Keep your mouth shut; decide first, then move.
Since the switch, Alex had treated those two as iron law.
Two days later he judged that he’d done every piece of preparation his current abilities allowed, and with the whole family at the dinner table he put the plan into motion.
“I need money.” Straight at it, no run-up.
“How much?” Aunt Susie passed baby Freddie across to Connie and reached for her money clip.
“Somewhere between seventy and a hundred dollars,” Alex said.
The clink of silverware stopped.
The sound of chewing stopped.
Four faces turned toward him at once.
“I’ll pay it back,” he added.
“With interest.”
“Damn it!”
It took Aunt Susie a few seconds to load, and then she went off.
“Whose belly did you go and fill?”
“Where do you even get that from?” Alex had no words.
“Him? No way.” Connie enjoyed contradicting her mother on principle, though she came at this one from her own angle.
“Girls at school don’t even look at him.”
Ah.
Well.
Alex wasn’t about to explain his keep-your-head-down strategy to her, but it stung a little all the same.
“Why not? Ali (Alex family nickname) is a good-looking boy!” Aunt Susie’s aim had already wandered off the target.
“Just yesterday I ran into one of his teachers out on the street. She’s crazy about Alex. Said his grades have been coming up so fast—”
“You’re just stirring it up now!”
Tony, who hadn’t said a word yet, remembered something and cut in.
“Two days now you been asking around about Lil Lori. About A.l. About AK. About the record company.” He fixed his eyes on Alex’s.
“I’m warning you. Don’t go getting stupid ideas in your head.”
“Am I that kind of person?” Alex had no intention of showing his hand tonight.
“You and me will talk properly tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, it’s about time you and me talked properly. You been wrong lately. Real wrong…”
Tony and the Alexander Song who had lived in this body before had shared a bedroom since they were small.
Nobody knew that boy better.
So naturally it was Tony who felt the change most — the way Alex moved now, the way he talked, the way he thought through a thing.
For days he’d been saying that something was off.
Ask him what, exactly, and he couldn’t tell you, and the not being able to tell you left him looking genuinely lost.
“Boy, what do you need money for?” Aunt Susie asked, and this time she asked it gently.
Alex had a good reason ready.
“Uh… I need some legal help. You know how lawyers are. They’re expensive—”
“So you did get some girl pregnant!”
He had not anticipated the ambiguity, and now even Connie had lost her certainty.
“You’re not talking about getting married? Ali. Don’t believe a word those bitches tell you — you know how it goes, they just want somebody to pick up the tab, the baby’s probably not even yours, or she’s been with three men and don’t know which one it is—”
“My God, shut your mouth!” Aunt Susie was on her feet.
“Seventeen years old and knowing all that — you’re not ashamed? I’m ashamed for you, motherf—” She turned and went up the stairs, and a moment later came the sound of a lock being worked, which meant she’d gone into the hiding place.
“She never gave me pocket money that many times in my life,” Tony grumbled.
“Never mind that kind of money.”
“Ali’s good at school,” Connie said, purely to needle him.
“You ever come first in your whole year? You ever get an A+?”
“Wow. Is Alex really that good?” Emily was in elementary school and her sense of the world was still intact.
“Hmph. Don’t y’all forget who’s bringing income into this house now.” Tony’s lip curled, sour.
“Emily.” He pinched his voice up into something sweet.
“You like that tutu skirt?”
“I like it.” She’d carried the tutu home from the second-hand store that day, exactly as she’d wanted.
“So who earned the money that bought that tutu?”
Emily considered it for a while.
“You.” And then: “But I got tired too.”
Connie laughed out loud.
“Here.” Aunt Susie was coming back down the stairs, and she dropped a roll of bills with rubber bands around it on the table in front of Alex.
“Thank you.”
Alex counted it under his breath.
It was all small bills, which was why the roll was so fat.
“I should be able to pay this back pretty soon. With the interest.”
“Mm-hmm. Is that all the thanks I get?” Aunt Susie turned her head and offered him her cheek.
“You haven’t kissed me in a long time.”
Right.
Alex understood by now that this was simply how people here said what they felt, and Aunt Susie had been genuinely good to him.
“Thank you, Aunt Susie.” He put his arms around her and kissed her once on each cheek.
The next morning he was up very early and took real care with himself.
His short hair cut crisp and close, a dark sweater with a collar, the pale jeans he’d washed specially, sneakers.
Over it went a plaid suit jacket he’d bought second-hand for nine dollars and ninety cents.
The cheap new suits they were selling these days came with shoulder pads like roof beams; Alex preferred the older cut.
Into a second-hand canvas briefcase went a stack of hand-written sheet music, a notebook, and a few newspaper clippings he’d found useful.
Everything but his carfare he pushed down into his socks, flat under the soles of his feet.
There wasn’t any other way to do it.
The odds of getting robbed around here were too high, and they went up when you were dressed a little above your station.
Nobody in the house was awake yet.
He took a cold pie out of the cupboard and ate it walking out the door.
A bus first, then two trains, then off the train and a good walk, to where he was going: Clark Street.
Connie should be phoning the school about now to get me excused.
He was a man who liked doing things in order, one step and then the next, which was why the way this morning felt suited him so well.
Since the Revelation he had the confidence of a man with an edge nobody else had.
Everything past that was just work.
He took the clipping out of his bag and followed the address on it.
More and more of the people on the sidewalk had black hair and yellow skin.
Yes — this was Chicago’s Chinatown.
Black folks in the South Side slums had never had a kind word for lawyers, and that went for Black lawyers too.
Alex figured he’d simply go find a Chinese lawyer for his consultation, and while he was at it he could see Chinatown and knock some rust off his Chinese.
Mainly, though, the fees here were the cheapest anywhere: thirty-five dollars for an hour of advice.
What he hadn’t expected was that Cantonese would be the language of the neighborhood.
When he stopped to ask directions, the English coming back at him wasn’t much better than his Cantonese.
He went around in circles for a while before he finally stood on the sidewalk below the address in the clipping.
This?
Not a glass curtain wall in the financial district vanishing up into the clouds, which was roughly what he’d pictured.
A plain old commercial building.
Well.
I’m here now.
He kept that to himself, rode an antique elevator with a folding cage door up to the fourth floor, and arrived at the true destination of the trip: MCGILL LAW OFFICE.
First things first — he pulled off his shoes, dug the money out of his socks and transferred it to his pocket, straightened his clothes, and rang the bell.
“Who is it?” a man called from inside.
“Alexander Song. I made an appointment by phone yesterday,” Alex said.
A sleepy-looking white man opened the door.
“You know my rate,” he said, and waved him in.
“This is a law office?”
Alex stood there taking in a single small room.
A desk, two chairs, one row of file cabinets.
That was the whole inventory.
The white man was about thirty, with his hair going thin on top.
He sat down behind the desk and pointed at the two certificates framed on the wall.
“It is. I’m Chuck. Chuck McGill. Sit down, please. On the phone yesterday you said you had copyright concerns, correct? Let’s get started, no sense wasting your time.”
He’s afraid I’m going to turn around and walk out on him, Alex thought.
He gave the documents on the wall a look.
They seemed to be in order.
So he asked, plainly, “Do you mind if I ask why you set up a law office here?”
“Because the business is here. Chinese people don’t like using their own for divorces and inheritance fights,” Goodman said.
Well.
That did make a kind of sense.
“But my problem is a copyright problem—”
“I know copyright too!” McGill was already losing patience.
He produced a small windup timer, set it, and slapped it down on the desk.
“Clock’s running.”