Page 23 of About the Green

He cuts me off, his voice louder than usual in the car. “I made the plans. I've been the main point of contact for this entire operation since we got to Atlanta. What exactly have you done?”

“Do you know how much of a burden it is to be the visuals of this team?” I gesture to my outfit which he still has not addressed in all its glory. “I am carrying the visuals.”

“We are not supposed to be seen,” he bites out.

I scoff. “Who cares about that?”

“Everyone,” he says, “Everyone cares about that when you’re casing someone.”

“Mmm, I bring joy to every space I come into,” I insist, straightening the lace of my bra top underneath the jacket. Who isn’t happy to see me coming in a fit this nice. It’s the perfect distraction from the roiling goo underneath.

He looks around the car, “What space?”

“This one. I'm like the spirit of the team.”

“Spirit?” he asks slowly.

“Yeah. I mean, you kind of, like, bring the mood down. I'm more on the up and up, you know?”

“The up and up,” he repeats drolly. Does he know how to make his own sentences instead of repeating mine?

“Yea. So, like, here, for instance, you're like, ‘Oh, grumpy, these guys,’ and I'm like, ‘Here's the solution. Liezel probably knows who that is.’”

“No, you—” he interjects, but then stops himself. “Please, just take a picture and send it to your boss so that we can figure out if she knows who this man is.”

“All right, all right. God, you're literally so dull. Like, if I had a color, it'd be fuchsia, or, like, bubble gum. Something very bright that, like, makes your mouth water. Oh, watermelon. That's the color I would be. Like, you, on the other hand, you would be something more like greige, you know?” I pause for a moment to give him an opportunity to respond but he doesn’t so I continue, “Pointedly neither beige or gray, which are both colors that go with other things, like very boring and can disappear against anything. Together, they pointedly make everything look more drab, and that's you. You're like the most drab color.”

“Don't give a fuck about what color you think I am. Did you take the picture?”

I put my phone back into my purse since it will vibrate when Liezel gets back to me. “Yea. I already did that. God. And what's your deal, huh? Like, everybody says that you're like a vampire, like a vamp. Did you choose that name? Is that, like, your name? Like, because everybody else has, like, their own, like, secret names, like Blue and Redd, and then Geno, he was Orange. So, like, what are you?”

“Vert.”

“Yea, but that's, like, your name.”

“Yea.”

“And what's a Vert?”

He doesn’t know whether to trust my question by the way his eyebrows remain low on his forehead, but he responds either way. “It's green.”

Green.

“Oh, so, like, everything is always about the green, huh? Like weed, money. That's, like, Dupont's whole thing. So, like, you—technically—are the Dupont mascot.”

“Nina,” he growls but I’m on a roll now.

“Oh my god, we're like the same. Same, same, but, like, obviously Lafayette and, like, everything that Racquelle has going on is just, like, way better than, like, what y'all have going on.”

His head hits the head rest and grumbles, “When can this be over?” he says to no one in particular.

I lean the seat back in the car so I’m able to catch his eye. “I was hoping soon, because I could really go for a nap. I have worked myself into a stupor. Oh, or better yet, lunch. When are we going to do that?”

He sighs, “We?”

“Yeah, we. You and me. After we've been just doing all this really hard work, we have to eat, right?”

“No. I need to check in with Redd and let him know what happened, what intel we gathered.”