We Cast a Shadow

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  “Who doesn’t love a good thumping?” I leaned in for the kill.

  “Gross!” Nigel stepped back into the kitchen. He wore the neon-yellow baseball cap. “Again with the kissy face.”

  Penny and I straightened in our seats. She gave me a look that said, Could you just try to keep it together for our son? I gave her an As you wish.

  “Tooth inspection,” I said.

  Nigel groaned.

  “You’ll understand when you’re older,” I said. “Cavities are the great scourge of adulthood.”

  Nigel carried a box-shaped arrangement of cardboard and plastic. He set the box on the table and pointed at the plastic window on its side.

  “You have to get really close and stare inside,” Nigel said. “Go on.”

  I stared. A light snapped on. A diorama appeared. It was a simple reconstruction of Nigel’s bedroom, the bed and dresser made of folded jacks and queens—Nigel and I sometimes played euchre or Forty-fives—and near the wall, to the right, was Nigel, or rather a cutout of a photo of him with his arms thrown up victoriously.

  I recalled that photo well. I had taken it on a Gulf Coast beach two summers earlier. The scent of seawater assailed my memory, the murmur of waves. A seagull wing whirled cryptically out of view. Nigel and I raced from the car parked on the coastal highway. I gave him a head start, but soon found that I couldn’t catch him. His long-toed feet beat against the clay until he stopped at the water’s edge and a cloud of water surged around his calves. He turned back to me with a smile so bright, I was shocked it didn’t reduce me to ashes. Penny was just beyond the frame when I took the picture. A moment later her arms were wrapped around him, and I took that picture, too, of them so deliriously happy in the surf, but the shot came out blurry.

  I couldn’t help but notice how much he had grown in so short a time. He had been shorter and rounder of face then. Plus, the birthmark had been smaller.

  Suddenly, mini-Nigel vanished, although the rest of the tiny room remained exactly as it was. Where did it go? Despite myself, I gasped and drew back.

  Nigel and Penny watched me with complete satisfaction. Penny smacked the table and guffawed, her somewhat wheezy laugh that jangled the keys to my heart every time. They had gotten the response they wanted. Penny kissed Nigel’s forehead.

  “Pretty good, right?” Nigel blushed and adjusted my sunglasses on his face.

  I sputtered for a moment asking how, shaking my head. Nigel explained about relative levels of light and the expectations of the person watching, but I was distracted as Nigel brought his hand to the birthmark and lightly scratched. Dermatologists assured us long ago that the mark was no danger to him in any way and that it certainly wasn’t infectious or spreadable by rough handling, but the cup clanging against the bars of my mind said that scraping it might make it worse. It could inflame; it would spread to other parts of his body. What if the dermatologists were wrong? My medical malpractice cases had taught me that doctors are no better at predicting the future than weathermen.

  “Don’t do that.” I grabbed Nigel’s wrist, harder than I intended, and saw framed in the oval lenses my own frantic, bloodshot eyes.

  3

  Firings at Seasons were low-key affairs, or so I’d heard. I’d never witnessed one, and I certainly didn’t plan on witnessing my own. Yes, I had promised Penny to make a run at saving my career, but the escalators changed my mind. They were out again, which I took as an omen. How could I secure my position if the skyscraper itself, all sixty-two stories of it, was against me?

  The Sky Tower, where Seasons’ offices nested, was a sprawling affair. A rotating, highly illuminated steel sculpture fountain—it blinded you if you looked at it the wrong way—sat in the center of the ground floor. Above, the rippling, curvaceous terraces surrounding the atrium seemed to spawn and respawn into infinity. But the diagonal distance from the concourse to the lobby—where a trio of middle-aged black female security guards chatted like a Greek chorus—was only about three stories via a series of M. C. Escher–like mechanical stairs, all frozen now.

  By the time I made it to the main elevator bank, I was clammy and winded. Deflated, I understood that talking my way back into the firm was a fantasy in the same way that I thought my voice sounded great, even angelic, in the shower. Occasionally, I went so far as to record myself. On playback, amid the pinging current of water and our crusty, clanging pipes, I heard my voice. What a whiny, keening instrument fate had saddled me with.

  No. I needed to slip into my office, grab my things, and slink out unnoticed. I’d tell Penny I gave it my all. As for Nigel’s procedure, there were no better-paying jobs in the City, but I’d simply have to find another way.

  Getting in and out of the office unnoticed wouldn’t be difficult. In a firm of more than five hundred employees, you could do almost anything without causing a stir. Last year one of the transactions shareholders had died cradling a telephone. No one noticed until Accounting came by to check his invoices. When they touched his shoulder, his body exhaled.

  Behind me, an elevator arrived. I climbed into the vertical coffin, careful to avoid making eye contact on the way up. My fellow passengers stared at their devices.

  The firm’s receptionist didn’t give me a second look when I padded into the vestibule.

  Something crinkled in my breast pocket. I pulled out a folded receipt. Penny had written on the back of it, “Nihil taurus crappus.” Penny never cursed in real life, but her cornydog Latin had been drawing a smile from me since the day we met. My best friend.

  Etherine passed me in the hall, carrying a tray of utensils and saucers. She wore her everyday uniform, a gray housekeeper’s dress. I told her good morning. She harrumphed and kept walking. Nothing unusual there.

  I went to the kitchen. Coffee and a few minutes of quiet would calm my nerves. I opened the door and stopped midstep. People were in the room. I leaned backward, hoping to leave without being noticed, but I knew the door would squeal like a pig the second I moved. So I froze in place, with half my body in the kitchen and the other in the hall. My brogue hovered above the threshold.

  Dinah Viet Dinh stood by the sink, dumping out her thermos. “God.” She removed her horn-rimmed glasses and stuck out her tongue. “It tastes like liquid butt.”

  “Speaking of which”—Paul Pavor leaned against the refrigerator, running a hand through his blond hair—“I wouldn’t be surprised if they cut all three of those boys loose.”

  “From last night, you mean?” Dinah asked.

  “I would be surprised,” Quentin Callower said. “I gather the major shareholders were rather impressed with those dehumanizing displays.” He hunched over his herbal tea, his bald spot showing.

  “Look, Riley’s prison rags had me rolling on the floor. I mean, I like a little fun as much as the next man,” Pavor said, winking at Dinah, who rolled her eyes. “But the last thing we need to do is keep dead weight for the sake of meeting some quota. Someone better missed out on a shot at working here because those clowns were in the way.”

  Dinah opened her mouth to speak, but shook her head and inhaled.

  We had all gone to law school together and were hired as part of the same class, although Callower was older than the rest of us. Pavor was from upstate; tall and blond, he left a failed acting career in his past. Today he looked like someone who might play a lawyer in a twentieth-century soap opera about attorneys and their convoluted love lives. He was biding his time until his parents believed he was responsible enough to take over the family marijuana empire back home.

  Callower was the great-grandson of a former mayor of the City, a staunch segregationist who left town during one of the waves of white flight. His family lived in the suburbs, and the rumor was that they had disowned him for living in the city limits.

  Dinah and I went back to grade school. We played strings in a youth orchestra together alon
g with Riley, who was the pianist.

  Dinah was born in Vietnam, but her mother got an engineering job at a solar company and moved the family over. Dinah used to say her parents never wanted to come to America because white people would expect them to assimilate. She took to the City quickly, even telling everyone to call her Dinah instead of her birth name, a fact she hid from her parents. But she was only doing what the other Vietnamese kids did. The members of the Vietnamese community in the City were known for fitting in and sacrificing for one another. The other Vietnamese kids I went to school with got mad when I asked them to teach me Vietnamese phrases or to tell me about Vietnamese culture. They didn’t even live together in clusters like most of the black folk. They were spread out, almost like they were trying to hide in plain sight.

  Dinah, Callower, and Pavor had all been promoted months ago. They worked upstairs and only came down to fifty-nine because that’s where the best espresso machine was and to cat-and-mouse the rank and file.

  It was tradition for new shareholders to give the subordinate lawyers ludicrous assignments that seemed more or less legit. Dinah had gotten me good. She asked me to run a legal analysis of porn shops under the City code. The firm served every vice company you could think of—bars, tobacco distributors, massage parlors—so it wasn’t an off-the-wall ask. When I brought the memo to her, she sat me down and held a straight face for all of five seconds before losing it and almost falling off her chair, laughing.

  “I think this new executive assistant”—Dinah was still working her mouth as if to roll the taste out—“I think this new executive assistant is really trying to poison me.” She said “executive assistant” with air quotes. She wasn’t big on political correctness. She had run through four secretaries the prior year.

  “It’s not like you don’t have it coming,” Pavor said.

  “It’s not like you don’t have a drone strike coming to your condo,” Dinah said.

  “It’s too early for violence.” Callower held his face in his hands. “And talking. Everyone should just be quiet for once, for me.”

  Pavor and Callower had been at Octavia’s last night. They had been trading shots of Jägermeister in a side parlor last I saw them. Was that confetti in Callower’s hair?

  Pavor pinched Callower’s cheek. “Aw, sugar plum’s got a sore noggin?” Callower pushed Pavor’s hand away.

  That was when Dinah noticed me. Pavor turned my way. Callower didn’t.

  I shrank back, not wanting to give away how vulnerable I felt, but that was a giveaway in and of itself.

  Dinah walked toward me, her silver stilettos sparkling.

  “Hey, buddy.” Pavor saluted me with his cup of vodka.

  “What the fuck are you wearing?” Dinah pointed at me.

  My stomach turned. I sported a three-piece rose-tinged seersucker with saddle shoes and a favorite fedora. They all had on seersucker suits, too—Dinah’s was a skirt ensemble with those extra-high heels she favored. Seersuckers were the firm uniform, of sorts. I never wore them—striped linen doesn’t go that well with brown skin—but this morning I had figured, what the hell? I donned it out of protest. A sign that I could have been one of the club if they hadn’t pulled the treehouse ladder out of reach.

  “That was one hell of a performance you put on last night.” Pavor crouched and threw his elbows out. “You were like a dancing ninja.” He wiggled in place.

  “The funky chicken on LSD,” Callower said.

  “Today’s the day,” Dinah said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t think you made it,” she said. “Hey, he thinks he’s been pushed out.”

  “Really?” Pavor said with too much perk in his voice.

  “Have you heard different?” I said.

  Dinah said nothing. Callower furrowed his face. Pavor sipped vodka.

  Etherine entered the kitchen, laid her serving tray on the counter, and wiped her hands on her apron. What kind of black person came to work dressed like Mammy in Gone with the Wind? Etherine did, that’s who.

  * * *

  —

  One night, years earlier, I was at the firm late. Some clients from out west were in town, and the shareholders were having a big to-do for them in the conference center. Walking by the prep area, I saw Etherine putting away flatware.

  She glanced over at me. “Why you shaking your head?” she asked.

  I was startled because I hadn’t realized I was doing it. “It was nothing.”

  “You think I don’t know you look down on me just like them people?”

  “I’m just trying to go home.”

  “I know you,” she said. “You think you so fancy with your degrees and everything.”

  “I just don’t know how you can dress like we’re in the antebellum South.”

  “You think we ain’t?” she said. “I got two daughters in college and a house that’ll be mine after I pay out the mortgage. That’s how I do it.” She shook her head. “You wearing that fine suit now, but give it some time. They’ll have you in a butler getup before too long. That’s when you’ll see.”

  * * *

  —

  “Did you set up the big room?” Dinah asked Etherine.

  “I did, Ms. Dinah,” she said.

  I was struck by two feelings at that moment. One was that once I left the building, I’d never see any of these people again. The other was, thank goodness that once I left the building, I’d never see any of these people again.

  I went to my office. I couldn’t believe that I’d put so much of myself into Seasons. Eight years—and for what? So they could raise Riley and Franklin up and shove me out? I was a better lawyer than either of them or Dinah and the others. I won hearings. I settled cases. I made Seasons look good. And why should I work at a place that made Etherine walk around looking like the resurrection of Hattie McDaniel? I shouldn’t. Seasons was just a den of thieves. It had stolen the best years of my life, my vigor, my self-esteem. I would leave and never look back. But first I’d leave a parting gift.

  I went to the supply room. I scanned the shelves. I saw what I needed: a green spray can.

  Malveaux was more a trophy case than a conference room. It was named after one of the long-dead early shareholders. Plaques covered almost every inch of wall space: plaques for donating legal services to the homeless, for representing death row inmates, for sponsoring Little League games, for every good deed imaginable. I thought the firm protested too much. There was a blank wall at the far end of the room. My perfect canvas.

  Frosted glass separated Malveaux from the rest of the firm. I turned off the lights and lowered the blinds. My heart hammered.

  But what should I write? For some reason, Sir, my dad, came to mind, sitting in his lonely prison cell, but I pushed him out of the way. I ran through a raft of possible messages and rejected them all: Give me liberty or give me death. (Too patriotic.) In the hands of the Almighty. (Too religious.) Freedom suit! (I wasn’t even sure what that meant.)

  I thought about drawing a scene, like when Huckleberry Finn meets Nigger Jim. (Too unrelated, and I couldn’t draw.) A yin-yang symbol. (Too abstract.)

  Maybe a simple word would do. Love. (Hell no.) I dropped the can. Fuck. Yes, that old stand-by. Fuck. No. Too generic. Anybody might write that—

  Etherine shuffled by on the other side of the frosted glass but didn’t seem to notice me. I could just make out the silhouette of her dark head floating above the frilly lace collar she wore.

  Suddenly, one word screamed to the front of my mind. I raised the spray can.

  Someone cleared their throat behind me. “What are you doing?” Dinah asked.

  “I—I was just…” I lowered my arm.

  Dinah sat on the edge of the conference table. “I mean, word travels fast, but you’re celebrating already?”


  “What?”

  “The shareholders were just saying nice things about you.” She told me the executive committee had met up on the top floor, sixty-two. “They picked you.”

  “You mean I’m not fired?”

  “No.”

  A heat rose in my body. I had been so afraid. I wanted to breakdance at the news. Instead, I pumped my fist. “Wait, you’re on the EC?”

  “As of today.” She placed a golden doubloon in my hand.

  It had the firm’s name on one side and the logo, a crescent that looked like a frown, on the other. “What’s this?”

  “It’s yours,” Dinah said. “You’re the new diversity chair.”

  I laughed. “That’s impossible. The committee is all white.”

  You had to be a senior shareholder to be on the committee, but there were no senior minority shareholders in the firm. Ergo, the committee was all white. The exclusion of the firm’s minority members from the diversity committee wasn’t racist. It was simply a matter of protocol. Franklin used to say the committee was a regular rainbow coalition that anyone could serve on provided they were ivory, eggshell, or pink.

  Then it struck me. Not only was I on the committee, but I was the head. That could only mean—

  “So I’m a shareholder,” I said. The house, the cars, Nigel’s face. Everything would be saved.

  “Um. Not exactly. You need to talk to Octavia.” Dinah walked toward the elevators.

  I dodged the mail girl pushing a cart full of folders, one for each attorney, and held Dinah’s shoulder. “Why, what’s going on?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you I didn’t know, would you?”

  “No,” I said.

  Dinah was Octavia’s right-hand glove. Anything Octavia touched, Dinah did, too.

  “I know what you know,” Dinah said. “She’s supposed to fill me in at the plantation.”