What Simon Didn’t Say

by Joy Copeland

  “I didn’t even ask what you were fixing, so I just guessed red.”

  “Perfect. My budget always says chicken. You do eat poultry?” he asked, waiting for a reply.

  “Yes. I’m a sometime vegetarian but not this week. I would have warned you.”

  Zoie wandered into the living room as Jahi headed into the kitchen. The place seemed nice enough. It was filled with pictures and books. It was comfortable and clean. The owner had kept the best of the building’s original feel, like the heavy crown molding and built-in bookcases, and that original feel was set off by very modern furniture. She reminded herself that this home didn’t belong to Jahi. It was on loan. She wondered what his place looked like.

  Jahi served dinner in the small dining room, which had huge curtainless windows. He’d fixed a wonderful chicken fricassee, something she hadn’t had in years. She was careful not to lick her fingers, though she really wanted to. She praised him profusely and listened as he talked about life in the US Marines, his aunt, and his take on the music scene. She offered to help him clean up the kitchen, but he wouldn’t hear of it. They finished the bottle of red wine she brought; then he pulled out another. With a slight buzz, she was relaxed and comfortable. She wondered what had happened to the Jahi she’d seen at the movie two weeks before. Where was the Jahi who headed up the Shelter? Neither persona seemed to be there that evening. This man was altogether different—gentle, caring, and strong. She was intrigued.

  He turned on some soft jazz, and they settled on the sectional sofa in the living room. As she was finishing her first glass from the second bottle, she said, “You haven’t mentioned one thing about the Shelter tonight.”

  “On purpose,” he answered quickly. “I have to stop myself thinking about that place. Most days I eat and sleep the concerns of the homeless. Tonight I just want to be a normal human being without that weight on me. Does that sound selfish?”

  Did his eyes twinkle, or was it just the wine? “No, that’s not selfish,” she answered. “I know you’re dedicated, but everyone needs a break.”

  “It’s like this place. I couldn’t afford this. But it’s good to take a break and let go of the misery for a while. Sometimes I dream about those poor guys out there on the streets, the ones I’ve found dead. I do what I can.” There was anguish in his voice. “There’s only so much I can do.” He bowed his shaking head.

  “I understand—I really do,” she said. Moving closer, she took his hand and held it between her own to comfort him. The touch of his skin was electric.

  He lifted his head, pulled her toward him and put his mouth on hers. Her head spun. She felt herself sinking into a slow whirlpool. “And what do you want?” he asked when they came up for air. “Zoie, I know what I want. What do you want?”

  Her answer was silent: I want to feel alive.

  Without hearing an answer, he understood.

  Chapter 17

  You Ought to Know

  One day in early August, a call came from Tommy Vance. Zoie was glad to hear the friendly voice from her recent past. “How are things down in the capital?” Tommy asked with his thick Brooklyn accent.

  Tommy was a senior partner at Fairday and Winston, her former New York firm. He was a decent sort, as far as corporate wheelers and dealers went. He’d served as her mentor. She counted him among her true friends. But what did he want?

  “Let me see…how are things down here?” she said, echoing Tommy’s question. Better not say too much. She’d left the firm on good terms. Perhaps they wanted her back. “Hot. Real hot.”

  “You are talking weather?” Tommy asked, his tone playful.

  “Tommy, behave!”

  He laughed. “So tell me something. Do you miss us?” he asked.

  Is he trying to feel me out?

  “Sure, I miss the city, but I don’t miss those crazy hours. Now my busy week is forty-five hours max.” She didn’t want to admit that most days the slower-paced Foundation work bored her to tears or that those forty-five hours were more like forty. And some of those forty hours she spent just twiddling her thumbs. Give it a chance, she kept telling herself. You might even be able to have a life. But if Fairday and Winston wanted her back, she’d at least consider it.

  “Wow! Forty-five hours! Sounds like a picnic,” Tommy said.

  “I wouldn’t call it that. It’s different. Sometimes the office politics makes one hour seem like two.”

  “If I remember correctly, you didn’t have time for office politics here. You didn’t care for the politics part at all. Hey, you’re not getting yourself in trouble down there, are you? You know how you can be when you start on a crusade.”

  “You know me too well. But no, no crusading this week.”

  “Good.”

  “Now, Tommy, it’s good to hear from you, but I know you didn’t call just to ‘shoot the breeze.’”

  “Zoie, you’re right as usual. Still all business, huh? Look, I need a favor.”

  So this is not about coming back to Fairday and Winston. Just as well. She owed Tommy several times over for getting her out of jams at the firm. She could always count on his being on her side or his giving her a good reference if she needed it. There was only one thing to say: “Glad to be of service—what can I do for you?”

  “That’s my Zoie. Look, I have a friend down there by the name of Sy Rosen. Sy’s an old law-school bud. He’s doing some pro bono work for a nonprofit. Some reading program.”

  “So you want me to advise him on how the program can apply for a grant from the Crayton Foundation?”

  “No,” Tommy answered, “seems they applied last year.”

  “From your tone it sounds as if they were unsuccessful.”

  “Yeah. And I know you can’t get them the grant, but if you could just meet with Sy and hear him out…he’s one of the good guys. Having someone listen to his situation may satisfy the whole thing.”

  Internally all kinds of alarms were going off. “Okay,” she answered but with hesitation.

  “Just hear him out.”

  “That’s probably all I can do anyway,” Zoie said, setting low expectations for her ability to help this Rosen.

  “Don’t worry—if listening is all you can do, well, that’s all you can do. Zoie, you’re a peach. You should be getting a call.”

  Later that afternoon Zoie got the call. Sy Rosen seemed pleasant enough but made it clear that he didn’t want to discuss his client’s situation on the phone. Nor did he want to come to the Foundation’s office. She offered to stop by his office, but he suggested that they meet the next morning at the Starbucks on K Street, which was halfway between their offices.

  Zoie was on time, exactly at 10:30 a.m. It was past the morning coffee rush and too early for the lunch crowd. She’d done preliminary research on Rosen. No one matching the picture she’d seen on LinkedIn was in the place. She ordered an iced coffee and then settled at a corner table away from the K Street windows but with a view of the door. She took out her cell phone and read her e-mails.

  A few minutes later, a thin man with a shock of Einstein-like hair came over to her. “Ms. Taylor?”

  “Mr. Rosen?”

  “Sorry—I’m a little late,” Rosen said, out of breath. He plopped in the chair across from her as if he had just finished a run. His LinkedIn photo was obviously from some years back. When compared with Tommy, he showed a lot of wear and tear, but then she always suspected that Tommy—being the vain preppy that he was—had undergone some facial restoration.

  “No problem,” she said to his apology for tardiness. “It gave me a chance to catch up on some e-mails.” Zoie put her phone away and folded her hands on the table. “Now, Mr. Rosen, fill me in. Why did you want to talk to me?”

  “Tommy said you were good looking,” Rosen said with a crooked smile. “He also said you were all business.”

  “Well, thank you for the compliment. And, yes, I have that reputation.”

  “Tommy probably never said anything to you about
your looks when you worked with him. That would have been out of line. So now that you don’t work there anymore, just thought I’d pass that on.”

  “Okay. So, Mr. Rosen, what’s this about?”

  “Call me Sy.”

  “Okay, Sy, tell me your client’s story. I understand it has something to do with the Crayton Foundation and an unsuccessful grant application.”

  “Mind if I call you Zoie?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Then, Zoie, what I’m about to tell you should go no further. This is just between you and me. I want your take on things. And I don’t want to put you in an awkward position with Crayton.”

  “Believe me, Sy, I don’t intend to do anything that would put me in that position.”

  “Okay then.” He took a deep breath. “My client, Magnum Youth Literacy, has been operating successfully for twelve years. It has two arms: a for-profit program for children whose parents pay for reading tutoring and the like, and a 501(c)(3) arm, a separate entity that serves children whose parents can’t afford to pay. In fact, the needy children make up the bulk of the program’s participants.”

  “So the corporations are separate?”

  “Yes and no. They share a building, and they share the teachers, who are paid by the hour. The teachers can work for either corporation. They get separate checks based on the number of hours working for either Magnum or Magnum Plus Reading, the entity that serves the need-qualified students. Simple enough, huh?”

  “Seems so. Go on.”

  He handed her the colorful Magnum brochure. Then he continued in a quiet voice. “For the last three years, Magnum Plus has been receiving grant funds from the Crayton Foundation and from several other foundations. Last year the grant advisor from Crayton told Magnum Plus that its application for a continuing grant was in order. Though the advisor could not promise future funds—based on a recent program review, in which Magnum Plus received an A—she thought it likely that Magnum would get another grant.”

  “I know that Magnum didn’t get the grant, so what happened?” Zoie asked, equally as quiet.

  “Magnum Plus was notified that it was a finalist for last year’s funding cycle. And then nothing happened.” Rosen threw up his arms.

  “What do you mean ‘nothing’?”

  “No funding. No explanation as to why Magnum had missed out.”

  Zoie took a deep breath and then said, “The Foundation can’t give any grantee a guarantee of ongoing funding.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Taylor, for stating the obvious. The bottom line is that the Foundation can do what it wants to do. I understand that. My client understands that. But what puzzled my client was how it all went down so last minute. Then, to top it off, Magnum was strongly dissuaded from appealing through the official appeals process.

  Zoie frowned. “What do you mean ‘strongly dissuaded’?”

  “The Crayton grant advisor told Maxwell Bynum, he’s Magnum’s CEO, that Magnum should be satisfied with the good run of grants it had received in previous years. Furthermore, the advisor said that Magnum should accept the decision and not fight it, especially if it ever wanted to be considered for a grant in the future.”

  “That was rather blunt.”

  “I’d call it threatening.”

  “Okay, okay, so what happened?”

  “Maxwell Bynum decided to appeal anyway. He’s bullheaded, in a good way. He followed the application-based appeal process.” Rosen waved his hand dismissively. “It’s all out there on the Foundation’s website. The next thing you know, the IRS is pulling audits on Magnum and Magnum Plus. Then the Foundation’s response to Magnum’s appeal is that it cannot consider grants for any organization under an IRS audit.”

  “But you can’t connect the IRS audit to the Foundation, can you? If that’s what you’re insinuating…”

  “The timing is all too coincidental. Someone sicked the feds on Magnum. You see, Maxwell wasn’t going to take no for an answer, not without a good explanation. Based on the expectation of further funding, Maxwell had kids lined up and ready to start the program. He had instructors on the hook.”

  “Then that’s on him,” Zoie said. “He took a risk, and it didn’t work out.”

  “True, but his risk was well calculated. His operation was clean as a whistle. You can say a lot about Maxwell, but he was determined…persistent. So he started questioning his grant advisor about how the funding had gone. If you look at the grants for that funding cycle, Mahali Salaam made out like a bandit. Have you heard of them?”

  “Of course. They’re one of our premier grant recipients.”

  Rosen wiped his brow and continued. “I’m all for helping the homeless. But this time the process smells.

  “Sy, I don’t know what to tell you. How did your client do in the audit?”

  “Came through with flying colors,” Sy said, waving his hand in the air like a symphony conductor. “There was a preliminary finding that the IRS actually owed Magnum a few thousand dollars. And as far as Magnum Plus goes, its nonprofit status was upheld with no problems.

  “Magnum had to scale down. Kids had to be turned away. A bunch of teachers lost their part-time jobs. This year Magnum is seeking other sources of funding. But it’s too late for those other kids,” Rosen said with a sigh.

  “Sorry to hear that.” Zoie had been listening intently and drawing small circles on the table with her index finger. She stopped.

  “Where does that leave us?” he asked.

  Zoie felt sorry for the kids who missed out on the tutoring and for the teachers, but what could she do? Had there been real malfeasance or just lousy process management? It sounded as if Rosen had no proof of wrongdoing. It would be Rosen’s word against the Foundation’s, her employer, her client.

  “Considering the clean audit, sounds as if Magnum is in good standing to apply again.”

  “I don’t think Maxwell wants anything more to do with the Crayton Foundation. Look, when Tommy told me that someone he used to work with had gone to work for the Crayton Foundation, I just thought I’d give that person an earful and then put the situation to bed. I don’t think Magnum can expect justice without a thorough investigation and without throwing a lot of money at trying to fight the situation. Maybe some other small-time nonprofit out there can save itself some time and effort. Seems that if another nonprofit wants to get funding from Crayton, they will need an in.”

  Zoie didn’t know what to say.

  “Thank you, Zoie, for hearing me out, for letting me get this off my chest. Keep your eyes open.”

  Rosen left, and Zoie sipped what was left of her diluted ice coffee. Her thoughts were consumed by the strange meeting that had just transpired. Sometimes life isn’t fair, she thought. And if the Shelter managed to get more money but Magnum lost out, that wasn’t the Shelter’s fault. The Foundation, on the other hand, needed to be careful.

  Why had Tommy wanted her to talk to Sy Rosen? Tommy must have known she couldn’t do anything. No, she was supposed to listen to Sy Rosen. This was Tommy being Tommy; he was still looking out for her. Tommy was sending her a warning.

  Chapter 18

  Zen and Now

  When Zoie arrived at Nora’s on Florida Avenue, she found Tina already seated and sipping something in a tall glass. In a yellow terry-cloth jogging outfit, trimmed with white piping, Tina looked like a marshmallow chick, the kind kids find in their Easter baskets. Still, Tina made the outfit look elegant, not that it took much. Tina was a beautiful woman, one of the ones who’d look good in most any type of clothing. She had a glow about her. Zoie figured it had to do with Tina’s inner peace. Something Zoie wanted but didn’t have.

  “Happy birthday, sweetie,” Zoie said, giving her friend a peck on the cheek and plopping a gold gift bag billowing with pink tissue on the table in front of her friend.

  “Zo, how pretty! Thank you,” Tina said, gushing.

  As soon as Zoie situated herself at the table, a waitress in a white blouse and tailored
black slacks appeared.

  “Hello, ladies,” she said as she slid a menu in front of Zoie. “What may I get you to drink?”

  “Have you ordered yet?” Zoie asked, noticing Tina’s menu tucked under her beverage plate.

  “No food. I was waiting for you.”

  Turning to the waitress, Zoie pointed to Tina’s frosty glass. “What’s that?”

  “Lemon-ginger iced tea.”

  “Sounds wonderful. I’ll have one of those, please. And maybe later some wine.”

  “Sure, no problem,” the waitress said, leaving the two friends to talk.

  Tina beamed. The hint of pink on her brown cheeks looked natural. Reaching into her gift bag, she pulled out a large ivory candle and brought it to her nose.

  “It’s coconut, but there’s more,” Zoie told her.

  Indeed, there was a large orange one and one the color of raspberry Kool-Aid.

  “They’re wonderful,” Tina said, savoring the scent of each. “I especially love the coconut.”

  “I’m glad you like them—just don’t set yourself on fire,” Zoie said half-teasingly. She’d been to Tina’s condo on more than one occasion and witnessed the place ablaze in candlelight. Tina’s place reminded Zoie of church, its atmosphere mystical yet ripe for disaster.

  The efficient waitress returned with Zoie’s iced tea and placed it in front of her.

  “We’re not ready yet,” Zoie said, picking up her menu for the first time.

  “Don’t rush. I’ll come back,” the waitress said, leaving them.

  Zoie toasted Tina’s birthday. Their glasses clinked.

  “Well, we finally got together,” Zoie sighed as she settled into her chair and pushed her briefcase against the table leg. Even though it was early, Nora’s was busy. The popular organic restaurant drew a good crowd throughout dinner. Tina had arranged the six o’clock reservation because, in her words, “late dinners are tough on the digestion.”

  “I move back to DC, and now I see you less than when I was in New York,” Zoie said with a frown.

  “I know,” Tina began. “I’ve been a lousy friend. So much for getting you reacclimated to the DC groove, huh?” Tina stirred her tea with her straw.