When the lights went up for intermission, I stole a glance at Barack. He was slumped down, with his right elbow on the armrest and index finger resting on his forehead, his expression unreadable.
“What’d you think?” I said.
He gave me a sideways look. “Horrible, right?”
I laughed, relieved that he felt the same way.
Barack sat up in his seat. “What if we got out of here?” he said. “We could just leave.”
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t bolt. I wasn’t that sort of person. I cared too much what the other lawyers thought of me—what they’d think if they spotted our empty seats. I cared too much, in general, about finishing what I’d started, about seeing every last little thing through to the absolute heart-stopping end, even if it was an overwrought Broadway musical on an otherwise beautiful Wednesday night. This, unfortunately, was the box checker in me. I endured misery for the sake of appearances. But now, it seemed, I’d joined up with someone who did not.
Avoiding everyone we knew from work—the other advisers and their summer associates bubbling effusively in the lobby—we slipped out of the theater and into a balmy evening. The last light was draining from a purple sky. I exhaled, my relief so palpable that it caused Barack to laugh.
“Where are we going now?” I asked.
“How ’bout we grab a drink?”
We walked to a nearby bar in the same manner we always seemed to walk, with me a step forward and him a step back. Barack was an ambler. He moved with a loose-jointed Hawaiian casualness, never given to hurry, even and especially when instructed to hurry. I, on the other hand, power walked even during my leisure hours and had a hard time decelerating. But I remember how that night I counseled myself to slow down, just a little—just enough so that I could hear what he was saying, because it was beginning to dawn on me that I cared about hearing everything he said.
Until now, I’d constructed my existence carefully, tucking and folding every loose and disorderly bit of it, as if building some tight and airless piece of origami. I had labored over its creation. I was proud of how it looked. But it was delicate. If one corner came untucked, I might discover that I was restless. If another popped loose, it might reveal I was uncertain about the professional path I’d so deliberately put myself on, about all the things I told myself I wanted. I think now it’s why I guarded myself so carefully, why I still wasn’t ready to let him in. He was like a wind that threatened to unsettle everything.
A day or two later, Barack asked if I could give him a ride to a barbecue for summer associates, which was happening that weekend at a senior partner’s home in one of the wealthy lakefront suburbs north of the city. The weather, as I remember it, was clear that day, the lake sparkling at the edge of a well-tended lawn. A caterer served food as music blared over stereo speakers and people remarked on the tasteful grandeur of the house. The whole milieu was a portrait of affluence and ease, a less-than-subtle reminder of the payoff that came when you committed yourself wholeheartedly to the grind. Barack, I knew, wrestled with what he wanted to do with his life, which direction his career would take. He had an uneasy relationship with wealth. Like me, he’d never had it, and he didn’t aspire to it, either. He wanted to be effective far more than he wanted to be rich but was still trying to figure out how.
We walked through the party not quite like a couple but still mostly together, drifting between clusters of colleagues, drinking beer and lemonade, eating hamburgers and potato salad from plastic plates. We’d get separated and then find each other again. It all felt natural. He was quietly flirty with me and I was flirty back. Some of the men started playing pickup basketball, and I watched as Barack moseyed on over to the court in his flip-flops to join. He had an easy rapport with everyone at the firm. He addressed all the secretaries by name and got along with everyone—from the older, stuffier lawyers to the ambitious young bucks who were now playing basketball. He’s a good person, I thought to myself, watching him pass the ball to another lawyer.
Having sat through scores of high school and college games, I recognized a 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 loosen and unfold.
He was looking at me curiously, with the trace of a smile.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
And with that, I leaned in and everything felt clear.
Becoming Us
9
As soon as I allowed myself to feel anything for Barack, the feelings came rushing—a toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder. Any worries I’d been harboring about my life and career and even about Barack himself seemed to fall away with that first kiss, replaced by a driving need to know him better, to explore and experience everything about him as fast as I could.