I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t. There was something like lightning in the eyes of everyone I saw. It burned through each of them, like it would destroy them if it wasn’t put to use. It was something I also used to feel before I allowed myself to become complacent.
“I can,” I said, looking down the length of the table. “But I definitely don’t have that spark, Rhett. At least not anymore. I don’t even know what you do here.”
“I told you; we sell a vision.”
“Yeah, but what vision? What does the company actually do?”
“Don’t worry about that yet. I want you to be as pure and pristine for your interview as possible. We can discuss specifics afterward. I promise.”
“Interview? What’re you talking about? I need to get back downstairs, man. The Starbucks could be on fire and I wouldn’t even know.”
He yanked me up by my elbow and pushed me toward the windows. “What do you see, Darren?”
I looked down and flinched. Gridlocked taxis, buses, and trucks flooded the street below us; cyclists wove in and out of them like threadless needles; smoke rose from food carts on the corners; men and women hurried across the avenues, some likely wondering if the babysitter would work out, others worrying if they’d be able to make rent. From where I stood, I felt like God.
“I see New York,” I said. “It’s messy as hell but beautiful.”
He stood behind me, holding my shoulders. “Then if your precious Starbucks was on fire, right now, and the whole building was going down, wouldn’t you at least want to be up here with the view?”
“Uh.”
He pressed a button on a conference phone.
“Hello?” a voice answered.
“Yeah, Clyde. Qur’an.”
Seconds later, the tall blond guy who had been caressing the receptionist’s face strode in, a smirk slowly forming on his face.
“Clyde, Darren. Darren, Clyde.”
I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you, Clyde.” His deep-blue eyes resembled whirlpools ready to swallow me at a moment’s notice.
“Oh,” he said, grinning from ear to ear as he shook my hand. “This is going to be fun.”
* * *
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Rhett said, patting my shoulder before walking out.
I turned to Clyde, who was sitting at the head of the table. “Where’s he going?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, crossing his legs, laying his hands flat.
I wasn’t sure what the hell to do. The guy just kept staring. After a few endless minutes, he took a deep breath and slapped the table.
“Where are you from, Darrone?”
“Bed-Stuy. And it’s Darren.”
“Sure. You’re quite a ways from home, no?”
“Where are you from?”
“Greenwich.”
“Then I’d say you’re even farther from home than I am.”
He laughed, then nodded, never taking his eyes off me. “It sure doesn’t feel like that. So how do you know Rhett?”
“We recently met. I can’t say I really know him, but he seems like a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he is a nice guy. Crazy, brilliant, and manic, but nice nonetheless. Where did you meet?”
I didn’t want him to know anything about me. He reeked of privilege, Rohypnol, and tax breaks, which rubbed me the wrong way. But instead of making something up, I figured telling the truth could be in my favor since Starbucks was a common place where people in the pigment-deficient world met.
“Starbucks.”
He clapped his hands and threw his head back. “I knew it! Here I was, trying to place you. I knew you looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure if it was in the way most Black people look alike. Not in a racist way, of course. You’re the dude downstairs who works at Starbucks, aren’t you? Frankly, I almost missed it. I doubt anyone else here will even recognize you without your uniform.”
Shit. I knew I’d seen him somewhere before, no doubt walking in with Rhett and ordering some disgusting drink. But I wasn’t sure. In the same way Clyde claimed that all Black people looked alike, I couldn’t tell one tall blond WASP from another. It was as if they were agents straight out of The Matrix. But instead of wearing black suits, they wore Ralph Lauren polos, Vineyard Vines pullovers, Easter-egg-colored slacks, and brown leather belts with matching Sperrys.
“Yeah, that’s me.” There was no use hiding it now. I had been found out. And weirdly enough, I felt relieved. This whole hallucination was about to end, and I could wake up and return to my normal life.
He looked me up and down. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Malcolm X?”
“Uh, no,” I said. “But I recently got Martin Luther King and Sidney Poitier.”
“Hmm. Well, you do. Where do you like to go out?”
Is this a joke? I thought that after discovering I worked at Starbucks he would’ve pressed a little button on one of the phones and called Rhett to escort me out.
“I don’t really go out much. I’m usually at work, home, or hanging with my girlfriend.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Girlfriend? How long have you been dating?”
“It’s hard to say. We’ve been on and off for about nine years now if middle school counts. But I guess I’d say six years since that’s when we first became serious.”
He slapped the table. I flinched. “On and off, huh? I know how that is, brother. I’ve been on and off with a handful of girls. Where’s she from?”
“Yemen, originally,” I replied, unsure why he was so interested in Soraya. But the way he was acting made me feel like I was just chopping it up with someone instead of being grilled.
“Arab, nice. I had one of those once. From Lebanon. You’d think they’d be all covered up and shy, but I gotta tell you, she wasn’t a hijab-wearing Muslim, that’s for sure.” He winked.
I swallowed the anger bubbling up in my throat.
He leaned in closer. “Listen, I’m not allowed to ask certain questions during interviews. At least that’s what I was told. You can’t ask things about race, gender, age, blah, blah, blah. But,” he said, pointing at me, “this isn’t really an interview, is it, Darrone? More like a chat between two dudes getting to know each other, right?”
“Uh, I guess so.” It didn’t feel like any interview I’d had before. I didn’t even know what the job I was not interviewing for was. Or what the company actually did.
“Good,” he said, leaning back and putting his feet on the table, inches from where I sat. I could see dirt in the cracks on the soles of his Sperrys and noticed that he wasn’t wearing socks. It was warm out, but shit.
“How old are you?” Clyde asked.
“Twenty-two.”
“Nice, I’m only two years older than you.”
I nodded.
“How did you end up at Starbucks?”
“I needed a job and applied four years ago. Been there ever since.”
“Christ, you’ve been slinging coffee for four years? Couldn’t you have gotten another job?”
“I guess, but it’s easy and leaves me time to do other things.”