With Nick working on the game trailer, and Asher and Kat putting together the game demos, things were back on track. We had three weeks until the trade show, so there was no room for error. Somehow, we’d managed to hit every production milestone despite the addition of GameCon deliverables to our demanding schedule.
Asher came into the office later than usual, with two coffees and two bagels in hand. Was he being nice for once? Nah, turns out they were both for him. He alternated bites between the two bagels (“Oh my god, Melody, the new bagel shop near my house just opened this morning and the bagels are perfect. So chewy and soft. You should go there sometime”) and drinking the two coffees with lots of slurping bravado. The last few days I had brought in doughnuts, pastries, and muffins from the bakery around the corner, which had a LINE every morning, and fed all the producers, developers, and artists working on my project. And yet Asher couldn’t even think to get me a stupid bagel. Or add a third coffee to his greedy order. Bastard.
Ian walked by my office and backtracked to the door. “Melody, aren’t you coming to the meeting?”
“What meeting?” I checked my calendar. Nope, no meeting.
“Oh, I thought I’d invited you.” He looked on his phone. “Here, I’ll add you to the meeting invitation. You should come to it.” The meeting he invited me to, called “Meeting,” would start in one minute. I saw no agenda listed.
I grabbed my laptop and trailed behind Ian to head to “Meeting.” The only thing I knew about it was that the selfish double-coffee and bagel-eating monster Asher wasn’t invited.
Around the executive conference room sat ten other people evenly spaced around the table. A few Indian and Chinese developers, our black receptionist, and Kat and me. And Ian. And some cheeseball dude with a loud fake laugh and gray moussed hair, wearing a shiny oxford shirt with damp armpit marks, standing in front of the whiteboard.
“Welcome! Please take a seat, we were just about to get started.” I looked around for some clue on what this meeting was about. Kat sat on the other side of the room, so I couldn’t ask her. “I’m Rafael. I’ve been brought in by Ian to facilitate diversity sensitivity discussions. We asked for you to join this meeting because you represent a minority group here at Seventeen Studios, and we want to hear from you.”
My stomach dropped, like I’d just plunged down a roller-coaster hill.
Ian said, “HR thought we should do this because of the recent controversy around our newest game launch.” He shot me an exasperated look. I averted his glance by looking down at my notebook and writing “Diversity Discussion” in bubble letters.
Rafael read from a sheet of paper. “According to our roster, we have a wide range of representation in this room. We have foreign nationals from India and China,” he said, glancing at the developers. “We have Asians and Blacks”—he nodded to the receptionist and me—“and we also have LGBTQ.” He looked at Kat.
“I’m not LGBTQ, I’m straight.” Kat scrunched her brow and leaned forward, like a cat about to pounce. Did they think she was a lesbian just because she had short hair and drove a Subaru? Almost everyone in Seattle drove a Subaru.
Rafael didn’t know what to do. He looked at Ian. “Oh. Should we cut her loose?”
Ian thought for a moment. “I really thought she was L. But she’s still a woman. We could use that input.” He scanned the room. “But maybe someone else in here is L, though.” His eyes fixed on mine like a predator spotting prey. “Melody?”
My mouth dropped open. “I-I-I’m not a lesbian.”
And with me saying this, you’d think we were done. But no.
Ian asked, “Not even . . . B?”
I shot a pleading look at Rafael the moderator. Rather than moderate this cringeworthy dialogue, he looked at me in earnest. He, too, wanted to know if I was bisexual.
Kat jumped to her feet and flung her chair back. “Oh hell no, I’m way too busy for this fake diversity rah-rah bullshit. We have a game to launch and a trade show coming up soon. If you need me, I’ll be at my desk.” She stormed out, mumbling, “Why do I fucking work here?” She slammed the door hard enough to make the walls and table shake.
I leaped up too. “Kat and I have the same deadlines. And . . . I’m not bi.”
Ian shrugged, and Rafael handed me a diversity questionnaire to fill out and mail to him by the end of the week.
I clomped back to my desk in a hurry and skimmed the three questions.
Do you feel singled out for being a minority at Seventeen Studios?
(Yes. Please refer to the bisexual discussion.)
Do you agree with this statement: “Gaming is for guys.”
(No.)
Please explain.
(I shouldn’t have to.)
Is there anything Seventeen can do to help you feel more comfortable and welcome at this company?
(Yes. Put Ian and the rest of you executive idiots through diversity and sensitivity training.)
What a joke.
I crumpled up the paper and threw it in the trash. Walking back to my desk, Kat’s last words played back over and over through my head. Why did I fucking work here?
Honestly, I couldn’t think of an answer anymore.
Chapter Seventeen
My parents weren’t paying attention when I pulled up to the arrivals area at Sea-Tac airport. They were arguing about something. Without even saying hello, they continued their bickering in Korean while I opened the trunk and put their luggage in. My mom sat in the back and Dad got in the front.
“How was your trip?”
My dad made a harrumph sound as he pulled the seat belt across his chest. “You ask your mom!” He crossed his arms and stared straight ahead.
“Um, okay. Mom, what happened?”
“He mad because he say I forgot to buy his heart medicine. And now we have almost empty bottle. We need to refill here.”
My dad had a pretty serious heart attack a few years ago, but he recovered like a champ. Since then, though, he had to take daily medication, a blood thinner, to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
“Dad, why didn’t you refill it yourself? Mom isn’t the only one who knows how to do that at a drugstore.”
My mom yelled, “Yes! I’m not his maid!” while my dad shouted, “I am older. She need to help me.”
Yet another one of their pointless fights where they ping-ponged angry words and then refused to speak to each other.
They needed to cut this shit out. “I think it’s good for you two to discuss this with each other. About why Dad expects you to fill his meds, Mom. And, Dad, why you depend on Mom to do this for you. But you can do this at your hotel room, and not with me in public. I’ll drive you to the hotel and you can check in early. We can eat around there and skip brunch. Too bad, it was going to be at an all-you-can-eat crab place, your favorite kind of restaurant.”
Mom and Dad looked at each other and came to a quick nonverbal peace treaty. “We want to eat crab.” My dad gave me a sad puppy-dog look, upset that I could so easily yank away this privilege from them. I wasn’t going to reward their bad behavior.
Mom chimed in. “We not angry anymore, Melody.” She reached into the front seat, grabbed my dad’s hand, and then she swung their arms a little bit. “See? We are friends. Drive us to crab brunch.”
I picked out this seafood brunch buffet because of the number of high reviews, and because my parents couldn’t get good seafood where they lived in the South. They could eat hundreds of dollars’ worth of Alaskan crab legs in one sitting, so foodwise they’d be in heaven. Whenever my parents went to any buffet, they went straight for the seafood section. They never had salad. Or rolls. Sometimes my dad would have clam chowder. “Salad is waste money,” he’d say, as he cracked open crab shells with his steel-trap-strength teeth, ripping out the juicy flesh with surgical precision.
The table was ready when we arrived, and the hostess seated us near a bay window overlooking Puget Sound. The hanging fog obscured our view, but at least it wasn’t pouring rain.
“Waaaaaa!” Mom and Dad oohed and ahhed over the scenery. Seagulls swooped down and around the water, mesmerizing my parents into silence.
A man’s southern voice boomed a few feet away. “Well, son, this certainly is a treat. What a spectacular view!” I looked up from the menu to see a ginger-haired, ruddy, giant man in a light blue oxford shirt and pleated khakis walking to the table next to us. Behind him was a lovely older woman, maybe sixties, with a blunt brown bob and perfectly applied red lipstick. And behind her?
Nolan MacKenzie.
Nolan, with his neatly pressed, tucked blue shirt, perfectly centered silk blue-and-gray-checkered tie, khaki-colored cords, and brown laced Oxfords. He looked like a different person entirely with his preppy, evenly combed hair. While his parents got seated, he walked over to say hello.
“Hello, Mr. Joo, Mrs. Joo. So nice to meet you. Melody talks about you so much at work.”
My parents exchanged looks. Mom spoke first. “You work with Melody?”
He laughed. “Yes, she works hard.”
My dad tipped his chin up and smiled proudly. “She take after us.”
“Melody, I’d love for you to meet my parents.”