“I’m sorry, Rhett,” I said as he paid for our meal. “But I’m not the person you think I am.”
Once we got outside, he wrapped his muscular-but-not-beefy arm around me as a best friend would. The embrace was strange but comforting, especially when paired with his cologne, which was woodsy with hints of lavender, as if to say, I’m manly, but that doesn’t mean I can’t cry.
“You’re right, Darren. You’re not the person I think you are. You’re probably a lot better. But let’s do this. Just come up to the office and see what the vibe is. If you don’t like what you see, you can jump in the elevator and leave. I’ll go back to being the guy ordering coffee from you, and you’ll go back to being the guy who’s getting it for me. Sound fair?”
Reader: Ending a pitch with “Sound fair?” is a common sales tactic. Most people don’t want to be viewed as unfair or unreasonable, so they’re more likely to give in, especially when what someone is pitching does sound fair enough. Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
If I had known where that question would lead me, I might have thought twice about going up to the office. I might have shrugged his arm off my shoulder, and said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” returned to my soldiers, and put my black apron back on. I might have also just hopped on the subway, went to Bed-Stuy, and buried my face in Soraya’s chest, seeking refuge somewhere safe. But I didn’t.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds fair.”
We crossed Park Avenue and entered the building. But instead of cutting left for Starbucks, I went straight: across the lobby, past the security guards, and into an elevator headed for the thirty-sixth floor.
4
We entered the elevator. A woman already inside pressed the button for the thirtieth floor. On seeing Rhett, she smiled.
“Which floor?” she asked, beaming like a firefly’s ass.
“Thirty-six, thanks,” Rhett said, grinning at me.
She folded her arms, squinting. “So you’re the floor making all of the noise and having the best parties, huh?”
Rhett backed into a corner, raising his hands in surrender. “Guilty.”
“Rumor has it that you have to pay the security guards not to call the cops when you all get too rowdy.”
“The truth is that it’s usually the security guards who are the rowdiest when they hang with us.”
The elevator bell rang, signaling we were at her floor. She walked out but not before looking back at Rhett.
“So, are you going to invite me to one of your parties?”
“Every Friday at six,” he said, giving her a mock salute.
As the elevator climbed, the sound of bass-heavy music shook the cab like a mild earthquake. The higher we went, the more violent it became. My heart beat irregularly at the thought of cables snapping and me plummeting thirty-six floors to my death.
“What is—?”
Rhett placed a soft finger on my lips. “This is where men and women are made, Darren. If you don’t just survive but thrive here, you will be able to do anything.”
The doors opened to an elevator bay with see-through glass doors to the left and a pair with frosted glass to the right. Through the transparent doors sat a young white girl with short hair, glasses, and sharp features. A blond guy, who could’ve been her twin, leaned over her desk and caressed her face before she slapped his hand away. But it was the frosted doors to the right that the noise blared from.
Fuzzy silhouettes moved beyond those doors: jumping, running, and whizzing by all to the sound of Wiz Khalifa’s “We Dem Boyz.” Something small and round, like the Golden Snitch from Harry Potter, ricocheted off the glass.
Rhett turned to me. “You ready?”
I straightened out my shirt and nodded, unsure of what I had to be ready for.
The minute Rhett opened the door, something flew at his face, and before I could register what it was, I found one in my hand.
“Whoa, the brother can catch!” someone shouted from the lawless scene in front of us.
Brother?
“Good reflexes,” Rhett said, pointing to the purple stress ball in my hand.
Everything happened so quickly, I hadn’t even realized someone had thrown one at me. I turned it over and saw the word SUMWUN in white cursive. When I looked back up, my eyes readjusted to the chaos in front of me.
A sea of people ebbed and flowed, spilling out of every corner, entering, leaving, standing on desks, huddling in offices, sitting under tables with fingers in their ears as mouths moved at hyperspeed, throwing balls at one another. Is this real or was there something in those pancakes?
People zipped by on scooters with mugs of hot coffee in their hands. Clusters of guys and girls wrote on floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the East River like they were in A Beautiful Mind. Dogs barked and chased one another. A few people wielded purple-painted Louisville Sluggers behind others sweating on phones, as if they would bash their heads in for saying one wrong word. There was a girl walking around with a piglet in her arms, petting it as she laughed into the headset nestled in her orange-red hair.
I turned to Rhett, who was casually scrolling through his phone. “What is this?”
“This?” He shrugged, smiling at me. “This is the sales floor at 9 a.m. What else?”
“But how can anyone work?” I swung my head around, searching for an answer. “People are on the phones, but there’s music blasting from—where’s the music even coming from?”
“Everywhere. We had speakers installed in every room, even the gym. It’s good for parties, but it also lets everyone know when we’re celebrating a new deal, like now.”
“Gym?”
“Yeah, you wanna see?”
“Sure.”
“Twenty K, Rhett!” an indistinct voice yelled from the void.
“Throw it up!” Rhett said, pointing toward the whiteboard nailed to the wall next to us.
“Already did!”
We took a right and walked down a narrow corridor until we arrived at a door with a workout calendar on it. Rhett opened it. Inside was a small spotless gym with weight benches, dumbbells, treadmills, a flat-screen TV, and other meathead paraphernalia. A white guy with Mediterranean features—black hair, chestnut eyes, olive skin—and more chiseled than Adonis and Hercules put together abused a leather punching bag.
“Mac, Darren. Darren, Mac,” Rhett said.
I had seen Mac in Starbucks before, accompanying Rhett on some of his afternoon coffee runs, so I stood there waiting for him to recognize me as the “Starbucks guy,” but he just pulled off his gloves and extended a calloused hand. I extended mine and he squeezed it, almost bringing me to tears, but I didn’t relent. I just held his stare until he laughed and smacked the shit out of my back.
“Good man! Thought you would’ve backed down after a few seconds, but you didn’t. Solid.”
“Darren,” Rhett said, stretching his hands around. “This is the gym. Mac’s our in-house personal trainer. We have locker rooms with showers, soap, towels, and anything else you need. Let’s continue.
“The office is one large bisected circle,” he explained as we passed a quiet group with their heads down in their laptops.
“This is where marketing sits. They usually spend the day writing copy, emails, working on ads, and supporting sales.”
A pale white woman with brown hair and freckles looked up, waved to me, then focused back on her computer.
“Jen,” Rhett said, causing the woman to look up again. “Meet Darren. Darren’s going to be one of our new SDRs.”
“New what?” I asked.
Jen stood, grabbed my hands, and got so close to my face that I swore she was about to kiss me. Like Mac, I had seen Jen in Starbucks on dozens of occasions, to the point that I knew she preferred soy milk over whole, yet when she looked into my eyes, it was as if she were seeing me for the first time. How does no one recognize me?
“It’s so nice to meet you, Darren! We can’t wait to have you on board. If you’re getting th
e royal treatment from the king himself, you must be special. By the way, has anyone ever told you that you look like Sidney Poitier?”
“Um—”
“Really?” Rhett said, incredulity in his voice as he stared at Jen.
Finally, we can stop all this bull—
“I thought MLK,” he finished.
“No.” Jen shook her head. “Definitely Sidney.”
“Uh, no, never got that before. But thanks.”
We walked on, passing offices featuring different scenes like flipping through TV channels: white people huddled around a table, shouting into a phone; the blond guy from earlier writing on a whiteboard as white guys and girls nodded along; two white guys doing push-ups, slapping their hands together after each one; a pack of white girls eating salads.
“Hey,” I started to ask, “where’s all the Bla—”
“Heads up!” someone yelled before two scooters flew past us.
We came to the far side of the office, where there was a meeting room that ran the length of the hallway.
“This is Qur’an, the main conference room,” Rhett said, opening the heavy wooden doors and pulling out a leather-backed chair for me. I took a seat in front of the long mahogany table.
“Sort of corporate, but we like it. Makes us feel more serious.” He pointed to the table studded with triangular conference phones. There was a large flat-screen TV on the wall across the room, and we were surrounded by glass. Glass floor-to-ceiling windows, like the ones on the sales floor, and clear glass walls. But why the hell is it called Qur’an?
Before I could take it all in, a small, sweaty, red-faced guy with hair sticking out in every direction burst in.
“Rhett,” he said, breathing heavily.
“What is it, Chris?”
“Lucien called. He wants to chat. Now.”
Rhett waved him off. “I’ll call him later. Don’t worry about it.”
“But, Rhett—”
“Dammit, Chris. I said I’d call him later. Stop worrying, will you? It’ll all be fine. I promise.”
“Stop worrying? How in the world can we stop worrying when the board is breathing down our fucking necks, Rhett? You tell me how and I will.”
Rhett didn’t say anything. He just looked at him. Chris nodded and left as quickly as he had come.
“So,” Rhett said. “What do you think of all of this?”
“I don’t even know what all of this is, man. Is this some kind of illegal operation or an insane asylum?”
He laughed, squeezing my bicep. “Definitely not illegal, but I can’t say the same for this not being an insane asylum. Most of us here are crazy, crazy enough to think we have what it takes to change the world and all of that other startup bullshit. But here it’s true. You saw it for yourself, Darren. The burning passion, the unrestrained madness, the electricity. Can you feel it?”
I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t. There was something like lightning in the eyes of everyone I saw. It burned through each of them, like it would destroy them if it wasn’t put to use. It was something I also used to feel before I allowed myself to become complacent.
“I can,” I said, looking down the length of the table. “But I definitely don’t have that spark, Rhett. At least not anymore. I don’t even know what you do here.”
“I told you; we sell a vision.”
“Yeah, but what vision? What does the company actually do?”
“Don’t worry about that yet. I want you to be as pure and pristine for your interview as possible. We can discuss specifics afterward. I promise.”
“Interview? What’re you talking about? I need to get back downstairs, man. The Starbucks could be on fire and I wouldn’t even know.”
He yanked me up by my elbow and pushed me toward the windows. “What do you see, Darren?”
I looked down and flinched. Gridlocked taxis, buses, and trucks flooded the street below us; cyclists wove in and out of them like threadless needles; smoke rose from food carts on the corners; men and women hurried across the avenues, some likely wondering if the babysitter would work out, others worrying if they’d be able to make rent. From where I stood, I felt like God.
“I see New York,” I said. “It’s messy as hell but beautiful.”
He stood behind me, holding my shoulders. “Then if your precious Starbucks was on fire, right now, and the whole building was going down, wouldn’t you at least want to be up here with the view?”
“Uh.”
He pressed a button on a conference phone.
“Hello?” a voice answered.
“Yeah, Clyde. Qur’an.”
Seconds later, the tall blond guy who had been caressing the receptionist’s face strode in, a smirk slowly forming on his face.
“Clyde, Darren. Darren, Clyde.”
I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you, Clyde.” His deep-blue eyes resembled whirlpools ready to swallow me at a moment’s notice.
“Oh,” he said, grinning from ear to ear as he shook my hand. “This is going to be fun.”
* * *
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Rhett said, patting my shoulder before walking out.
I turned to Clyde, who was sitting at the head of the table. “Where’s he going?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, crossing his legs, laying his hands flat.
I wasn’t sure what the hell to do. The guy just kept staring. After a few endless minutes, he took a deep breath and slapped the table.
“Where are you from, Darrone?”
“Bed-Stuy. And it’s Darren.”
“Sure. You’re quite a ways from home, no?”
“Where are you from?”
“Greenwich.”
“Then I’d say you’re even farther from home than I am.”
He laughed, then nodded, never taking his eyes off me. “It sure doesn’t feel like that. So how do you know Rhett?”
“We recently met. I can’t say I really know him, but he seems like a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he is a nice guy. Crazy, brilliant, and manic, but nice nonetheless. Where did you meet?”
I didn’t want him to know anything about me. He reeked of privilege, Rohypnol, and tax breaks, which rubbed me the wrong way. But instead of making something up, I figured telling the truth could be in my favor since Starbucks was a common place where people in the pigment-deficient world met.
“Starbucks.”
He clapped his hands and threw his head back. “I knew it! Here I was, trying to place you. I knew you looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure if it was in the way most Black people look alike. Not in a racist way, of course. You’re the dude downstairs who works at Starbucks, aren’t you? Frankly, I almost missed it. I doubt anyone else here will even recognize you without your uniform.”
Shit. I knew I’d seen him somewhere before, no doubt walking in with Rhett and ordering some disgusting drink. But I wasn’t sure. In the same way Clyde claimed that all Black people looked alike, I couldn’t tell one tall blond WASP from another. It was as if they were agents straight out of The Matrix. But instead of wearing black suits, they wore Ralph Lauren polos, Vineyard Vines pullovers, Easter-egg-colored slacks, and brown leather belts with matching Sperrys.
“Yeah, that’s me.” There was no use hiding it now. I had been found out. And weirdly enough, I felt relieved. This whole hallucination was about to end, and I could wake up and return to my normal life.
He looked me up and down. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Malcolm X?”
“Uh, no,” I said. “But I recently got Martin Luther King and Sidney Poitier.”
“Hmm. Well, you do. Where do you like to go out?”
Is this a joke? I thought that after discovering I worked at Starbucks he would’ve pressed a little button on one of the phones and called Rhett to escort me out.
“I don’t really go out much. I’m usually at work, home, or hanging with my girlfriend.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Girlfriend? How long have
you been dating?”
“It’s hard to say. We’ve been on and off for about nine years now if middle school counts. But I guess I’d say six years since that’s when we first became serious.”
He slapped the table. I flinched. “On and off, huh? I know how that is, brother. I’ve been on and off with a handful of girls. Where’s she from?”
“Yemen, originally,” I replied, unsure why he was so interested in Soraya. But the way he was acting made me feel like I was just chopping it up with someone instead of being grilled.
“Arab, nice. I had one of those once. From Lebanon. You’d think they’d be all covered up and shy, but I gotta tell you, she wasn’t a hijab-wearing Muslim, that’s for sure.” He winked.
I swallowed the anger bubbling up in my throat.
He leaned in closer. “Listen, I’m not allowed to ask certain questions during interviews. At least that’s what I was told. You can’t ask things about race, gender, age, blah, blah, blah. But,” he said, pointing at me, “this isn’t really an interview, is it, Darrone? More like a chat between two dudes getting to know each other, right?”
“Uh, I guess so.” It didn’t feel like any interview I’d had before. I didn’t even know what the job I was not interviewing for was. Or what the company actually did.
“Good,” he said, leaning back and putting his feet on the table, inches from where I sat. I could see dirt in the cracks on the soles of his Sperrys and noticed that he wasn’t wearing socks. It was warm out, but shit.
“How old are you?” Clyde asked.
“Twenty-two.”
“Nice, I’m only two years older than you.”
I nodded.
“How did you end up at Starbucks?”
“I needed a job and applied four years ago. Been there ever since.”
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