The Vanishing Half(38)

“Yes ma’am,” she said. “I’m here.”



* * *



—

A JOB. She would find a new job.

The answer seemed so simple once it arrived one night as she watched Reese climb out of bed in his sweaty T-shirt. He wanted a new chest. Carried in his wallet a worn business card from Dr. Jim Cloud, a plastic surgeon with an office on Wilshire. Dr. Cloud, a patron at Mirage, had worked on friends of friends, but his price was steep. Three thousand dollars cash up front. Fair, if you thought about the risks he was incurring even performing such procedures. The medical board could revoke his license, shutter his practice, call for his arrest. The shadiness unnerved Jude, although Reese insisted the doctor was legit. Still, she’d done the math, unfurling the faded gray sock in his drawer and dumping the crumpled bills onto the bedspread. Two hundred dollars. He would never save enough by himself.

“I need a new job,” she told Barry.

Autumn had arrived, along with the Santa Ana winds. At night, angry hot gusts rattled their windowpanes. They were celebrating Barry’s thirtieth birthday, everyone crowded in his apartment.

Barry shrugged, running a hand over his shaven head.

“Well, don’t look at me,” he said. He was on his third martini and already fresh. “I need a new job too. Those white people don’t hardly pay me as it is.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “A real job. One that pays real money.”

“I wish I could help, sweet thing, but I don’t know nobody who’s hiring. Well, my cousin Scooter drives a catering van but you don’t wanna do nothing like that, do you?”

Scooter picked her up the next afternoon in an old silver van that read, in peeling purple cursive, CARLA’S CATERING. Inside, the van was crumbling, a chunk of yellow foam gaping from the passenger’s seat, the roof cloth hanging like a canopy, a faded air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. Not much to look at, but the fridge worked, Scooter said, thumbing at the wall separating the cooled food. He was lanky like Barry but yellower, wearing a purple Lakers cap.

“Let me tell you,” he said, “don’t believe none of what you hear about the economy and all that. It don’t matter one bit. White folks always wanna throw a party.”

He laughed, the van lurching onto Fairfax, and she quickly reached for her seat belt. He drove with an arm hanging out the window, chatting amiably the whole time, always starting midway into a conversation as if he were responding to a question she hadn’t actually asked.

“Yeah, I had my own spot once,” he said. “Nice little joint, off Crenshaw. But I couldn’t hang it. Never been all that good with money, you know. I get a penny, I spend a penny, you know how that go. I was good with the food but I ain’t no businessman, that’s for sure. But it turned out all right. Now I’m Carla’s right-hand man.”

Carla Stewart, he explained, as they crawled along the Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu, was tough but fair. You had to be both if you were a woman in the food world. She’d built the catering company after her husband died. A smart business in a city where there was never a shortage of people wanting to host events while exerting as little effort as possible. He tossed a black polo shirt onto her lap.

“You gotta put this on,” he said. When she hesitated, he laughed. “Not now, when we get inside! I ain’t no pervert. Don’t worry, Barry said you like a little sister to him and he better not hear I tried to flirt with you or nothin.”

It was the nicest thing Barry had ever said about her, and of course, he never intended her to hear it.

“Barry’s funny,” she said.

“He is,” Scooter said. “He’s a funny boy, but I love him. I love him all the same.”

Did Scooter know about Bianca? Barry prided himself on his ability to keep his lives separate. “It’s like the Good Book says,” he told her once, “don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” He was Bianca on two Saturday nights a month, and otherwise, he pushed her out of sight, even though he thought about her, shopped for her, planned for her eventual return. Barry went to faculty meetings and family reunions and church, Bianca always lingering on the edge of his mind. She had her role to play and Barry had his. You could live a life this way, split. As long as you knew who was in charge.



* * *



—

“WHERE YOU BEEN?” Reese asked when she climbed into bed that night.

He sounded worried; she never stayed out late without calling. But she’d catered a party for a real estate agent who’d sold homes to Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch. She’d wandered through the house, admiring the long white couches and marble countertops and the giant glass windows that faded into a view of the beach. She couldn’t imagine living like this—hanging on a cliff, exposed by glass. But maybe the rich didn’t feel a need to hide. Maybe wealth was the freedom to reveal yourself.

The party had ended at one and she’d had to clean up after. By the time Scooter dropped her back off, the morning sky was tinting lavender.

“Malibu,” she said.

“What you doin all the way out there?”

“I got a new job,” she said. “With this catering company. Barry helped me find it.”

“Why?” he said. “I thought you said you were gonna focus on school.”