by Mark Gimenez
“Open the goddamned gate!”
Osvaldo held his hands up. “No card. No gate.”
“Jesus Christ!”
Scott backed out and parked the Ferrari on the street, pumped a few quarters into the parking meter, pissed off until he remembered that the Ferrari would be his for only nine more days. Fuck it. Two-hundred-thousand-dollar car gets scratched, it’s the bank’s loss. By the time he hit the front door of Dibrell Tower two blocks away, he was whistling.
Rebecca Fenney was crying. She was still in bed, hiding from Highland Park. She had bet her beauty on Scott Fenney and lost. Her house. Her car. Her status. Her life. Everything she had acquired over the last eleven years would soon be gone. And it hadn’t been lost to a twenty-two-year-old blonde with big tits and a tight ass-to a girl by the pool-but to a heroin addict, a whore, a…Rebecca never said that word because even in Highland Park such words are best said only behind the brick walls at the club, but she thought that word now: nigger.
Her husband had sacrificed her life for a nigger’s life.
There. She had said it. Or at least thought it. As everyone in Highland Park was thinking at that very moment-the town is so small, so insular, that nothing escapes notice. Not that this could have escaped the notice of anyone in America, her husband on national TV, for God’s sake! And today at lunch, her (former) society girlfriends would order Caribbean salad, tortilla soup, sparkling water, and for dessert, Rebecca Fenney. She would be today’s scandal souffle.
Oh, how they would gossip! And how they would laugh!
There’s nothing the girls love to sink their sharp teeth into more than a juicy scandal: a lesbian affair; a good Highland Park girl knocked up by a black SMU athlete; botched cosmetic surgery; drinking, drugs, and STDs at the high school; criminal fraud committed by a scion of an old Highland Park family; a Democrat in Highland Park; failure in Highland Park. They lapped it up like the family dog laps up leftovers.
Rebecca Fenney had gossiped so many times about other women’s scandals. Now everyone in Highland Park would be gossiping about her-at the Village, at the club, at the gym, at every restaurant and in every dressing room. They would all be gossiping and laughing-at her expense.
How could she ever show her face in this town again?
She was crawling back under the comforter when the phone rang.
Boo quietly pushed open the door to her parents’ bedroom and stuck her head in. She saw her mother sitting on the far side of the bed and heard her talking on the phone. Her voice sounded strange.
“ What?…Sleeping with Trey?…Where’d you hear that?…It’s all over town?…Everyone knows?… Oh, my God! ”
She hung up the phone and put her hands over her face.
“Mother?”
“Oh, God.”
“Mother?”
“Oh, God.” Finally she turned to Boo. Her mother looked like a frightened little kitten. “What, Boo?”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Can I help?”
“No. What do you want?”
“Is it okay if Pajamae and I go to the Village? We’ll be real careful crossing the street.”
Mother waved her hand. “Fine, whatever.”
“Okay. See you later.”
Boo started to shut the door, but her mother said, “Boo, wait. Come in. I need to talk to you.”
As soon as Scott stepped inside the lobby of Dibrell Tower, he stopped whistling. A tidal wave of reporters and cameramen came rushing toward him, all shouting questions on top of each other.
“Mr. Fenney, what’s her name, the woman Clark raped?”
“What are the names of the other women he raped?”
“You brought down Senator McCall-are you happy?”
“Do you think Senator McCall will be indicted?”
“What about Tom Dibrell-will he be indicted?”
Scott squinted at the bright camera lights and ducked and weaved his way toward the elevator bank. But at the speed at which he was advancing against the mass of reporters defending their ground, he wouldn’t get into an elevator before noon. He was about to retreat when two enormous blue blazers stepped in front of him. Two black men, Dibrell Tower security guards, were now running interference for Scott Fenney. The reporters had a choice: get out of the way or get run over.
They got out of the way.
The two guards pushed forward until they arrived at the elevators where a third guard stood blocking the doors of an empty elevator. He stepped aside to allow Scott entrance, then again blocked the way. He was joined by the other two guards, three huge bodies in blue blazers protecting Scott Fenney from the reporters and cameras, black guards whom Scott had never before even acknowledged; they were just inanimate objects in the lobby, like the big bronze Remington sculpture. Scott reached over and punched the FLOOR 62 button, then fell to the back of the elevator. Just before the doors closed, the middle guard turned to him and said, “Thanks, Mr. Fenney.”
“For what?”
“Standing up for that girl.”
Pajamae followed Boo out the front door and down the walkway to the sidewalk. Boo said, “Boy, my mother was acting really weird this morning. The stuff she was saying.”
“Is she sick?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“’Cause Mama says weird stuff when she takes her medicine.”
They turned left down the sidewalk. Boo was talking, but Pajamae was watching. Mama had taught her to keep her eyes peeled when she went outside in their neighborhood, watching for strange people. Of course, in their neighborhood grown men hung around outside the liquor stores on every corner and drank malt liquor out of brown paper bags and peed right into the street whenever nature called, so strange here in Boo’s neighborhood was a different thing altogether. But Pajamae still noticed something strange.
A man in a car.
He was sitting across the street and down one house from Boo’s. He stared at them as they came down the sidewalk. He was a big man with a bald head in a black car. When she and Mama were outside and a white man looking like him drove into the projects, everyone would stop what they were doing and shout, “The man!” The police. The bald man in the black car looked like a policeman.
Pajamae noticed the car door open partway and the bald man’s black shoe come out. She was about to grab Boo and hightail it back to their house when an old man stepped out the front door of the house they were walking in front of. He came down the path toward them, but he stopped and picked up a newspaper on the grass.
Boo said, “Good morning, Mr. Bailey.”
The old man smiled and said, “Why, good morning to you, Miss Boo Fenney.”
Pajamae looked over at the black car. The bald man’s foot was back in the car and the door was shut, but he was still staring. They continued down the sidewalk and came to a busy road named Preston and turned right. Pajamae glanced back and saw that the black car was gone. She shook her head at herself for being so silly: You’re not in the projects, girl!
They walked on and Pajamae soon found herself enjoying the stroll through Boo’s neighborhood, what she called the Bubble. She always felt nervous and scared if Louis was gone and she and Mama had to walk alone through their neighborhood to the nearest liquor store to buy some bread or eggs, even in the middle of the day. Mama always told her, “If I say ‘run,’ you run, girl.” But she wasn’t nervous or scared at all in this neighborhood. The sidewalks were so clean, no beer cans or liquor bottles or syringes or those funny long balloons Mama told her never to touch. And no men hanging around outside liquor stores-in fact, there were no liquor stores. No pimps or pushers trying to recruit her or sell to her, no older boys driving by and yelling out nasty words, no loud rap music from cars and boom boxes, and nobody cussing each other ’cause they just got evicted. It was so quiet!
Boo’s Bubble was nice.
They stopped at an intersection and waited for the light to change. When it did, they looked carefu
lly both ways and hurried across four lanes of traffic and a short parking lot and onto the sidewalk of-
“Highland Park Village,” Boo said.
They were standing outside a store named Polo/Ralph Lauren in a fairyland place Pajamae had never imagined existed, fancy cars lining the sidewalk shaded by little trees and fancy white women getting out of those cars followed by pretty little white girls looking like princesses and giving her second and third glances like they had never seen a black person their whole lives, and leaving behind a smell so sweet that Pajamae breathed it in several times and was reminded of the old fat ladies at church each Sunday morning-only these ladies weren’t fat and they didn’t gush over her and pinch her cheek. The white women and white girls just hustled by and into the store, the cool air from inside rushing out, making Pajamae’s face feel like it did when she stuck her head in the freezer to cool off, as she often did down home in the projects.
Boo said, “Do y’all have shopping places like this?”
“We don’t have any place like this.”
When she and Mama went shopping, it was generally at yard sales and the Goodwill store, not someplace where she couldn’t begin to pronounce the names, and sometimes one of their neighbors would get a good deal on sneakers or stereos or TVs and sell them right out of his car trunk, at real good prices ’cause the stuff was a little warm, Mama would say, although Pajamae was never exactly sure what she meant. And before school started each year, Mama would work extra and Louis would take them to buy her school clothes at the JCPenney, but it wasn’t like this.
“Where- as,” Pajamae said.
They walked down the sidewalk in the shade of the awning, Pajamae feeling like it was Christmas, checking out every window display, fancy clothes on skinny mannequins wearing makeup, and past a kid’s store-
“That’s Jacadi Paris,” Boo said. “My closet is full of clothes from here.”
“Does this stuff cost a lot?”
“Mother bought them, so they must.”
When they arrived at a store called Calvin Klein, Boo said, “Britney was here a few months ago.”
“Britney who?”
“Britney Spears, the singer. Everybody went crazy.”
“White girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. We don’t listen to white girls down in the projects.”
Boo shrugged. “I don’t listen to her up here either.”
And on they went, past stores named Luca Luca and Escada and Lilly Dodson-“Mrs. Bush bought her red party dress here, when George W. got elected the first time,” Boo said-and Banana Republic-only they sold clothes not bananas-and they crossed the parking lot and got ice cream cones at Who’s Who Burgers.
They walked outside and Pajamae stopped short. A bad feeling swept over her small body: the bald man in the black car was driving by slowly and giving her a creepy stare. She got really scared, and Pajamae Jones didn’t get really scared easily.
“Boo, that man’s following us.”
“What man?”
“That man who just drove by, in that black car. See him? The bald guy?”
Boo laughed. “This is Highland Park. Nothing bad happens here.”
Boo tugged on her arm and Pajamae followed reluctantly. They walked past more stores then went inside a store with the same name as the old wino with no teeth who lived three apartments down. Harold.
“This was my mother’s favorite store,” Boo said.
A saleslady was on them before they made it five steps, and Pajamae thought at first she was going to run them out. But the lady smiled and said hi like she was really happy to see them. She was very pretty for a white girl, with hair that bounced and smooth skin and lips that were painted red. She looked at Pajamae and leaned down, putting her knees together and her hands on her knees, and said, “My, aren’t you the cutest little thing!”
Pajamae was wearing Boo’s denim overalls, a white T-shirt, white socks, and white sneakers; her hair was in cornrows; and she was licking her ice cream cone.
She said, “Thank you, ma’am.”
“So how do you like living in Highland Park?”
Pajamae glanced at Boo, who shrugged. How did this woman know that she was living with Mr. Fenney?
“I like it just fine, thank you.”
“You tell your mother to come see me, my name’s Sissy. I’ll make sure she’s as well dressed as any woman in Highland Park.”
“My mama’s in jail.”
The lady snapped up straight with a confused look on her face. “ Jail? Aren’t you the new black family’s little girl?”
“I don’t have a family. I only have Mama. And Louis, he’s like an uncle only he’s not.”
Boo said, “What new black family?”
“The black family that just moved into town, the first black homeowners in the history of Highland Park.” The saleslady was now staring at Boo when a hint of recognition crossed her painted face. “You’re the Fenney girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you with that hair. Where’s your mother been lately”-her thin eyebrows raised a notch-“and your handsome father?”
“My mother’s being weird and A. Scott’s been real busy.”
“Helping my mama,” Pajamae added, and the lady’s head swiveled to her. “They say she killed the McCall boy, but she didn’t.”
The saleslady slapped her hand over her mouth. “She’s your mother?”
Pajamae licked her ice cream cone and said, “Unh-huh. Mr. Fenney, he’s her lawyer, so everybody’s mad at him.”
The saleslady’s face suddenly looked like that boy’s face that day in the projects when he tried to get a freebie from Mama and when she refused, he called her a “white man’s whore.” As he turned to run away he ran smack into Louis-and that black boy’s face turned white. Just as this lady’s face had turned two shades whiter. She must not have known what to say, so she said, “Maybe you girls should leave now.”
“Mr. Ford wants to see you,” Sue said.
Scott grabbed his message slips and walked to the staircase. He greeted his fellow partners along the way, but all he got in return were odd stares, averted eyes, and shaking heads. No doubt they had seen his network interview last night and didn’t care for it. Fuck ’em. He found Dan standing by the window in his office.
“Dan, what’s up?”
Dan turned; his face looked like he hadn’t slept last night.
“Come in, Scotty. Shut the door.”
Scott did as instructed and said, “Dan, can you talk to Ted at the bank? He’s being a real asshole. He called the notes on the Ferrari and my house.”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Scotty, as of right now, you’re no longer a partner in the firm.”
“You’re demoting me?”
“I’m firing you.”
Dan’s words knocked the air out of Scott as fully as a football helmet in the solar plexus. Scott stumbled back and fell onto the sofa. Dan returned to the window and stared out, his hands clasped behind him. Scott struggled to find words.
“You said I was like a son to you.”
Without turning from the window: “You were. But when my son embarrassed me with that homosexual nonsense, I disowned him. Now I’m disowning you.”
“Why?”
Dan turned to face Scott; he was now an angry father figure.
“Your little spectacle last night! For Christ’s sake, Scott, what the hell were you thinking?”
“McCall tried to destroy me, that’s what I was thinking!”
“So you go on national TV and accuse the senior senator from Texas of obstruction of justice? Extortion? Bribery?”
“I was just trying to do the right thing!”
“The hell you were! I know you too well. You were giving McCall a little Scott Fenney payback. You weren’t doing it for the hooker; you were doing it for yourself. And even if you wer
e doing the right thing, it’s no better. I told you, Scotty, this firm doesn’t exist to do the right thing; no law firm does. We don’t do the right thing; we do what’s right for our clients. And destroying Mack McCall’s presidential ambitions isn’t right for our clients. But you took care of that, didn’t you?”
“What was I supposed to do, let him take everything I have? My club memberships, my car, my house, my best client? McCall did all that.”
Dan Ford was now staring at Scott with an expression Scott had seen only once before, five years ago. Scott had stood next to Dan in a state district court as the judge read his ruling, a ruling against their client, against Ford Stevens, against Dan Ford, who had made a substantial contribution to the judge’s last campaign. Dan’s expression then and now was that of a man betrayed, but a man with the power to do something about it.
“No, Scotty, he didn’t do any of that. I did.”
“You?”
“Yes, me. When you refused to do what I asked, I wanted you to see what your life would be like without all the things success buys- It’s a Wonderful Life starring Scott Fenney. But you’re stubborn, Scotty, too stubborn for your own damn good. McCall asked me for a small favor, to get you to leave his son’s past in the past where it belongs, so he could be president. And I asked you for a small favor, so I could be the president’s lawyer. And after all that I’ve done for you, how did you repay me? You betrayed me.”
“ A small favor? Dan, without that evidence, Shawanda will be sentenced to death!”
“So?”
“What, she’s just a nigger?”
Dan laughed. “Oh, yeah, I’m a racist. My son grew up wanting to be Michael Jordan and my daughter’s in love with Tiger Woods…No, it’s the other way around, my daughter wanted to be Jordan and my son’s in love with Tiger. Anyway, I’d love to have both of them as clients. Because they’re rich. Because they pay their lawyers lots of money. Scotty, the color of law isn’t black-and-white, it’s green! The rule of law is money-money rules! Money makes the law and the law protects the money! And lawyers protect the people with money!”
Dan’s face was red and his neck veins were purple cords. He paused and gathered himself.
“Scotty, this firm is my life. I built it from nothing to the richest firm in town. No one makes what we make. No one! And no one’s gonna hurt this firm, not your hooker, not you, not anyone. I’ll run over anyone who gets in my way.”