We Cast a Shadow

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  “Ah-ah, sugar.” Octavia grabs Dinah’s arm and spins her around. Dinah tries to break away but can’t. “Not so fast. You’ve got something of mine.”

  Law offices are not worlds of physicality. People rarely move, and you can go an entire year without seeing two humans touch. Violence is as rare as vibranium. Octavia’s action might seem like a minor flare-up between two women if you saw it on a busy street. But up here, on the sixty-second floor of the Sky Tower, among dusty files and beige walls, they might as well be going at each other with flaming whips and broadswords.

  “You were like a daughter to me,” Octavia says.

  “I already have a mother,” Dinah says. “And I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have.”

  “Don’t sweat it, peach. I understand. Business is as business does.” Octavia snatches something from Dinah’s jacket. Dinah pulls away, clutching her upper chest.

  I ask what in the world is going on. They’ve had verbal altercations before, but nothing like this.

  Octavia opens her hand. Dinah’s sun pendant. Octavia took it from Dinah’s lapel. Dinah’s not in the group anymore.

  “That bitch Armbruster stole her away.”

  “He didn’t steal anything,” Dinah says. “I chose.”

  “Whitmore, I’m wounded.” Armbruster strolls into the room. “Is that the language you use to describe your old mentor when you think he’s out of earshot? Thought I house-trained you better.”

  “When he did everything he could to hold me back,” Octavia said, pointing, “you’re goddamn right that’s how I describe him.”

  “Now, heel.” Armbruster whips out a handkerchief and wipes the corner of his mouth. “Did you really think you’re qualified to run this place?” he asks. “I’m not going anywhere. This is my ship. Will be till I say otherwise.” He snorts and pauses in his tracks. “Octavia didn’t tell you, did she? I guess she was hoping to turn things around before the deal was done.”

  I turn to Octavia, but it’s Dinah who speaks. “Darkblum Group signed up with Armbruster. They’re his client now.”

  “Our client.” Armbruster lays an arm over Dinah’s shoulder. She smiles stiffly. The significance of this strikes me all at once. Octavia and Armbruster shared the preliminary Darkblum work all year, but only one shareholder can take credit. With the company signing up with Armbruster, all the money and billables from that work will go to him and his team. Including all the billable hours from the past year. Any hours I worked on the file will go to Armbruster instead of Octavia. She won’t get the credit. Neither will I. My abacus bleeds.

  “My firm.” Armbruster adjusts his tie.

  He takes a sheet of paper out of his pocket and unfolds it. I don’t have to see the words to know that it’s a Racing Form containing everyone’s stats.

  “You’ll be needing to revise this.” He crumples the paper and throws it at Octavia. But the ball lands at my feet.

  27

  Life doesn’t care about your protest. You can rage all you want, curse it, abstain from it in every way possible. But necessity rears her heavily made-up face and says, Frown all you want, sweetheart, but somebody got to handle up on this and this and this. In the middle of our archipelago of sadness, Nigel and I still had basic needs. Toothpaste. Tissue. Tea.

  “Can I stay in the car?” Nigel asked.

  “Come on,” I said. He got out, and we walked into ¡Organix!, the macromarket with heart.

  The problem with going to a grocery store when you’re the noncooking partner is you feel like a phony. You’re out of your element and assuming an area of responsibility that you aren’t built for. You haven’t kept track of how many cans of corn belonged in the pantry. You didn’t stock those shelves. You consumed. Greedily, you lapped up every breadcrumb lovingly placed before your muzzle, always sniffing for the next bit and keening whenever you wanted more, which was frequently.

  Even the layout of the building challenged me. Should I work counterclockwise through the fruits and veggies or start with the bread and sweets? What a farce. As if either choice could give me even a single moment more with—

  “This is dumb.” Nigel picked over a selection of grapefruit. He was wearing his hoodie up, which I hated. In profile, his shaggy hair sprang from under the hood like the legs of a hermit crab. “We’re not going to eat any of this.”

  He was right, of course. I didn’t want any of the food in the entire place. A fetid scent, of charred pig meat, rooted in the air. My stomach pulsed. Run away, my gut squealed.

  But there was a fatherly ticker tape tangled in the rat’s nest of my brain. I was depressed, and I knew it. But I had certain duties. And even if I didn’t believe in the goodness of the world or have any hope whatsoever for the future, I had a job to do. All I had to do was speak the words.

  “We don’t get to give up,” I said.

  “When was the last time you were hungry?” he asked. “I can’t even—”

  “Listen to me—”

  He gestured toward the center aisles. “I mean, we just keep buying all this stuff, and then it gets all moldy, and I have to throw it away.”

  “Nigel, I’m trying to tell you something, son.”

  I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Horrible things happen. I don’t like anything now. I don’t like waking up. I don’t like leaving the house. I sure as hell don’t like being here.”

  “Why are we here then?”

  “I don’t even like you. I certainly don’t like myself. In fact, I like me less than you. So in a battle between us, you win. But this won’t last forever. One day I’m going to wake up and feel like a person again. We both will.”

  “You’re talking weird again.”

  “Maybe. You should try it sometime. It feels awesome. Now, I was saying that things can’t suck this hard forever. And one day I’m going to wake up and my stomach will growl, and I’m going to be pretty mad if I go to the fridge and we don’t have any frozen waffles. She always made sure we had frozen waffles, just in case.”

  “You’re trying to sound so tough. You can’t even say her name.”

  “And you can?”

  “I talk about her all the time.” Nigel glanced at me, then away. “Just not with you.”

  I rubbed my forearm and blanched at who he might have felt more comfortable confiding in. Araminta? Riley? It didn’t matter. “Well, then,” I said, “you’re a better man than me.”

  A tall figure in black crossed between the onions and the potatoes. It was Eckstein from PHH. The scowl he wore every time he saw me seemed to soften when he realized who I was with.

  “This must be your boy,” he said. He seemed a little frazzled. Five o’clock shadow. Ashy feet in slippers. His straightened hair uncombed.

  I introduced them.

  “I saw you at Ms. Whitmore’s mansion,” Eckstein said to Nigel, “and your mother, too, but didn’t have the pleasure of meeting either of you then.”

  “My mom’s dead. She was run over by a police officer.”

  “Oh.”

  “But don’t worry.” A strange smirk spread across Nigel’s face. “She’s in a better place now. She would have wanted us to be happy. And at least we have memories of our time together.”

  Eckstein’s eyebrows shot up.

  Nice job, Nigel. Way to sock it to him for the old man. Eckstein’s shock was the perfunctory reaction I was used to seeing from the powerful trying to relate on some surface level. But then his whole body deflated.

  “Don’t mind him,” I said. “He’s just talking weird again.” Nigel rolled his eyes. For a brief second, he seemed like my son again, and I felt like his father.

  Eckstein leaned forward and gathered us in his arms. He smelled like coconut oil and aftershave. I looked at Nigel, who looked at me as if to ask what was happening.

  “I’m so sorry.” Eckstei
n let us go. “It’s just I lost Beverley when Tyresha was small.”

  “Tyresha?” Nigel asked.

  “Crown,” I said.

  “I’m sorry—I’m not very comforting, I know.” He swatted away a tear.

  I was jealous of him. I hadn’t cried. I was so tranqed at the funeral that I felt nothing on my skin or in my soul. I recognized its presence that day, a purple-brown whirlpool gurgling inside me. It needed to get out. Nigel gushed like a busted hydrant though.

  “Enough about us,” I said. “How are things at the hospital?”

  “Terrible, to be honest. All this business with those protesters and terrorists has the shareholders feeling quite nervous.” He blew his nose into a napkin. I had seen the reports on the news. The mother corporation’s stock was plummeting. They were considering selling the hospital or even mothballing it if they couldn’t find a buyer. “You know my feelings about the special procedures we offer now. And I get why some in the community are upset. But it’s a slap in the face to have those charlatans leading the charge. They’re not even the real ADZE.”

  “They’re real.” Nigel said. “I’ve seen them.”

  “Young man, the original ADZE was a community-minded group that tried to build people up. Not kill them. They provided job training to the underemployed, healthy breakfasts to kids who couldn’t get them even at school. They even put on an annual pride festival called Visions of Blackness. It was beautiful to see. My parents were heavily involved in all of it. Until the government started sending in infiltrators.”

  Sir would have disagreed. He thought old ADZE was a bunch of self-centered radicals. It was one thing to organize and protest, but grandstanding was almost always counterproductive, in his view. ADZE’s tactics led to a whitelash, which led to the world Nigel and I lived in.

  “Infiltrators?” Nigel asked.

  “Sure,” Eckstein said. “The FBI made a task force that—”

  Something in my head clicked. A slip of paper popped out of my mouth. “That’s what you should do.”

  “What?”

  “Correction.” I bopped Eckstein’s shoulder. “That’s what we should do. What if PHH threw a festival in the Tiko like back in the old days? Nothing too crazy. Just a day-long thing. Your daughter could headline it.”

  “But they hate her.”

  That’s when I laid it out to him in jargon he could understand. The firm would lead the charge leveraging its connections to various community groups, including BEG, to shore up support. PHH would provide the real money, including donations to those same organizations and free swag for the festival. As for Crown—

  “She just needs to say to the public what she told me when I first met her. In fact, if she works for free, it might clear out her community service.”

  “Gracious,” he said. “I don’t—”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Tell me it’s the best idea you’ve ever heard.”

  “The corporation has been itching to greatly expand its community medical services program.” Eckstein rubbed his chin. “Demel discounts and that sort of thing, which I’m not particularly supportive of. Yet I’ve a fiduciary duty to present ideas that could increase our stock value. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think we should work together on this project. I’ll need approval from the board, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I think we have a deal.”

  We shook hands, and Eckstein walked away, steering his basket with one hand and calling someone on his device.

  It took everything in me to keep from dropping to the floor and break-dancing right there.

  “What was that?” Nigel asked.

  “That was the beginning of the next chapter of our life, son.”

  The Sky Tower gym floated some twenty stories above the street. It was fronted by a band of opaque silver windows that circled the superstructure. From a mile away, the gym floor looked like a metallic belt that had been cinched a little too tight. The crystal elevator that ran right of center down the southeast side of the building formed the dangly part of the belt.

  “Why are we here on a Sunday?” Nigel asked, as we stepped out of the elevator.

  “Because I’ll explode if I have to wait until tomorrow. Wait out here.”

  Octavia was on one of the antigravity treadmills, chatting with someone presumably through an earbud.

  “Keep up with what you’re doing, Luna. Catch you later.” Octavia seemed startled when she noticed us standing just a few feet away. “What the dickens?”

  “Eckstein is ready to close the deal.”

  “Well, don’t just stand there looking pretty, sugar. Spill it.”

  I told her.

  Octavia tapped her earbud. “That’s great news. You should hear Dinah shouting in my ear. She likes it too.”

  “Dinah?” I asked. “But she’s with Armbruster now.”

  “That was just a ruse. Dinah is reporting back every move they make. No way Armbruster closes that deal with Darkblum with our girl throwing monkey wrenches into the works.” Octavia stopped the machine, waited for the lower chamber to decompress, and stepped off the platform. “Everyone has a role to play.” She wiped her face with a towel. “Pavor’s going to win mayor, and he’s already set to get federal funding for that demel clinic. Did you know Pavor has family in D.C.? Between that and your smooth-talking Eckstein, I’ll own that hospital four or five different ways. They’ll have to sign up as my client. Now, don’t you feel useful?” Octavia went into the ladies’ locker room.

  I felt more than useful. I was rapidly approaching the fulfillment of my life’s work.

  Nigel stood outside the glass doors. I made a show of pointing at him, then walloping a nearby punching bag with the only combination I recalled from a long-ago summer camp. Hook. Uppercut. Cross.

  28

  Nigel sat on the examination table in Dr. Nzinga’s office, wearing a gray hospital gown. The nurse had already drawn blood and taken his vitals. Nigel and I were like those two theatrical masks, him all frowns, me all smiles.

  “Someone has a case of the pouts,” said the nurse, pumping the blood pressure cuff.

  “Girl trouble,” I said.

  I was on cloud nine thousand, of course. When I explained the plan to Octavia, she had immediately shifted into gear, throwing out the names of production companies and other contacts I needed to get in touch with. We met with Eckstein’s people just two days later and signed contracts. “You’ll be a shareholder within twenty-four hours after the festival is over, sugar,” she said. In the meantime, I was to get Nigel signed up for demelanization. She would cover the consultation fees. She said I was a good father for working so hard to improve my son’s life.

  The nurse placed a hand over her heart. “Aw. It’ll get better,” she said. “You just have to move on, sweetie.”

  “I already have a new girlfriend,” Nigel said. His mark seemed darker and more clearly defined under the fluorescents.

  “That’s the spirit.” The nurse gathered her equipment and pinched his arm. I smiled at her. She winked and left the room.

  Nigel asked me how long would this take. Not very long, I said. Dr. Nzinga had already explained the process to me. It was a six-month procedure, similar in some ways to the cancer treatments they used to give. The plan would play out in stages. A few weeks of primer treatments, various markers and agents added to the body to prepare it for complete demelanization. Then active reagents introduced. That was where the real work began. Epigenetic restructuring that I only understood in the broadest strokes. That was where the actual retoning of the skin occurred, among other changes to the hair and visible membranes like the gums, etc. Of course, Nigel’s procedure would leave his nose, lips, and other features untouched. The changes would focus on getting out that damned spot.

  But the process was also
preventive and would keep him, or his once and future children, from ever being black like me. Dr. Nzinga described it as sending out millions of little demolition teams, each crashing a wrecking ball through a ghetto facade. The final stage was the bum’s rush, when the tiny crews attached bombs to the melanocytic pillars and brought down the house. The procedure had been much improved with time. Crown’s process had taken nearly two years.

  “Let’s play a game,” Nigel said. I was startled when he spoke. He had been on his device, flipping from screen to screen. But now he held a pair of dice. “Double or nothing. If I win, we leave. If you win, I’ll do it and never complain again.”

  “That’s not necessary. You already promised.”

  “But I didn’t promise to like it.”

  We had left before daybreak. But not before Nigel threw a fit, wrapping his arms around the porch pillars and refusing to move. He wanted that nettlesome girl to come along. She was there by our door waiting, doing her best impression of a darkened corner, when we exited. I wouldn’t have it, of course. This was a private experience to be shared between father and son—a cornerstone of our future relationship. It was only by convincing him that he was making a small child of himself in front of Araminta that I was able to pry his koala fingers from the wood. He exchanged words with her. She seemed genuinely wounded.

  “How do we play?” I asked. Nigel tossed the dice into the air and caught one—and then the other.

  I always found the game uncouth; the men who gathered in semicircles on the streets of the Tiko were invariably society’s dregs: unemployed or chronically underemployed, lacking imagination or premium insurance, empty message bottles headed for the great recycling facility in the sky.

  But the few times someone convinced me to roll, I had a lucky hand. In fact, I often found favor in games of chance. Lady Fortuna knew the score and sought to help dedicated, pure-hearted men like me carry out our appointed rounds.

  Nigel climbed off the examination table. I refastened the tie on the back of his hospital gown. He tossed the dice, and a good number rolled up. I tossed and a bad number rolled up. We agreed to best five out of seven, but he won the first three. Then five out of six.