Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

It was.

I don’t care if it was Jesus Christ’s tape, I would have tossed it out the window after two bars.

Plenty of people think Joni Mitchell’s cool, Marshall says. Herbie did a whole album of her songs. Ain’t you ever heard Mingus ?

Yeah, I heard Mingus.

No, Mingus, her album, you ignoramus. That’s some whacked-out Seventies material on there. Cassandra Wilson’s early stuff comes right out of Mingus .

Problem is, Martin intones, Paul, all due respect, you don’t know your musical history.

But back to Obama—

Seriously?

Yes, Paul , Martin says. Seriously. Let him finish.

Before I was so rudely interrupted by Michael Jackson and the henchmen of pop-culture distraction, Marshall says, let me just say that what Obama is not is a proxy. He doesn’t carry the bag. Not for the white liberal establishment, not for Israel, not for Charlie Rangel or Tavis Smiley.

He carried the bag pretty damn well for Goldman Sachs. Or he let Geithner carry it.

Then he sicced Elizabeth Warren on Geithner’s ass, Paul. It’s that Team of Rivals theory you were telling me about.

Martin scratches his chin.

You ever read those Joseph Campbell books, The Masks of God ? he says. Robin hooked me up with those when we were first going out. It’s totally fascinating stuff. Anyway. Somewhere in there, Campbell says that the earliest kind of kings in prehistory, in the very early Egyptian, Sumerian, Mesopotamian states, were sacrificial kings, that is, they were put to death by the people and ceremonially buried in order to appease the gods.

I don’t like where this is going, Lee says.

Okay. Okay. I’m extrapolating a little. But get this. Obama’s just an extremely, extremely smart guy. An intellectual overachiever before he was a political overachiever. And he’s also, just to put it mildly, a hybrid. A mongrel. A cobbled-together person who’s chosen his categories all the way along. You got me? That kind of person is always going to be a natural skeptic.

A master of the mask.

Yeah, but here’s the thing. A skeptic is not a cynic. Not necessarily. So Obama, he understands something about the essential nature of being president that the rest of us don’t. Being president means being at the center of a circle whose radius is infinite. You’re the center of an incalculably complex system. Responsible for everything, in control over almost nothing. Now most presidents are essentially just showboats who are very good at projecting leadership and pretending to have a hand on the helm. They sleep well at night. Dubya was one of those. So was Reagan. So was JFK. And then there are the really deep political minds, the Machiavellians. LBJ. Clinton. But Obama is something else again, because he understands the symbolic role of the president is a tragic role. That puts him in a different category.

Lincoln.

Yes. And not because he’s freeing any slaves or even because he’s the first black et cetera. Because he wears that mask. He has that look all the time, a kind of noble dread. He’s a sacrificial king, the still center of the churning world. Call him whatever you want, but he’s older than old school. He’s the most primal president we’ve had in my lifetime. And the thing is, it’s all contrived. It’s constructed. And we’re okay with that. It’s artificial and sacred.

Do I feel, or is it just my hyperattentiveness, that there’s a palpable shift in the room, a feeling that someone’s just gone too far? Not that Martin’s wrong; that he’s too literally right, too eager to spell it out. There’s a kind of malicious energy in his voice: I know you too well. I know you better than you know yourselves. Lee purses his lips and nods. Marshall takes out his BlackBerry and absently spins the wheel with his thumb.

That’s some deep material you got there, Paul says. Kelly, you sure you ain’t writing a book on this guy? ’Cause I think fifteen thousand words isn’t going to cut it.

Martin avoids my look, dusts off his lap, and stands, collecting napkins and cups. Gentlemen, on that note, I have to run off and find my wife, he says. You should do the same. Don’t let them get lonely.

They’re not lonely. They just don’t want to listen to us.

So listen to them for a change.

What, Marshall says, they’re paying you now? Must be nice. He’s getting up, too, and now everyone does, stretching, loosening collars and belts. Got to get the kids to bed, he says. Soccer starts at eight tomorrow. No sleeping in these days.

Coffee in a paper cup and muffin crumbs in your lap. That’s Sunday brunch in my house.

Tell me about it.

And I leave them there, as I have to, before they notice and ask the inevitable question, do you have kids, Kelly? I wouldn’t do that to them. It’s kindness, I’m thinking, slipping away, toward the kitchen where the women’s high voices ring out. Not to make them apologize for their lives without meaning it. I never would have been able to apologize for mine.

• • •

Peter Joseph, it was explained to me, used to be on the board of the Urban League with Martin, and also had a fellowship with the Greater Baltimore Commission the same year as Robin; he’s a venture capitalist who made his money on the West Coast — an early investor in Yahoo! — and who now is developing a biotech startup in Harbor East. The party is for Renée Jackson, a City Council candidate with bigger plans. What plans? I asked, and Martin said, national plans. We added a House seat to Baltimore City in the last redistricting.

Isn’t that a bit of a stretch, from not even being elected to the City Council?

Watch her, he said. Watch and learn. We shook hands with her as we came in, all together, and then she disappeared into a crowd, every head angled toward her. Short, slim, very erect, in a navy Hillary-style pantsuit, her hair swept back and folded into a sort of a crest — my god, I said under my breath, she’s younger than I am, not even thirty, maybe.

She’s an Iraq vet, Robin told me, handing me a glass of white. There’s serious political traction there. Great family, too. Her dad’s a pastor; he was up on the dais when you came to church with us.

Yeah. Martin pointed him out.

And her mom’s some kind of an heiress from Atlanta. Real estate money. They’re a Spelman family, too. In fact, I interviewed her. Not that it made any difference. She has a law degree, too. Finished her service working in-house at the Pentagon. Seriously, she’s someone to know.

So why aren’t you in there, pressing the flesh?

Robin doesn’t need anyone’s favors, Martin said, in my other ear. I hadn’t noticed, but they were flanking me, providing security. She dispenses favors. The second-highest-ranking black woman in the whole Hopkins system. One of these days she’s going to cash in and work in administration.

What he means is, Robin said, in his rich fantasy life, I’m going to sit behind a desk, push paper, and pull down something in the high six figures. In reality, it’ll be a cold day in July.

As she was speaking she laid her hand on my forearm, a purely affectionate, nominal gesture, but in the flutter of a heartbeat I felt Martin’s eyes angling downward, noting, noticing, as he noticed everything. And the envelope surrounding us, the membrane of convivial warmth, broke in an instant.

There’s food, right? I asked. Sorry to be so abrupt, but I’m starving. Something about Sundays — I always feel as if I don’t eat enough the rest of the week.

Is there food? Are you kidding? Robin laughed at me, her teeth — not blindingly white, not iridescent, but perfectly proportioned, stainless, neatly arranged — on full display. I don’t know where you come from, she says, but among black people a party from five to eight means serious food. Didn’t you see the Melba’s catering truck? Noreen doesn’t mess around. She’s from South Carolina. Low-country food.