“It wouldn’t be right,” Ramona said. “We didn’t earn that money.”
“It ain’t right having the two of you living in the damn ghetto and workin’ forty hours a week at your ages while your boy is a goddamn multi-millionaire,” G countered.
“What would we do in Burlingame or Los Gatos?” Tevin asked. “We’re ghetto blacks. That’s where we lived all of our lives. Do we need a bunch of rich white people glarin’ at us every time we go out? Shee-it, it’s bad enough here at this place, watching people afraid to get into the elevator with us, sitting as far away from us as they can get in the dining room. I even had one woman lock all the doors on her car when I walked by in the parking lot.”
“Amen to that,” Ramona said. “We live in East Palo Alto. That’s our home.”
“You could at least let me pay off the mortgage and pay your bills for you,” Gordon said.
“Not gonna happen,” Tevin said, shaking his head. “Those are our bills and our mortgage. We only got another five years to pay on it. I’m proud that we’re paying that house off ourselves, with our own money that we earned honestly.”
“You got too much pride, pop,” Gordon told him.
“Could be,” Tevin said, nodding wisely. “But that’s better than not havin’ enough, ain’t it?”
Jake had to admit that the man had a point.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the hall, Nerdly and Sharon were sitting at a table with Neesh’s parents, Bartholomew and Phuong Jefferson. Bart, as he insisted the Nerdlys call him, was a light skinned black man with short, slightly graying hair. Phuong was a tiny, petite pure-blooded Vietnamese woman who had been born under Japanese occupation in Saigon in 1944. Both of the Jefferson elders were doctors; Bart an anesthesiologist who practiced at Providence Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica; Phuong a doctor of veterinary medicine who was a partner in a successful practice that owned and operated three clinics in the Los Angeles area.
“You are an avian veterinary specialist?” asked Nerdly, who had just been told that Phuong’s clinics focused primarily on birds.
“That’s correct,” she said, her English clear and precise, without so much as a hint of accent. “I’ve always loved birds, ever since I was a little girl growing up in Saigon. It was caring for injured and sick birds that inspired me to study veterinary medicine when my family came to America after the French left. As it turns out, avian medicine is quite a lucrative specialty. It took me an additional two years of residency and study, but our clinics are one of only a handful in the Los Angeles area to treat all the pet birds that people have.” She soured a little. “Those that care enough about their birds to actually seek treatment for them, that is.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sharon.
“Most people who buy birds for pets do it on impulse and have no business owning them. They treat them like disposable pets, keep them locked in cages all the time and just want us to euthanize them the first time anything ever goes wrong with them. It’s sad, really. Breaks my heart sometimes because birds can be such wonderful companions if you let them be part of your family.”
“That makes sense,” Nerdly said. “They are flock animals, after all. It would seem intuitive that they would exhibit the best companionship traits if they felt as if they were part of a flock.”
“Exactly!” Phuong said brightly. “Have you owned birds before, Bill?”
“Never,” Nerdly said. “To tell you the truth, I’m quite afraid of them.”
“Don’t ever come over to our house then,” Bart advised. “We have three of them, all of them on the loose whenever we are home. Two cockatiels and a rather foul-mouthed parakeet.”
“Foul-mouthed?” Sharon asked.
“Yes,” Phuong said, casting an evil glare at her husband. “We’re not proliferate users of profanity by any means, but someone likes to let the occasional politically incorrect phrase fly out.”
“You do it too,” Bart said, smiling.
“In any case,” Phuong went on, “little Ding, that’s the parakeet’s name because he likes to ding a bell that hangs above his favorite perch, always seems to pick up those utterances quite well and then repeat them over and over.”
“Just like a baby,” Sharon said, delighted. “Kelvin will be doing that soon.”
“Yes,” Phuong agreed, “but with a baby, they eventually outgrow it, or you can at least get them to stop doing it. Ding is seven years old now and his vocabulary only grows with each outburst.”
“I’d love to meet him sometime,” Sharon said with a laugh.
“He sounds interesting,” said Bill. “But does he bite?”
“Yes,” Bart said without hesitation. “He bites.”
“Not that hard,” Phuong said. “And only when he’s upset.”
“I see,” said Bill, making a vow that he would never set foot in their house as long as those birds lived.
“So...” said Bart, “I understand that you, Bill, were the piano player for Mr. Kingsley back when he played for that rock band of his.”
“That is correct,” Bill said. “Jake and I have known each other all of our lives. Our mothers played in the Heritage Philharmonic together and are best friends. We grew up together and I was always drawn to the piano. When Jake joined Intemperance, he thought I might be a musically complementary addition to the base sound of the group, so I went and played for them. The rest is history.”
“I guess it worked out well for you,” Bart said, nodding. “You sound quite intelligent.”
“I have a tested intelligence quotient of one hundred and thirty-nine on the Wechsler scale,” Bill without so much as hint of pride. He was just stating a fact. “There are, of course, some who suggest that my abnormally high score is inflated to some degree due to my early childhood musical training, which some data suggests may artificially enhance such scores.”
“I see,” said Bart slowly. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“Where did you go to college?” asked Phuong.
“I was accepted to Stanford, Harvard, and the New England Conservatory of Music,” he said. “Alas, I did not actually attend any institute of higher learning. I started playing music with Intemperance shortly after high school and there has been no real need to pursue further studies.”
“Really?” Phuong said, her voice flirting with disbelief. “You’ve only a high school diploma?”
“It has gotten me this far in life,” Bill said. “Sharon, by contrast, is the holder of a master’s degree in Audio Engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles.”
“Is that so?” Phuong asked, new respect showing in her eyes. “UCLA is our alma mater, both Bart and myself.”
“It’s a good school,” Sharon agreed. “I learned a lot there. Truth be told, however, I learned much more about my profession by working with Bill.”
“Really?” Bart said, raising his eyebrows a bit.
“Really,” Sharon said. “I have the education, but Bill is a musical genius with a superb ear for sound reproduction. He and I are the most sought-after sound engineering team in the United States right now. We could name our own price if we decided to hire ourselves out. I never would have accomplished that without him. I’d be lucky to be working on television commercials in some basement somewhere if it weren’t for Bill.”
“I think she underestimates herself a small amount,” Bill said.
“Really?” asked Phuong.
“Oh yes,” Bill said. “I think she would at least be working on second rate media fills by this point if I had not made her acquaintance.”
The Jeffersons laughed for a few seconds before realizing that Bill was not kidding.
“So ... anyway,” Sharon said, “you two met in college?”
“That’s right,” Phuong said. “We were undergrads together, both working on our biology degrees back in 1965. We took a lot of the same classes together—chemistry, bio-chem, organic chem, microbiology. Back then, there weren’t a lot of black people attending UCLA—at least not any who weren’t playing on the football or basketball teams. Nor were there a lot of Vietnamese—my family were among the very first able to come to this country before the war over there started to ramp up. Bart and I were both outsiders, as you can probably imagine, and we were drawn to each other. We used to study together in the library and then we started going out to lunch and dinner, and then ... well ... we became a couple.”