Monday, June 16, 2014
### Lia
Lia moved the photograph off the center of her diagram. The property transfer, the Atlas partnership, and Chancellor's role could sit on one page. Victor's surname still had no place on that route.
She marked the old version first attempt and kept it behind the records. Then she wrote the question the company connection had brought her to: did Curtis use the same attorney?
She could ask Deion that without pretending she knew why her father had saved the papers.
Tylil's journal lay open beside the notebook.
People remember stories. Paper remembers facts. Check both. Believe neither until they agree.
"You could've left instructions less annoying than that," she told him.
The room gave her the refrigerator's distant hum and Abuela speaking to somebody downstairs. Lia smiled without looking away from the page.
Deion called to offer food. She let him argue that she was hungry until she had to admit she had forgotten lunch.
"I'll be there in twenty."
"From where?"
"Don't worry about it."
"That's not how time works."
He laughed and promised to call when he reached the Bronx. She closed the notebook before he arrived, then opened it again to write down the question she actually intended to ask.
An hour later, with food balanced between them in the car, she waited until he had finished telling a story about a friend who refused to admit he had been lost.
"Does your dad's company use Chancellor?"
Deion put his drink down. "For what?"
"Paperwork. Legal stuff."
"I don't know."
"You know the name?"
"He works with lawyers. I don't keep track of every one."
She nodded and let him have the answer. He reached for the radio, then stopped.
"Where you see it?"
"In property paperwork."
"What property?"
Lia looked at him. They had both reached the place where an ordinary question asked more than its words.
"I'm checking something before I talk about it."
"With me?"
"With anybody."
He turned the music on softly. It filled the silence without ending it.
At the next corner, Deion stopped behind a car whose driver seemed to have forgotten the light would eventually turn green. He tapped the steering wheel with one finger.
"You trust me?" he asked.
Lia looked toward him. "That doesn't mean you know every person your dad works with."
"That's not what I asked."
"I do."
"Then why can't you tell me?"
The light changed. The car ahead moved, and Deion followed it before she had an answer.
She watched a woman lifting a little boy over a puddle at the curb. Something ordinary to hold her eyes on while she decided which part of the truth belonged in the car.
"Because I found things Dad hid," she said. "I don't know why he hid them. I don't want to tell you a story I have to take back."
Deion glanced over, then returned his attention to the street.
"What kind of things?"
"Papers. Notes."
"About my pops?"
"About a lot of things."
His jaw moved. He turned the radio down until she could hear the air coming through the vents.
"You could've said your dad was part of it."
"I just did."
"Before asking about mine."
Lia rested the food container against her knees. He had a point she did not want him to have.
"Okay. I could've."
The admission changed his posture. He turned the radio down another notch and asked whether she wanted to stop somewhere before he took her home. She said no.
Deion told her about a place he thought she would like. She listened, then thanked him when he dropped her at Abuela's.
### Nasir
The six-stop route was confirmed. Nasir had made the cancellation calls; the youth organizer still wanted a recorded greeting to play in his absence.
Bishop had brought the authorization history. The login that opened her working report had been kept available for emergency cover after the usual reporting duties changed. No one had withdrawn that permission. It gave them a small group to interview and no single person to accuse.
"Freeze the old permission," Nasir said.
Darius nodded. "And name who's covering now. Somebody still has to do the work."
Bishop wrote that beneath the list.
At the table, Melo was checking the main celebration's arrangements against Bishop's notes. Darius had the revised schedule ready to circulate to the people who required it.
"Keep the private timing off the general copies," Nasir said.
"Already separated," Darius answered.
Melo looked up. "We still need to account for you staying longer."
"Do it."
"And you stick to what we decide."
"You want me to sign something?"
"I want you to answer the phone."
Nasir thought of telling Maine the same thing and gave Melo a tired smile. "Fair."
Bishop asked him to confirm the start time he had agreed to with the main organizer. He did, then checked the page against the conversation he remembered having. There were two other versions on the table. She had kept them to account for which people had received what before the changes.
"Anybody still expecting me at the stop we dropped?"
"I'm checking," Darius said.
"I'll call."
"I have the number."
"Give it to me."
Darius passed it across without argument. Nasir appreciated that. The calls were unpleasant precisely because nobody had done anything wrong by believing him.
He reached the youth organizer to confirm when the recorded greeting would be used and who else had agreed to speak. The exchange stayed ordinary until the organizer mentioned that a volunteer had called to find out when he would arrive at the main celebration afterward.
Nasir did not let his expression decide the tone of the answer.
"Which volunteer?"
The man explained how the question had reached him. Another link, not a name at the beginning of the chain.
Nasir wrote it down and asked him to preserve the message. He promised the greeting, too. The useful thing could not be allowed to disappear because the troubling thing had arrived beside it.
When he finished, Melo had stopped moving the papers.
"More timing."
"Yes."
"You still want to stay longer?"
Nasir looked at the six stops. "We just told people that was the plan."
"That ain't an answer."
"It's part of one. Constant changes don't make me less visible. They make more people chase the changes."
Melo considered him. Bishop added the new contact to her notes, and Darius checked which copies were ready to go out.
Nasir signed the route. Melo took the copy and told him which number to answer if the site arrangements changed.
His own phone vibrated while Bishop was pointing out an unresolved piece of information. He waited until she finished, then glanced down.
YOU CAN'T PROTECT WHAT YOU REFUSE TO PREPARE.
The words reached a conversation he had not meant to share with strangers. He read them twice, hearing Melo's arguments without hearing Melo's voice exactly.
Melo noticed the change in his attention.
"What?"
Nasir showed him the screen. Bishop asked when it arrived and whether he had responded. Darius waited while she recorded it.
"Anybody could've heard us talking about the boy," Melo said.
"Not anybody," Nasir answered.
"More than one person."
Nasir looked toward the empty chair beside Bishop. He had said some version of it at home, here, in his car. He couldn't make the sentence point to one room.
"Write down where we had that conversation," he told Bishop. "And who was there. Don't turn it into a name before we've checked."
When he got home, the dark car down the street drew his eyes. He watched long enough to notice another car moving around it, then unlocked his door. Parked was parked. He had enough real questions without making a stranger's vehicle answer them.
Maine called down from upstairs that Rome had left his basketball in the hall. Nasir nudged it out of the doorway with his shoe and told his son it was becoming rent-paying furniture.
For a minute the laugh from upstairs belonged entirely to his house.
Maine came down to retrieve the ball and stopped when he saw his father holding the phone.
"Work still?"
"Some of it."
"You eat?"
Nasir looked at him, amused by the familiar question coming back.
"Not yet."
"I'm making something. You want in?"
"What are you making?"
"Something."
"That sounds dangerous."
"You can stay hungry."
Nasir put the phone facedown and followed him toward the kitchen. He let Jermaine choose the food without supervising the decision. His son moved through the cupboards with the easy knowledge of a room he had lived in all his life, then discovered the thing he wanted was not where either of them thought it should be.
They argued about who had finished it. Neither could establish a reliable witness.
Maine improvised. Nasir helped with the part requiring a second pair of hands. There were evenings when he could almost believe protection consisted of keeping the world outside long enough to do this.
His phone remained on the other side of the room.
He did not mistake not answering it for the end of whatever had begun.
### Lia
Deion had not called back. Lia checked once, then turned the phone facedown.
Her new search began with the company relationship rather than the photograph. She followed one reference, found the source it cited, and compared the attorney entry with the card she had already matched last week.
The next document loaded while she reached for the journal. The company line stopped her hand.
Thompkins Construction & Development. She read the company line twice, then scrolled down to Chancellor's name.
Deion had said he didn't keep track of his father's lawyers. She needed to ask about the company first.
Her phone was still beside her hand. She turned it over and opened Deion's contact. The photograph next to his name was one he had complained about until she refused to change it.
She held her thumb above the call button, remembering him asking with me?
Then she set the phone down and wrote the source and date beneath the document reference.
* * *