desk with a smile.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the file. “Looking forward to it.”
After he left, I tucked it into a drawer.
Did he know I’d never read it? I think he probably did. He’d given it to me
half as a joke. We were in different specialty groups, so there was no material
overlap in our work anyway. I had plenty of my own documents to contend
with. And I didn’t need to be wowed. We were friends now, Barack and I,
comrades in arms. We ate lunch out at least once a week and sometimes more
often than that, always, of course, billing Sidley & Austin for the pleasure.
Gradually, we learned more about each other. He knew that I lived in the same
house as my parents, that my happiest memories of Harvard Law School stemmed
from the work I’d done in the Legal Aid Bureau. I knew that he consumed
volumes of political philosophy as if it were beach reading, that he spent all his
spare change on books. I knew that his father had died in a car crash in Kenya
and that he’d made a trip there to try to understand more about the man. I knew
he loved basketball, went for long runs on the weekends, and spoke wistfully of
his friends and family on Oahu. I knew he’d had plenty of girlfriends in the past,
but didn’t have one now.
This last bit was something I thought I could rectify. My life in Chicago was
nothing if not crowded with accomplished and eligible black women. My
marathon work hours notwithstanding, I liked to socialize. I had friends from
Sidley, friends from high school, friends developed through professional
networking, and friends I’d met through Craig, who was newly married and
making his living as an investment banker in town. We were a merry co-ed crew,
congregating when we could in one downtown bar or another and catching up
over long, lavish meals on weekends. I’d gone out with a couple of guys in law
school but hadn’t met anyone special upon returning to Chicago and had little
interest anyway. I’d announced to everyone, including potential suitors, that my
career was my priority. I did, though, have plenty of girlfriends who were
looking for someone to date.
One evening early in the summer, I brought Barack along with me to a
happy hour at a downtown bar, which served as an unofficial monthly mixer for
black professionals and was where I often met up with friends. He’d changed out
of his work clothes, I noticed, and was wearing a white linen blazer that looked
as if it’d come straight out of the Miami Vice costume closet. Ah well.
There was no arguing with the fact that even with his challenged sense of