I smiled tentatively up at him. Jude wouldn’t forget to say it. He’d say it again and again like he had been saying it so much over the last few weeks. It was beautiful and lovely, and it was starting to get easier to believe. But, still our love felt fragile.
Even then. Before the truth came to light and everything we had both said and done before would need to be examined under a new lens.
But in that sparkling moment in the Freedom Art loft, Jude’s words were heady and gratifying. I interrupted the moment anyway. “Oh you. Let’s face it. This campaign announcement had been in the works already that night we met on H Street.”
Jude smiled and nuzzled my ear. And ignored me. “We need a little reunion in front of Little Miss Whiskey’s, you know. I haven’t been back there in years.”
“Me neither.”
When we told the “how we met” story to newcomers in our life, it always started on the corner of H and 11th, on a spring night in 2015. I was standing outside, next to my car parked on the corner, hood up, and a not insignificant amount of smoke bellowing from within. It wasn’t long before I found myself on the receiving end of a ride home offer from an incredibly tall, incredibly handsome (but also a little bit drunk) man who pointed to his shorter, less handsome, but apparently sober friend who was actually offered up as the driver for this whole adventure.
The third friend—who turned out to be Finn—was in between—in looks, height, and sobriety.
I had figured out by that time—finally—that I could take care of my own damn self. Which is why I was even there in the first place.
The tall man was persistent as he pointed to his short sober friend. “Meet Huck. He’ll drive. He’s our designated driver tonight. I’ll navigate. We promise to be complete gentlemen.”
Something in Jude’s eyes made me want to deviate from my script and say yes on sight. Something so clear. After all I’d been through in the last few years before he found me broken down on that corner—literally—I was clear-eyed finally. I liked that I’d found someone else who was clear-eyed as well. Still, I was not naïve. I understood that three handsome frat boys who also happened to be lawyers were still to be turned down when they offered damsels in distress rides. Such boys are a dime a dozen in D.C. and they may be or may not be serial killers, or rapists, or worse—conservatives.
I wasn’t going to take that kind of chance outside Little Miss Whiskey’s, and I told them so, as I held up my hand and started dialing information for local cab companies.
“Conservatives!” The trio laughed in a way I could already tell they did most things—in unison. “You have us all wrong. Jude Birch here’s a bona fide District of Columbia born and bred liberal—he’s going to run for office one day. Probably even be President of these here United States.” Huck slapped Jude on the back and feigned a midwestern accent that didn’t exactly match his ambiguously copper-colored skin that I thought at the time might be Indian, might be Middle Eastern, or might be the result of a long summer in the Caribbean. I found out later it was a combination of all of the above. “Jude here” as I started calling him for a short-lived time had a pretty face and too long hair. A couple of years later, after his political aspirations were much more than a pipe dream, when Justin Trudeau rose in fame with our Canadian neighbors to the north, I pointed to him on the television, and said to Jude, “You two could be brothers!”—and Jude had laughed, and said, “Eh? Canadian, hunh?”
But outside Little Miss Whiskey’s that night, Jude didn’t look like anyone except maybe my next boyfriend. Someone to help facilitate my launch of the next leg of my journey, a short-term fling at best, but one that I was already looking forward to as I leaned on my hunk of junk Hundai trying to look as svelte and cool as possible. I hadn’t planned to fall for Jude Birch at first sight, but that’s what happened anyway.
The heart wants what the heart wants, my mother always said. She said it every time people asked her how she could have fallen for a poor struggling artist like my step-dad. Those words ended up in her final conversation to me, too, but in a much different, more painful context. Still, something in me bottled up those words and saved them for later. Later came outside Little Miss Whiskey’s as it turns out. Standing on the corner of the trendy bar waving away smoke billowing out from under the car hood I’d inherited from her, I remembered that ridiculous quote of hers. I had an urge to call her and apologize for always dismissing it. While the boys argued over who would be able to best diagnose my car troubles, I dialed her old number and let it go to voicemail. She was dead by then, of course, but still I hadn’t given up the habit of calling her occasionally.
As I said no to the ride, I smiled and flirted right back while Jude moved about my car pretending he knew what he was doing and sort of pretending to supervise Finn under the dinged-up hood of my car.
Finn looked up from under my hood that I had somehow—incredulously I always claimed when we reminisced about that night—managed to pop open shortly before the boys arrived on the scene, where he was fiddling with the wires underneath. Something about Finn always seemed a little less threatening than the other two. When I found out, much later, that Finn’s real name was Carl—I had laughed and said, “Oh! I wouldn’t have had any qualms letting a ‘Carl’ drive me home that night. That makes perfect sense.” From around the corner of the hood, Finn yelled out, “Radiator hose is busted. You aren’t getting home via this car tonight. And you’re right, Miss. You should never accept rides from strangers. No matter how good looking they are or whether they are going to be President of the United States one day.”
Jude shrugged his shoulders innocently. “Well, let us help you anyway. We can buy you a drink while you’re waiting for your cab.” He gestured inside, but I ignored him as I tapped on my phone and then shushed him as I spoke into it.
“I need a cab, please, at the corner of 11th and H, northeast. Yes, outside of Little Miss Whiskey’s.”
I shushed them again.
“No, I broke down, I’m not drunk. Tell the driver I have no plans of throwing up on his pleather upholstery. Please, thanks. Um, Where to?”
As I repeated the dispatcher’s question, I looked over at the boys who looked a little too expectantly at the imminent blurting out of my home address. “To Georgetown, please. I’ll give the driver the exact address when he gets here.”
Jude whistled as I hung up. “Georgetown, hunh? So do you have a nice waterfront condo? Wait, you’re not like an undergrad are you? You’re legal, right?”
I belly laughed at that one. “Thanks for the compliment. Not an undergrad. I work for a fledgling foundation in town. Let’s just leave it at that.”
I was admittedly embarrassed under Jude’s intense stare. (“Well, she was wrong. you are intense, Jude,” I had said when he finally fessed up to the reason his previous girlfriend had dumped him for her comrade on the Hill.)
Later—much later—Jude would connect the dots on the timing of my job. Consequences and choices would unravel and unfold, and we’d all be accountable for our mistakes and withheld information.
Later.
But not that night.
That night outside Little Miss Whiskey’s when everything was still unknown?
Contrary to what Dr. Drake might say a few years later, that was the real first night for me and Jude. Everything that came next stemmed from that first night.
Waiting outside Little Miss Whiskey’s for a cab that first night, I had to inform the boys a few more times that neither Jude, nor the other two would be driving me home. I’d wait for the cab, and I didn’t need them to wait with me, thank you very much. I refused to give them so much as my first name or initials. Certainly not my number no matter how many times Jude asked. I would have relented, of course, if Jude didn’t insist I take his name and number—which I did with an exaggerated show of begrudging gratitude. When he said, “Seriously—just call me and let me know you got home ok, please,” his words were punctuated with a sincerity that I was cer
tain I had never seen in any male’s eyes.
Yes, unfortunately, it was his sincerity that hooked me.
I called later that night, and said simply, “Hi, it’s me. I made it home.”
And I could have sworn I heard a sigh come from Jude as he said, “Thank you for calling. How about lunch tomorrow?”
We agreed quickly on an Ethiopian place on Ninth Street and hung up before I realized I hadn’t even given him my name. me.
An hour before I arrived at the Ethiopian restaurant, Jude texted me.
I still don’t know your name.
Well, I’m not sure our relationship has progressed quite that far, Mr. Birch.
Fair enough. What should I call you at lunch?
I was still pondering when I saw the three dots pop up and then:
The future Mrs. Birch?
Ha ha. Very funny.
Well, you seem like someone who could make a guy forget all before you.
All before you.
I traced the words—the letters—in his text and finally relented.
Sigh. Very romantic, Mr. Birch. Ok, then. At lunch, you can call me Aby.
Aby it is.
Three more dots and a pause. A pause long enough to make me wonder if I was making a fool out of myself, and then he added: And the future Mrs. Birch, for short.
At lunch, surrounded by plastic orchids and wood paneling decorated with cheap photographic prints of tourist attractions in the nation’s capital, we pretended we were actually getting to know each other. Sharing job descriptions, and the best of each other’s families and travel highlights and humanitarian projects.
Jude told me he had lived all his life in the city limits, and for Washington D.C., that was like 1,000 dog years. Even though I was relatively new to D.C., still I knew enough about the town to know that no one was from D.C. Mostly, it was a stopping ground for those ambitious enough to walk through its doors. A place for the elite from places outside of D.C. to come to work. To make a difference. And to leave again. But Jude was from D.C. and crazy obsessed with advocating for its city schools, its equal voting rights, and countless other measures. He was born into a family of middle class, hard workers; his parents had both been career educators in the District of Columbia school system, before retiring in Florida. But they had not had the opportunity to enjoy retirement as they had died tragically in a car accident the year before Jude started law school.
A proud product of the District of Columbia public school system, Jude had worked and saved and taken out government subsidized loans to put himself through college and then law school within the city limits of his native town. While in law school, he had worked summers interning for the inhouse counsel’s office of a notorious construction company, and then leveraged an important recommendation to get a prestigious (and relatively new) spot at the U.S. Attorney’s office, where he’d been working on internet privacy and some other high profile cases for the last two years.
I shared only snippets of my life before. I told Jude my mom had been involved in local politics, and that her death was tragic and nothing I wanted to talk any more about. He nodded with empathy. He confessed that the reason he’d been living on frat brothers’ couches at the start of law school after leaving his girlfriend’s townhouse was that he was struggling with his own grief as well as lack of funds.
I was impressed that other than those brief months living with his Virginia debutante in Old Town Virginia, Jude had never had an address outside of the District of Columbia city limits. He knew where the best Vietnamese food was, had six favorite dive bars in various neighborhoods of the city, knew the best times to jog the Washington monument mall, and where the best community theatre was. But he was far from provincial.
In college, Jude told me, he’d traveled every spring break with Habitat for Humanity to underserved areas of the country, helping build homes and restore communities in crisis. As a D.C. lawyer, he used his charisma to propel fundraisers and to broaden his world view; he used his vacation time to travel to places like Haiti and Honduras on mission trips organized by the local churches.
I sized him up over lunch. Jude had the understated experience and world view of a veteran privileged politician with the drive and courage of a rookie one. And I let him know that his interest in politics was a hurdle for me, not a selling point. “I’m looking to make my own mark on the world. I’m mostly here in D.C. to help underprivileged kids. I’m not really into politics, if you must know.”
Jude nodded. “Yes! That’s exactly what I’m talking about! I think my place—and the District’s place—and indeed the United States’ place—in the global picture can only be viewed along a spectrum where educational reform, and underserved kids, are the priority. Not politics.”
By the end of lunch, I told Jude that while I had not planned to get involved in politics when I first came to D.C., he was already making D.C. politics sound sort of unexpectedly interesting to me.
Jude told me he was excited about the journey ahead, and that he was sure he would never lose focus of what really mattered. That he’d be the first politician in history to avoid becoming a cliché and would never forget about the reasons driving him there in the first place.
I wondered how much of the story Jude was feeding me was pure bullshit. Wasn’t this just a politician’s lies?
As our waitress came over to check on us, a note dropped out of her apron’s pocket. Jude reached for it and skimmed it, then blushed. I thought it might be a love note. I said as much. “No,” he said quietly. “It’s a grocery list. Itemized by aisle. Diapers, wipes, baby soap. She’s a mom.” He said it almost reverently.
When she came back, he handed her back the list, and I noticed he glanced at her ring finger. I did the same. I caught his glance and felt the thought in unison. Single mom. He paid the bill, and I asked to leave the tip. I wanted to leave something generous for this sweet waitress who could have been my own mother twenty years earlier. I slipped $20 into the bill folder, and excused myself for a final trip to the ladies’ room. As I walked away, I glanced back over my shoulder to see Jude quietly slipping more bills into the folder.
And I realized in that moment: he believed this stuff he was saying. And that fact, more than anything he’d actually said that day, made me realize how perfect we might be for each other.
We ended up back in Jude’s apartment for dessert. The politics discussion ended there.
His roommates were gone. When I asked where they were, he told me, “We lawyers all usually go into our respective offices on Sundays to get a jump start on the week. I had other plans today,” he winked at me.
I told Jude that I’d left Pennsylvania for the best of reasons and the worst of ones.
“There was a guy. I wanted a fresh start. Put it that way.”
“Ah. Ok. So tell me about your last boyfriend. The one you left behind.”
I weighed the question. Balanced how much I’d decide to tell him. How far I wanted to go back. How truthful I wanted to be. Out came my decision.
“Oh boy, Wilson. Well, you should know he was a lawyer, too.”
Jude fake gasped. “No!”
“Don’t tease. I swore off lawyers completely after that one. You’re lucky we’re even sitting here.”
“So what was the final death knell? Other than just, you know, the fact that he was a member of the most noblest of professions?”
I gulped down a bite of thawed-but-still-frozen cheesecake and washed it down with some red wine that Jude had opened, before answering. I wondered if this would be a bit too complicated. I dove in anyway.
“Sarbanes Oxley if you must know.”
Jude looked at me with his mouth a little open but to his credit, didn’t burst out laughing.
“Sarbanes Oxley?”
I nodded. “You know it right? Please, tell me you know the law that was passed for no other purpose than to prevent another Enron in this lifetime. Yes? No? Maybe?”
This time, Jude laughed.
“Yes. We lawyers are generally pretty familiar with Sarbanes Oxley. So how did that kill the relationship with Wilson? Do tell.”
“Oh, forget it.” I waved my hand trying to dismiss the conversation, realizing this was no longer first date stuff. I’d gone too far. But Jude insisted. “What? Tell me.”
I decided to go all in.
“He was covering up all sorts of bad stuff with a public tech company he was representing in town. There were a bunch of whistleblowers making a name for themselves in the press, and I finally confronted him.”
“And?”
“And, he was pretty dismissive. But I said, come on. It’s not one or two—it’s dozens now. You need to report the creative bookkeeping that’s going on. You’re the lawyer for God’s sake.
“And he had the nerve to reply, ‘Right. Which is exactly why I won’t be reporting a thing. I have a client confidentiality to uphold. I’m not going to risk disbarment because of a few disgruntled citizens who might not understand that the stock market is a pretty volatile place to put your money.’
“And I said, ‘Seriously? You are going to risk disbarment—or worse—if you don’t report them. That’s the point of all the new regulations since the whole Enron debacle. You have to come clean. You can’t hide behind the lawyer privilege. You’re being very obtuse.’”
Jude watched me and when I didn’t keep going, he moved me along with his hands. “Yes, come on. Now I’m invested. How did he respond to you calling him obtuse?”
“Well that’s the best part. He called me ‘adorable.’ And then he said, ‘A lot of very smart men have been all over these books. How about you just leave it to them? Don’t you worry your pretty little head about this stuff.’”
Why We Lie Page 3