Warily he kept his eyes on the sky. “‘We have a new corporate strategy,’ they said. ‘We’re happy to have you stay on, only you’ll be back out on the floor, and oh yeah, at a fifth of your former salary.’” He looked deflated, like he’d been pricked with a pin, all the hot air hissing out. “Then they turned around and packed the place.” She could hear the bitterness in his voice. “Now it’s all brown and foreign-born.”

  If he’d been hoping for even a modicum of understanding, he’d just blown it. “I bet the stock value’s gone sky-high,” said Striker. “Admit it. The place’s on fire now with new ideas.”

  He laughed. “Fat chance. It’s all one big revolving door,” he said. “They hire these new people for the optics, but when it doesn’t work out, they kick ’em to the curb.”

  Though she didn’t want to admit it, Striker actually felt herself relating. Riley called it the Great Blackrush of 2020. In her line of work, Striker had watched as all the major studios and media companies were chomping at the bit to get their hands on Black creatives, every new series thirsting for a Black showrunner. But when you never had a proper pipeline in place, a truly equitable ladder where the cream could rise to the top as they learned the ropes, you ended up with folks at the table who didn’t fully understand the trade through no fault of their own. She’d heard the same thing was happening all over the place, in historically white fields like advertising and publishing. Basically corporate white America was setting a generation of Black and brown folks up for failure. And they were patting themselves on the back about it, blind to the fact that the systems they were shoring up really needed dismantling. Telling themselves through it all that they’d done good.

  But despite the Great Blackrush, there was always the other side of the coin. “Just admit it,” Striker said. She was surprised how easily the words came out. “You don’t want us to exist.”

  Kevin took his eyes off the sky. “Wow,” he said. “Where’d you come up with that?”

  “You don’t think so?” Something inside her was heating up. Out there in all that gleaming emptiness, it had never felt more clear. “A Black person lands a decent job, and what does the Twitterverse say? They gotta be a DEI hire.”

  “Most of that’s Russian bots.”

  “Okay. An interracial family pops up in an ad for breakfast cereal, and forty percent of the country loses its shit.”

  “How’s that my fault?” Already he’d gone back to searching the skies.

  Striker recalled the whole online ruckus over that terrible ad campaign for some luxury car company featuring a bunch of beautiful people flouncing around but no car. As if just casting Black actors in your commercial made you woke. Didn’t people realize they were gradually moving toward a society where a Black person couldn’t be cast in anything let alone wield any sort of power, Blackness nothing more than a symbol onto which the audience could ascribe their own worldview?

  Waddya mean “moving toward”? Baby, we’ve arrived!

  Striker was still trying to work out if she and Kevin might actually have a common grievance about the myopia of corporate America hell no when he shot up out of his seat.

  “Get off me,” he was yelling. “Get it off!”

  He picked up his dry bag and began swinging it blindly in the air. Madly he twirled around flapping his arms, bouncing from side to side, falling down and then springing back up.

  Striker slowed the zodiac, trying to maintain control of it.

  “Sit down,” she screamed, “you’re gonna tip us!” But he stayed locked in his frenzy, spinning in circles, arms up, trying to knock something out of the sky.

  A shot rang out.

  He slumped to his knees.

  A door opened in the back of his head. Red stuff gushing from it. He fell backward, face up. The gunshot right through the eye. His heart was still beating, gore rhythmically pumping out of the wound. He was still trying to breathe. She could hear it, each bloody rasp. The blood filling the bottom of the boat. It was coming toward her, running into the inflatable’s drainage system. A bright red stream flowing toward the lowest point in the zodiac. He stopped moving. It was then she saw what he’d been trying to drive off.

  Sitting at the other end of the inflatable was the one-eyed bird. The thing perfectly still like a hood ornament. Striker gripped the little gold cross hanging around her—

  << In the basement of Our Lady of the Annunciation, the air is hot and clammy as an army of dehumidifiers do their best to keep water from forming on the ceiling. Soon the little ones will file up the back stairs to the portable risers the deacons have set up in the sanctuary where the children’s choir will sing their little hearts out like Ama and Ronnie used to do on Christmas Eve when they were small and cute and malleable, which means easy to pick up and cart out when the shrieking set in, not the surly teenagers they have become who want nothing to do with Our Lady of the Annunciation, especially tonight when Sam Bly is back in town from his first semester at Wake Forest and some of the other kids from school are gathering out by Hammond Farms to pass a bottle. No, this night Ama and Ronnie have been tasked with helping to make sure the little ones don’t put their robes on backward, their wings neat and straight, that no one is chewing gum, that the girls who want it are given a small dab of cream blush on their pale, bloodless cheeks, the boys’ hair run through one last time with a comb.

  Ama is in surprisingly good spirits. She moves among the children, singing “Jesus Loves Me” under her breath, a song Sister Abigail says feels too, er, uh, boisterous the way she sings it, too full of the meatier passions of the world you mean life especially in the way it pours out of Ama’s mouth, hips like honey, eyes closed in ecstasy, the moment just between her and some special someone the same way Ama’s hero Whitney Houston sings it on The Bodyguard soundtrack, gorgeous soulful Whitney, Whitney who never hides the power of her instrument, inhabiting every square inch of it, her voice always informed by the spirit of the true church, the one where people have bodies and desires and testify about a Lord they aren’t ashamed to be bursting with.

  It’s been almost ten years since the sisters came to live on Zinnia Trace. A decade since the two hid in the compost heap. Ten years of adapting, of obfuscating when necessary, of figuring out how to make this place work for them, of keeping the shrieking to a minimum by keeping it on the inside. For Ama, singing her way through Zinnia Trace has been a calming balm. For Ronnie, that same balm has been the stories she silently invents about this place and the people who inhabit it.

  Tonight Sam Bly is back. The prodigal son has returned. Ama is shining in a way that makes the older women blush. The gap between her front teeth like a lock in search of a key. Even Ronnie must divert her eyes. All these months the sisters holding their secret close to their chests as they always have. The way these two can hide all sorts of things, but they can’t hide anything from each other.

  Jesus loves me—He who died

  Heaven’s gate to open wide.

  He will wash away my sin,

  And let the child come right in.

  And so it’s time. The little ones are rising two by two up into the navel of the church under the dreaming eyes of these teenaged sisters, the stairs wide enough for each pair of cherubim to hold hands.

  When the first stirrings of trouble begin lowing in the basement’s dank air, Ronnie knows it’s the same rumbling Mary must have felt all those years ago in the desert night. She looks to her sister. Like Mary, Ama is shining so hard her inner light is what brightens the >>

  Striker let go of her sister’s gold cross and killed the boat’s engine, the Antarctic air preternaturally still. Only an arm’s length away sat the rapidly cooling heap that was once called Kevin. At the other end of the zodiac, the one-eyed skua stood folding and refolding its wings. Striker wondered what part of her psyche had summoned this unwavering beast. The bird some kind of feathery gunslinger with the infinite patience of a buddha.

  Another wave crashed over the side. The lid popped off a crate. Some of the things packed inside toppled out. One of them bumped her foot. Striker reached down and picked it up out of the dark stuff sloshing around her ankles.

  It was a bottle of Yoo-hoo, the drink brown like something decanted from the bottom of a river.

  The universe has a funny sense of humor, she thought. She considered breaking into uncontrollable laughter, but if she did, would she ever be able to stop?

  Overhead, the sun stayed stuck beyond time. Striker rinsed the bottle in the ocean and twisted it open. She could see a series of waterspouts erupting on the horizon. Like the fountains at Caesar’s Palace. She tried to remember her last trip to Vegas, tried to recall what musician had been in residence, what she’d done while there, who she’s slept with, if it had been any good. It didn’t work. The thing was still foremost in her mind, this thing she was trying to forget. The gore still swirling around the drain, her yellow booties a ghastly shade of orange.

  She was desperate for anything to break the silence. My kingdom for a single word, she thought. She swallowed hard, hoping to find her voice. Ama was the real singer in the family but Striker wasn’t half bad. She both was and wasn’t surprised by what erupted from her mouth.

  Silent night, holy night.

  Shepherds quake at the sight.

  “How long you gonna sit there?”

  “Long as I want,” she said. “I don’t see any signs around saying no two-hour parking.”

  “Well, when you decide to come back to Planet Earth, our friend with the newly aerated head is still gonna be here doing his best impression of a floor mat.”

  “Why you gotta be like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “All sarcastic and shit.”

  “You gonna complain now? Remember all those times this sarcasm got shit done?”

  “What I remember is all the shit it got us into.”

  Silence. She could no longer see the small fountains jetting up in the distance. She wondered how long a whale could go without breathing. Please don’t leave me, she thought. I need you.

  “Uncle,” she finally said.

  Still nothing. The voice remained silent. There was nothing else to do. Striker tipped back the Yoo-hoo and drained it. The sugar hit her in the chest like a chocolaty fist.

  “Apology accepted,” said the voice. “First things first. Didn’t you learn nothing from me? Always start by counting your blessings.”

  “My blessings?”

  “At least homeboy didn’t go shooting no hole in your craft.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “Second: Homeboy got anything on him you might want?”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as that magical yellow bag of his. Personally all this time I been waiting for his ass to pull out an ironing board.”

  “That would mean I have to look.”

  “Newsflash: it’s not like I can.”

  “Okay okay.” She closed her eyes and took a deep, centering breath.

  “Just do it already. We ain’t got all day.”

  “I’m looking I’m looking.”

  Striker opened her eyes.

  The one-eyed bird was brazenly standing on the dry bag as if staking its claim. Daring her to come and get it.

  “So what? You used to play softball.”

  “That I did,” Striker said softly. She hefted the empty Yoo-hoo in her hand, gauging how fast it might fly. Who was she kidding? She lowered the bottle, took a deep breath, and leaned forward on the exhale, grabbing at the bag.

  The bird didn’t budge. Instead, it sat down on the shredded yellow rubber like it was nesting.

  Striker tugged but the dead man’s hand wouldn’t slip out. His fingers were buried in what was left of the bag as if it were a mitten. She pulled harder. The action sent his body tumbling toward her. She panicked, tried to keep him from falling on her. In the struggle she found herself gazing on what was left of him. It was worse than she’d expected.

  He was grinning at her. A big shit-eating grin. The upper right quadrant of his face blasted to kingdom come. Striker imagined a pizza where the toppings had slid off. His face a wasteland of grease and ooze and red nothingness.

  “Let go, goddammit,” she whispered.

  “I seen worse.”

  Striker couldn’t argue with that. Together they had both seen worse. Something small and hot, like a loaf of bread wheezing on the concrete floor, the voices of angels singing from on high, the smell of the redness all over her.

  For the first time in a long time, she realized she was angry. At Kevin for being stupid enough to wave a bag holding a gun at a demon bird. At Vadim for going and getting his fool self run up a rich perv’s mast. At Zinnia Trace for making her the kind of person who let herself be talked into leaving a dead body hanging thirty feet up in the air and getting the hell out of there. Not our problem, Kevin had said, and she’d listened to him, silently agreeing, and kept her eyes locked on the deck, avoiding the shadow the body was casting on the two of them like a pox on both their houses.

  Seeing Kevin’s ravaged visage, she felt her anger dissolve. She sat back and let herself stare. Looking is a kind of love. Who had told her that? Not that she loved this man, this person who had probably killed his wife, smashed up all the sailboat’s communication equipment, slipped the binocular strap into the sail’s pulley system, and happily watched as the Russian was ratcheted home to his orthodox lord. We reap what we sow, she thought, some of us more than others.

  Gently she leaned forward and took hold of his arm. This time she kept her eyes on the ruins of his blasted head. His hand slid smoothly out of the dry bag, his ravaged face still grinning at her. The bird hopped back and took off into the sky.

  She remembered how the two of them had motored away from the sailboat. She had glanced back one last time like the wife of Lot itching for trouble. At the top of the mast, there had been an imperceptible movement, the smallest twitch as Vadim’s leg spasmed. He’s still alive, she thought. The horror of it locked around her lungs. Reflexively, she’d gunned the tender for the passage out. Once back on the open sea, she told herself it had been an illusion, the sun playing tricks on her weary eyes.

  “Okay, we got what we wanted,” said the voice. “Time to dump his ass.” Striker didn’t answer. “You know I’m right. Ain’t nobody waiting for him back at the volcano.”

  She tossed the dry bag in a crate and braced herself against the side of the zodiac, put her feet up on his chest. As she pushed Kevin overboard, the red wasteland that was once his face winked. Joke’s on you, it seemed to be saying.

  This time Striker didn’t look back. She knew if she did, she’d see a bright yellow object floating on the ocean like a broken yolk. For once, the one-eyed bird was nowhere to be seen.

  She picked up the ruined dry bag. The rubber smelled bad where the gunshot had blasted a hole in it, but Kevin’s manhood was still in there. She hugged the bag close to her chest, felt a glow come over her. Was she already becoming like him? Or thanks to Zinnia Trace, had there always been a part of him in her, a part that was always ready to blame everyone else?

  “Okay, now we getting somewhere. Home, Jeeves.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” She cut the engine and laid back. If you stared long enough, the darkness sloshing around in the bottom of the tender gleamed like claret or an aged merlot. But Striker was already asleep.

  When she woke up, it felt like she was back in the earsplitting silence of Midtown. The only sound in existence was the soft thud of her heart. As always, the sun sat a few degrees from vertical. In all directions the water lay shiny and smooth, a sheet of unstamped silver, the ocean so still she couldn’t be sure the zodiac was moving. The islands remained fixed on the horizon, growing neither closer nor more distant. Even the thin column of smoke Striker was aiming for appeared static, the smoke unwavering as if captured in a photograph. It all brought to mind a silly sci-fi movie she’d seen where the main character comes into possession of a magical remote control. At the touch of a button, the character could make time stop, allowing him to stroll freely around town as everyone else remained frozen mid-act.

  “I broke the world,” said Striker.

  “You break it, you buy it.”

  “I’m starting to feel unreal,” she said.

  “Starting?”

  A dimple appeared on the surface of the water. She watched as a ripple radiated out from it, the ripple growing bigger and bigger until it slipped under the zodiac and disappeared. A second dimple emerged on the other side of the tender. Something was kissing the surface of the water from below, the glassy sea quivering concentrically. Others appeared. The area around the inflatable silently filling with these moments and their echoes. It was beautiful to watch. The water rippling as though it were raining but not a drop was falling from the sky, the ripples hypnotizing as a lava lamp.

  “Start the engine.”

  Striker didn’t move.

  “You gotta get out of here.”

  She could feel it under her legs. Something was knocking on the bottom of the zodiac. Two long taps, then two short. She scrambled to her knees and pulled the engine cord. The thing stayed dead.

  She knew what it would be before it even surfaced. The way it sliced the ocean open like a long black knife. She was floating in a boat full of blood. She wondered if the creature could smell it.

  A dark fin began to circle the tender. The zodiac jounced around as the thing swam donuts around her, the water churning. More fins surfaced. The ocean filled with the sound of their mewling, like demented cows.

  They were orca. Somewhere she’d read they were as smart as humans. She knew they were toying with her. If they wanted to capsize the tender, it was as good as done. She had read about a pod of orca ramming sailboats off the coast of Spain after one of the females in the group had been harassed by boaters. The species was beginning to lose patience. Antarctica was theirs. She pulled the cord again but the engine didn’t fire up.