Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

But him … thank God, he still had a job.

His gratitude overflowed every time he picked up the car from the garage, knowing he could be jobless like many all over the country. He read of job losses daily in Clark’s discarded Journal and watched news segments about layoffs on CNN after work.

Every night he went to bed hoping it would get better soon, but it would only get worse in the coming weeks.

More jobs would be lost, with no hope of being found in the immediate future. The Dow would drop in titanic percentages. It would rise and fall and rise and fall, over and over, like a demonic wave. 401(k)s would be cut in half, disappear as if stolen by maleficent aliens. Retirements would have to be postponed; visions of lazy days at the beach would vanish or be put on hold for up to a decade. College education funds would be withdrawn; many hands would never know the feel of a desired diploma. Dream homes would not be bought. Dream wedding plans would be reconsidered. Dream vacations would not be taken, no matter how many days had been worked in the past year, no matter how much respite was needed.

In many different ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now, Jende reasoned, was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing.

And yet, all through the land, willows would weep for the end of many dreams.

THEY DROVE TO THE CHELSEA HOTEL AT LEAST A DOZEN TIMES IN THE first five weeks after Lehman fell. Clark seemed to need those appointments more as hysteria in the market grew and the weight on his weakening shoulders got heavier; he seemed to need them desperately, like a scorched land panting for rain. It was as if they were his sole path to aliveness, his sole means of feeling sane in a demented world — only when he called to confirm each appointment did his tone change from morose to expectant. Always, he confirmed the rendezvous on the way there. Always, he verified with the person on the phone that the girl would do the acts she had promised to do on the website. Always, he nodded, and sometimes smiled, as the person assured him that he would get his money’s worth, that the girl would make him very, very happy.

In the driver’s seat, Jende pretended not to hear anything. It was his job to drive, not to hear. Before every appointment he pulled up in front of the hotel, dropped Clark off, and searched for a spot on the street. There, he waited until he got a call from Clark to pick him up in five minutes. When Clark reentered the car, Jende saw a man who looked relaxed but, in other ways, was no different from the man who had exited. His hair was combed back, as when he left the car. His blue shirt was without wrinkles, his collar without a dent. No guilt was evident in his demeanor.

Jende drove him wherever he needed to be next and asked no questions. He had no right to ask questions. Sometimes when Clark reentered the car he made remarks about the weather, the Yankees, the Giants. Jende always responded quickly and agreed with whatever the boss said, as if to say, it’s okay, sir, it’s perfectly all right, sir, what you’re doing. And he could tell Clark felt that way around him; that Clark trusted him and knew that no one would ever know. Without speaking of it, their bond had been firmly established — they were two men bound by this secret, by their dependence on each other to move forward every day and carry each other to the achievement of daily and lifelong goals, by the relationship they had forged after almost a year of cruising on highways and sitting in rush-hour traffic.

Theirs was as solid a bond as could be between a man and his chauffeur, but not solid enough for the chauffeur to venture into a delicate territory. Which was why Jende said no more than was necessary the night Clark returned to the car without his tie on.

On any other day, Jende wouldn’t have noticed the tie’s disappearance, since he cared little about ties. Winston had given him one — after Jende told him what Clark had said at the job interview, about him getting a real tie if he hoped to further his career — but he’d rejected Winston’s offer to teach him how to tie it, believing he still remembered how to do it from the couple of times he’d worn one in Limbe. On the morning of his first day on the job, though, neither he nor Neni could figure out how to tie it. Neni had suggested they Google it but he didn’t have the time for that. He’d gone to work with a clip-on, and Clark had complimented his “more professional look,” which Jende took as a validation of everything he was wearing. Later that week, Winston had again offered to teach him, but he’d declined because he found it unnecessary and, besides, why did a man have to tie his neck like a goat? Few ties seemed worth the discomfort, but Mr. Edwards’s blue tie had gotten his attention that morning, when he picked him up.

It was a tie of many flags, and at a stoplight Jende had looked at it through the rearview mirror and recognized the British Union Jack, the American Stars and Stripes, the Drapeau Tricolore of France, il Tricolore of Italy — flags he knew from years of watching the World Cup. He had searched for the Cameroonian green, red, and yellow flag with a yellow star on the red, but it wasn’t there, though the Malian flag was there, for some reason. While waiting for Clark in front of the Chelsea Hotel that night, he considered making conversation about the tie when the boss reentered the car, partly to diffuse the awkwardness that often sat between them in the first minutes after Clark returned, and partly because if he was going to spend money on a real tie, he wanted it to be something notable, and he was hoping Mr. Edwards could tell him where he could get a cheap version of his tie, since his was probably from one of those rich-people stores on Fifth Avenue.

But Clark had returned to the car without the tie.

Jende had opened his mouth to say something and immediately shut it. He had no right to comment on the boss’s appearance. And it wasn’t his place to speculate where the tie could be, though he couldn’t stop himself from wondering. It couldn’t be in Clark’s briefcase — he never took the briefcase into the hotel. It couldn’t be in his pocket — that would make no sense. And he couldn’t have given it to whomever he had just …

“Back to the office, sir?” Jende asked as he pulled out of a parking spot in front of the hotel, wondering how much pleasure the man must have received for him to forget his tie.

“No, home.”

“Home, sir?”

“That’s what I said.”

Immediately, Jende could see how this was going to play out. Clark was going to walk into the house, and Cindy, being a woman and being as inquisitive as women couldn’t help being, was going to ask him where the tie was. Clark was going to stammer and quickly mutter a lie, which Cindy would not believe. Cindy would start a fight, maybe their third fight of the day, and tomorrow Jende’s ears would be subjected to more cringe-inducing details about their marriage. And poor Clark, as if he wasn’t suffering enough, would have one more battle to fight.

Or maybe Cindy wouldn’t notice.

It was already ten o’clock, and she might be sleeping. Clark would return home, undress, take a shower, and, thankfully, the poor woman wouldn’t know a thing.

CINDY ASKED HIM TO COME UPSTAIRS ON AN EVENING EARLY IN NOVEMBER, a week after the tie went missing. It was three days after Barack Obama had been elected president and New Yorkers had danced in Times Square, three days after he and Neni had jumped all around the living room and shed euphoric tears that the son of an African now ruled the world. It was a day after Clark had told him that he would be getting a two-thousand-dollar raise for having been an exceptional employee for one full year.