Linger reading
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One

            For three-quarters of a decade I have sat curled over this notepad, scratching out my daily diagnosis of Chicago’s body politic; seven years enumerating its many and constant self-inflicted wounds: its bureaucratic sclerosis, its weeping budgetary cuts. That’s enough time standing knee-deep in democracy’s operating room to deaden anyone’s nerves. And yet. Even I cannot deny that tonight, there is hope in this town.

            Charlie Thomperson. She is our buzzing defibrillator, out now on the ballroom floor, resuscitating this room with another campaign speech. And watching her, it’s hard to think she’s real. More than once I’ve thought that if I still believed in anything, I might mistake her for an actual gift from heaven. A bona fide celestial agent, plucked from the ether and wrapped in a black gown with all the mystical trappings therein—holy aura, divine might. And I’d think it because there is no other explanation for this. That after four years of watching our now dead President, Gary Beuger, strip and sell the United States for parts, that people in this country not only have the capacity for hope, but they’re drunk on it like toddlers on Christmas Eve.

            I watch from the corner, wedged in the far back of the Hilton’s Grand Ballroom where right now Charlie is closing out another frightfully successful fundraiser. In attendance are the glistening, well-fed bodies of Chicago’s elite: the left-leaning CEOs and investment fund managers and namesakes of charitable trusts that regularly haunt the gala scene. They’re here to flaunt, and to bestow favor on their chosen political gladiator. But beneath the pageantry, there is genuine admiration, the lusty, tear-stung eyes of real belief. Charlie speaks as if only to them:

            “Because a country without a vision, without all of our support, is a country stuck in the past. You,” eye contact with one, two, three guests, “you are the purveyors of that future. You are the hope this country needs.”

            Flattery, empowerment, two offerings regularly laid before the wealthy but when it comes from Charlie, they lap it up. It’s like that every time; a thrall so complete, I swear she could ask for a kidney and these captains of industry would unlace their girdles right here on the ballroom floor.

            “America was built on solid foundations,” she says. “Liberty and democracy. Those are what made this nation great. We rose because the founders entrusted us to lead the country. Not a monarchy or an oligarchy, but the people.” This is the fifth time I’ve seen her routine. Now she pauses for a breath, now a bit of high chin to project resoluteness but not so much as to seem inauthentic. “And Washington betrayed that trust.”

            Someone in the audience—Taylor Struthmore of the Struthmore Fund—pounds his table like a stepdad ten cans worse for Miller Light, triggering a wave of room-wide applause. It’s rousing, yes, but there is a lot more to Charlie than just speeches.

            Her background is political fairytale. She was born into money—the only child of Doris McNamie of McNamie Shipping, and Kit Thomperson of RNC infamy. But by the age of twelve, Charlie renounced her birthright and paved her own road one personal essay at a time. She put herself through Smithen’s Academy in northern Chicago, which launched her into Berkley orbit which earned her a spot at Yale Law. After graduating, she returned home to Chicago, compelled by the governor’s speedy descent into white collar despotism. One success led to another and now she’s swinging for the fences: DC—the United States Senate—and judging by every poll since March, the seat is as good as hers.

            People love Charlie, deeply and with sincerity, even people who love nothing, who spoil away in high towers like untouchable cheeses, they all come down and unload cash just for the chance to see her up close, to tell her they’re a fan.

            “So we have the opportunity—the responsibility—to repair this country and enact bold, effective policies. Policies that protect our future.”

            I, however, am the flickering bulb in this Christmas tree, the name people hiss when they hear bad news or stub their toe: Ham Black, political reporter for the Chicago Tribune and eternal scourge of all things nice and good. I also happen to be a tiny bit buzzed. Not ideal but I wasn’t planning on taking notes anyway. No need. I have a source who can tell me better than anyone what to feed my readers, and she is just now delivering her final line.

            “And that is why five months from now,” pause, turn. “Five months—you and I will show this country. We will show them what this room stands for, what Illinois stands for. In five months, we will show this entire country what America stands for. Thank you.”

            Applause applause. People actually stand. A man whistles—Don Herber of Dapine Pharmaceuticals. Then across the room, Puja Naidu is using her napkin to dab a tear. These people, all sharks in their own waters and here they are, clapping like they’ve been clipped by one too many jet skis. That’s my cue.

            It’s ten fifteen, which means Charlie will shmooze for thirty minutes and then escape via side door for our “interview.” Plenty of time to get some fresh air.

            The Hilton Chicago, a gloriously old fortress of brick and iron, was built some hundred years ago in a time when people still hostlered derringers in their dress socks and smoked unfiltered cigarettes in bed. Naturally, it holds a soft spot in my heart. The smoking patio is tucked just behind the main lobby, a walled-off sequester: wrought iron chairs, glass ashtrays.

            June in Chicago is a grisly thing. That time of year when the city has fully sloughed off its winter coat and plants have boiled green over the landscape. It’s when the air turns into a rivery fog and air conditioners groan their oscillating moon song. From here though, on the patio, all I can hear is the whoosh of traffic on Michigan.

            I check my phone and find two messages. Both from Cole, my editor.

            Federal Society buying airtime on channel two. Check with Jamie.

            Source in last piece dropped out. Recheck. Also Daisy says invite you to dinner. Sunday. Bring a date, you celibate.

            Cole, that beautiful relic. He’s a genuine news man: all suspenders and burnt coffee and a briefcase with snaps—the snarling manifestation of journalism itself. He’s a man who opens his mail with a skinning knife and who once told me H.L. Mencken was too soft.

            I am one of Cole’s fifteen lead reporters, and he is my self-appointed father figure. We’ve been working together a while now but the father thing started two years ago. It was a Labor day party and I accidentally let slip that I grew up in foster care, which is the last thing anyone should say to a man with two adult kids and very pluckable empty-nest heart strings. Now he invites me to dinner every other weekend and shoots me paternal glances during news meetings.

            But the celibate thing, that is a carefully constructed fabrication. Cole is under the impression, as are all my coworkers, that the Chicago dating scene is so completely hostile that I’ve sworn it off entirely. The truth, however, is walking directly towards me in a very expensive black dress.

            Charlie pushes through the patio door, steals my cigarette, smashes her lips against mine.

            “Went well?” I ask when she peals away.

            “Mhmm. Herber is going to donate another seventy thousand. Introduced me to his granddaughter.” Her teeth flicker behind the cigarette’s ember. I light another one.

            “Yeah, he seemed pretty chipper tonight.”

            “You seem in a good mood yourself,” Charlie curls a finger inside my belt. Of course I’m in a good mood. There are plenty of problems I could worry about: that I’m breaking my paper’s ethical guidelines by sleeping with my subject, or that Charlie’s campaign staff have been trying to split us up since we met. Or there’s the fact that Ham Black is not my real name and my whole life is a lie. But hey, Friday night.  

            “I’m surprised you’re down so early,” I say and hold a lungful of smoke. “I thought you’d be working the room longer.”

            “Is it so bad I missed you?” She holds her cigarette out, away from her body. “No, I have to go back up in a minute. I’ll be here till one unless Amanda can scare off the Tippermans.”

            “Oh, I fully trust in Amanda’s ability to strike fear in her enemies.”

            “Mhmm.”

            Amanda Cormorand, forty-one, Charlie’s communications manager and self-proclaimed enemy to all reporters. The first time I met her was at a presser in Oak Park and she stiff-armed me in the chest, bruised two of my ribs. Supposedly she thought I was a protester even though I was wearing a press badge and I had a scheduled interview.

            I pluck an ash tray from a nearby table and Charlie stubs out her cigarette. “Tomorrow I’m up early anyway. Strategy meeting with Ahmed. Then prep for the rally this weekend.” Charlie opens the patio door, trading swamp mist for air conditioning.

            “Oh yes.” The rally. Charlie’s rally. It’s supposed to be huge, more like a convention than a speech. I’m not looking forward to it: sweating with all the other reporters, elbowing my way through crowds. The closest I’ll get to Charlie the whole time is through the lens of my camera phone.

            But back inside, we let the lobby hold us briefly in its Art Deco embrace. It’s a room cast very much in the romantic minds of 1927. Determined opulence, glass etched with filigree, whorling plaster accents, gold light fixtures—an aesthetic that resonates Chicago and its aggressive need to build stone structures on top of shifting black soil. And the room speaks.

            “You two shouldn’t be walking around together,” it says, almost seething in a woman’s voice. Amanda. She’s skidding across the room, scolding us with her urgent whispers. “It’ll give people ideas.”       

            “Ideas?” I ask. “Of what? An intrepid reporter interviewing a public official?”

            Charlie snorts.

            “Intrepid,” Amanda hisses. “I’m sure that’s what your editor would call it.”

            “Leave my old man out of this,” I say. “Besides, I am only participating in the time-honored tradition of Chicago journalists wooing state politicians.”

            “Shut the fuck up, Ham.” Amanda cranks her neck to check for open ears, her veins bulging, veins that weren’t there a week ago. Amanda is militantly vegan but spends her free time beating the hell out of large hairy men in a padded basement, some sort of gym I guess.

            “Amanda, is everyone still upstairs?” Charlie asks.

            “Yes ma’am.”

            “Okay. Ham,” Charlie affects her professional voice, a bit louder than usual, a hint of teeth, “it was great to speak with you. I hope we can touch base again soon.” She winks.

            “Touch base,” I say and wag my eyebrows.

            Amanda groans but then the two of them head back upstairs, and alone again, I am left in the resplendent vacantness of the Hilton’s lobby. A prickle catches my skin. I smell the cuff of my suit where Charlie held it, her low, smoky perfume like bruised flowers spread over a burned down house. Fading. The smell, Charlie. The lights in the room dim. There’s nothing else for me here. I head outside and order a car with my phone.

            I stand a little bit past the awning, away from the doorman and let my mind go for a moment. I have to release it now and then, the pressure that builds up from lying so much.

            It comes quick—the watery twinge in my jaw, motion sickness between my ears. I close my eyes and there is a shape waiting there: a round electric sun, shivering in the darkness. That’s how it presents itself, who I really am—a black inverted star, the memory.

            There is no one around so I let it run, let it indulge in the replay. The un-sun blooms, a lightless ball surrounded by white, electric ribbon, and I watch it all again—the night so many years ago. Branches creaking. All those eyes—lidless—the jagged stones, the low feverish prayers.

            The memory runs and I do not move. To anyone watching, I would look entirely forgettable: another man in a shitty suit waiting for a lift.

            When it’s over, I light another cigarette. Charlie’s smell wafts up from my sleeve and I try to imagine, predict, what she’ll say if she learns the truth: where I really come from, who I am, what I am. Maybe it will happen before the election. Amanda will dig it up somehow; she’d be happy to plunge that stake into my chest. Or maybe I’ll tell Charlie myself. Maybe after all these years I’ll blurt it out and that will be it, the end of everything.

            A red Nissan rolls up. The driver leans over and asks with an accent: “Hey you ‘Aam Black?”

            Wave. Smile. Act human. “Yeah. Hey, how are you.” I get in the back and buckle up.