Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

“No,” Jende immediately said. “It’s not true.”

“She says it right here.”

“It’s not true.”

“How do you know it’s not true?”

“She wrote his name down?”

“No, she only mentions them by title, and I know Clark’s title.”

Jende chuckled to himself. “Ah, Leah,” he said. “You should not believe everything you read in the newspaper. People write all kinds of things—”

“Oh, I believe this one, honey. I know those men, what they do … No one’s going to make me think this is impossible—”

“There is no way it can be true — Mr. Edwards would never use bailout money for his own things. And even if the other men at Barclays use this prostitute, how does she know which pocket the money came out of? Mr. Edwards has his own money. He would never touch government money.”

“Maybe not, but what about touching prostitutes? You think he’s never used one or two or a hundred? I bet you’ve seen him—”

“I’ve never seen anything.”

“Poor Cindy.”

“Poor her for what?”

“For when she reads this. She’s going to go crazy!”

“She is not going to believe any of this,” Jende said, getting upset and wondering if Leah was excited about the downfall of a family or just loving the gossip. “It is funny in this country, how people write lies about other people. It is not right. In my country, we gossip a lot, but no one would ever write it down the way they do in America.”

“Oh, Jende,” Leah said, laughing. “You really believe in Clark, huh?”

“I don’t like it when people make up stories about other people,” Jende said, getting increasingly agitated at Leah’s glee. “And how does this woman even know what Mr. Edwards’s title is?”

“Yeah, that’s the one thing that’s funny, right? The madams don’t give the name of the clients to the girls. The girls are just told the time and place to show up and … Please, honey, don’t ask me how I know all this.” Leah laughed at herself. Jende did not join her.

“But Cindy,” Leah went on, “she’s not going to care about any of that. That woman is paranoid to a T, and, let me warn you, she’s going to be asking you lots of questions. She used to pepper me with questions whenever she had a chance, and I had to tell her, ‘Woman, I don’t work for you, you can’t take twenty minutes of my time—’”

“What is she going to ask me?”

“Oh, tons of stuff, honey,” Leah said, and Jende could sense her smiling, perhaps delighting herself with the thought of the entertaining drama that was likely to unfold. “She’s going to ask you if you ever took him to a hotel, if you ever saw one of those bimbos. I’d be really careful if I were you, because—”

“Ah, Leah, please stop worrying yourself for me,” Jende said, forcing himself to sound nonchalant. “If she has any questions, she’ll ask her husband.”

“The poor woman. I’d hate to be in her shoes. Any of their shoes. Now you see why I never bothered getting married?”

Actually, Jende thought, you didn’t get married because no one wanted to marry you, or you didn’t find anyone you loved enough to marry, because no woman with a brain intact will say no to a man she loves if the man wants to marry her. Women enjoy making noise about independence, but every woman, American or not, appreciates a good man. If that wasn’t the case why did so many movies end with a woman smiling because she finally got a man?

“I mean, marriage is good, don’t get me wrong,” Leah went on, as Jende barely listened because he was praying the story was fake and Cindy would be able to tell that someone was out to hurt men like Clark. “They’ve been through a lot, you know. Clark almost died one time — ruptured his appendix so bad it burst; he had to be rushed into emergency surgery. And I think, if I remember clearly, that was the year Mighty was born a preemie. Apparently, Cindy only wanted one child, and they didn’t plan for Mighty — at least that’s what I heard. Though I bet Cindy is thanking her lucky stars she had a second child, now that Vince has run off to India and Mighty’s the only one left … Anyway, the poor thing spent a whole month in the hospital. Clark and Cindy, God bless them, they pulled through together. But that’s marriage, right? He tells me to send her calls to voicemail, but when you see them at company parties, you’d think they’re the happiest couple in—”

“I’m sorry, Leah—” Jende said, looking at the clock and starting the car.

“Some people are real good at covering up their shit, and these people, if you weren’t in my position, you wouldn’t know a thing judging from how they’re laughing and—”

“I’m sorry, Leah,” Jende said again, “I really have to go get Mighty.”

“Oh, sorry, honey!” Leah chimed. “Go on, but promise you’re going to call me and tell me what happens when Cindy finds out. I’m dying to know!”

Jende dismissively promised to do so and quickly hung up, remembering only minutes later that he hadn’t asked her how her job search was going. The last time they’d spoken, Leah had sounded depressed about not getting any calls back after sending out over fifty résumés, but today she’d sounded cheerful, thanks to sordid details about the lives of others. Women and gossip.

But what if Leah wasn’t just making up gossip to pass the time? He called Winston as he drove uptown, hoping to ask him to read the story online and advise him on what he needed to do, but Winston didn’t pick up. He thought about calling Neni but decided it would be useless — what would she say besides something along the lines of what Leah had said?

He needed to decide what he was going to say to Cindy when he picked her up at five. He had to assume she’d read the story. He had to imagine that she would have questions for him as they drove to Lincoln Center, where she was to meet a friend for dinner and the opera. He had to be prepared to assure her again and again that he had never seen Clark with a prostitute, and that was the truth: He had never seen Mr. Edwards with a prostitute with his own eyes. He had to be ready for Cindy to doubt him, but he had to try as hard as he could to convince her that he knew nothing about it and everything he’d written in the blue notebook was the absolute truth.

“Good evening, madam,” he said as he held the car door open for her.

She did not reply. Her countenance was as hard as marble, her eyes covered with sunglasses in the light darkness, her lips pursed so tightly it was unimaginable they had ever broken into a smile.

“Lincoln Center, madam?”

“Take me home.”

“Yes, madam.”

He waited for her questions, but nothing came — not one word during the forty-minute traffic-laden ride to the Sapphire, not even a word on her phone. He imagined she had turned her phone off, and he couldn’t blame her for silencing the world at such a time — her friends were probably trying to reach her to express their shock, tell her how awfully sorry they were, say all manner of things that would do nothing to take away her disgrace. What good would it do her to listen to all that? And if they weren’t calling her, they were calling each other to say, can you believe it? Clark of all people? Poor Cindy must be utterly devastated! But how could he? Do you think the story is true? What’s she going to do now? And they would go on and on, saying the same kind of things his mother’s friends used to say in their kitchen in Limbe when one of their mates’ husbands had been caught atop a spread-eagled woman. In New Town, in New York, the women all seemed to agree that the friend had to find a way to move on, forgetting that the wreckage of so devastating a betrayal cannot easily be cleared away.