Likes by Sarah Bynum (electronic book reader txt) 📕

tattoo, abstract and arty, the sort of tattoo you’d find on someone working in a cheese shop.

The husband almost laughs at the stupidity of his own question. As soon as it’s out of his mouth, he’s already thinking, Um, let’s see, where to begin: The legacy of Jim Crow? Mass incarceration? The criminal-justice system? Police brutality? Underemployment? White flight? Redlining? Profiling? Misrepresentation in the mass media? His first episode of network television: at least four to five million viewers will be tuning in. His first episode of network television: a weekly paycheck larger than he’s ever seen, green envelopes with residual payments inside, Writers Guild health insurance for his wife and kid. His first episode of network television, and he doesn’t want his mother and father to watch it.

“I have a gun.” Emmett can hear more clearly now that he’s inside the house. And emerging from the kitchen into the living room he sees them, and he thinks at first that they’re dancing together, or maybe the boy is helping the woman lift something small but heavy. Their bodies are that kind of close. Her back is toward him, so that when the boy raises his fist he can’t see what’s happening on her face but he can see the boy’s face and like a mirror it reflects his own bewilderment. The face asks, What am I doing here?

She was right. There is no gun. She knew it! Just as she knows that this whole big windup with his arm is silly. Pow! Right in the kisser! He can wave his fist around all he wants. See how he lets it hang there in midair, giving her an even better view of his tattoo. Nice try; he gets points for dramatic effect. Bang! Zoom! To the moon, Alice! She knows he’s not going to do it.

Something is required of him in this moment, he knows. Someone is scared and needs his help. What’s confusing is the question of who. Even though the boy is looming over her and has his fist cocked, they both look to him like they’re in trouble.

Arm raised, hand clenched, he sees it then, clearly: she thinks he’s a joke. He sees it in the stubborn way she holds her body, the blank look, the total absence of fear. He’s a lightweight. A joker. He’s not going to do it. Actually, he thinks, yes I am.

Bam! Pow! Right in the eye. She stumbles backward, nearly falling on her butt, letting go of the bag.

Lenny brightens. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that! And here’s where we can introduce some really dark, interesting stuff in the B story. You’ve seen The Manchurian Candidate, right? Okay, so what I’m thinking is: The warden has been doing some crazy psychological experiments on the inmates. Including Emmett Diggs. They’ve made him into an assassin and he doesn’t even know it! Using, you know, radical brainwashing techniques, like a mixture of what they do in A Clockwork Orange plus electric shock therapy plus hypnosis? So what we come to realize is what triggers him is white women—” Abruptly the husband pushes away from the table, his chair squealing against the floor. He stands, rising to his full height, the sight of which makes Lenny pause and shoot a quick glance at the showrunner. “Everything okay, buddy?” the showrunner asks. The husband looks at him evenly. “Yes,” he says. “I’m just getting a Coke.”

There’s more blood than he expected. The lady is holding her eye with the hand that was on the messenger bag, and he can see blood coming through her fingers. In her other hand she’s still holding the telephone. The person on the other end seems to have finally hung up.

The husband walks right past the office kitchen and keeps heading down the hallway until he arrives at the elevator, which he takes to the lobby. After nodding at the security guard, he pushes through the glass doors. He stands on the empty sidewalk, squinting in the sunlight, barely registering the traffic going by. Then he slowly rotates to face the building. The security guard moves to open the door for him, but the husband shakes his head, pulls his car keys from his pocket, and turns toward the parking garage. The only place he wants to go right now is home.

Emmett hangs back for a moment, surveying the scene. On the one hand, he wants to go to the woman, who is sobbing in disbelief and dripping blood on the floor. But even though he has no way of knowing that a very good plastic surgeon will sew up her eyebrow with twenty-two stitches, or that her husband, despite his first show being canceled, will go on to write for a relatively popular supernatural police procedural, or that the woman, upon being asked by a female officer as they load her into the ambulance, “Now, were you in any other way assaulted?” will feel for the first time afraid, or that the dog, after attacking a UPS delivery driver, will be taken to a rescue organization up north that specializes in Australian shepherds, or that the daughter, having been told that her mother tripped at the gym and split her eyebrow open on a barbell, will grow nervous whenever the woman puts on exercise clothes—he somehow senses that regardless of the blood and tears his attention should be focused elsewhere. The sound of the front door opening softly makes him look at the boy (a little heavyset, still wearing the satchel slung over his shoulder), but before he can cross the room and reach him, before he can open his mouth and say, “Hey, brother,” the boy has closed the door behind him and is gone.

JULIA AND SUNNY

Our friends, our very good friends, are getting a divorce. Julia and Sunny, lovable and loving, whom we’ve adored from the beginning, when we were