The two men gaze at each other a moment. Finally Brian lifts his chin, smiles. “Of course, Jack, excellent plan.”
Parkhurst slaps Brian on the arm. “Good man, Brian. Thanks for speaking up. Honestly. Solid gold.”
He watches Parkhurst turn back down the hall, lifting his eyes to the embedded ceiling lights as if gazing toward heaven. The glass partition whispers shut. Brian taps the glass corridor wall to his office, then lets his head tip forward, gently, until the top of his forehead touches the closed office door.
SLUMPED IN HIS CHAIR, Brian coughs, tries to clear his head, his spiraling disappointment. He has hours yet to go: phone calls to the Latin Builders Association, the Planning and Zoning Board, and the Regional Planning Council; a polenta Bolognese from the executive dining room; a spirited visit from Javier, his voice booming over Brian’s desk, talk of another gloriously named project.
There’s a call from Stanley. He listens in the dilated office light as his son tells him about difficulties, girlfriend, money… Stanley says he wants to arrange a meeting. Like a client. Brian’s concentration hazes into a reverie of throttling Parkhurst.
“So Dad?” his son is saying. “That okay? Yeah?”
“Did you talk to your mother?” he asks reflexively.
“Mom?” Stanley sounds irritated; then he sighs. “She’ll just say the same thing.”
Brian pushes his fingertips into his temples, rubbing.
“How about can we just agree on meeting at the house?” Stanley’s voice is rigid. Brian finally realizes that his son is under some sort of duress; he tries to pay attention. Brian must’ve said something appropriate or reassuring at last because Stanley sounds happier now. “So, cool. We’ll come over. It’ll be good.”
Brian spots Fernanda on her way out, a gray naiad rippling in the glass wall, and he’s struck by an ancient memory. Twelve years old, feeling dizzy and sick, stretched out on a pew in a tiny mission chapel. He had visited this place with his family. The church was white as snow, the ceiling ribbed with timber, and an immense golden Jesus was pinned to the wall above the altar. The church, the dry hot air, the smell of sage, the sight of a black-eyed girl with dimpled feet and a black velvet ribbon around her hair. It comes back to him in finely etched detail — the sweetness of mariachi ballads and Mexican Spanish and the clear air. Suddenly he is asking his son, “Stan — have you ever heard of such a thing as a mud cookie?”
There’s a brief silence, then breath — almost a laugh. “Well — yeah. I guess so.”
“What is it exactly?”
“If we’re talking about the same thing… it’s pretty much what it sounds like. Maybe they add some lard to hold it together, but it’s basically dirt. People live on them, in some countries.”
“God,” Brian murmurs.
“Well, if it’s that or starving to death? You take the cookie. Why you asking about that?”
There it is, Brian realizes, the reason he’d tried to deflect Parkhurst from the one neighborhood: he imagined telling the story to his son, how he’d stood up to that greedy Goliath, on behalf of all those poor and dispossessed. Score for the other side. He’d imagined the approval in his son’s face, at last. “Oh, just something I saw,” Brian murmurs. “Nothing important.”
Avis
AVIS RUNS HER HANDS OVER THE UPHOLSTERY on her chair arms. Back and forth. New girlfriend: her husband had tried to warn her. She registers, in her peripheral vision, the girl, this Nieves, gazing around her dining room, tipping her drained Villeroy & Boch cup — peeking at the manufacturer. Brian sits in the matching arm chair to her right, Stanley sits at one end of the couch, oriented toward them, watching Nieves—awaiting her command. Normally Stanley comes to their house only on the holidays. Avoiding his sister’s ghost, Avis supposes. And herself.
Avis pours a half-refill of tea for the girl. “Did you inherit your china?” Nieves asks. Acquisitive thing. “It looks valuable.”
The girl really is quite striking. She has the translucent face of that starlet… The actress’s name has flown right out of Avis’s head, but she can’t help noticing the way the girl wears her dark hair in similar long, smooth twists. Her skin is a satiny caramel with notes of mocha and chocolate, her eyes black almonds. Avis wonders if growing up with such a cinematically beautiful sister has made Stanley too vulnerable to beauty. The young woman leans back, still clutching her cup, and Avis notes the fullness of her breasts and a certain thickness about the girl’s body, as if she were older than Avis initially thought. She stretches, bending slightly, then finally smiles. Stanley says, “Mom bought it on a trip we took to Germany. Years ago.”
Avis is pleased that Stanley would remember — they were on a sort of family vacation. While Brian attended a contract law conference in Frankfurt, Avis had taken the kids on a day trip to a medieval town in Bavaria, its narrow streets crowded with porcelain shops. The children helped Avis pick out the paper-fine china, its intricate webbing of cracked glaze, a sprinkling of rosebuds along the rim of the saucers. Now she smiles thinly at Nieves, thinking about the pieces she’d smashed on the patio after Felice had left for good. Avis had worked methodically, a piece or two a day, destroying her prized possessions, the satisfying crunch, like flinging robin’s eggs. Until Brian quietly suggested that Stanley might like to have them someday. She stopped in time to save the cups and saucers.
“I like old things,” Nieves says. She contemplates the cup again. “But these are lovely.”
“I’m so glad you approve,” Avis says.
Nieves looks up at her as Brian and Stanley rush to interrupt, Brian saying, “This tea is from—” just as Stanley says, “Mother made these meringues.” Mother—not Mom — Avis catches the remonstrance and she knots her hands together: Behave. Nieves puts the meringue in her mouth, as if to stop herself from speaking, and Avis knows what she’s tasting: a crisp folding air, then melting bits of shaved chocolate. Nieves’s mouth softens into a sigh. “Oh,” she says quietly, as if talking to herself. “Wonderful.”
Avis stands, her eyes hot, and hurries into the kitchen.
THE OTHER DAY, Avis had been in the kitchen preparing a batter when Stanley’s deliveryman had come to the door. Along with her usual baking supplies, Eduardo carried a cooler full of organic produce. She followed him back into the kitchen and watched him remove chilies, onions, garlic, and tomatoes from the cooler. A whole chicken. He opened the refrigerator and slid in cartons of milk and eggs, a wedge of lemon-colored cheese, bunches of lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower. He closed the fridge, then flipped the cooler shut. “Your son doesn’t approve of your eating habits.”
“No kidding.” Avis sighed as she filled a pastry bag. Once or twice a month a supply of unasked-for items.
“Risky, though — giving someone a bunch of food they don’t like.”
“He knows I won’t be able to let it go to waste.”
The mynah started its shrieking: a fierce, shattering braaaah. He swiveled toward the window. “Wow. What the hell.”
Avis piped tiny quenelles of tea cake dough onto a cookie tray. “He’ll settle down in a second.” She slipped the tray into the oven, then looked over Eduardo’s shoulder: they watched Solange walk down the steps, hair tied in a faded turquoise scarf, a teal dress fluttering with the air.