25.
Since his arrival, Lucas has all but commandeered Lillian’s office—the only secluded area within Communitiv.ly’s open-plan space—displacing Lillian to an annex desk by the bathrooms. By all appearances, Lillian has taken the move with team-player positivity, but Wendy’s sure it irks. She knocks on the door and Lucas tells her to come in.
He sits on the floor in a yoga pose, legs bent half-swastika while his torso sticks straight up like the top half of a charmed cobra. His jacket and dress shirt are draped across Lillian’s desk, and he’s wearing only a shrunken white crewneck. Wendy can see both the firm curve of Lucas’s pecs, and the fact that his arms above the elbow are inked with the kind of fluorescent koi fish popular among California surf-bros and singers in late-nineties ska-punk bands. They don’t suit him at all.
Wendy awaits instruction. Lucas remains still. She wonders if this is a power play learned from the autobiography of a celebrated American CEO, or if it’s a sex thing, Lucas showing off his tone and flexibility at the directive of a men’s mag listicle, or if she simply caught him in the midst of a midday exercise routine. He doesn’t seem embarrassed.
“Sit,” he says, and Wendy looks for a chair. There aren’t any except the leather one behind Lillian’s desk that would have her facing his back. The excess folding chairs that usually cramp the office are nowhere to be seen.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” says Wendy. She seats herself on the floor, bunching her skirt around her knees.
“You look tense,” Lucas says, though he’s the one holding the rigid position.
“You’re not looking so relaxed yourself,” says Wendy.
“Observant,” says Lucas, who now unlocks his muscles and stands. Wendy’s not sure if she should stand as well or stay seated. If she stands, it’ll look like she’s mimicking him, but if she stays seated, then he’ll be talking down from the mount of male authority. She stands. It must be all in her head. Lucas moves back behind Lillian’s desk and eases himself into her office chair. Wendy’s left standing.
“You see the mockups?” she asks.
“Fantastic,” says Lucas, batting his lashes. Wendy’s not sure if it’s a tic or an affectation. She guesses the latter. Everything he does feels deliberate. “You really managed to capture something there, the convergence of blue collar pride and sex appeal. The dignity and eros of someone who works with his hands. Like that old Mapplethorpe shot of Richard Gere, but much less gay-seeming. Babette in design is already in proofs. This will happen fast. We’re talking billboard tomorrow, prime time spots on the networks, a full page in Sunday’s Times. All hands on deck. The vote’s days away. The other agencies I met with said there was no way they could meet our timeline. That’s why I like an underdog. You strive for the impossible.”
“You spoke to other agencies?”
“How cute, you thought you were the only one. Seriously, you did an excellent job. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to see it.”
“I managed. So are you finally going to tell me about the product? I think I deserve that at this point.”
“Tomorrow, I promise. You’ll get a private presentation. Everything will become clear. I would today, but it takes a minute and I don’t have time. As I said, things are moving fast, and there’s a new problem that we have to deal with. A big problem. The rest, unfortunately, can wait.”
“What’s come up?”
“The police have made an arrest in the Cortes case.”
“And this is bad news?”
“Well it’s not good,” says Lucas, “considering who they’ve arrested. It’s certainly not good news for our cause.”
“Who have they arrested?”
“They’ve arrested the wrong guy is who they’ve arrested.”
“And you know better than the police?”
“I don’t know whether he’s the guy who did or did not do the murder. What I do know is that he’s the wrong guy as far as we’re concerned. I do know that who gets arrested generally has little to do with who’s committed the crime. I know that the DA’s office is desperate for a quick conviction. I know a justice system with a history of finding the closest African American, filling the jury box with suspicious white folks, and letting the problem solve itself.”
“You still haven’t told me who they’ve arrested.”
“The doorman,” says Lucas. “The doorman from Cortes’s building.”
Wendy feels nothing. No sense of further understanding or justice served. The revelation only gives rise to a new set of questions. She says, “Motive?”
“They don’t need motive.”
“And why is that?”
“They have something better than motive.”
“And what’s that?”
“They have narrative.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I’ll weave you a tale. Working black man with bills to pay. Say he’s bought an apartment in Harlem pre ’08. Took out a floating-rate mortgage because an asshole Realtor told him to. Some C&S trader bundles that mortgage into a CDO and sells the risk off to another bank, which in turn sells it off to someone else. The housing bubble bursts just as our guy’s interest has gone through the roof, so he’s in big, and the new bank that owns his mortgage refuses to give him a loan mod, even though he thought his tax dollars on the bailout were specifically designated to allow banks to give these kinds of breaks to homeowners. Meanwhile, he’s put 20K into the apartment which has depreciated by half, so either he can sell the place for
