“It’s not Jedi deep, it’s just arrogant. It is exactly the reason he can put luxury midrise condos up in the poorest part of Southeast. People like us don’t matter to him.”

Maurice, now also crammed into Liza’s bedroom, shrugged. “Your pretty boy WIC started it, if you ask me,” he said. “If you come for the king, you best not miss.” He quoted The Wire, but Liza wasn’t sure if the boy had ever really seen the show. That was so like Maurice, using a thing in the right context yet with so little understanding.

“Look at you, already standing up for your WIC.” LeDeya pushed Liza with her shoulder, but Liza did not allow herself to smile.

Her WIC.

SEVEN LIFETIMES

To: [email protected]

From: CoolPodz

Thank you for your interest in CoolPodz for your office! We’re so pleased that you had an amazing experience in one of our pods! Could you recall which model it was? We could have 3 shipped to your Philadelphia offices by the end of the week.

Best,

CoolPodz Sales

Four weeks later, on a crisp November morning, Dorsey was counting himself lucky. He had scarcely thought about Liza’s sugary-brown skin all day and hadn’t stalked her Instagram in thirteen hours. And moreover, for three days, he hadn’t lingered on that one picture where her shorts hugged her ass. An ass he had pushed out of the way. He sat in a DC municipal building with Virginia State Corporation Commission’s chair, Christopher De Berg. Representatives from Maryland also crowded the table, but the way they genuflected to the senator, it was like the president had walked in. When he spoke to Dorsey, the clamor hushed.

“People are looking into your developments in DC. This whole gentrification chatter is getting louder.” He had a forty-inch computer monitor in front of him. Dorsey didn’t know if it was tech-savviness or Luddite tendencies that would make a man purchase a monitor this obscene, then lug it around for meetings so he could fact-check in real time. There was no privacy. Dorsey could see an email from Lighthouse Marriage Counseling: “36 Questions to Bring You Closer.” The senator also bet on fantasy football quite a bit. When someone at the table asked him about the gigantic screen obstructing their view, he replied, “I like my own data, and I don’t know what the hell a cloud is.” Everyone chuckled, except for Dorsey. It must have been that absence of a chuckle that drew the senator’s attention. De Berg’s white hair, probably once blond and thick, was slicked back and clung to his collar. He inexplicably wore golf shirts year-round and had prominent front teeth that made him look like a member of the British royal family.

“What are you going to do about the chatter, Fitzgerald?”