good player when I saw one, and Barack quickly passed the test. He played an
athletic, artful form of basketball, his lanky body moving quickly, showing power
I hadn’t before noticed. He was swift and graceful, even in his Hawaiian
footwear. I stood there pretending to listen to what somebody’s perfectly nice
wife was saying to me, but my eyes stayed fixed on Barack. I was struck for the
first time by the spectacle of him—this strange mix-of-everything man.
As we drove back to the city in the early evening, I felt a new ache, some
freshly planted seed of longing. It was July. Barack would be leaving sometime in
August, disappearing into law school and whatever else life held for him there.
Nothing had changed outwardly—we were kidding around, as we always did,
gossiping about who’d said what at the barbecue—but there was a certain kind of
heat climbing my spine. I was acutely aware of his body in the small space of my
car—his elbow resting on the console, his knee within reach of my hand. As we
followed the southward curve of Lake Shore Drive, passing bicyclists and runners
on the pedestrian pathways, I was arguing silently with myself. Was there a way
to do this unseriously? How badly could it hurt my job? I had no clarity about
anything—about what was proper, about who would find out and whether that
mattered—but it hit me that I was done waiting for clarity.
He was living in Hyde Park, subletting an apartment from a friend. By the
time we pulled into the neighborhood, the tension lay thick in the air between
us, like something inevitable or predestined was finally about to happen. Or was I
imagining it? Maybe I’d shut him down too many times. Maybe he’d given up
and now just saw me as a good, stalwart friend—a girl with an air-conditioned
Saab who’d drive him around when he needed it.
I halted the car in front of his building, my mind still in blurry overdrive.
We let an awkward beat pass, each waiting for the other to initiate a good-bye.
Barack cocked his head at me.
“Should we get some ice cream?” he said.
This is when I knew the game was on, one of the few times I decided to
stop thinking and just live. It was a warm summer evening in the city that I
loved. The air felt soft on my skin. There was a Baskin-Robbins on the block
near Barack’s apartment, and we got ourselves two cones, taking them outside to
eat, finding ourselves a spot on the curb. We sat close together with our knees
pulled up, pleasantly tired after a day spent outdoors, eating our ice cream quickly
and wordlessly, trying to stay ahead of the melt. Maybe Barack read it on my face
or sensed it in my posture—the fact that everything for me had now begun to