“Ah, yes, sir, very much, sir!” he said, his voice escalating once more. “America has something for everyone, sir. Look at Obama, sir. Who is his mother? Who is his father? They are not big people in the government. They are not governors or senators. In fact, sir, I hear they are dead. And look at Obama today. The man is a black man with no father or mother, trying to be president over a country!”
Clark did not respond, picking up his buzzing phone instead. “Yeah, I saw his email,” he said to the person on the line. “Why? … I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure what Tom’s thinking … No, Phil, no! I completely disagree. We can’t keep on doing the same things and expect that the results will be different … Right, let’s stick with the strategy, even though for three years we’ve been making one poor choice after another. I mean, the level of shortsightedness here …” He scoffed and shook his head. “I’ve spoken up as much as I can … No, I won’t … What baffles me is how no one else, I mean no one, except for maybe Andy, sees how ridiculous it is that we’ve been doing the same things over and over and expecting that somehow we’ll survive. We’ve got to change course. Now. Completely rethink our strategy … Repo 105 isn’t going to keep us sailing forever … I don’t believe that will, either, and I’ve told Tom that … Everyone’s in denial! I don’t get how no one’s thinking about the fact that superficial short-term fixes are only going to come back to haunt us … Of course they will … How? Are you really asking me that? Have you thought for a second about the fact that everything’s on the line if this shit blows up? Our lives, our careers, our families, reputations … Trust me, it will. And I can guarantee you that the feds will be ready to hang Tom the way they hung Skilling, and the rest of us …”
For a few seconds he said nothing, listening to his colleague. “You think it’s going to be that nice and clean, huh?” he said. “Somehow everyone’s just going to walk away nice and clean from the burning building … No! How long we’ve been at it isn’t going to mean anything pretty soon. Hell, it doesn’t mean anything right now, Phil. We’re drowning.”
He took a deep breath as he listened again, then laughed.
“Fine,” he said. “I could use that. Maybe one round. Haven’t been on a course in a while … No, save that for yourself; one round of golf sometime soon will be enough … No, thank you very much, Phil. Not my cup of tea … Yes, I promise—I’m going to desperately beg you for her number as soon as I find myself on the verge of an explosion.”
He hung up, reopened his laptop smiling and shaking his head, and began typing. After thirty minutes of silence, he put his laptop aside and made three phone calls: to his secretary; to a person named Roger about the report he hadn’t yet received; to someone else, to whom he spoke in mediocre French.
“Always fun getting a chance to practice my French with the team in Paris,” he said after he’d hung up.
“It is very good French, Mr. Edwards,” Jende said. “You lived in Paris?”
“Yeah, for one year, while I was studying at Stanford.”
Jende nodded but did not reply.
“It’s a college,” Clark said. “In California.”
“Ah, Stanford! I remember them now, sir. They play good football. But I have never been to California. Is that where you are from, sir?”
“No, my parents retired there. I grew up in Illinois. Evanston. My dad was a professor at Northwestern, another college.”
“My cousin Winston, sir, when he first came to America, he lived in Illinois for a few months, but he called us all the time saying he was ready to leave because of the cold. I think that is why he joined the army, so that he could move to a warm place.”
“I don’t see the logic there,” Clark said, chuckling, “but yes, it’s very cold. I can’t tell you Evanston’s anything as wonderful as your Limbe, but we had a great childhood there, my sister, Ceci, and I. Riding our bikes around the block with the other neighborhood kids, going with Dad downtown to Chicago, to museums and concerts, picnicking by the lake; it was a really wonderful place to be a kid. Ceci’s thinking she might move back there one day.”
“Oh, yes, your sister, sir. I did not know you are a twin. It was only a few days ago that Mighty told me your sister is your twin sister. I really like twins, sir. In fact, if God gives me one—”
“Speaking of which, I need to check up on her,” Clark said as he pressed a few keys on his phone. “Hey, it’s me,” he said after the voicemail greeting. “Sorry I didn’t call back last week. Ridiculously busy at work, so much going on. Anyway, I spoke to Mom last night, and she told me you and the girls aren’t coming to Mexico? Cec, listen. Put everything on my credit card. Okay? I’m sorry if I haven’t made it clear enough, but I want you to put everything you can’t afford on that credit card. Everything. The flight, the hotel, the rental car, Keila’s braces, whatever you need, just put it on the card. You know how much all of us being there means to them. It’s Dad’s eightieth, Cec. And I want to see the girls. It’s been so crazy at work, I’m barely breathing, but I’ll try to pick up the next time you call. Or email. You know email or text is always better for me.”
He threw his head back after hanging up, his eyes closed.
“So, you didn’t have a job back home?” he asked Jende, opening his eyes and picking up his laptop.
“Oh, no, sir, I had a job,” Jende replied. “I worked for the Limbe Urban Council.”
“And it wasn’t a good job?”
Jende laughed, taken aback by Clark’s question, which he found na?ve. “Sir,” he said, “there is no good or bad job in my country.”
“Because?”
“Because any job is a good job in Cameroon, Mr. Edwards. Just to have somewhere that you can wake up in the morning and go to is a good thing. But what about the future? That is the problem, sir. I could not even marry my wife. I did—”
“What do you mean, you couldn’t marry? Poor people get married every day.”
“Yes, they can, sir. Everyone can marry, sir. But not everyone can marry the person that they want. My wife’s father, Mr. Edwards, he is a greedy man. He refused for me to marry his daughter because he wanted my wife to marry someone with more money. Someone who can give him money whenever he asks for it. But I didn’t have. What was I supposed to do?”
Clark snickered. “I guess people don’t elope in Cameroon, huh?”
“A rope, sir?”
“No, elope. You know, when you run away and get married without involving your crazy family?”
“Oh, no, no, no, sir, we do it. People do it. We also do ‘come we stay.’ Which means a man says to a woman, ‘Come let us live together,’ but he does not marry her first. But I could never do that, sir. Never.”
“Why?”
“It does not show respect for a woman, sir. A man has to go to a woman’s family and pay bride-price for her head, sir. And then take her out through the front door. I had to show I am a real man, sir. Not take her for free as if she is … as if she is something I picked on the street.”
“Right,” Clark said, snickering again. “So you’ve paid for your wife?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Jende said, beaming with pride. “Once I come to America and send my father-in-law a nice transfer through Western Union, he sees that maybe I am going to be a rich man one day, he changed his mind.”
Clark laughed.
“I know it is funny, sir. But I had to get my wife. By two years after I came to New York, I had saved good money to pay the bride-price and bring her and my son over here. I sent money to my mother and father, and they bought everything my father-in-law wanted as the bride-price. The goats. The pigs. The chickens. The palm oil, bags of rice. The salt. The cloth, bottles of wine. They bought it all. I even give an envelope of cash double what he asked for, sir.”
“No kidding.”
“No, sir. Before my wife comes to America, my family goes to her family, and they hand the bride-price and sing and dance together. And then we were married.”
Clark’s phone buzzed. “Fascinating story,” he said, picking it up and putting it back down.