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your whoevers? And do not plug your shit without letting the host know beforehand. They hate that.”

“The interview’s gone over well,” William said from the third row of the Navigator. He ran a finger repeatedly over his mobile.

“Hashtags all over social media. #ImWithJohn, #JohnsPlace, #WhyImHere.”

“You won’t have to rely solely on your contacts,” John said. “Those people out there can help.”

“How?” Hannah said, still cross.

“We announce a public search. People send photos, explanations as to how they might know me—”

Hannah put up a hand. “Do you realize what you’re saying? Even if we somehow thought of a way to systemize it—we’d be inundated.”

“William said you’re the best.”

“I am the best. But I’m not a goddamned magician.” She stared back at him. “Family can really screw you over. One day you

look up and find out your husband is doing some whore in Venice and it could last forever because she doesn’t even have the

self-respect to demand he take her out of the house once in a while. You know, most of my clients want me to keep family at

bay.”

“I don’t doubt it, believe me, but we’ve got nothing to go on from my end. Whoever knew me, we’re only going to reconnect

if they come forward. Then we figure if they can be useful, and if they aren’t...” He shrugged.

“And if they are?”

“I get the information I need and move on. Quick. Painless.”

“I don’t think you understand people.”

“They’ve been used to my absence. It won’t drag out.”

Hannah looked out the window, at the passersby and palm trees and streams of traffic. “Like I said, I don’t think you understand people.”

8

The first interview did what Hannah said it would: it set the tone. People loved John, and they wanted to know more. Yes,

they did want to know what he thought about climate change. They wanted to know what he thought about the crisis in the Sudan.

They wanted to know what he thought about war in eastern Europe and if he’d consider doing a reality show. Was he seeing anyone

special? Worldwide appetite for John was insatiable. You’re the only one who ever came back , Hannah said. You don’t represent Americans. You represent the human race. You’re a part of everyone.

John had Zoom calls with the biggest media outlets in the country: So, John, I’m going to ask you the thing everyone’s wondering about. Are you a boxers or briefs man? Or boxer briefs? And

especially, do you no longer feel the need to adjust your balls?

John gave interviews that were broadcast to every continent. (He wasn’t at all interested in getting on an airplane. It makes no difference that I won’t die if I fall through the seat—how would you like hurtling to the ground from forty thousand

feet? ) Hannah’s office was inundated with gifts and invitations (any invitations requiring air travel were declined but not before

it was leaked to the press that John had, in fact, been invited): a ceremonial tea set created by a renowned South Korean

artist; a personal letter from the Dalai Lama; a formal invitation to tour the Vatican Apostolic Secret Archives from the pope; an ostentatious video message from the dictator

of North Korea cordially inviting John to sit in his private box for an exhibition basketball game; a request that John attend

the son of a sultan’s twentieth-birthday party; an evening in Orange County with an especially esteemed imam from Mali.

Certainly everyone did not feel the kumbaya. A moderately sized contingent of people—throughout the world, but mostly white Americans—denied John was who, or rather what, he claimed, insisting he was either some deep-state hoax or self-indulgent fraud or perhaps even Lucifer himself.

There was, of course, the fact that John didn’t care, for he didn’t want to be a part of everyone at all, but rather apart from them.

“Because of course,” William said one day with a roll of his eyes, “the only person to ever come back as a ghost just couldn’t be a Black man. White evangelicals are not exempt. I’m going to need them to do a Google search so they can see what Jesus

probably actually looked like, OK?”

“Sorry you’ve got to deal with this,” Jin Mi said to John. “It’s like when Trump tried to say Obama wasn’t born in America,

and how all those people kept believing it even after seeing the paperwork.”

“Because it was never about the birth certificate,” William said. “And this is like one hundred times worse.”

Jin Mi nodded vehemently. “Plus Hillary’s emails plus QAnon—”

“Girl, we ain’t going into the trifling mess that was Hillary’s inbox—”

“It was nothing!” Jin Mi said.

“It was a whole lot of something but let’s agree to move on. You can park Hunter Biden’s laptop in that suitcase, too.”

“Oh my goodness—William, sometimes I just can’t believe you.”

“Anyway,” said William, turning to John, “you’ve been rolled into a burrito supreme conspiracy that is John the Dead Black

Antichrist.”

John still couldn’t believe that Donald Trump, real estate developer/reality TV star Donald Trump, had ever been president.

It was America, however, so perhaps he should cease to be surprised about anything.

“Trump was president-elect three days,” said Jin Mi, “and I nearly had a panic attack. And the first time he said kung flu I was ready to expatriate.”

William shook his head. “My ancestors didn’t bleed into this soil so I could cut and run. Racism—all the isms—were front and

center. But I wasn’t about to be hoodwinked and bamboozled because the blue team was saying all the right words, either. You

know what, I think I’m going to start my own political party.”

William, despite his apprehensions about no longer living full time in Hannah’s beach house but in the hotel room next to John, was in a better mood these days, having warmed to their excursions to the beach, to the Getty Museum, to the hills to watch sunsets and the Griffith Observatory to watch the stars.

John had insisted upon hunkering in his hotel room but even he had to admit there was a limit to that.

William insisted that John drink in everything the living world had to offer, but John thought maybe it was helping William to temporarily ignore his suspicion that Hannah would be sacking him any day now.

Because that’s why she has me babysitting you—no offense—instead of having Jin Mi do it.

John had tried to convince William otherwise, but William bemoaned, Hannah is the sun, and the farther away a planet is from the sun, the colder it is.

I am not going to spin classes. I am not

getting her macchiatos. I’ll be fired, and I won’t even have a boyfriend to distract me because I was too focused on Hannah

to ever get one!

And then an interesting discovery. Jin Mi noticed early on that people tended to disagree on John’s appearance. He was a tall,

dark-skinned, dark-eyed Black man, yes, with a dark fade complete with rippled waves and a crisp edge-up; but when it came

to the exact details of his face—the proportions of his nose, his lips, his chin, the set of his eyes—the discrepancy was

staggering.

Arguments flared online over the details of John’s face while looking at the same image. Essentially, each person seemed to

see something different. John’s eyes had been described as everything from wide and round to bedroom-y to almond shaped; his

nose had been called aquiline and straight and full and round; his lips were as bowed as they were flat and plump. His origins

were a source of great debate and took him across all of the African diaspora: Was he Haitian? Nigerian or Congolese? Ethiopian?

Somalian? Or was he, in the words of one prominent Black comedian, just Blackity Black Black Black, damn!

Oftentimes, his features corresponded with those of the person perceiving him.

So were people seeing what they wanted to see?

What they expected to see? He’d worried this would make it difficult for someone who actually knew him to recognize him, hence make it difficult for him to find his House, but then he realized that if they knew him in life, surely they would know his face now, for he would be who they’d expected.

And what do you see when you look in the mirror? William asked John one night, to which he replied, I see me.

9

For years, Mama Cross had been living vicariously through her ten-year-old daughter. It wasn’t so much dancing as it was stardom,

in general, that sparked through Persephone’s mother’s brain like a bedazzled t-shirt.

“That’s what she really wants,” Persephone confided to Parker one afternoon as they sat atop their trailer with three cans

of Coke and two family-sized bags of Cheetos.

“To be a star?”

“Not like a movie star. More like a behind-the-scenes star. A producer. A conductor. You should see the way she carries on

after some of the shows, the way she fusses over me just to get attention.”

“She fusses over you ’cause she’s your mama. She cares.” There was a hint of something in his voice, something that made She cares sound more like She cares, stupid .

“That’s not it. Miss Marley comes around with Summer and all of a sudden Mama gets ten times as loud, spraying more Aqua Net

over my bun and talkin’ about me not snaggin’ my tights.”

“She’s had a hard go of things, you know that. Daddy ain’t shit. And you know what people say. Plus that time Miss Marley

callin’ her your nanny knowing damn well she’s your mama.”

“Yeah,” Persephone whispered, chastened. The first day of class, after Miss Marley had said it, Persephone was so angry, only

to realize later that there was something else she felt: shame, though she couldn’t say what, exactly, she was ashamed of,

or whether it was Miss Marley or Mama who’d triggered it.

“And at least she shows up,” Parker added tightly.

There it was again. Only this time, Persephone didn’t have to wonder at the tone. It was smack dab in front of her: resentment.

Parker must’ve heard it in his own voice, because he added, “She wants to see you do good, Funny.”