Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You know I wouldn’t ask if we didn’t really need it. Wish I had stayed in the field like you. Fundraising = gargling sweaty balls with strep throat.
Please don’t murder me in my sleep, J
P.S. Yes, I will make you my special tacos al pastor next time you visit. Promise.
Damn.
Zia belatedly realized that she had stopped right in the middle of the bustling terminal—a boulder in the stream of other travelers. A beleaguered mother pushed a stroller with twin toddlers. A lithe woman with amber eyes looked away as soon as Zia met her gaze. A squadron of Japanese bankers argued as they hurried to their gate, the lack of overt labeling on their secret brand suits signaling just how extravagantly expensive they must be. All of them buoyed along by a ghostly Brian Eno ambient album that was glass and steel and time melted down and transmuted into music.
Zia wanted to see her friends, wanted to hear whatever it was Selai wanted to tell her. Zia did not want to schmooze with yet another billionaire looking to assuage a guilty conscience or launder a dirty reputation. How had Himmat put it? You’re treating symptoms instead of addressing root causes, and you have to beg donors for the privilege of doing so. He really was learning fast. Maybe too fast.
She sighed, scanning the terminal for a map. No need. There was the Blue Bottle sign, just around the bend toward baggage claim and across from a full-wall ultra-high-definition photographic print that must be one of Selai’s—a red gummy bear perched on a craggy peak overlooking an Arctic fjord with water so absurdly turquoise it might leak out of the frame.
Zia set out toward the coffeeshop, then faltered again as an even more disturbing thought struck. Says you’ll recognize him. Asked me not to mention his name, wanted it to be a surprise. Could her dad be nursing a macchiato, waiting for her to waltz in? Her stomach twisted. It would be just like Santiago, wouldn’t it? Manufacturing an excuse to show up one day after years of silence. Buying his way back into her life despite his tacit disapproval of her choices. How appropriate that he would appear right here right now, just as she was en route to a reunion at the boarding school he’d shipped her off to a lifetime ago.
No. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have right now.
Or ever.
The worst part was that she knew she was being unfair. That the silence had been mutual. That both of them had helped erect the wall that had grown between them. But what gave him the right to tear that wall down just because he felt like it?
The café drew Zia like a magnet, her body falling toward it through the crowd, against her will. One foot in front of the other across the agglomerated marble floor, carry-on humming along behind. The sleek espresso machine shrieked as she crossed the threshold into an airy space that was all blonde wood and polished concrete—every detail designed with self-conscious obsession.
There he was. Corner table. Complete with the prophesied macchiato and apologetic lopsided grin.
Not her father.
Maybe worse.
Tommy.
+
4
+
“First off, I want to say I’m sorry,” said Tommy, his blue eyes clear as cut glass. “I didn’t want to ambush you like this, but I was worried that you might not come if you knew it was me.”
Instead of responding, Zia sipped her pour-over—black—and remembered their first date. With butterflies in her stomach, she’d squeezed out of the window and climbed down the rough stone wall into the orchard, where Tommy had been waiting with a fresh Guaria Morada orchid. He’d led Zia by the hand through the shadows, along the lake, and into the forest.
She’d seen the glow long before she could figure out the source. They’d pushed through a patch of brambles and emerged into a clearing with a French bistro table and two chairs standing in the middle. Lights were strung through the branches of the surrounding trees, as if stars had fallen from the sky just to illuminate their meal. White truffle salad. Beef carpaccio. Fresh sourdough smothered in cultured butter. An assortment of raw milk cheeses and homemade jams. Beluga caviar. A twenty-sixteen Loire Valley pét-nat. Ridiculously over the top for a pair of fifteen-year-olds, but ridiculously over the top was precisely the impression Tommy had hoped to make. Corporoyals were like that, and Zia had appreciated the gesture more than she’d like to admit. Everyone wanted to feel special sometimes. What got you in trouble was believing you were better than everyone else.
Tommy cleared his throat. “Jason sent over the draft annual report. You’re doing incredible work in Chhattisgarh. Nine thousand farmers trained. Twenty-five hundred rescued from the brink of bankruptcy. Open source gene license on Dr. Chou’s new miracle seed. Looks like what the Green Revolution was supposed to be. And before that: Ghana, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Bolivia, Taiwan, Guatemala, and the Maldives.” Memories flashed through Zia’s mind—vestiges of doing what little she could to help hollow-eyed survivors in her friends’ respective homelands. “More rigorous program data and better impact metrics than any comparable NGO. You’ve been all over the map tackling every kind of disaster.” He golf clapped. “Kudos, seriously. We need more people like you.”
Zia tilted her head back and gazed straight up into the tastefully recessed light. That’s what everyone was doing all the time: shining forth from a certain remove—dimmable, perhaps, capable of coloration, refraction even, but never dark, never off, until the reaper threw the final switch. She looked back at Tommy. Blinked. Watched his face fade in through the negative after-image the light had impressed on her retinas.
“So, SaudExxon is looking to buff up its rep, or is it you personally?” she asked.
“Changes are brewing,” he said. “And it’s past time we got out ahead of something. Being a laggard gets old.”
“Being a laggard makes sense when you have everything to lose.”
He raised his diminutive cup. “My glass is half-full,” he said. “How about yours?”
Zia stared at her coffee, wishing she could read the shimmer of light on its dark surface like a psychic could tea leaves. Galang was going to flip out when she told him about this.
“For your sake, I hope your reservoirs are too,” she said.
“Ahh,” said Tommy, pushing back a floppy lock of blond hair. “Now we get to it. Oil money too dirty for you? You do the Lord’s work, no ill-gotten alms accepted? That’s how this goes, right?”
“Tommy,” Zia kept her voice as gentle as she could. “Why are you here, really?” She leaned forward. “And don’t try to sell me the same bollocks you did Jason.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Shut his eyes for a moment during which Zia suddenly noticed the crow’s feet that had formed at their corners, the streaks of silver in the blond. The old Tommy hadn’t known how to rein himself in, hadn’t wanted to know.
When he spoke his voice was rough. “Look, I just—” He stopped, started again. “This reunion. I know it’s silly, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’ve been thinking about us a lot. And that’s even sillier—laughable, even. But I— As the date got closer, I just couldn’t get it out of my head. I was such a total ass back then. To you. To everyone. And I just couldn’t bear the thought of sipping cocktails and pretending to be interested in all the bullshit catch-up. And I know we would never have a chance to really talk, that you wouldn’t want to anyway. So I just figured—”