Birds of Paradise

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  Personal assistant to Jack Parkhurst, Esmeralda is nearly seven years older than Brian, from one of those cultures where everyone is so conscious of class and family and respect, etc. “Old World.”

  He walks through the door that Rufus holds for him, neither man looking at the other. And there is the memory of Avis weeping again. No.

  The trick, he reminds himself, is to discipline the mind. It’s what one does during the toughest times that proves one’s mettle. Arguing before a zoning board, negotiating fees with county commissioners, placating citizen action committees. This is the true reason to work, he thinks: to train oneself. His son understood this almost intuitively. But his daughter. Spiraling disappointment. Across the lobby, Celia and Esmeralda are chattering in front of the elevators: they’ll be speaking Spanish, they’ll stop, politely, as he approaches, and ask in English, “And how are you, today?” At first he hangs back, not eager to talk to anyone this morning. But then he notices that Fernanda Cruz has come in from the Biscayne Boulevard entrance and, impulsively, quickens his step.

  The elevator doors slip open. “Wait, wait,” he calls. He bounds across the lobby and into the elevator. “Going up? How is everyone this morning?”

  “How are you, Brian?” Celia asks, a sweet glance from the corner of her eyes.

  “Hey Brian.” Fernanda gives that little wave.

  He nods at both of them, glancing at Fernanda—new manager of the Investor Relations division. She’s been using one of the offices down the hall from Brian—a corridor nicknamed “the bullpen”—while her own wing is being remodeled.

  For eighteen years, Brian had looked down that hall into Hal Irvington’s office as Irvington sat hunched, forehead lowered to his interlocking fingers, his mournful gaze locked on The Wall St. Journal Investor’s Edition. Then, for a year it stood empty. One day Brian looked up, expecting the usual darkened window, instead discovering this lily of a shoulder, this lightly downturned mouth, a fringe of lashes. Every day for the past two weeks, Brian has looked up from his screen, eyes ticking to the right, down the hall, to see Fernanda Cruz’s white shoulder delineated from her neck by a dark curtain of hair, the first three knuckles of her right hand resting on her telephone set, all set off by the modernist glint of the swooping office window.

  She’s been at Parkhurst, Irvington & Benstock for five or six months and Brian finds he’s forming a steadfast affection. She waves at him on her way in or out of the office, a clipped, girlish gesture. It’s what sets her apart from the usual parade of brazen Miami beauties: that wave. She seems sweet and retiring—a throwback to some earlier ideal. Now Celia and Esmeralda stand side by side, backs against the elevator wall like sentries, while Fernanda stands close to the door, near the buttons; her hair spills forward, partially obscuring the side of her face.

  Brian says to the general assembly, “Could boil an egg out there—just wave it through the air.”

  Celia and Fernanda laugh deferentially. Esmeralda adjusts her coral button earrings, slides her finger along the curve of her ear. Her smile deepens but doesn’t quite touch her eyes. He notices her glance tick from Fernanda back to him again, an icy glimmering. “How is that new office working out for you, darling?” she asks her.

  Fernanda flicks her hair back across her shoulders. Her face brightens. “It’s weird over there. Must be three times the size of my regular office. It’s like a cave.”

  A cave! Brian studies the laces in his shoes.

  “It’s a little lonely,” she adds. “Up there.”

  “You know you can always come talk to me,” he blurts. Brian catches a look between Celia and Esmeralda. He glances at Fernanda then; the elevator light touches her hair: gossamer strands of blue light on black hair. He thinks of how he used to slide his fingers along the nape of Avis’s neck, warm hair slipping between his fingers. He picks up some familiar strand of honeysuckle. Then Fernanda sniffles and rubs under her nose, the roseate tinge of the rim of her nostrils, with the back of one knuckle.

  The elevator button for 28 flashes, the doors swipe open. “Ciao, chica,” Celia says to Fernanda. “And Brian—” Esmeralda’s voice drops. “Take care of yourself.”

  He smiles from the upper reaches of the elevator. As soon as the doors wisp shut, he says to Fernanda, “Really—I’m always down the hall. Anytime.” Anytime what? He falters, uncertain if he’s finished the sentence.

  “You’re kind.” She smiles. “I just like to complain for the ladies.” Now he laughs, though he isn’t sure what she means.

  The doors open on 32. She whisks off the elevator ahead of him. A blade of calf appearing in the slit of her coal-colored skirt. Brian follows her out, then hangs back, unwilling to follow her all the way to their wing.

  Lately it requires more energy and concentration for Brian to face his lineup of client meetings and phone-ins, and the obligatory weekly rendezvous on the links at the Doral or over drinks at the Highland or poker—that eternal round of scotch, cigars, and playing cards—at Old Benstock’s manse on Santa Maria Street by the golf course. Everything takes more energy these days. Brian decides Fernanda has enough of a head start. He’s walking toward the bullpen when there’s the whoosh of the executive restroom door: Javier Mercado, PI&B’s sales czar, as he laughingly refers to himself, appears before Brian, shooting his white cuffs. “There he is.” His teeth are startling against his deep tan. “There’s my man! What’re you doing right now? You got a minute. C’mon, bud.” He slaps one hand on top of Brian’s lightly padded shoulder and steers him around. “Walk with me a little, yeah? I wanna ask you something.”

  Brian looks longingly over his shoulder, the sanctuary of his desk.

  “Vámos! No problema—I know you’re busy, man. We’re all busy until we’re dead, right?”

  Unlike many developers who contract out to other specialists, PI&B is so vast their staff includes architects, landscapers, surveyors, as well as a legal department, which Brian heads, and a wing of sales agents—Javier’s domain—to move units once the condos go up. At times it seems to Brian that he and Javier are very nearly adversaries. Most of Brian’s legal colleagues wouldn’t be caught dead consorting with real estate agents. As the last man on the “development food chain”—as Parkhurst dubs it—Javier is all about sales, speed, and profit. Brian presides over the beginnings of things—talking to environmental engineers, zoning boards, and county commissioners, patiently sifting through contracts, moving slowly, scanning the horizon for problems. It was well after law school that he heard corporate lawyers referred to as the handmaidens of the deal.

  Javier cries at the partners’ obscene jokes, always has cash for big tips. Brian keeps to himself, but Javier spins legends about his compañero’s oracular, “Vulcan-like” powers of reason. “See that dude?” Javier says to buyers, tipping a thumb at Brian, “Dude is like CIA, ice-cold intelligentsia.” He himself spends afternoons schmoozing poolside at the Biltmore while Brian logs hours in meetings with the regional planning councils, their Blackberries and legal pads lining the tables. Now Javier drops his voice to a private, closing-the-deal tone: “What about that little Fernanda? You check her out?”

  A project manager at Lennar—her previous employer—had regaled Brian and Javier one afternoon with a string of rumors about Fernanda. Brian knew how it was: executives entertained themselves: private fantasies spun into whispered allegations. He tries to act amused, but now he feels defensive about Fernanda and ends up overdoing it, wagging his head. “Heh-eh-eh . . .” Trailing off, he tries for a hapless shrug. His shoulders feel heavy. “She’s something all right.”

  Hap Avery and Dean Hayes burst out of Accounting talking intensely about a Heat game. Avery salutes Brian and Javier and says, “Hey.” Hayes nods. “Hello, Jav.” He brings his palms together and bows slightly. “Counselor.”

  Javier and Brian stop speaking until they’re well beyond the others. Javier stops Brian just as they reach the glass door to the East Wing. “So . . . what? You’re really
not interested in her? Or you just don’t go for that Jewish thing?” Jack Parkhurst once said that he’d hired Brian as much for his “moral compass” as for his research acumen: a comment Javier never tires of kidding him about.

  His fingers loosen in his pockets. “She’s Jewish?”

  “You know—Juban. Fernanda Levy Cruz? What do you think?” He peers through the glass door marking off the land of the bullpen. “That cute little fixed nose. That Russki hair.”

  Another flash of annoyance. Proprietary, indignant, he says, “How’s Odalis doing?”

  Javier gives Brian an immense smile. “My wife? What, are you kidding? I’m not going to actually do anything.” He pulls the glass door open and heads in, Brian close behind him. “Besides,” he says, clearly aiming for Fernanda’s office, “that’s there and this is here.”

  Brian falls back, dwindles to a halt. He rubs the inner corners of his eyes: his pupils feel soft—is that possible? A sign of heart disease? There’s a diffuse ache in the center of his chest left over from the morning commute. He opens his office door: even the back of his hand looks old.

  A stack of invitations and contractual materials are heaped on his desk. Brian’s desk is a piece of smoky green glass with one drawer adorned by a coral-shaped handle. Each morning, Hector places mail on the corner of Brian’s desk beside the screen, its wafer of light. Brian sits down with his coffee and releases a preliminary daily sigh that signals his immersion in contract review. This is the moment he craves: the vitality of his body stirring, his imagination focused on problems and solutions. He feels hints of the time when he met Avis and fell into a sublime entrancement. He bent over her bedraggled Economics 102 text in the tutoring center and the airy scent of her hair, the dented lower lip of her smile, turned him aphasic: all higher thought abandoned him. She passed her final somehow, then agreed to dinner with him.

  Brian checks voice mail: there’s the usual barrage from his ambitious associate Tony Malio giving Brian the rundown on development locations and the status of new project plans. “The Little Haiti Corps people are back again—blowing hot air. Just rescheduled our sitdown with them—again. Probably looking to leverage more buyout. Keep you posted.” Brian jots “Little Haiti,” then shakes open the paper, but his attention keeps floating over the top of the page. Peering down the hall, he spots the patent leather gleam of Javier’s head as he arches over Fernanda’s desk. It’s hard to see through the sliding blebs of reflections in the glass wall—the curve in the glass imparting a whimsy to passersby—but it appears that Fernanda tilts her head—into laughter?

  Brian squeezes the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. The newspaper lies on his desk, his other hand flat on the paper. For a moment, it seems that he can feel something insectival rattling around inside his body.

  Juban.

  This term, which he has heard bandied about Miami for years, now strikes him as somehow distasteful, impertinent even. He can clearly make out Javier’s gestures: the whisk of hand through air as he laughs. Brian imagines Javier sliding his eyes in Brian’s direction, whispering, “Our office Anglo.” The thought causes him to shove himself away from his desk, his legs lifting his weight from his chair. He pushes through his office door. Passing the corridor’s glass wall, he spots the skeleton of the Metro Building going up just two blocks from the Ekers Building, one hastily constructed story at a time. These days, Miami is a skyline of towering developers’ cranes operating in varying degrees of legality. Beyond that, filling the view, floats the striated, Caribbean blue of Biscayne Bay. By noon each day, three-quarters of each window glow like mercury.

  As he moves down the glassy corridor, more reflections flicker before him; they glide sideways then and Javier is leaning out, holding open the door to Fernanda’s office. “The man himself! We were just talking about you.”

  The air around him shimmers for an instant, like heat rising off blacktop. Brian closes his eyes, opens them, follows Javier into the office. “Here he is—here’s the man,” Javier says again. “Resident legal evil genius.”

  Brian gives Javier a thin smile. “Don’t you have units to go sell?”

  “You looking to invest?”

  He realizes peripherally that Fernanda does not seem to be amused. There’s a pliancy to her shoulders, a pretty girl’s receding from attention. This had been one of Felice’s habits as she began to edge toward young womanhood. Fernanda’s eyes are sable black, so dark they seem to float slightly apart from the rest of her features. She has a funny, petal-shaped mouth—too much humor—or cunning—to be considered a real beauty. He smiles broadly. “I haven’t wanted to bother you while you were settling in—Investor Relations must be in chaos with the remodel.”

  “We are.” She reveals a row of even white teeth. “It’s been insane, trying to stay on top of anything—I feel lost without my little nest.”

  “Look at her smile,” Javier comments. “She was just being polite to me before. She didn’t give me any kind of smile like that. Where you been keeping that smile?”

  To Brian’s gratification, Fernanda’s smile hardens in place. “I know it’s silly.”

  “Ya, what’s silly?” Javier ticks back his head. “Good Cuban girl needs su familia.”

  Watching them, Brian feels a jealous pang: it’s the trace of collusion he seems to sense in the air around him—not only between Cubans but between the hip young African-American women buying tabouli and the languid Arab men at the counter at Daily Bread, between the Italian models at South Beach and the Swedish au pair girls sauntering around Cocowalk. Javier says that Brian suffers from Anglo paranoia. So many people seem to know something that they’re not sharing with Brian. Everyone flirting, accents magnetically attracted to accents: everyone dusky, sexy, Spanish-speaking. Brian slips his hand to the back of his neck, trying to collect his wits, wishing for Javier’s dragonfly quickness. “I can understand—” he begins, just as the door flashes and Agathe pokes her head in, a bolt of gray pageboy swings forward.

  “Mr. Muir? I’m terribly sorry—someone’s been waiting on line 2?”

  Irked, Brian twists toward her, about to bark, So take a message—but Fernanda is listening. He flips a hand in Javier’s direction. “Duty calls.”

  “YEAH, HI, UM, THIS IS NIEVES?” a young voice says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nieves. Stanley’s girlfriend?”

  There’s a minor ringing in his ears. “Um. I—I don’t—” He plunks back into his office chair. “I’m sorry—who is this?”

  “Oh.” There’s a long pause. Then: “Did he not tell you about me?”

  “I don’t know.” Brian places one hand on his desk. “He might have. What can I do for you?”

  “It’s concerning—well—I just thought—I just wanted to make contact, you know? Only you don’t know about me. So, okay. This is weird now.”

  “Excuse me, I—” He pats his keyboard very lightly with his open hand. Over his shoulder there are dark files of clouds reflected in the interior glass wall; it looks as if he is caught between cloud banks. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I think I goofed here.”

  Another pause. This time he can hear a swipe like a hand being squashed over the receiver, muffled voices in the background. “Hey—hello—is Stanley there?” He raises his voice. “I’d like to speak to my son.”

  A muffled squeak. “I’m sorry—what?”

  “I want to speak to Stanley.”

  “Ha—me too.” Her voice is lightly serrated. “I can’t believe he—well, I’m embarrassed now. I’m sorry for troubling you.”

  “That’s all right, dear. Why don’t you have Stan call me when he gets in?”

  There’s a pause in which she seems to be weighing her answer. “Look, it’s—everything’s okay,” she says at last. “We’ll get back to you.” Then she hangs up.

  BRIAN’S CALLS TO STANLEY’S cell and office number go unanswered; he leaves messages at both: Call your f
ather. Stanley is a bit of a local celebrity: the girl was probably some sort of crank. Brian sits back and stares at the bay that fills his windows. He thinks of a time, an hour like a silver-blue membrane, that covered him and his infant son, tucked into the crook of his arm, sitting in the creaking leather rocker. They were still in Ithaca and Stanley was six months old when Avis went back to work at the Demitasse Pâtisserie. She had to be at work each morning by 4:30, so Brian took over the early feedings with Stanley, then dropped him at day care on the way to his own job. Those recalled mornings possess a quality of translucence: Stanley’s bare shoulders, his curved fingers touching Brian’s lips, his gray eyes fixed on his father over the curve of the bottle. They breathed together into the slow drinking, Stanley’s body flung across Brian’s legs, his tiny arm flung back, his hand rhythmically crushing and releasing a lock of his own hair. Brian memorized the globe of his son’s forehead, the silk of his eyebrows, the frog-crouch of his legs. Avis was always bringing work home: their counters, refrigerator, and freezer were filled with boxes of danishes, layer cakes, and cookies, the kitchen was crowded with cake pans and rollers and an enormous, hunched-over Hobart; the whole house had the pink scent of sugar. He read to Stanley (reaching for the book with groping, swimmer’s fingers) about a witch who baked a gingerbread house to lure children. Brian felt as if he and Stanley were the children in this story and Avis the good witch who baked the house they all lived in.