Free All My Relations by Christopher McIlroy Page B

of her doublewide. Answering the door, the principal could be a softball coach with her long, untended hair and sateen windbreaker, except for the Stratocaster slung across her neck. Motioning me to the couch, she steps behind the mike. Dreadlocked portraits glower from the walls, one in lion headdress, spearpoint at his shoulder, another clay-yellow with a weird fringe of blond hair.
    Bass and drums kick off. The principal sings, “I hear the words of the Rasta Man say Babylon you throne gone down, gone down …”
    The band is Hualapai Dread, though only the principal is Hualapai, and no one wears dreadlocks. The rhythm section is Havasupai, while the plump white woman crouched over the synthesizer teaches kindergarten. Practice over, the principal joins me on the couch.
    A Vegas dealer once told me his cards are a meditation, that while shuffling and distributing them he achieves the tranquility to make life decisions, including his vasectomy and conversion to Judaism. Laying out the AIS prospectuses, I feel solid ground beneath me. AIS is a well-marked path, with a handrail, and nearly drinking away this job a year ago was the worst hurt I’ve done myself.
    Drinking really heavy, I was in command of the big picture, but details at the edges were eroding. Clients could have had legitimate issues with me. October 17, the market’s Black Monday, obliterated those details, wiping my record clean. Since then, the extra time and effort I’ve devoted to clients—secretly I’ve even paid their custodial fees myself—is probably what got me promoted.
    The principal’s accounts are off 25 percent since the crash. She wants to build a recording studio. “Cut our own demo, sure, but for all musicians on the rez. You should hear the Hualapai Elvis.”
    Imaging the client in his or her ideal outcome directs me to the proper options. I see the principal in headphones, twirling knobs and slamming levers, torso pumping subtly to the beat. For rapid capital formation, I propose transferring the remains of her NewTech Fund into Precious Metals.
    â€œTwo-point-six percent in South African gold,” she says, thumbing through the prospectus.
    â€œDown from five-point-one. AIS is in the process of divestiture.”
    â€œNone of that apartheid gold.”
    While admiring her principles, I can’t allow her to abandon her goals. “You might consider,” I say, “whether a symbol, with negligible real impact, is worth jeopardizing what you can accomplish here. Precious Metals is the portfolio’s most aggressive performer. Forty-seven percent last year.”
    â€œTake it easy, King Midas.” The band laughs. “Hualapai Dread doesn’t make its music on the bodies of our African brothers and sisters.”
    â€œO.K. Good,” I say.
    I leave incredulous. Her investments will fail.
    Without a couple of drinks I don’t drop off at night. Dooley and I drive to a bar off the rez, where I wait in line at the package goods window. On the way back we hold hands, Dooley’sfingers slipping in and out between mine, every so often a convulsive squeeze, our palms bellying against each other. I stop and we rub our faces together in just the same way.
    Side by side under the covers, in the dark, we bring each other off. Our hands are slow, careful, and we never face each other.
    â€œFriends would do that, for relief,” Dooley says.
    Drifting, I remember to ask after her mother.
    â€œI’ve taught mother self-caring skills,” Dooley explains. Through the monotone, stilted phrasing I hear clearly, Mother, release me, somebody get me out of this. Funny. Dooley’s nudity is a mask, but the dense, crunched speech—her “deceased” father “subjecting me to abuse,” “my husband despised me because I am a nonwhite”—is transparent, exposing her completely. I’m embarrassed and touched by these glimpses, as if I’ve