Page 65 of Pride and Protest
“He doesn’t seem like the out-in-front type,” Janae said thoughtfully. “When David and I hang out with him, he almost disappears into the wallpaper. I was shocked Liza got him to play along with us at the office.”
WIC’s eyebrows rose. “He played along to what?”
Janae laughed prettily at the hazy and mostly wrong memory. “We were snowed in and bored to death and played hide-and-seek. I forget most of it, but I do remember Dorsey chasing Liza or something. Or maybe he had caught you? Y’all slept in those pods...”
“It’s all fuzzy!” Liza interrupted. “The point is, he’s a stick-in-the-mud who’s not out in front.”
“You spend alotof time defending him when you should denounce him. Post something on the ’Gram to tell people how you feel about being used,” WIC demanded.
She could feel herself bristling. “I think it was simpler than that,” Liza said defensively.
“What? That he just happened to ask the person leading the opposition to his development work to dance in front of a thousand eyes and cameras?” WIC shook his head. “Look at how bad it’s getting.”
He brought his phone to her face. It was a picture of two people, Liza’s and Dorsey’s faces pasted on them. The man was vigorously fucking the woman from behind and whipping her with some sort of medieval contraption—while the womanshouted out, “Master!” Liza looked away, practically vibrating with shame.
“We have a cousin in the permit office,” she told WIC, her voice softened. “I’m sure I can get her to slow things down.”
“That should buy us some time to do more fundraising. How’s my proposal coming along?” WIC’s smile lit up the room. It was like she’d been kicked out of some enchanted garden. Everyone was having fun but her.
“It’s coming.” That was all Liza was willing to say. Her shame was transforming into a slow simmer.What did he mean to do by showing me that disgusting video?
WIC touched her shoulder. “Fine, be mysterious. You’re beautiful when you’re mysterious.” Liza saw Bev elbow Janae out of the corner of her eye. Liza was about to let them know she saw them, but she was stopped short when LeDeya walked out of the spacious hotel closet with a scarf around her head and thigh-high boots.
“Deya, what are you wearing?” Janae asked.
“It was in the boxes WIC brought up.”
“My gifts are better and you can wear them home,” WIC said, winking at Liza.
“You brought us head wraps?” Liza asked. She hoped to heaven this man was not thinking of converting her into any of this head-wrapping nonsense. She worked too hard laying her edges to see them go to waste.
“Modesty is the true source of beauty,” WIC said and winked at Bev.
“That’s why I always keep a modesty cloth over my knees for church,” Bev said. Liza bit the inside of her cheek. Bev was perhaps the most immodest person she knew.
“I also think that you all would be perfect faces for themovement. Janae, I know you can work your pageant magic to bring awareness to this fundraising campaign. Liza, your social media following is enormous, and Deya is even attracting a large following with her makeup tutorials.”
“You know about my tutorials?” LeDeya’s eyes were saucers.
WIC nodded. “You’re quite the businesswoman.”
LeDeya beamed, but Liza frowned. She was already spending a lot of her extra time writing a proposal. She also didn’t like that he had researched her sisters to rope them into the effort. Janae especially hated doing pageant work, trading her face to add value to a friend’s tire shop or a new grocery store chain. If he had researched them, why wouldn’t he have asked Janae, with her finance degree, to do this damn proposal? Not that she would have been fool enough to do any of this for free. Liza took a deep breath.
No. She was doing that thing again. Finding faults and messing up a thing before it even started.
“These scarves are dope. And they would really take a well-made-up face to the next level,” LeDeya said. WIC smiled that damned smile, and Liza saw every woman in the room’s heart skip a beat.
Except hers.
Bev glanced approvingly at Liza. Bev liked him. Liza had actually done something right in Bev’s eyes, and she’d be damned if it didn’t feel good. But she knew this was going to be her high school boyfriend all over again. Once Bev liked someone, she asked about them endlessly, even when Liza had someone new. This would be the beginning of years of “How’s WIC?” It made her dread messing anything up for fear of hearing “Whatever happened to that nice WIC fella?” every month for the rest of her life. Everyone loved him. WIC seemed to even like herfamily, and there were no cultural or class translations needed. He would know to eat the damned oxtail. He would have known to do it. Liza would just have to squash her own asshole tendencies and settle into a good thing.
“While I applaud your attempt at modesty, you sound only interested in scarves to highlight the expert application of immodest makeup,” Maurice said.
“While I applaud your attempts at being a thesaurus, you still sound stupid,” LeDeya shot back. Maurice took a scarf and attempted to whirl it around and snap LeDeya with it.
“Leave the girl alone. She knows what she likes,” WIC said.
“She doesn’t know anything,” Liza said.
