Black Cake(90)

Look at me, Pa!

When Marisol walks back into the house where she has been employed for the past ten years, she will find Lin’s head tilted at a forty-five-degree angle against the hibiscus-patterned cushion on the wicker couch, one side of his face in a droop. She will check his pulse then pick up the phone and dial 911 and, as she speaks to the dispatcher on the other end of the line, she will sit down next to Lin and pat his arm.

“Hang on, Mister Lin,” she will say, “they’re coming to help.” Then she’ll lift her hands to his head, shift his hairpiece back into place, and smooth it behind his ears.





Plunder





Lin had paid a private investigator. He had learned almost everything about his daughter’s life over the years. But until Byron’s outburst in his living room, Lin did not know what had happened to Covey in Britain. He still didn’t know, exactly, but he could make a fairly good guess.

The beauty of a thing justified its plunder.

And nothing was more beautiful than a girl who was fearless.





Byron





They don’t tell you how to live with this kind of anger, this prickly feeling under your skin. That’s the thing about false narratives that ultimately define your life. When you finally learn that you’ve been lied to for years by the people you’ve trusted the most, even when you can see why they might have done it, that awareness contaminates every other relationship you have.

You begin to revisit all those actions and comments you never fully understood, the things people never said, the times you were sure that someone acted a certain way for a certain reason, only you couldn’t prove it. And then you get to thinking about all the lies you’ve been telling yourself over the years. About how good everything’s been, about how much you’ve been appreciated, about how much people have cared. About being friends, about being one big team, about how certain things were just business, Byron, nothing personal at all.

Then everything shifts.

And you can’t push it back.

One day, you wake up and you find yourself standing at the mouth of something wide and howling, like the open door of an airplane, the kind you jump out of with a parachute for fun, only it’s not any fun, you can’t see the ground, you don’t know what you’re doing, but you know you’re going to have to fling yourself out there and you don’t know exactly where Out There is, you only know that it’s where your life is going to be from now on.

Byron fishes his phone out of his jeans pocket and dials Lynette’s number for the umpteenth time. This time, Lynette answers.





Consultation





Byron needs the name of a lawyer, he tells Mr. Mitch. A good lawyer, someone who understands workplace discrimination issues. Someone who understands issues of persistent, ingrained, institutional barriers, racial or gender or otherwise. Byron needs someone who believes that such issues should be resolved, ideally, through open dialogue but who, if absolutely necessary, is capable of landing a well-placed, legal kick in the butt.

“I need someone like you,” he tells Mr. Mitch. “I need someone like my dad.”

He tells Mr. Mitch how he’s just been passed over for the director’s position a second time. How even Marc, the colleague who’s gotten the job, said Byron was the better man, hands down. Mr. Mitch listens for a long time without saying anything. Byron has noticed he’s good at that.

“I’m not your man but I know someone,” Mr. Mitch says, finally. “You might be able to win this. But Byron, do you really want that job?”

Byron tips his head. “I deserve that job.”

Mr. Mitch nods. “You know, your colleagues are going to give you hell.”

“No, they’re not,” Byron says. “We have our disagreements but we’re a community. We’re scientists. We mostly love the same things. And every scientist knows that every once in a while, if an experiment or calculation isn’t giving you the result it should, you need to be willing to adjust the process, you have to be willing to take a step back and correct your mistakes.” Byron puts on his best TV smile, confident with a tinge of coy. He straightens his shoulders as he leaves Mr. Mitch’s office. Later, he will practice that stance in front of the mirror to convince himself.





Surf





This one’s a biggie, the weather gal says. STAY OFF THE ROADS if you can help it. Byron looks out at the driveway. The trees are bending in the wind. The rain is coming down in leaden sheets. He nods at the window.

Perfect.

Byron grabs a shortboard and his helmet and plunks them into the back of his Jeep, turns on a Black Eyed Peas album and heads for Cable’s house. They sit at the end of Cable’s driveway discussing the pros and cons. It’s a nasty storm, all right, but they’ve seen worse. They are, after all, SoCal guys. Byron shifts the car into drive and they head for the shore.

Byron swerves as the frond of a palm tree breaks off and flies across his windshield.

“Whoa, Byron, good save!” Cable says.

When he gets to the beach, they’re all there, all the regulars, wetsuited and shiny and yelping like a pod of sea lions. One of the middle-aged guys throws a shaka at Byron and Cable, shaking his hand in the air, thumb and pinkie extended. When they were kids, it wasn’t this easy to be around the others. They would get ignored. They would get threatened. Unless, of course, Byron’s bombshell mother was there with them, in which case, the guys were mostly focused on her, only pretending they weren’t. But time passes. And that can be a good thing.