Behold the Dreamers(12)

“Never, Mr. Edwards.”

“Why?” Clark asked, picking up his buzzing phone. Jende waited for him to finish his conversation, a ten-second discussion during which he only said, “Yes … No … No, I don’t think he should be fired for that.” The phone buzzed again and he told whoever was on the line to call HR and tell them he was going to take care of it. He hung up and asked Jende to continue.

“Because … because in my country, sir,” Jende said, his voice ten decibels lower, far less unbound and animated than it had been before he heard that someone was in danger of being fired, “for you to become somebody, you have to be born somebody first. You do not come from a family with money, forget it. You do not come from a family with a name, forget it. That is just how it is, sir. Someone like me, what can I ever become in a country like Cameroon? I came from nothing. No name. No money. My father is a poor man. Cameroon has nothing—”

“And you think America has something for you?”

“Ah, yes, sir, very much, sir!” he said, his voice escalating once more. “America has something for everyone, sir. Look at Obama, sir. Who is his mother? Who is his father? They are not big people in the government. They are not governors or senators. In fact, sir, I hear they are dead. And look at Obama today. The man is a black man with no father or mother, trying to be president over a country!”

Clark did not respond, picking up his buzzing phone instead. “Yeah, I saw his email,” he said to the person on the line. “Why? … I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure what Tom’s thinking … No, Phil, no! I completely disagree. We can’t keep on doing the same things and expect that the results will be different … Right, let’s stick with the strategy, even though for three years we’ve been making one poor choice after another. I mean, the level of shortsightedness here …” He scoffed and shook his head. “I’ve spoken up as much as I can … No, I won’t … What baffles me is how no one else, I mean no one, except for maybe Andy, sees how ridiculous it is that we’ve been doing the same things over and over and expecting that somehow we’ll survive. We’ve got to change course. Now. Completely rethink our strategy … Repo 105 isn’t going to keep us sailing forever … I don’t believe that will, either, and I’ve told Tom that … Everyone’s in denial! I don’t get how no one’s thinking about the fact that superficial short-term fixes are only going to come back to haunt us … Of course they will … How? Are you really asking me that? Have you thought for a second about the fact that everything’s on the line if this shit blows up? Our lives, our careers, our families, reputations … Trust me, it will. And I can guarantee you that the feds will be ready to hang Tom the way they hung Skilling, and the rest of us …”

For a few seconds he said nothing, listening to his colleague. “You think it’s going to be that nice and clean, huh?” he said. “Somehow everyone’s just going to walk away nice and clean from the burning building … No! How long we’ve been at it isn’t going to mean anything pretty soon. Hell, it doesn’t mean anything right now, Phil. We’re drowning.”

He took a deep breath as he listened again, then laughed.

“Fine,” he said. “I could use that. Maybe one round. Haven’t been on a course in a while … No, save that for yourself; one round of golf sometime soon will be enough … No, thank you very much, Phil. Not my cup of tea … Yes, I promise—I’m going to desperately beg you for her number as soon as I find myself on the verge of an explosion.”

He hung up, reopened his laptop smiling and shaking his head, and began typing. After thirty minutes of silence, he put his laptop aside and made three phone calls: to his secretary; to a person named Roger about the report he hadn’t yet received; to someone else, to whom he spoke in mediocre French.

“Always fun getting a chance to practice my French with the team in Paris,” he said after he’d hung up.

“It is very good French, Mr. Edwards,” Jende said. “You lived in Paris?”

“Yeah, for one year, while I was studying at Stanford.”

Jende nodded but did not reply.

“It’s a college,” Clark said. “In California.”

“Ah, Stanford! I remember them now, sir. They play good football. But I have never been to California. Is that where you are from, sir?”

“No, my parents retired there. I grew up in Illinois. Evanston. My dad was a professor at Northwestern, another college.”

“My cousin Winston, sir, when he first came to America, he lived in Illinois for a few months, but he called us all the time saying he was ready to leave because of the cold. I think that is why he joined the army, so that he could move to a warm place.”

“I don’t see the logic there,” Clark said, chuckling, “but yes, it’s very cold. I can’t tell you Evanston’s anything as wonderful as your Limbe, but we had a great childhood there, my sister, Ceci, and I. Riding our bikes around the block with the other neighborhood kids, going with Dad downtown to Chicago, to museums and concerts, picnicking by the lake; it was a really wonderful place to be a kid. Ceci’s thinking she might move back there one day.”

“Oh, yes, your sister, sir. I did not know you are a twin. It was only a few days ago that Mighty told me your sister is your twin sister. I really like twins, sir. In fact, if God gives me one—”