Winston sat up and leaned forward.
“This is what you do,” he said, looking at Jende. “You go up to the woman. Not tomorrow. Maybe in two days’ time, so she knows you’ve had time to think about it, eh?”
Jende nodded again.
“You see her and you look her right in the eye. Don’t do that thing where you’re talking and avoiding people’s eyes, acting like a mbutuku, because you’re afraid.”
“Can you just tell me the idea already?”
“You say to her, ‘Madam, I thought about what you want and I understand. But I’m sorry, madam, I cannot do it.’” Here Winston opened his arms and shrugged. Then he creased his brow. “She’s going to say, ‘How dare you, this is the end of you, no more job.’ And then you look at her right inside her eyes and say, ‘Madam, I don’t want to hurt you, but you fire me, I tell everyone about the drugs.’”
“What!” Jende exclaimed.
“Mamami eh, Winston!” Neni said, high-fiving Winston.
“Are you guys crazy?”
“You want to keep your job or not?”
“I want to keep my job, but—”
“But what?” Neni said.
“I’m not going to do this to a poor woman who looks like she has so much of her own troubles. I mean, you guys are sitting here talking as if she’s just a stranger on the street to me.”
“She’s nothing to you!” Neni said. “You think tomorrow you lose your job, she’ll remember your name?”
“You’re just a black man who drives her around,” Winston said. “I’m telling you, Bo, if you know the things I know about this kind of white people, you wouldn’t worry about her.”
“I’m not worried about her!” Jende said. A line of sweat ran down the right side of his face. “You guys think I’m stupid? I know I’m only a chauffeur. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t feel sorry for her. I mean, I was looking at her as she spoke to me today, and tears filled my eyes.”
“Eh?” Neni said, raising the left side of her upper lip. “So you’re sorry for her, eh? You know what, bébé? If she decides you’re going to lose your job, guess whose eyes are going to fill up with tears? Mine!”
“Mr. Edwards will never fire me because of his wife.”
“I hope so,” Winston said, looking at his cell phone.
“He’ll never do it. He’s not that kind of a man.”
“Don’t trust another man like that, Bo. People have many different colors.”
“Let’s leave the topic alone, please. I’ll handle it right. I won’t lose my job.”
Neni pursed her lips, muttered something under her breath, and leaned back with her arms folded.
“Have I showed you guys Maami’s picture?” Winston asked. He picked up his iPhone and tapped on it a few times to bring up a picture of his high school girlfriend, a pretty painted face with a long weave and plentiful cleavage. He showed it to Neni, who nodded and passed on the phone to Jende, who, knowing Neni’s eyes were on him, carelessly acknowledged that Maami would make a very fine Mrs. Winston Avera.
“You have to do what Winston says,” Neni said, her arms still folded over her high belly. “The only way you can escape this is to shut her up, because if you tell her something Mr. Edwards doesn’t want her to know, Mr. Edwards will fire you for breaking the contract. If she ever finds out you knew something and didn’t tell her, she’ll fire you for lying to her. She won’t care if you have a family or if—”
“Neni, please! Let me rest, I’m begging you. My head is aching, okay?”
“My head is aching, too, okay? I don’t like this situation at all. I know Mrs. Edwards. I know what kind of woman she is. She looks like she is weak, but she gets what she wants from people, one way or another. You cannot make any mistake with your job right now, let me tell you. One little mistake, you lose your job at a time when—”
“You think I don’t know that!”
“Everyone calm down,” Winston said. “And Bo, please, don’t talk to our woman like that. Not especially when she’s carrying our fine American baby.”
“Maybe a woman carrying a baby should know when to stop talking.”
Neni looked at Jende from head to toe, her momentary disdain unconcealed. She sat up and started lifting herself off the sofa. Winston stood up and pulled her to her feet.
“Put some sense into that coconut head of his,” she said to Winston. “Because if I say one more thing to him, I swear to you, my mouth will start bleeding like a slaughtered cow’s.”
Jende and Winston chuckled as Neni bade Winston good night and waddled into the bedroom.
“How did I get myself involved in other people’s married business like this?” Jende asked Winston after Neni had closed the bedroom door. “This one is beyond me.”
“Women can be very tricky,” Winston said. “If you don’t give her what she wants, she’ll go to him and make up a story about you so that he’ll do away with you.”
“Then I’ll become like Joseph in Egypt.”
“Yes, you’ll be like Joseph in Egypt. But instead of solving a dream about seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, you’ll be living in seven years of hardship.”
Thirty-one
ON THE MORNING OF HIS THIRTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY, HE STOOD OUTSIDE the car and held the back door open for Clark Edwards, as he did every workday morning. He was dressed in a suit Neni had bought for him at Target as his birthday gift, a gray wool ensemble that he paired with a white shirt and red clip-on tie and completed with a pair of brown dress shoes. Earlier that morning, as he’d stood in front of the mirror admiring himself, Neni had walked into the bedroom and told him he looked more handsome than ever, and he had agreed, giving her a long thank-you kiss.
“Today is my birthday, sir,” he told Clark.
“Happy birthday, then,” Clark replied without taking his eyes off his laptop, which was booting up. “I won’t ask how old you are.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jende replied, smiling. While they waited for the light to turn green at Park and Seventieth, he pondered how best to bring up the topic.
“I know this is a very busy time for you, sir,” he said, “but there is something I wanted to discuss with you.”
“Go on,” Clark said, still not lifting his eyes from the laptop.
“It is about Mrs. Edwards, sir.”
Clark continued looking at his laptop. “What about her?”
“Sir, I think she wants to know where you go to. And who you see. And all those kinds of things, sir. She wants me to tell her about what I see you doing.”
Clark looked at Jende in the rearview mirror. “Really?”
Jende nodded. “I do not know what to do, sir. That is why I am asking you.”
He wanted to turn around to see the reaction on Clark’s face—rage? disappointment? frustration?—but he couldn’t; he could only catch a glimpse of the boss’s eyes in the mirror.
“Tell her what she wants to know,” Clark said.
“I can tell her, sir? Do you want me, sir … you want me to—”
“You can answer her questions.”
“You mean I can tell her everything, sir?”
“Of course you can tell her everything. Where do you take me to that you can’t talk about? Who do you see me with?”
“That is what I told her, sir. I told her I only take you to office buildings in midtown and downtown and sometimes—”
“Never mention Chelsea.”
“I have never mentioned Chelsea, sir. I will never.”
The car was silent for a minute, the men acknowledging without words what they each knew the other knew. Jende wanted Clark to know more; he wanted to assure him of his loyalty, promise him again that his secret would always be safe. He wanted to tell Mr. Edwards that because he had given him a good job that had changed his life and that was enabling him to take care of his family, send his wife to school, send his father-in-law a cash gift every few months, replace the roof and crumbling wooden walls of his parents’ house, and save for the future, he would always protect him every way he could.