June 17–18, 2014
### Lia — Tuesday
Thompkins Construction & Development appeared on paperwork for an Atlas property, with Isaiah Chancellor named as the attorney.
Lia checked the line against her notes from the night before. The document still said what it had said when she stopped with her thumb above Deion's number. Sleep had not supplied a different reading.
She put the card beside the screen, even though she had matched Chancellor already. This was another transaction, another company. The attorney was the thread that carried her into it.
She wrote down the full company name. A name resembling her boyfriend's was not proof it belonged to his father. She would need to check that too.
Deion's message arrived while she was copying the source reference.
You good?
She answered yeah this time and disliked the convenience of it.
You got plans today?
Some reading. Family stuff.
He sent a complaint about her becoming impossible to get out of the house. Last week she would have called and told him he was dramatic. Today she looked at the company name before answering.
What's the full name of your dad's business?
The reply took long enough for her to put clothes away. When she came back, he had asked why.
Making sure I got something right.
He supplied the name. She compared it letter by letter, then thanked him without asking another question.
Three dots appeared and vanished. Finally: What you checking?
She sat on the edge of the bed.
I'll explain when I understand it.
His call came immediately. She answered.
"Lia, you can ask me something without turning it into all that."
"I did ask."
"And I answered. So what is it?"
He sounded hurt. She hated that she had hoped to hear something else.
"Paperwork Dad kept. I'm trying to understand why."
"The papers you told me about?"
"Yeah."
He was quiet, then his voice softened. "You found something else?"
She looked at Tylil's watch on her wrist.
"A company name I could check."
"And that's where my pops comes in?"
"Your dad's company is on the paperwork. So is the attorney I asked you about."
She could hear him moving somewhere, a door opening and closing. She did not know whether he was walking to his car or finding a quieter place to hear her. Her mind tried to supply a reason she could use.
She stopped it by looking at the saved document.
"I'm not asking you to explain everything," she said.
"I know. I'm trying to figure out what you're looking at."
"So am I."
A breath moved across the line.
"You could ask him."
"Maybe I will."
"He'll tell you if it's his paperwork."
She thought of Curtis moving a fork away from the documents during lunch, of how easily he had made her question sound like an interruption rather than an invitation.
"Okay."
Deion wanted more from the answer. She could hear it in the silence he left. She did not fill it with a promise to share what she had not understood yet.
Before they hung up, Deion asked whether she was still going to the Juneteenth festival.
"Probably. Why?"
"Don't go this year."
"Why not?"
"Just sit this one out, Lia. We can do something else."
"You got a reason?"
"I'm asking you."
She hadn't agreed when the call ended.
Curtis called later. She expected another conversation about the paperwork. Instead he asked about Thursday.
"If you're planning on that festival, I'd leave it alone."
"Deion just said that."
"Then listen to him."
"Is something happening?"
"I'm telling you to make other plans. That's all."
It wasn't an answer. She let him finish the call without promising anything.
She messaged Deion: If there's a reason I shouldn't be there, tell me the reason.
He answered that he was trying to look out for her. She asked again. This time he said they would talk later.
Lia wrote both calls beneath the company question. She decided to stay home Thursday, but refused to call that a satisfactory explanation.
She left the page open. If she put it away, we'll talk later might become Thursday before either of them supplied an answer.
### Maine — Wednesday
Rome had volunteered both of them to help move supplies because, according to him, carrying things before a cookout improved their claim on the food.
"You can't just make up policy," Maine said.
"Watch me carry this table."
"It's a box."
"I got range."
They took the boxes into the community center. Niq passed them carrying a bag of decorations and told Rome to stop explaining why he was helping before somebody decided they would rather do it themselves.
Maine found Nasir talking to an organizer beside the doorway. His father had one hand under a stack of papers while somebody else pointed at a section that needed changing.
"You still coming to the other thing?" Maine asked when the organizer stepped away.
"Not this time. I'll be at the main celebration longer."
"Rome's gonna be there long as people keep cooking."
Nasir smiled. "Then he can help clean up."
"I ain't say all that," Rome called from behind them.
Maine watched a worker hand Nasir a public program, then take back a smaller sheet after checking a time. His father folded the smaller sheet rather than leaving it on the table. Maine would have forgotten the motion if Nasir had not looked up and caught him watching.
"What?"
"Nothing. You got ten people waiting for you."
"Nine. You're one of them."
They finished the errand and left Niq arguing with Rome about whether his contribution qualified as community service when he intended to be paid in ribs.
On the way out, Maine found the girl from Senior Day at Leo's. She recognized him before he had worked out what to say.
"Graduated?" she asked.
"You thought they might change their minds?"
"I don't know you that well."
"Don't even know your name."
"Yasmin. Yas."
"Jermaine. Maine."
"Now I can ask Leo if they let you graduate."
He laughed. She had milk in the basket again. He moved aside so she could reach the counter, and this time the conversation lasted past what she had come to buy. She waited for his answer about the ceremony instead of looking past him toward the counter.
"What you doing next?" Yas asked.
"SSU. Waiting to hear back from a program I applied to, too."
"And until then?"
"Trying to figure that part out."
Leo interrupted before Maine could decide whether to ask what she was doing Thursday.
"You two buying anything, or I rent this aisle out?"
Yas looked toward the counter. "I got my milk."
"He got a conversation," Leo said.
Maine picked up the thing he had come for. "You always got jokes when I'm here."
"You used to get paid to stand around. Now you do it for free."
Yas laughed, and Maine let himself take the hit because Leo had earned it.
"I didn't stand around."
"No. You complained while you worked. Important distinction."
Leo rang Yas up first. Maine watched her check what she had left in her bag, counting quietly. He looked away before it could become watching something private.
Outside, she shifted the groceries to her other hand.
"You miss it?" she asked.
"Working here?"
"Yeah."
"Some parts. Not being told I put something in the wrong place after I put it exactly where he told me."
"He does seem consistent."
"With the complaints? Very."
She smiled. "You ask about going back?"
"Thinking about it."
"While you wait for the other thing?"
He nodded. She had listened instead of waiting for her turn to talk. He liked that.
"I'd go back for a few shifts," she said. "Then at least you get paid while you check your phone."
"Leo put you up to that?"
"Leo can put me up to a free sandwich. That's about it."
"Which one?"
She gave him a look. "You worked here two years. Don't tell me you need the menu."
He laughed. "I'm asking what you like."
"Egg and cheese. No ketchup."
"That's specific."
"People don't listen about the ketchup."
She asked how Nasir was involved in Thursday's celebration. Maine described the ordinary parts, the appearances, the people who always needed one minute. He did not have anything else to describe yet.
Before she left, he asked for her number. She held out her phone.
"Put yours in. Spell Maine, too, before I save you as Leo's former employee."
He laughed and entered it. Her screen lit with a message from Niq while he handed it back.
"Y'all know each other?"
"Through Jada. You don't know everybody she knows."
"I'm finding that out."
Yas said she might be out for some of Thursday if home let her. He wished her a good afternoon without making the possibility into a plan.
On the walk back, Rome asked why a five-minute stop had taken twenty.
Maine told him Leo was talking.
"Leo, huh?"
"You want to carry the rest of this?"
Rome accepted the bag and let that become his answer for half a block.
### Maine — Wednesday night
Nasir sat at the kitchen table without his jacket. Maine could tell from the untouched food that he had meant to eat and been interrupted.
"You want me to heat that?"
His father looked down as if someone else had put the plate there.
"Yeah. Thank you."
Maine took it to the microwave. Nasir asked about the supply errand, then about the question Maine had sent the program. The program office had acknowledged his question and said the placement work would depend on the mentor and project assigned. It was more specific than the brochure, less specific than he wanted. He was still waiting on the selection process.
"Guess I gotta ask the person doing it," Maine said.
"If you get the chance," Nasir answered, "ask."
"Tomorrow, keep your phone where you can hear it," Nasir said.
"At a cookout?"
"Vibrate."
"You call me, I'm probably looking at you."
"Then wave."
Maine brought the plate back and stole a piece from the edge before his father could object. Nasir caught his wrist lightly, let him take it, and asked whether Mrs. Neal knew Rome had invited himself to every grill in Fort Greene.
They laughed over the plate. Maine stayed until his father had finished eating.
When he went upstairs, he left his phone on the desk to charge. He checked the graduation video Niq had sent before setting the phone down. The image shook during his father's speech because somebody beside the person filming had stood up. He heard Elizabeth's name, the laugh about the air horn, and his own laugh smaller beneath it.
Maine stopped the video before the next sentence. He rubbed his mother's pendant, then opened his notebook.
Downstairs, Nasir moved through the kitchen. A cupboard shut. Water ran. His father coughed once and then called up to ask whether he had taken the empty glass from the table.
Maine looked at the glass on his desk.
"Yeah."
"Bring it back down when you're done."
"I'm still using it."
"For what? Holding air?"
Maine laughed and said he would. His father's footsteps moved away, then returned as he apparently remembered another thing the kitchen needed.
Tomorrow he would be outside with people he knew, watching his father do something he had done for as long as Maine could remember.
He set an alarm so Rome could not claim he had been waiting all morning.
* * *