June 14–15, 2014
### Nasir — Saturday
"You're trying to hit all of these?" Darius asked.
Nasir kept his finger on the schedule. "I told people I'd come."
"You told them before three locations changed."
Melo leaned back in his chair. "You got a gentler way to say that?"
"I could let him miss half of them and explain it tomorrow."
Nasir laughed despite the irritation. Darius pushed the second page closer, showing where a promise had become a bad route. A youth program, a church gathering, another appearance whose organizers had moved the start time without realizing what that did to the rest of his day.
Nasir recognized the trap. Every request was reasonable until all of them belonged to one man.
"Stay longer at the main celebration," Darius said. "Less moving. The people who need to see you know where to come."
Bishop checked the timing against her notes. "It reduces transitions. We'd still have to review the site."
Nasir put his phone beside the schedule, the picture from yesterday open. "Somebody was watching me there while we moved chairs."
"We checked the approach," Melo said. "Didn't find the person. Before Thursday we walk it again with the event workers. Side gate included."
"And whoever asks for arrival times comes to one person," Bishop said.
Nasir looked from the photograph to the revised route. Fewer stops would not make him hidden. It would give Melo fewer places to account for. He could choose that without pretending the picture had stopped mattering.
"And the east-side event?" Nasir asked.
"Tell them now," Darius said. "Don't make them find out by waiting."
Nasir marked the page. "Move me off that stop. Main celebration gets the time."
Melo asked how the longer stay would change the people watching the stage and the paths around it. Bishop wrote down what needed checking. Darius began drafting the calls so the decision would reach the organizers before it became a rumor.
Nasir took the canceled stop's number into the hallway and made the first call. The organizer did not object immediately. She asked whether there had been a mistake on the program and whether another start time would make it work.
"I don't want you moving everybody else because I can't keep up," he said.
"You said you would come."
"I did."
He let the sentence stand. There was no explanation that made her wrong to expect him. He offered to send someone who could help with the practical work rather than merely stand in for a photograph. She said they had enough hands.
That ended the conversation more cleanly than an argument would have.
Melo was waiting when he returned. "How bad?"
"She was polite."
"Ouch."
Nasir folded the phone into his palm. "You got something else to tell me about the main place?"
Melo marked where the first pair watching the stage would be relieved. Another pair would keep the path by the chairs open. He asked Nasir to stay long enough for the change to happen instead of pulling somebody away for a conversation.
"Keep the exits clear," Nasir said.
"That's already part of it."
"And don't make it look like people came to visit a checkpoint."
Melo held his gaze. "You want a public event."
"Yes."
"Then it's a public event. That's a choice."
Nasir knew what he meant. A private room could be controlled more tightly, and would fail to be the thing he had promised the neighborhood. He did not want to confuse wanting safety with being willing to turn everybody's celebration into the price of it.
Darius came into the hallway with the revised page. "We should get this to the organizers before somebody uses yesterday's version."
Nasir checked the changed stop and initialed the page. He did it because the decision was his. Neither Darius's practical advice nor Melo's caution could make him the man who had merely followed an order.
"Tell them I made the change," he said.
"I was going to."
He trusted that answer. Darius had handled enough complicated rooms for him to know which explanation would save somebody another call.
When they went back inside, Bishop was already marking the difference between the public program and the arrival information. Nasir pulled out the next organizer's number and made the call he had been avoiding.
### Lia — Sunday
Deion had promised food and produced it, which made it harder to be annoyed that he had forgotten to mention his father would be there.
Curtis came into the room carrying paperwork and set it far enough from the plates that nobody had to be told not to touch it.
"You two eat all of it?"
"We left some," Deion said.
Curtis lifted a lid. "Some is generous."
Lia smiled. He asked about graduation, and she gave him an answer that did not mention Nasir's photograph. Deion supplied a story about her family's cheering. Curtis listened, amused, while she reminded him that his own shouting had not exactly helped the principal keep order.
For a few minutes she could see why Deion relaxed around him. Curtis knew how to make a room feel like ordinary family business.
Deion told him about a man who had tried to convince him a shortcut was faster and then called to ask what street he was on.
"Sounds like somebody you listen to too much," Curtis said.
"He was driving his own car."
"That don't mean you had to follow him."
Lia pointed her fork at Deion. "Thank you."
"Why you acting like you were there?"
"Because this is not your first shortcut story."
Curtis laughed. Deion tried to defend the trip and lost the argument to both of them. Lia watched him lean back in the chair, annoyed in the comfortable way he could be when he trusted the room would let him remain liked.
It was possible to know him that well and still know almost nothing about the things his father did for work.
She reached for her drink before Curtis could notice her watching.
Curtis asked what she intended to study. She gave him the answer she had been giving relatives, broad enough to remain true if she changed her mind. He told her to choose something useful.
"Useful to who?" she asked.
He looked at her, then smiled. "Start with you."
"That's a reasonable answer."
"You sound surprised."
"People usually have a list ready."
"Give me time."
The laugh gave her a place to ask the Atlas question without dropping it like a challenge between their plates.
She waited until he mentioned a construction job.
"Do you work with Atlas a lot?"
His hand stayed on the lid. "Depends what they need."
"Directly, or through other contractors?"
"Both. Why?"
"I keep seeing their name."
"You will. They're spending."
"On places people already live."
Curtis put the lid down. "That's most places in New York."
Deion reached for another portion as if the conversation had remained about lunch. Lia kept her tone where it had been.
"I mean who decides what happens to those people."
"Owners. Agreements. The city, sometimes. A contractor gets paid to do the work."
"Does a project tell you who's funding it?" Lia asked.
Curtis considered her over the table. "Some do. Some tell me who signed the contract."
"That's enough for you?"
"Enough to know whose check I'm waiting for."
Deion smiled. Lia watched Curtis take a drink. He had answered who paid him. She still wanted to know who decided what happened to the tenants.
He asked whether she had found a project she wanted to complain about.
"I'm looking at some old paperwork."
"For school?"
"No."
She had not meant the answer to sound closed. It did.
Curtis nodded as though that was all he required. He told Deion where the rest of the food was and moved a fork away from the paperwork. The gesture reminded Lia that she had arrived at a meal, not an interview.
"You can ask a person a question," he told her, "and still let them finish lunch."
Heat moved into her face.
"I wasn't trying to—"
"I know. I'm eating slow."
He gave her somewhere to laugh and save herself. She took it. The fork stayed beside her plate while he put the lid back on the food.
For now, she thanked him for the food and did not ask the next question.
She wanted to ask about 311. She had already asked enough to make him ask why, and she did not have a reason she wanted to give him.
Curtis picked up the papers. "You start looking at that kind of history, make sure you know what part belongs to who."
"I'm trying."
"Good."
He left them with the food. Deion watched the doorway, then looked back at her.
"You taking summer classes I don't know about?"
She smiled, but he was still waiting when the smile ended.
### Lia — later
Carmen knew which photograph she meant before Lia finished describing it.
"The one you showed Nasir?"
"Yeah. Victor. What's his last name?"
Her mother took the photograph and looked at the younger faces. Her thumb stayed below Tylil's, careful not to cover it.
"Thompkins."
Lia repeated it.
"Why?"
"I only had the first name."
Carmen handed the photograph back. "Then write it down before you forget."
Lia did, in the kitchen, with her mother still there.
Her mother returned to what she had been doing, but Lia lingered. The photograph rested in her hand with Victor's face unobstructed now that she had stopped looking only for Tylil.
"Did he come around a lot?"
Carmen looked back. "When?"
"When they were young."
"They knew each other. I wasn't with them every time they went somewhere."
Lia heard the limit in the answer and checked herself before turning it into a refusal. Her mother was allowed not to remember every afternoon her father had lived.
"Okay."
Carmen took the photograph again. For a moment she smiled at something Lia could not see.
"What?"
"Your father thought he looked grown."
"He does."
"He thought that at fourteen too."
Lia laughed. "Was he wrong?"
"Oh, very."
The memory gave the younger face a different expression. She could imagine Tylil trying to look serious and someone older refusing to let him. Carmen handed it back, gentler this time.
"Keep it somewhere it won't bend."
"I am."
"You got it in your hand every time I see you."
That was true enough that Lia did not argue. She found an envelope that fit the photograph and put it inside while her mother watched.
Upstairs she wrote the surname beneath Victor's face. Thompkins. She opened Deion's contact, checked the spelling, then returned to the photograph.
She wrote Victor Thompkins beside Deion Thompkins, then left a space between them. She had no document connecting the men. She did have a document connecting an attorney to a property and a conversation connecting Curtis's work to Atlas.
She separated those facts on the page.
Deion called while she was looking at the names. He wanted to know whether she had got home and whether Abuela had complained about her arriving after food had already been served.
"She made me eat again."
"See? That's why I like coming over."
Lia laughed. She remembered him standing at graduation with her family, making room for Tito, holding bags nobody had asked him to carry. Those moments had happened too. Whatever she found next would not make them unhappen.
"Your voice sound far away," Deion said.
"Sorry. I'm looking at something."
"Put it down."
She did. The notebook went on the bed beside her instead of remaining against her knees.
"What happened with the guy?"
"What guy?"
"The one you were talking about."
He sighed dramatically. "You missed the whole best part."
"Tell it better this time."
He did, making the other man's voice ridiculous enough that Lia laughed before she wanted to. She could hear his pleasure in getting her back. The call became the familiar thing they knew how to share, and she let herself stay there for several minutes.
Then he asked whether she had enjoyed lunch.
"Yes."
"You and Pops was having a whole seminar."
"I asked a few questions."
"You always do."
He said it warmly. Her stomach tightened anyway.
"You coming Thursday?" he asked.
"Juneteenth?"
"Yeah."
"Probably."
"Let me know."
After they hung up she moved the notebook back onto her knees. She could care for him and still check the record. She could find a company relationship without deciding she had found his character written beneath it.
She wrote beneath Victor's surname:
Where does this name appear in the paperwork?
She opened the laptop to find out.
* * *