Jake and Nash looked at me with some degree of puzzlement and anticipation, but Nash did as I asked and shut the door, taking his seat again expectantly.
“Turn around and look at that picture,” I said, pointing at the giant framed close-up of Emmy’s face from the magazine cover.
They both did as instructed, wondering what was my point.
“Look at Emmy’s picture. Now, besides the fact you know who she is, what is the most striking thing about her?” I asked.
They hesitated, but eventually Nash said, “Her coloring? I mean, the white hair and the…”
“Right,” I agreed, saving him from saying what might be inappropriate. “The fact that she’s as black as charcoal. Why do you think she looks like that?” The two guys hemmed and hawed, but Jake finally said, “I read something about some kind of negative albino syndrome?”
“That’s a lie that Emmy used to tell to deflect attention,” I told them. “The truth is that she’s a member of a very, very rare ethnic group, and they all have skin that black, or blacker, even. Nash, have you ever seen Michael in the San Jose office? Do you remember the English girl we had at the reception desk?”
“Um, I’ve been introduced to Michael, and of course I remember Sana,” he admitted.
“And how did they look?”
“Far and away the blackest people I’ve ever seen in my life,” Nash said.
“Right. The simple truth is that these people do live among us, but have been so marginalized for so long that they hide. So our outreach division is doing just that- finding these folks and bringing them into society. We offer life skills training, housing assistance, and job training and placement.”
Both men just stared at me, totally taken by surprise by what I’d just explained.
“So when I say all the rest of this,” waving my arm to encompass the offices in general, “Is to support the outreach program, it’s literally true. I bought Loeltz Property Management originally so I could get these people into quality housing. I started buying restaurants and nightclubs so I could give them jobs. I guess you could make the claim that most other divisions in the company are subsidiaries to outreach, in that sense.”
The two men sat there, absorbing what I’d just said.
“I guess I always wondered why a company that specialized in real estate would even have a hospitality division,” Jake finally said. “It never made any sense to me.”
“Can you guess why I brought all the subcontractors in-house up in San Jose?” I asked.
“Jobs,” Nash said, nodding. “It’s all about jobs.”
“Got it in one,” I said.
Jake leaned back, still thinking about it all. “I took my granddaughter to that burger place in Venice a few months ago. I remember thinking that one of the other waiters was the blackest man I’d ever seen.”
I nodded.
“My preference is to get them service jobs to start, mainly to get used to interacting with people and becoming comfortable in crowded places.”
“My mind is officially blown,” Nash said.
“So, yes, outreach doesn’t make any money. In fact, it’s a giant money pit. But all the rest of what we do? It allows us to keep shoveling whatever money that pit needs, and we will keep doing that,” I said, a note of finality in my voice.
“And this is because of Emmy?” Jake asked.
“There’s more to the story, and if you want to hear it you’ll have to come over to the house for dinner some night and I can get Emmy to explain it all, but basically, yeah. She wants to help her people, and so this is what I’m doing to make that happen.”
“So what is Emmy doing?” Nash asked.
He didn’t sound as if he meant it in any sort of negative way, so I said, “Presenting a public face for her people to rally around. I guess you could say she’s the outreach PR department.”
In San Jose I had a long talk with Pete Ayres, head of the venture capital division. He was very understanding of the idea that profit sharing would be across the whole company. As he pointed out, the way it had been, one hundred per cent of the profit sharing had been limited to just me. This way he’d at least get a tiny chunk of it, right?
A few of the others I talked to about it agreed that the plan was a step forward for all of them, and welcomed the sense of independence the new org chart and job titles gave them. I made it clear it was still my company, and as sole owner, I was still at the top of the food chain, but yes, they were free to run their divisions to the best of their abilities.
Satisfied that everybody really was good with the new arrangements, I wrote out an email to all the heads telling them that I’d O.K.ed the new deal, and we would start on the profit-sharing as of the end of the third quarter. This way the money would come as a sort of Christmas bonus, I explained.
Dinner with Michael and Jassie was a nice respite from the day of meetings, even though Michael and I did talk shop. Mostly, though, we talked about Jassie’s college plans and how she was going to miss her boyfriend when the two graduated next June.
“I’ll miss Buster,” she said, waving a roast chicken drumstick in the air for emphasis. “But we always knew we would probably be going to different universities, so it was never going to be permanent.”
“I’ll meet other guys at college,”she said with a shrug. “And he’ll meet other girls, but none will ever compare with me.”
An image of the terrified girl in the shabby clothes that we brought home that night so long ago popped into my head, and I marveled at the change. She was still small for her age and that would likely never change, but she’d blossomed into a bold, confident young woman ready to take on the world. Her big, almond-shaped eyes were the same, but they now held a sparkle that had been missing when she was eleven.
“How about your friend Addison?” I asked.
“Addy and I are applying to all the same schools,” Jassie said. “If we both get accepted to the same one, that’s where we’ll go. If not, we’ll just have to get together when we can.”
“That’s a very reasonable plan,” I agreed. “Where are you guys applying?”
“Mainly small liberal arts colleges, like Reed in Portland and Scripps in Claremont, or Amherst, Lafayette and Bates on the East Coast,” Jassie said. “We’ve applied to a ton of ‘em.”
“Your dad tells me your grades are good, so you should be able to get into most of them,” I said. “How about Addie?”
“She gets better grades than me,” Jassie said, again with another shrug.
After dinner, Michael and I made our way to the rooftop deck with some Palomas he’d mixed.
I told him that I’d been making it clear to the other division heads that outreach was the reason the whole company even existed, and the new profit-sharing plan would include everybody on the payroll under his purview.
“You told them about the Night Children?” he asked, surprised.
“Not exactly as such, no. I just said that you and Sana were from the same ethnic group as Emmy, and outreach was all about integrating them into society. The only reason I even bothered to say anything was that a few had seen you on the new org chart and had no idea what outreach even was, or why it showed as a serious loss year after year on the balance books,” I explained.
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Michael nodded thoughtfully. “If I’m to understand the new order of things, you’re essentially promoting me to be your… your regent?”
“You already have been, functionally,” I said. “When was the last time I countermanded or overruled anything you’ve done? You’ve been my right hand for years now.”
“It has been a while,” Michael agreed. “But that isn’t all that I meant. Obviously, everything that I’ve done has been in your name and Queen Emmy’s name, and that will continue…”
“The only difference is that I’m giving you a bit more autonomy,” I said. “I’m still going to want your weekly reports, and you can come to me and Emmy with anything major that needs to be dealt with, but as for the day to day, well, I’ll leave the decisions to you.”
Michael was quiet for a while in the way only Night Children could be, as silent and as unmoving as a statue. Finally, he said, “I accept.”
“I never doubted it,” I said, clapping him on the knee. “You’ve always been there for us, from the very start.”
“You and Emmy, you two have given me so much,” he replied, waving his arm to encompass pretty much everything. “Jassie and I, we literally owe you our lives. It is no exaggeration to say that everything that we have, we have because you two saw worth in me. Every day, I have striven to do my best to show that your trust has not been misplaced.”
“I know that it hasn’t,” I said. “Believe me, I know that it hasn’t.”
We spent a couple of hours up there talking about how things were going with finding new strays and bringing them into the fold, and how the major eastern seaboard cities were remarkably unproductive.
“It’s becoming harder and harder to dismiss the idea that someone or some group is actively working against us,” he said. “We should be finding more Night Children than we have been. They simply aren’t contacting us at the rates I would expect, based on experience. Why should there be dozens of Night Children in Montreal who are ready to join us, but none at all in Boston? It makes no sense, unless they’re avoiding us.”
“Yeah, I have my suspicions,” I agreed. Taking another sip of my Paloma, I said, “There’s been something going on that I was hoping meant nothing. I probably should have kept you in the loop about this, but…”
“Is this about the Night Children enclave in Brooklyn?” Michael asked.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that he knew, but somehow I still was. “Yeah, I guess Grant has told you about what Mia has discovered?”
“He’s told me some things, but I would like to hear it from you,” Michael said.
“I’m gonna need another one of these,” I said, holding up my empty glass. After a quick trip down to the kitchen and then back up to the roof with fresh drinks, I laid it all out for Michael, how the visits every few days had started and how Mia had set up cameras to track the guys back to the subway station. I related that a friend of mine hacked the New York subway system’s security cameras and we’d used them to track the strays and piece together their patterns of travel, finally discovering their central base.
Michael listened quietly, asking a few questions here and there for clarification. Eventually, when I’d finally finished my tale, he asked, “What do you think we should do with this information?”
“Nothing, yet. The last thing we want to do is tip off our hand that we know where they gather. I think that in New York we need to follow our same old protocols, and see if any locals reach out to contact us. It may be there is a local leader who might be willing to join up with us, and this is all just paranoia on our part. On the other hand…” I said with a shrug.
“It may be like Chicago,” Michael finished for me.
“Right. And if we know more than they think we do, that puts us in a position of power,” I agreed.
“We are more prepared than we were in Chicago,” Michael said. “Grant and Jody have been training our teams to a truly impressive level, and we’ve been equipping them very carefully. If it comes down to another battle, I expect that we would do very well indeed.”
“It may,” I said. “But I hope not.”
I got to the club later than usual that night, but still put in my appearance.
Making my traditional pass around the room, glad-handing the regulars and meeting their guests, quite a few asked where Angela was. One even commented that it felt strange to see me without her.
“Is she?” Imogen asked, patting her tummy when I explained that Angela wasn’t in the mood to come to San Jose.
“Not so far,” I said. “But we’ve been trying.”
“Poor thing,” Imogen said. “This must be very difficult for you three.”
“It is,” I agreed.
The night seemed to drag on, and I was happy to leave earlier than usual to go back to the lonely condo.
I slept poorly that night, and when morning rolled around I was perfectly willing to get up and go to The Pit for some stress relief.
Ruben wasn’t there, so I just focused on my body and buried myself in a hard workout.
“I think that poor bag has had enough,” a familiar voice said, breaking me out of my zone.
“Hey, Ash,” I said, taking the water bottle she offered. “How’re things?”
“Better, now,” she said, eyeing me with a lascivious wink. When I rolled my eyes, she said, “No, I’m serious. It’s good to see you. Especially in that sexy little outfit,” she added, earning her another eye roll. “If you need any sort of help with your workout, I’d be glad to, um, you know, help,” she said. “And even gladder to help if you need any assistance in the shower afterward.”
“Help,” I said. “I’m being sexually harassed.”
“Anyway,” Ashley said. “If you’re in town for the weekend, wanna get lunch or something? Maybe go for a drive, if you have the time?”
“Will you keep your clothes on?” I asked.
“No promises,” Ashley said brightly.
We did wind up having lunch together, and she told me about how she’d been doing well in the cross country season.
“We finished fourth overall at Nats,” she said, pointing at me with a piece of peanut-sauce-covered chicken on her fork. “I had the second best finish on our team, in twenty-seventh place. Which doesn’t sound good until you realize there were three hundred starters,” she said.
“Cross country really isn’t even my specialty,” she said. “But it’s a great way to end the season, before taking a few weeks off.”
She talked about how her parents wanted her to come home for Thanksgiving, but the airfare was too much, and she’d rather skip the travel anyway and just visit at winter break, and on and on. Sure, it was all pretty mundane, but I didn’t mind. Ashley was just being a friend, and not trying to get in my pants, so that was good. She wasn’t even giving me peeks down her scoop neck T shirt, which was a relief.
I guess, really, what would that even accomplish anyway, since I’d seen her completely nude for extended periods of time? Still, it was nice not having to fend off the aggressive flirting.
After lunch we did go for a drive, west on La Honda Rd out to the coast, then up Highway 1 to Pacifica before returning back to Palo Alto.
“You know what’s funny?” Ashley asked at one point. Answering herself, she said, “I’ve seen more of California riding in your car than I have any other way. I mean, like, I don’t have a car, so it’s campus, and that’s it for me, right? But this?” She said, gesturing out at the Pacific. “It may as well not even exist for all that I ever get to see it.”
“Hey, um, are you going to your speakeasy tonight?” Ashley asked when I dropped her off at her apartment. “If you are, can I come? I want to meet this Angela.”
“She stayed back in Los Angeles with Emmy,” I said. “But yeah, you can come if you want. But don’t wear that silver dress this time. Wear something classy.”
“I don’t really have anything…” Ashley said, distressed.
With a sigh, I said, “Get back in the car. I’m gonna take you shopping.”
“No, I’m sure I can put something together…” Ashley protested.
“Get in,” I said. “I’m not going to-”, I said, stopping myself from saying ‘bring a poorly-dressed date.’ “Spend a ton, but really, any girl should have a nice cocktail dress,” I said, recovering.
I took her to the Nordstrom by campus, where the saleslady was perfectly willing to help us find a nice, classy dress and matching heels. Ashley wound up with a sleeveless sheath dress in a dark blue-gray, the snug knit showing off the shape of her legs and butt nicely.
Thankfully, it was all pretty cheap, too. With a pair of heels and a little clutch the whole thing came to less than four hundred dollars, which seemed very reasonable.
Ashley looked really good that night when I picked her up to go to the club. She had done her hair up in this complicated loose chignon, strands artfully framing her face. She’d spent a lot of time on her makeup, too, transforming herself into a lovely young woman ready to impress.
We got a few raised eyebrows in the club, and yes, I know how it looked, but whatever. I introduced Ashley to the regulars as ‘my friend’ and let them think whatever they wanted.
“You know, my dad still talks about this place,” Ashley said when we sat down.
“What does he say?”
“He asks if I’ve been back since, and he asks about you, too.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I think he’d be O.K. if I was in a lesbian relationship with you,” she laughed. “He was super impressed by you. Hey, can you take a picture? For my dad?” She asked, handing me her phone.
I snapped a few photos, making sure to capture the club’s ornate bar in the background.
I took out my own phone and snapped a pic of Ashley, too. “For Emmy and Angela,” I explained as I texted it to my wives.
“They know I’m here with you?” She asked, surprised.
“Of course they do,” I said. “I don’t keep any secrets.”
“Did you tell them about, um, last time? The car drive?” She asked, turning a cute shade of red.
“About you parading around naked? Yes, as a matter of fact I did.”
“And they weren’t upset?” She asked, looking as if she really wished her drink had alcohol.
“They thought it was funny, to be honest,” I said with a shrug.
Ashley was saved by the waiter asking if we wanted any dinner. Remembering what I’d told her last time, Ashley asked for roast chicken with garlic-grilled Brussels sprouts, almost daring the waiter to tell her that wasn’t an option. Of course he took her order without question, and after I gave my order of rare filet with asparagus and potatoes he left with a little bow.
“I still can’t believe you can just order whatever the hell you want,” Ashley said, shaking her head.
“It’s good to be the queen,” I said, leaning back and spreading my arms out on the back of the banquette.
It wasn’t long after that before the usual trickle of club members came to the table to ‘kiss the ring’ as I’d come to mentally refer to it, somewhat unfairly.
“You said that you have to be a member to get in here, right?” Ashley asked after a while. “And these people are trying to get their friends on the membership list, right?”
“Yeah, that’s a lot of it,” I agreed.
“So my dad’s chance of ever getting in here again is roughly zero?”
I shrugged. “If you let me know when your folks come out for another visit, I can make sure their names get added to the guest list for a night.”
“You have no idea how much my dad would love that,” Ashley said.