“Amen.”
“You know, Mrs. V,” Soraya started, plopping a piece of pizza onto my plate. “You mentioned opportunity in your prayer tonight. What’s funny is that D has jus’ been presented with one but doesn’ plan on takin’ it.”
The three of them glared at me as if I had been accused of a crime. I just kept eating.
“Well, boy, go on,” Mr. Rawlings said, hitting me with those stank eyes only wrinkly-ass Black men know how to do.
“Yeah, Dar. Go on,” Ma said, gripping the hell out of my hand.
“Ah, c’mon, Soraya. Why’d you have to bring it up? It’s nothin’, Ma. Some guy at work today, you know those white techie guys? He asked me to visit his office to talk.”
“Whatchu mean, talk?” Mr. Rawlings asked. “What kinda talk he wanna do, askin’ you to talk outta the blue like that?”
“It wasn’ outta the blue,” Soraya explained, jumping into the entire story. The double registers, what Rhett was like, how I convinced him to buy a different drink, the reverse close.
“Reverse what?” Mr. Rawlings asked. “Sounds like one of those newfangled sex positions y’all young folk be pretzelin’ yourselves into nowadays.”
“Percy!” Ma shouted, slapping Mr. Rawlings’s wrist. “And what, Dar? You didn’ go to his office after work?”
“Nah,” I said, preparing for whatever she was about to lay on me. But instead, she just pulled her hand away and looked down at the white crumbs on her plate. Then the sniffling came.
“C’mon, Ma.” I felt like shit. Mr. Rawlings grabbed another slice of pizza, muttering to himself. And Soraya looked at me like she messed up, which she did.
“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity,” Ma said, staring down at her plate. “You know who said that?”
I took a breath, shaking my head.
“It’s somethin’ your father used to always say. Whenever we were goin’ through a tough time, or somethin’ jus’ wasn’ workin’ out like it was supposed to, he’d turn to me, and say, ‘In the middle of every difficulty lies an opportunity, amor.’ I always believed him. And he was always right. It’s what I told myself when he passed and what I still tell myself today.”
“Look here, boy,” Mr. Rawlings said, staring me down.
I quickly looked up, then away.
“I said look at me,” he repeated, sounding more serious than the time I accidentally crushed his English peas. “Young Black folk, even mixed-up Black and Spanish folk like yourself, don’ get this type of opportunity too often.
“Back in my day, when a white man gave you an opportunity, it came at a cost. You could be his chauffeur, but had to always be available to drive him around no matter if you had plans with your family or not. You could vote, but someone would break your legs if you didn’ vote for the candidate they wanted you to. But either way, an opportunity was an opportunity, and if you took it, and learned how to play their game, you could be successful.”
But I don’t want to play their game. I was fine doing my own thing. Working at Starbucks wasn’t so bad. I had plenty of time to kick it with Soraya. And most important, I was there for Ma whenever she needed me. But it wasn’t until she turned to me, tears running down her cheeks, that I actually considered seeing Rhett.
“Promise me you’ll at least give this a chance. Whatever it is,” Ma said. “That man must’ve seen somethin’ in you, Dar. Somethin’ that everyone in Bed-Stuy sees in you. You owe it to yourself to follow up and see what he wants. Promise me.”
I crossed my fingers behind my back and looked into her eyes.
“Aight, Ma. I promise.”
3
I lied. I lied because I didn’t want Ma to feel like I wasn’t trying to better myself. I lied because of the stank eye Mr. Rawlings gave me as a string of cheese clung to his lip for dear life. But most of all, I lied because I was afraid. You see, it’s easy for someone to walk around telling everyone that they’re “jus’ waitin’ for the right opportunity,” but an entirely different thing when they actually receive it. An opportunity means change. An opportunity means action. But most of all, an opportunity means the chance of failure. And it’s the potential for failure, more than failure itself, that stops so many people from beginning anything. Back then, I was no different.
When I walked into work the next morning, I received a roomful of applause. The room only contained three people, but it was a roomful of applause nonetheless.
“Man, you really gave it to that gringo,” Carlos said, giving me a hearty dap and bringing it in so close I almost blacked out from the thick fog of vodka, weed, and cheap cologne.
“Uh, it was nothing,” I said and headed to the back before noticing Nicole’s wide-eyed look.
“Come here, Darren,” she said, wrapping her thick, plush arms around me. “Where did that come from? It was like you transformed into someone else. Like the Hulk!”
“The Black Hulk, hermano,” Carlos added. “I knew somethin’ was comin’ when you hopped on both registers. You had this look in your eye, like you was the same person but sorta different. Like a superhero who sees the city burnin’ down and you had to step in to help out. Except this Starbucks isn’t like a city, but, wait, maybe it is; if you think about it, we gotta—”
“Yeah, I get what you’re saying, Carlos,” I said, deciding whether to call him out for being high, drunk, both, or something else. But every soldier deserves a break, so I dropped my bag, threw my apron on, and unlocked the front door.
When the room fell silent—that crisp silence before the first person walks in clip-clopping their expensive leather shoes like a horse—someone tapped my shoulder.
“Hey, Darren?” Brian said, looking in every direction except at me.
“Yeah?”
“You think you could, uh, you think you could—shit!—sorry. You think you could”—he quickly brought a hand to his mouth, muffling a still discernible “Penis!”—“Sorry, sorry.”
Now, not everyone with Tourette’s involuntarily curses like a sailor with syphilis. It’s called coprolalia, and only about one in ten people with Tourette’s has it. Brian Grimes—age twenty-six, born in Virginia, raised in Connecticut, avid Dungeons & Dragons player, and spectacular barber—was that one. And even though I’d never sat around a table and battled mythical beasts with him, we often bonded over comic books and our shared ironic hatred of coffee. He also gave me lifesaving shape-ups once in a while.
I put my hands on his shoulders, and said, “Close your eyes and take a deep breath.”
I should also mention that, even though he was older than I am, Brian—perhaps because I was a Black man like him except with a little power—looked up to me. So, being the HNIC, I did my best to make him comfortable, put him at ease, and let him know he was doing a good job.
“Thanks, Darren. What I wanted to ask was if you think you could teach me what you did yesterday?”
“What did I do, Brian?”
“How you, uh, how you—”