”
The woman shook her head, as if casting off a spell. She rose to her feet and walked away, her Birkenstock sandals slapping her heels. She glanced back once more before dumping her trash into a receptacle and turning in to the arena proper.
Someone tapped my shoulder. It was the security guard, who stared down on me from two and a half heads up.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
“Are you with the firm up in the Seasons Ustis suite?”
“So what if he is?” Nigel said.
“A lady asked me to escort you.”
“How did you know it was me?” I asked.
“She described you to a T.”
We followed the guard into a side tunnel, passed a couple of paramedics smoking cigarettes, and rode an elevator to suite level. The firm’s spacious suite loomed near center court several stories up. Mixed in with numerous shareholders, including Armbruster, his right-hand man, Scott Forecast, and Callower, were heavy hitters I was more likely to see on television than in person. Armbruster and Forecast spoke to Mayor Chamberlain, with her signature bouffant hair, who was preparing to run for her second term. Dinah was removing lint from Pavor’s lapel. Pavor grabbed her other hand, but she brushed his away and glanced around to see if anyone noticed.
A young man who’d starred in an action film about shapeshifting gnomes tucked into a slice of marionberry pie and wrinkled his nose. I had tried a slice on the way in and agreed with his assessment. On a ten-point scale, I wouldn’t have given the stale-crusted, gloopy wedge much more than three and some change.
I escorted Nigel to the exterior seats that afforded a view of the game with the unwashed masses just below our feet. Men careened across the court. Whistles blew. Someone did a 720 dunk, and the whole cave rocked with applause. At halftime, the arena lights dimmed, and a squad of cheerleaders with small wings on their backs appeared and flew around under laser beams.
A waiter offered a tray of cocktail wieners. Nigel took some, but I didn’t. I was too shaken to eat. In fact, I probably hadn’t said much more than yes, no, or maybe for some time. To Nigel’s question as to why Herman was the only one with gold-plated kicks, I replied, “Maybe.” My wistfulness wasn’t the result of a pharmacologically induced state. I hadn’t had a Plum since the morning, although it was high time.
Octavia sat next to me, removed her sunglasses from her face, and put them in her hair. “I was starting to think you made other plans.”
“Not at all.” I gave her a double-cheeked air kiss.
She glanced at the cluster of men talking to Armbruster. “The good old boys have run this place long enough. Do you know Seasons hasn’t had a woman managing shareholder in twenty-seven years, three months, and eight days?”
“I had no idea,” I said.
“It all comes down to who society chooses to respect. Like when you didn’t come to my office on Friday when I messaged you. That was disrespectful.”
“I’m sorry about that—”
“I’m talking. Do you know why I called you to my office that day?” Octavia went into her suit jacket pocket and pulled out a lapel pin. One of her sun pendants. “To congratulate you for winning on Elevation Night.” She attached the pendant to my T-shirt. “A lot of people had money on that Riley, but I knew you were up to the task.”
I exhaled. The pendant meant I was one of Octavia’s people, which afforded me a measure of job security. Job security meant I was that much closer to helping my son. “Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t thank me. You’ve got your work cut out for you, and people who wear my pendant aren’t allowed to slack. But you knew that.”
I pointed at the pendant. “So this means I’m promoted to shareholder.”
“About that. No. A majority of the executive committee had to sign off on it. None of you got a majority of votes, but you got the most. So you’re not a shareholder, but you’re not canned either. You’re provisional until a revote or I release you.” Octavia glanced up toward one of the suites that ringed the arena. “You should have cleared it outright, but I think Armbruster convinced a few of the others to turn their nose up at you to spite me.”
“Why?”
“Because they know I’ve got aspirations. I’ve got a potential client on the hook, a real whale who’ll give me enough juice to make a run at head honcho. That’s why I need to know that you’re in up to the hilt.”
“Of course I am.”
“If you come through for me, I’ll have enough clout to get you that revote. Of course, if you crap out or I do, we’ll both be in the unemployment line. People who make a run for the top of the mountain and miss don’t last very long. But you knew that, too. Any questions?”
I swallowed—ludicrous, considering we had worked together for years. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything I cared about was at stake in how I handled the next few minutes. “The diversity committee. Why did you put me on it?”
She tilted her head in the direction of Armbruster, who was chatting up a leggy young brunette. “What do you see when you look at old Jack? Be honest.”
I didn’t want to insult Octavia. But I knew she would see through any attempt to be tactful. “I see success. Some deserved. Some not. I heard he was in line to be in charge after only a few months in. Big clients flock to him because he’s got the look and profile that people buy. It’s a closed loop, a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Octavia pursed her lips and nodded. “That’s good. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve spent my whole career paddling in his wake. I made my group number two by force of will, and now it’s time to overtake that big rusty cruise ship. Know how we’re going to do it?” I shook my head. “We’re going after PHH.”
Personal Hill Hospital, or PHH, as people called it. I wasn’t surprised that her target client was the hospital where Penny worked. PHH was one of the biggest employers in the City, and if Octavia managed to bring it in, she would become one of the wealthiest shareholders in the history of the firm. PHH had a level-one trauma center and an acclaimed, renowned cancer treatment service, but its plastic surgery clinic was all over the news since that pop singer underwent a transformation there. It was where I planned to bring Nigel when that sunny day came. Rumor had it that Octavia herself had had a good deal of work done. Franklin once told me that Octavia was just another light-skinned black who had her nose sharpened so she could pass. I never believed that story. After all, her family had owned that mansion on the Avenue of Streetcars since before recorded time.
“That’s where you come in,” Octavia said. “I need to show that the firm cares about the community. It’s the price of entry to even be considered for their approved-legal services list.”
“By community, you mean black people.”
“Don’t be crass with the race talk, but that’s right. That’s how the game is played. They lose their federal funding without the right mix of vendors.”
“What can I do?” I asked.
“I need you to put together a campaign that proves the firm is committed to diversity.”
A great roar erupted in the arena. Nigel jumped up, pumped his fist.
Octavia tilted her chin up and smiled. “I remember your résumé. You were what? Second in your class?”
“First.”
“See that there. You’ll think of something. I’m a big believer in putting my people in position to do their best. Callower has a job to do. He’ll be running down the permitting and licensing side to see if we can find something that will increase PHH’s profits. Companies love when lawyers find money just lying around. Dinah has a job to do. She’ll keep track of the competition and ensure that we’re one step ahead. And now you have your orders.”
Made sense. Dinah and the others all seemed extraordinarily busy with things other than drafting briefs and going to depositions. I had to grab the reins while the grabbing was good.
“I’ll need a budget,” I said.
“Oh, you’re quick,” she said. I tossed out a number, not really knowing what I’d do with the money. “You can make do with half that.”
“Do you want PHH or not?”
Octavia sniffed. “Fine. If there’s one thing I cotton to, it’s initiative. Take this puppy, for instance.” Pavor stooped next to Octavia and licked barbecue sauce from his thumb. Octavia squeezed Pavor’s cheeks like a cheerful aunt. “Look at this face. Wouldn’t you vote for this man?”
I had no idea what they were talking about.
“I’m running for mayor,” Pavor said. “The firm is backing me.”
“You?” I asked. “Since when do you care about politics?”
“Since boss lady needs someone on the inside to move things along,” he said. “I qualified this afternoon.” Pavor noticed a line of sauce on his blazer and cursed. He wandered away wiping it.
“He and that Dinah make a pretty effective team.” Octavia gestured toward Dinah, who was pouring club soda onto a cloth. “What do you want?” Octavia asked. “I mean psychologically, if you catch my drift. What do you need as a human-type person?”
“To do my job well.” I studied my hands. It was true, in a sense.
“Nice answer, boy-o, but body language doesn’t lie. I saw you look over at your kid again.”
Nigel leaned forward at the rail, waving his foam finger.
“You’re a good heart,” she said. “That’s what I like about you.”
Armbruster walked down the steps to where Nigel was. He patted Nigel on the back.
“What about Armbruster?” I asked.
“What about him?” she whispered. “Managing shareholder isn’t a lifetime position. If he’s smart, he and his contingent will back me. I don’t think he’s that smart, though.”
Nigel led Armbruster over. “This is your boy?” he asked.
“Last I checked,” I said. A small part of me wanted to feel sorry for Armbruster. He was a grandfather, after all. Chairman of the water utility board. A respectable man. Octavia usually got what she wanted, and with Armbruster in her sights, he was as good as done.
“I had no idea. Such a handsome boy. A good-looking young man. Must have got it from his mother.” Armbruster guffawed. I chuckled, too. “I bet you’re good at basketball.”
“Not really?” Nigel glanced at me, apparently wondering if that was the right answer.
Armbruster plucked a cigar off a server’s tray. “Too bad.”
Octavia and I both noticed my knee, which was leaping up and down like a thrown engine rod. I put my hands on my knee. The shaking stopped.
“Did you see that, Dad?” Nigel asked.
“What, son?”
“Some stuff happened,” he said, twisting on one foot, “but we won.”
“Never doubted we would.” Octavia extended a hand. “Did you?”
“Not for a second.” I clasped both my hands around one of hers, the universal, diplomatic black man’s handshake.