Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

“We have a wise old saying in South Florida,” Brian intones. There’s a murmur of laughter around the table. “Show me the money.”

Waiters in black tuxes and bow ties mill around the table ferrying trays of glasses, bamboo and sugarcane stirrers, a swirl of Spanish under the strands of Sinatra. The mayor’s chief of staff comes to greet Brian en route to the grand dining room, and Javier glimpses the tubby governor and entourage on their way out. A couple of the Lennar people stop by the table, one thumps Brian on the back so he can hear hollow thuds. “Whadya call a group of lawyers at the bottom of the sea?” Sydney Eckles, a site contractor, grabs Brian’s arm.

Brian gives a patient half-smile to the wrought iron chandelier. “Really? You just heard that one, Sydney?”

“A good start!” Sydney hoots with laughter.

“Really, Eckles — long as you been around? Best you can do?”

He stops and straightens as Chantelle appears; two waiters place the trays on folding stands. Brian admires her queenly profile, the way she lowers each plate, giving it a slight turn to center their steaks.

BRIAN FORBIDS HIMSELF certain memories. Like the times Felice waited up past her bedtime for him to come home from work — three, four, and five years old. Her face seemed to go pale with joy when he opened the door, Daddy . He’d loved her profoundly: there were times he worried he loved her more than even Stanley (it wasn’t true). He’d taken her to her first day of kindergarten and he’d stayed at the curb, watching, long after she’d gone in. He’d loitered outside on a bench, kicked at the grass, stared at the doors of the school until one of the teachers came out and told him — gently chiding — that Felice was playing happily. For years, he’d read her bedtime stories, her small, warm head resting against the cove of his chest: once, he’d read to her from a library book that had turned out to be more sophisticated than he’d expected. He worried she was bored — especially after a long meditation on children playing in a field — but his six-year-old daughter had looked up from her pillow, saying, “That’s you, Daddy. You catch us.” No . He couldn’t think of that without feeling his throat tighten. The children were small and Brian and Avis still young, holding each other inside shining nets, in equipoise. Early spring nights where they sat together on the hood of the car eating ice cream, watching for the red pulse of a passing space station. Is that what a happy family looks like? He would have sworn it was. A family like any happy family. He wanted only to keep them whole and entire: to provide. But perhaps that’s where the problem was? The drive to pour oneself out, into the providing?

Chantelle nods at Brian as she returns to clear some platters. She bears away Gavin’s nearly unmarred steak with an air of mournful dignity. Brian hopes that she will take it home later for dinner. At one time the lunches had seemed useful — instead of chewing over the same old cases with other lawyers at La Loggia, these get-togethers gave him a chance to collect intelligence from a cross section of architects, bankers, elected officials. But Brian became impatient — it was all developer gossip, analysis of their next car and boat purchases, rubbing elbows with, frankly, subordinates and the semi-educated — agents, appraisers, and engineers. The indigenous population, as Javier puts it. One day Chantelle appeared, a trainee server for their table: Affirmative action hire, he thought. Her face a young, frightened translucence. Brian spoke to her while she studied the older server. She was the same age as Felice. He learned that Chantelle was on summer staff, still a student at Gables High: she’d been in some of Felice’s classes in middle school. When he said Felice’s name, her eyes ticked to his face “Everyone knew Felice, sure.” She stopped. “Are you her dad?”

Brian closed his eyes and a white star of light bloomed behind his eyelids. He smiled as Chantelle asked, “Did she become a model? That’s what I heard.”

It doesn’t matter that much to Brian if they talk to each other — simply catching sight of her is enough. These moments of contact with Chantelle are small indulgences. They rarely mentioned Felice after that first meeting, but suddenly he had a marker, a buoy in darkness. He never misses summertime lunches at Joe’s. If Chantelle is out sick, he feels bereft. When she moves to his side of the table, he says, “How you doing today, sweetheart?”

“Just fine, Mr. Muir.” She doesn’t pause in her clearing.

“I guess you’ll be heading back to school soon.”

A faint smile. “I just started fall semester. But I’ve got morning and evening classes, so I can stay on lunch service.”

“Fall semester?”

“I started at Miami-Dade.”

“Ohh, yes…” She’s eighteen now. Beginning college.

Brian catches Conrad saying to Harold Wisen, relationship manager at First Trust, “Hear we’re cracking Little Haiti?”

Chantelle hands her tray to a busboy and turns.

Harold, in the visitor’s seat, leans across Gavin — who now seems to be napping with his eyes open. “No shit? It’s going through? Who’s doing the financing? You guys must be getting that property for nothing.”

“It’s part of the Design District, friends,” Javier interjects, simultaneously joking and serious, eyeing Brian, “Remember? Making the downtown bloom?”

Brian glances at Chantelle’s impassive profile as she clears Conrad’s plate. He should help Javier shut Conrad down before he blabs too much. Chantelle picks up the last piece of cutlery, her back straight as a carpenter’s level, her expression formal.

Conrad laughs and closes his eyes to drink. “Right, right — we’re saying the block’s in the Design District —neat, huh? Northeast Fifty-sixth Street!”

Gavin says mournfully, “Aguardiente Group never got that zoning nailed down. They don’t like talking to the neighbors. But our man bagged it.” He nods at Brian. “High-density and mixed-use, right?”

“That zoning board.” Brian can’t resist the boast. “They were out for my blood.”

“Always,” Javier says. His wingman.

Brian gives a good dash of salt to the remains of his New York strip. “Northeast Fifty-sixth. I went to an art opening there. It looked like a combat zone. There was this weird old space, closer to the west. I think it used to be someone’s house.”

“Residential.” Conrad checks the bottom of his drained highball glass, then looks around hopefully. “Suburban. As in suburban warfare. Ha.”

“That area, they’ll be begging for high density. You’re doing them a favor,” Harold says. “So you are all set with that financing?”

“Gentrify me, oh baby!” Conrad breathes, lifting the glass from his server’s hand.

“Shit, man.” Javier has a look of furious concentration, staring around the table. “Build on the outskirts — there’s the Everglades. Suburbs is all freakin NIMBY. And try to be nice and fix up the core? They’re hollering gentrification. Where the hell you supposed to put people?”

“Hey, you don’t have to tell me,” Harold says dolefully.

“Follow the money, baby,” Conrad says.

Brian draws himself up and looks around at the table. “We’re doing good work here and there isn’t a goddamned thing to apologize for. Building houses is God’s work. Look at those missionaries in — where do they go? Guatemala? Putting up those shacks for people.”

“Yeah, the only difference is that ours have a security system downstairs,” Javier says, laughing. Brian can’t tell if he’s agreeing or mocking him.

“He’s right, actually,” Harold says. “It is God’s work. I believe it.”