discussing race, as if the mere mention of the subject might cause their fragile alliances to come apart. “Mexican” was a word that sounded harsh, somehow, and it caused a few of them to look at Araceli.
Maureen’s maid was a woman with the light copper skin of a newly minted penny, and cheeks that were populated with a handful of summer freckles. Araceli’s Mexican forebears included dark Zapotecs and redheaded Prussians, and in her family she was on the paler side of the spectrum. But in California, and at this party, she stood out unmistakably as an ambassador of the Latino race. Still, she appeared oblivious to the Big Man’s comments as she walked past. Others glanced briefly at Scott: he didn’t have any of the qualities associated with “Mexicans” by those in the metropolis who were not Mexican, but his surname was Torres, after all. Scott was sipping his sangria and had just closed his eyes and wasn’t listening either. He was, instead, trying to discern all the different fruits in this beverage: grapes from the wine, of course, and also orange and apple. And is that pomegranate? Pomegranate? That takes me back.
“Still, I guess they really do deserve a share of the pie,” the Big Man said, renewing his monologue with a conciliatory tone, as if there might be a closeted Mexican in his audience. “But this mayor guy, he’s a real piece of work,” the Big Man continued, and he began to pronounce on the swirl of rumors surrounding the personal life of the city leader. Suddenly his son ran through the cluster of his audience: he was a boy of eight with the same curly hair and round belly as his father, and was wearing one of the papier-mâché helmets, along with plastic breast armor and a skirt of cardboard scraps painted to resemble leather. “Hey, it’s the Little Big Man!” someone called out, and the ensuing laughter finally brought the Big Man’s monologue to an end.
The adults scanned the backyard for their children and saw how their swords and other homemade Roman paraphernalia were starting to fall apart, littering the lawn with scraps of cardboard and paper. They bit into their taquitos and tasted bits of shredded chicken in a red sauce that was boldly spiced with organic chile de árbol. Now Araceli was weaving between them with two sopes on her tray: they were the last two, she had just realized, and she was going to try to make it back to the kitchen and impertinently devour them. But just as she broke free of the main cluster of guests, she walked into a patch of open grass to discover the Big Man standing alone and suddenly staring straight at her, and then at her tray and the sopes. The Big Man raised his boxcar eyebrows jauntily and extended his hands, using one to take the last two sopes, and the other to place his empty drink on Araceli’s tray. “Thanks, kid.”
“¡Cabrón!” Araceli muttered under her breath, but the Big Man did not hear her because he was circling back to the conversation, which had taken the lamenting, retrospective tone that eventually came to dominate the reunions of the MindWare alumni, once the alcohol started to set in.
“We should have set up in India,” Tyler Smith was saying. “Everyone is doing that now. Bombay.”
“Mumbai,” Carla Wallace-Zuberi corrected.
“Yeah. Or Bangalore. Everyone was telling us to do that.”
“The stockholders,” Tyler Smith said, repeating a word whose connotations only further darkened their shared mood. “The guy from that hedge fund. What an asshole!”
“Shahe!” the Big Man’s wife shouted toward the inflated castle. “Shahe Avakian! Take your foot off that boy’s neck now!”
“Those bouncy houses always bring out the aggressive behavior,” Carla Wallace-Zuberi said.
“The stockholders! The sacred stockholders!” interjected the Big Man, as his molars crushed what was left of Araceli’s last sope. “The first thing we should have done is killed all the stockholders.”
“Uh, that would have included all of us too.”
“And the board members too. Where did we find those people?” said the Big Man, who knew perfectly well.
“They actually expected us to make money,” Scott said.
“Remember that letter from that stockholder in Tennessee?” the head of research said. “The guy who said he was sticking with us even though he’d lost half of his investment.”
“And all those stupid suggestions he made,” Scott said. “That we should move our headquarters to Nashville.”
“Toyota moved there,” Carla Wallace-Zuberi said dryly. “At least the guy was loyal.”
“I’m sure he