Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

Parkhurst blinks slowly. The more their business has grown, the more Parkhurst likes to give outsiders the impression that his attorney lives next to his skin. Brian has never before tried to get in the way of a PI&B project, but he remembers vividly the night he’d visited that art gallery; the sound of neighbors talking in the night: a particular mood of serenity and contentment. He knows the essence of the city is its neighborhoods, most of which are being systematically broken into by developers — their constructions driving out the old homes and families, ushering in nonresident owner-investors, anti-communities made up of transients and tourists — no personal history or investment in the place where they’ve landed. He thinks of the little brown-faced doll on Fernanda’s desk. For all they know, her grandparents live on that very street. Now he takes a breath and begins listing worst-case scenarios. “It’s old, Jack, like historic old. The street in question doesn’t even border the District — it’s deep, old neighborhood. According to our new intelligence,” he lies, “there will be a citizens’ turnout that’ll make those hippie tree-huggers look like a tea party.” He shakes his head. “We could be tied up for years.” And you, he thinks, vain old man, do not always get want you want.

Parkhurst studies Brian’s face. Over the years, he’s come to rely increasingly on Brian to help guide projects. Still, the old man thrives on resistance, derives jolts of inspiration from roadblocks. “That could be fun,” he says. “Haven’t seen a goddamned crowded zoning meeting in years. ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.’ ”

Sun Tzu. One of Jack’s favorites. Brian nods. “Right, right. But then there’s plain bad decisions. Remember the publicity nightmare when they gutted Overtown to put in I-95?”

“Terrible move.”

“Disastrous.” Brian folds his arms as they stop before his office. “We’ve got to be smart about risk-reward ratio, take another look at cash flow. There’s no parking, no infrastructure, and frankly, I’m concerned that the downtown corridor is approaching saturation.”

The recessed lighting makes a nimbus of Parkhurst’s white comb-over. He looks down the hall past Brian for a long moment. “Brian, I hear you.” Parkhurst’s tone is modulated now; his white brows lower. “At this point, we’re more than three-quarters in. Tony Malio did beautiful work greasing the zoning board and we have an initial clearance there. I met with the Aguardiente group and shook on it.” He lets the glass corridor partition swing shut behind them as Brian turns. “So here’s what we’re gonna do: we’ll send Tony back out in the field — the Citizens’ Action Corps, is that it? Have him grab a paralegal, go visit the natives, shake some more hands, throw another third, up to double, onto the payouts. Make everybody happy.”

The two men gaze at each other a moment. Finally Brian lifts his chin, smiles. “Of course, Jack, excellent plan.”

Parkhurst slaps Brian on the arm. “Good man, Brian. Thanks for speaking up. Honestly. Solid gold.”

He watches Parkhurst turn back down the hall, lifting his eyes to the embedded ceiling lights as if gazing toward heaven. The glass partition whispers shut. Brian taps the glass corridor wall to his office, then lets his head tip forward, gently, until the top of his forehead touches the closed office door.

SLUMPED IN HIS CHAIR, Brian coughs, tries to clear his head, his spiraling disappointment. He has hours yet to go: phone calls to the Latin Builders Association, the Planning and Zoning Board, and the Regional Planning Council; a polenta Bolognese from the executive dining room; a spirited visit from Javier, his voice booming over Brian’s desk, talk of another gloriously named project.

There’s a call from Stanley. He listens in the dilated office light as his son tells him about difficulties, girlfriend, money … Stanley says he wants to arrange a meeting . Like a client. Brian’s concentration hazes into a reverie of throttling Parkhurst.

“So Dad?” his son is saying. “That okay? Yeah?”

“Did you talk to your mother?” he asks reflexively.

“Mom?” Stanley sounds irritated; then he sighs. “She’ll just say the same thing.”

Brian pushes his fingertips into his temples, rubbing.

“How about can we just agree on meeting at the house?” Stanley’s voice is rigid. Brian finally realizes that his son is under some sort of duress; he tries to pay attention. Brian must’ve said something appropriate or reassuring at last because Stanley sounds happier now. “So, cool. We’ll come over. It’ll be good.”

Brian spots Fernanda on her way out, a gray naiad rippling in the glass wall, and he’s struck by an ancient memory. Twelve years old, feeling dizzy and sick, stretched out on a pew in a tiny mission chapel. He had visited this place with his family. The church was white as snow, the ceiling ribbed with timber, and an immense golden Jesus was pinned to the wall above the altar. The church, the dry hot air, the smell of sage, the sight of a black-eyed girl with dimpled feet and a black velvet ribbon around her hair. It comes back to him in finely etched detail — the sweetness of mariachi ballads and Mexican Spanish and the clear air. Suddenly he is asking his son, “Stan — have you ever heard of such a thing as a mud cookie?”

There’s a brief silence, then breath — almost a laugh. “Well — yeah. I guess so.”

“What is it exactly?”

“If we’re talking about the same thing… it’s pretty much what it sounds like. Maybe they add some lard to hold it together, but it’s basically dirt. People live on them, in some countries.”

“God,” Brian murmurs.

“Well, if it’s that or starving to death? You take the cookie. Why you asking about that?”

There it is, Brian realizes, the reason he’d tried to deflect Parkhurst from the one neighborhood: he imagined telling the story to his son, how he’d stood up to that greedy Goliath, on behalf of all those poor and dispossessed. Score for the other side. He’d imagined the approval in his son’s face, at last. “Oh, just something I saw,” Brian murmurs. “Nothing important.”

AVIS RUNS HER HANDS OVER THE UPHOLSTERY on her chair arms. Back and forth. New girlfriend: her husband had tried to warn her. She registers, in her peripheral vision, the girl, this Nieves, gazing around her dining room, tipping her drained Villeroy & Boch cup — peeking at the manufacturer. Brian sits in the matching arm chair to her right, Stanley sits at one end of the couch, oriented toward them, watching Nieves— awaiting her command . Normally Stanley comes to their house only on the holidays. Avoiding his sister’s ghost, Avis supposes. And herself.

Avis pours a half-refill of tea for the girl. “Did you inherit your china?” Nieves asks. Acquisitive thing. “It looks valuable.”

The girl really is quite striking. She has the translucent face of that starlet… The actress’s name has flown right out of Avis’s head, but she can’t help noticing the way the girl wears her dark hair in similar long, smooth twists. Her skin is a satiny caramel with notes of mocha and chocolate, her eyes black almonds. Avis wonders if growing up with such a cinematically beautiful sister has made Stanley too vulnerable to beauty. The young woman leans back, still clutching her cup, and Avis notes the fullness of her breasts and a certain thickness about the girl’s body, as if she were older than Avis initially thought. She stretches, bending slightly, then finally smiles. Stanley says, “Mom bought it on a trip we took to Germany. Years ago.”