Saturday, May 24, 2014
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Maine had written I have always been passionate about business and spent the last four minutes looking at it.
Outside his window, somebody was trying to park in a space that wasn't going to get bigger. An engine revved, stopped, revved again. Maine leaned back far enough to see the nose of the car below, then returned to the sentence. He could hear an argument starting on the sidewalk. That was making more progress than he was.
He deleted always.
The email was open behind the document, its subject line beginning with Sovereign State. He had nearly passed over it that morning while clearing messages about housing and orientation. Then he had seen the words Alpha Scholars Initiative and gone back.
The program was inviting incoming students to submit a statement for its selection process. The description offered business mentorship and placement opportunities. Maine went back over the part about working with people already doing the jobs students hoped to learn. He had opened the attachment, looked through the photographs, and returned to the part describing the work. There were students in an office, students around a table, a man pointing at something on a screen while everybody pretended the photographer wasn't there. Atlas Development's name appeared beneath the list of partners.
Maine knew the name from construction fences. A company that big would have people who knew the work. He wanted a chance to ask them questions.
The statement asked what he wanted to learn and how he might use it in his community. It sounded easy until he tried answering without sounding like everybody he had ever heard make a speech at school.
He changed the sentence to I'm interested in learning how businesses work.
Better. Also something a twelve-year-old could have written.
On the bed, his phone vibrated against a pair of folded jeans.
Rome: you outside today or you retired
Maine reached for it.
Maine: working on something
Rome: that's unfortunate
He smiled. Through the open door, the house was quiet. His father had gone out before Maine came downstairs, leaving a rinsed cup by the sink. Maine had checked the street while he made something to eat. There had been a delivery van and a woman pulling a shopping cart, neither of them interested in his window. He had almost called Nasir about the night before, then pictured asking why a car had been outside their house as if no car had ever been outside their house.
He hadn't called.
He put the phone beside the keyboard and read the email again. No place promised, no money promised. A chance to put himself in the room. He could do that much.
Maine: got something to show you. give me a little
Rome: you said that yesterday and crossed a teacher
Maine: that was community service
He returned to the document and wrote a second sentence before he let himself get dressed.
*
Rome was sitting on a stoop with his elbows spread across his knees, finishing a bag of chips. He shook the crumbs into his mouth when Maine came up the block, then held out a hand.
"Let me see."
"You don't even know what it is."
"You said you had something. I'm here."
Maine handed him the phone. Rome read the subject, scrolled once, and looked up.
"Alpha Scholars. That sound expensive."
"You ain't paying for it."
"Then I like it." He returned to the screen. "This the business thing?"
"Something like that. They got people you can work with. Mentors. Placements if you get through."
"So you about to start wearing that little jacket every day."
"It's a blazer."
"Look at you. Already correcting people." Rome stood, brushed crumbs from his jeans, and gave the phone back. "What you gotta do?"
"Write about what I wanna learn. What I could do around here."
They walked toward the avenue. A man was washing his car with a bucket at the curb, calling instructions to a boy who had already soaked both his sneakers. Maine moved around the spreading water and opened his unfinished statement.
"I just don't wanna put some nonsense," he said.
"Then don't."
"Appreciate the consultation."
"First one free."
Maine started to step off the curb. Rome caught the back of his sleeve as a cyclist shot past, close enough to stir the loose fabric of his shirt.
"Look up, scholar."
"I saw him."
"You saw the back of his head."
Maine locked the phone and waited beside him for the light. Across the avenue, a shopkeeper was dragging a display rack back into the shade. The wheels caught on a seam in the pavement. A customer held the door while he lifted one end clear.
"You ever think about how all these places keep going?" Maine asked.
Rome followed his eyes. "People buying stuff?"
"Yeah, obviously. I mean, you got Leo there every day. Carlos. All these people working. Some places stay forever. Some don't."
"You tryna open a store?"
"I don't know." Maine watched the rack disappear inside. "Maybe I wanna learn something I could use a bunch of ways. Do some work for somebody, make something out of it. Get better. Keep building."
Rome considered that as they crossed.
"What kind of work?"
"That's the part I'm figuring out."
"Okay. Start with that."
"With not knowing?"
"With wanting to know. You just talked longer than whatever you showed me on your phone."
Maine looked at him. Rome shrugged and opened his empty chip bag as if something might have survived.
"You write all that, don't make it sound like somebody else." He folded the bag. "We going to Juneteenth, right?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Put that in your schedule between mergers and acquisitions."
"You don't know what that means."
"I know you gonna buy the chips next time."
*
By Sunday afternoon, Maine had rewritten the first paragraph twice and gone downstairs because there was nothing cold in the refrigerator he wanted to drink.
The walk to Leo's took him past open windows and a little girl practicing the same three jumps with a rope. On the fourth, it caught beneath her shoe. She looked at him as though he had caused it.
"Gotta lift that foot," he said.
"I know."
"My fault."
She started again before he reached the corner.
At Leo's, a hand truck blocked half the doorway. Maine turned sideways past it, then stopped with the bell still moving overhead. A deliveryman was inside trying to pull a box from beneath another box without surrendering either.
"This going in the back?" Maine asked.
Leo looked up from the register. "The water. Leave those."
Maine took the case nearest the door, carried it down the aisle, and set it where Leo pointed. He straightened before reaching for a second one; two years of hearing Leo complain about people breaking themselves for a box had left something behind.
Dominic watched from the grill.
"You shopping or you on the clock?"
"Depends. He paying?"
"You buying a drink?" Leo asked.
"Depends. I on the clock?"
The deliveryman laughed. Maine held the door while he wheeled the empty truck out, then went to the cooler. Somebody had changed the shelf arrangement. He found the Arizona where the bottled tea used to be and took one from the back because the front ones weren't cold yet.
He and Rome had worked here since seventeen. Maine still knew which shelves customers would undo five minutes after he straightened them.
"You moved the drinks again," Maine said.
"You left," Dominic answered. "We had to keep living."
"Must've been difficult."
"We managing."
A woman coming down the aisle asked Maine where the coffee filters were. He pointed her toward the household shelf, walked over when she couldn't find them, and reached behind a stack of paper plates. She thanked him and carried the package to the counter.
"Still know where everything is," Leo said.
"Somebody gotta."
"Then find your money."
Maine put the drink on the glass and reached into his pocket.
The bell rang again. An older man in a cap came in, nodded to Leo, and walked straight toward the tea. He stood there long enough for Maine to notice him checking the shelf twice.
"You got that ginger one?" the man asked. "Yellow box."
"Not anymore," Leo said.
"You getting it back?"
"Not right now."
The man pressed his mouth to one side, picked up another box, and read the front. He returned it to the shelf.
"All right. I'll try over on the avenue."
Leo asked after his wife before he left. The man answered from the doorway, one hand keeping it open, and for a moment Maine could see the deliveryman outside folding his straps. Then the door closed and Leo went back to counting change.
"We used to sell those," Maine said.
"I know. I bought them."
"I remember putting them up."
"Then you remember taking them down."
Maine did, after a second. A carton on the floor, Leo telling him to check the dates on every box. At the time he had mostly been thinking about how long it would take before he could go.
"They didn't sell?"
"They sold. Slow." Leo handed the woman with the filters her bag. "He comes for one. Somebody else comes for one. I gotta buy the case."
Maine leaned against the end of the counter, drink unopened. "So the rest just sits."
"Everything sits. Question is how long."
"What if you wrote down who asks for it?" he said when the counter cleared.
Leo looked over his glasses. "You writing?"
"I'm saying, if enough people ask—"
"People ask for everything."
"Yeah, but the same thing."
"They ask for that ginger tea. I order it. They come next month."
Maine laughed. "You got an answer for everything."
"Been doing it longer than you."
He took a sip and looked toward the shelf again. The man had been willing to walk somewhere else for one box. That meant something. So did the carton Leo had paid for while he waited for that man to come back. Both could be true, and Maine hadn't thought about either while he was putting prices on the boxes.
"You'd need to know if they were really coming for it," he said.
Leo shrugged. "Now you thinking."
When Leo finally looked back, he said, "What's with all the questions?"
"School thing." Maine pulled out his phone. "They sent something from Sovereign. Program where you work with people. Business stuff."
"You get in?"
"I gotta send them something first."
"Then send it."
"I'm working on it."
"You been working on it or you been telling people you working on it?"
Dominic looked up. Maine pointed the bottle at him before he could speak.
"Don't."
"I ain't said nothing."
"You breathing like you got something to say."
Leo chuckled and took the phone when Maine offered it. He held it farther away, then found his glasses already on his face and moved the screen closer again.
"What you wanna do?"
"That's what they asking."
"I'm asking."
Maine rubbed the damp bottle against his jeans. "I wanna figure out how to make something out of what I'm good at. Work for people, learn things. Maybe have something of my own. I just don't know what yet."
Leo gave the phone back.
"You ain't supposed to know everything yet."
"I know. I just don't wanna keep making money and not know where it went."
"Then pay attention when you spend it."
"I mean more than that."
"Start there."
Maine smiled. Leo reached beneath the counter for another roll of bags, tugging until the plastic caught on the edge. Maine moved his drink and held the loose end for him.
"You know you got a place here," Leo said. "If it don't work out."
"You missed me that bad?"
"I missed somebody who could reach the top shelf."
"That's love."
Leo pulled a bag free and looked at him properly.
"But go try. Don't come asking me for hours because you got scared to send an email."
Maine nodded. For once, he didn't have another joke ready. He finished his drink while Dominic told him something Rome had done during a shift that neither of them remembered the same way, then put the empty bottle in the bin and headed home.
At his desk, he started a new paragraph about working at Leo's. He wrote about stocking shelves, then about taking the tea down, and stopped before he turned it into an answer he didn't have.
Nasir appeared at the doorway while Maine was rereading it.
"You busy?"
"A little."
"That good or bad?"
"Depends how this sounds."
He turned the laptop enough for his father to read the paragraph. Nasir stood beside the desk, one hand resting on the back of the chair. Maine watched his eyes move across the lines.
"Leo tell you all this today?"
"Some of it. The rest I remember."
"What are you writing it for?"
"Statement. Opportunity at Sovereign."
Nasir nodded. "What do you want them to understand?"
Maine looked at the screen. "That I wanna learn how to do more than the part I already know."
"Then tell them that."
"It sound too simple."
"Did you understand it before you went outside?"
Maine considered the question. "Not like that."
"Simple's fine." Nasir squeezed his shoulder once. "Let me know when you finish."
After he left, Maine removed the sentence about changing his community. He hadn't changed anything that afternoon. He had carried two boxes, helped somebody find filters, and asked a question he wanted answered. He could write about that honestly.
*
On Monday, the Neal kitchen was full of the smell of onions and somebody insisting the screen door had to stay shut.
Maine stood out of Mrs. Neal's way while Rome looked for a container that apparently belonged to a different lid. Niq sat at the table with her phone plugged into the wall behind her, scrolling through a school message. Every time Rome leaned over her shoulder, she moved him back with an elbow.
"You gonna read it out loud or we gotta pay?" he asked.
"I'm trying to get to the part that matters."
"You been saying that."
She looked up at Maine. "Graduation's at Barclays."
Rome stopped with the lid in his hand.
"Our graduation?"
"No. Somebody else's. I'm just keeping you informed."
Maine stepped closer. "For real?"
She turned the screen. Du Bois Prep appeared above the ceremony information, followed by Saturday, June 7, and the venue. Maine read the line twice while Rome leaned around him to do the same.
"We walking in Barclays," Rome said.
"Walking across a stage," Niq corrected.
"Inside Barclays."
"Yes, Rome."
"I might need an entrance song."
"You need to listen when they call your name."
Mrs. Neal came over with the towel still on her shoulder. She took the phone, adjusted it beneath the light, and read in silence. Then she looked at Rome.
"Your grandmother's gonna want to come now."
"She wasn't coming before?"
"She was coming. Now she's gonna tell everybody she's coming."
Niq took the phone back before the cord pulled tight. Farther down the message, the school thanked the people who had helped arrange the venue. Maine saw his father's name among them.
"Your pops been working," Rome said.
Maine smiled. He pictured Nasir at the kitchen counter with another call going, glasses pushed up while he listened. There were calls Maine knew nothing about, but there were these, too. He could imagine his father pretending the whole thing had been easy when Maine asked him.
"He ain't say nothing."
"He probably wanted to let the school announce it," Niq said. "Which they have. So now both of you can stop asking me if it's official."
"Twelve days," Maine said.
Rome looked at him. "You counting?"
"It's on the screen."
He was counting anyway. Twelve days until his father could sit in that crowd and watch him cross the stage. He wondered what the room would sound like with the families from Du Bois in it, Mrs. Neal and everybody who had watched them grow up. Rome was already arguing that Niq could probably get the DJ involved. She was telling him that student government did not work the way he thought it did.
Maine took out his phone and sent Nasir a message.
Maine: Barclays?? you wasn't gonna tell me?
The reply arrived while Mrs. Neal handed him a plate.
Pops: Heard you know now.
Maine laughed and put the phone away.
*
Back home, he opened the document before he could find another reason to leave it until tomorrow.
The room held the afternoon heat. He pushed the window higher, moved a stack of school papers out of his elbow's way, and read from the beginning. The first paragraph still sounded like him explaining himself to Rome. That was better than what he had started with on Saturday, but he took out stuff twice and made one sentence shorter.
He wanted to turn useful skills into income he could depend on. He wanted to understand what happened to that income, how to use it, how to keep one good month from being the only good month. Working at Leo's had taught him to arrive when somebody expected him and do things properly even when nobody was standing over him. It had also shown him how much he didn't know about the decisions behind the counter.
He read the tea paragraph aloud. Without Leo there answering him, it was easier to hear where he had tried to sound certain. He changed I would improve the way small businesses manage their inventory to I want to learn how owners decide what to buy, and whether I could help them understand what their customers need.
That was a question he could stand behind.
Maine returned to the email, checked the instructions against the document, and attached the file. He opened the attachment again to make sure it was the version he had just saved. His name was at the top. No comments to himself in the margins, no sentence left unfinished.
He clicked Send.
The message disappeared from the draft window. He checked the sent folder, found it, and let his shoulders settle.
Then he printed the program information. The printer downstairs complained before it took the paper; Maine stood beside it, waiting for the rollers, and brought the pages back up warm. He put them beside the notebook he wanted to use if they asked him in for an interview.
There was no answer yet. He hadn't expected one. For now, he had something to tell his father.
*
Nasir knocked on the open door that evening, holding a glass of water.
"You eat?"
"Mrs. Neal fed me."
"That's not a time."
"I'm good."
Nasir looked at the nearly empty bottle beside the laptop. "Drink something that didn't come with a flavor."
He put the water down. Maine moved the notebook to make room.
"I sent it," he said.
His father looked back at him. "The statement?"
"Yeah. This afternoon."
"How'd it come out?"
"Better than yesterday."
"That's usually what happens when you work on something."
Maine gave him a look. Nasir smiled and leaned against the edge of the desk.
"You let me read it?"
"Yeah." Maine opened the file. "And thanks for Barclays."
"Thank your school. Lot of people worked on that."
"Still."
Nasir held his eyes a moment. "You're welcome."
Maine turned the laptop. His father read with one finger resting against the corner of the desk, occasionally going back over a line. Maine reached for the water because watching him was making him want to explain sentences that didn't need explaining.
"You kept Leo in it," Nasir said.
"That was the part I actually knew."
His father nodded. "Good."
It was a small word, but Maine felt himself relax. Nasir looked through the last paragraph, then reached for the printed program information lying beside the notebook.
"This is for Alpha Scholars?"
"Yeah."
His father turned the page. Maine watched his hand stop near the lower edge, his thumb beside the Atlas name.
"They sent this to you?"
"From Sovereign. It's for incoming students."
Nasir read the page again.
"You spoke to anybody?"
"No. Just the email. Why?"
"I want to see what they're offering."
"It's there." Maine pointed to the section he had read Saturday. "You gotta get through the process first. I ain't got in yet."
"I understand."
His father said it gently. Maine couldn't work out why that made him more aware of the paper in his hand. A minute ago they had been looking at what Maine had written. Now Nasir hadn't looked at him since he turned the page.
Maine set the glass down.
"Pops?"
Nasir lifted his eyes at last.
"Show me what they sent you."
* * *