Page 7 of That's Not a Thing

Moe is the Burmese immigrant my law firm is representing pro bono. Harrison, Whittaker & Shine, where I have been working since I graduated from law school, allows junior lawyers to represent nonpaying clients every now and then as a sort of training exercise. The firm’s partners like to boast that their lawyers complete a certain number of pro bono hours annually. What the senior attorneys don’t advertise when they are recruiting all those bright-eyed law students year after year is that pro bono cases are permitted only to the extent that they do not impinge on the firm’s ability to assist the large corporations, the clients who actually pay the firm’s bills. So taking on a pro bono case means committing to additional hours in the office, rather than replacing one kind of case with another.

Even so, I was energized when I was assigned to assist Moe Hre with his application for political asylum in the United States. I immediately delved in and spent weeks sorting through Moe’s paperwork, so many pages written in English and Burmese, documenting his alleged political and religious persecution in Burma. Today, we finally had our first in-person meeting.

“His English was pretty terrible.” I nod as I take Aaron’s hand in my own and slip our joined hands inside his coat pocket to keep them warm. “Thank goodness for the interpreter. It’s kind of baffling.” I think back to the two-hour meeting. “He was very different from what I had pictured. Even the way he was dressed. I don’t know ...” I glance at the ceiling of the cab, noticing that there are little glow-in-the-dark star stickers affixed to it. “He looked like anyone else, like he could have been one of your mother’s teaching assistants, or an intern at the hospital. I guess it was closed-minded of me to expect political persecution to somehow show on his face.”

“But what about the case?” Aaron asks, as he readjusts our hands so that our connected palms now rest on his lap inside the coat. “Now that you’ve talked to him, do you think you’ll be able to get his status adjusted so he can stay in the country?”

I think about what Moe recounted earlier today as he sat with me and my supervising associate, Rose Conway, in one of our firm’s many antiseptic conference rooms. He told us about how the Myanmar military ransacked his home and set fire to parts of his village, about how he walked for weeks until he reached the Thai border. He lived in a primitive camp in Thailand until he secured false documents and fled the region altogether. Although certain portions of his testimony were still too vague, like how he actually got himself out of Thailand, the stories he shared about women and girls from his village being raped and groups of men being locked inside huts that were burned to the ground were almost too terrifying to comprehend.

Thinking again about the extreme challenges Moe has faced, I feel familiar guilt about my career choice—selling out as I have, going corporate instead of pursuing a position in public-interest law. I sweated my way through law school because I wanted the skills to help people, but after all the fallout with Wesley, I shifted my focus to finding the job that paid the most generously. My priority has become ensuring permanent self-sufficiency, even if the work in which I engage means nothing to me. Representing Moe Hre in connection with his application for political asylum is the one bit of substantive merit I can see in my otherwise dismal legal career.

“I wonder if I should go back to Community Kitchen, start helping out there again,” I muse, not answering Aaron’s question. “It was like being delivered from darkness today when I was with Moe, finally doing something that mattered. I mean, the antitrust case is great for racking up billable hours, but I can’t say I’m at all passionate about whether one chewing-tobacco company behaved unfairly toward another. As far as I’m concerned, they should both declare bankruptcy and save all their unfortunate customers from nasty breath and probable mouth cancer.”

“Why don’t you quit, then?” Aaron asks me, not for the first time. “You could go work for the ACLU or the ADL, or any of the other nonprofits out there.”

“My salary—”

“Who cares about your salary? If you don’t feel fulfilled by how you’re spending your days, what good is the money?”

I know he is trying to be supportive, offering to pick up the slack until I find something more gratifying, but for some reason I chafe at his apparent need to manage this situation, to commandeer every predicament he encounters.

“Look, we can’t all be heroes like you, okay?” I snap. “Just because I’m not saving infants from neurological defects all day, it doesn’t mean my work is meaningless.”

“Whoa. Okay.” We pass under the glow of a traffic light, and the green hue travels over his face for a moment as he looks down at me. “I know your work is meaningful, and complicated, and I’m sure it matters a great deal to some people, but it doesn’t seem to matter toyou. I only want you to be satisfied, so if you are, stick with it. I’m just saying, you could break your lease and move in with me early, let me support us both until you figure out what job you want to take. But if that doesn’t appeal to you, then you should do what you want. Keep the current job but go back to the soup kitchen, like you said.” He shrugs as if he has no stake in the outcome, as if my six-figure salary is irrelevant to him, and then turns away to look out the window.

His support of my choices is nothing new. It’s one of the many qualities I love about him. As I watch him working his lip again while he stares out the window, I feel contrite. One glance at Wesley and I have begun to treat Aaron like he is disposable, which he is not. He is the man who brought me back from oblivion when I thought I might never be happy again; he is my sunrise on a brand-new day, every day.

“You know what appeals to me?” I say, more gently. “Youappeal to me.” He doesn’t turn back toward me, so I kiss his shoulder through his wool coat, feeling the coarse fabric scratch my lips.

Chapter Four

January 2008

Iwoke up to the sound of staccato knocking outside my dorm room. Straining toward my digital clock was a useless reflex, as the device was entirely obscured by the clutter on the nightstand, a stack of DVDs, Daphne’s polka-dotted cosmetics case, and two plastic snow globes of the New York City skyline. I picked up my phone from where it was charging on the floor and saw that it was 3:37 p.m. If I hadn’t stayed out with Wesley until six in the morning, I would have already been awake for hours, probably making flashcards about early-twentieth-century cubists for Art History.

I hauled myself out of my warm bed, squinting into the afternoon light that was pouring through the room’s two large windows. The knocking was probably some guy looking for Daphne, whose bed sat unmade, like an open invitation, on the other side of the room. What a relief it had been, when I’d slipped back into our room early this morning, to see her alone in that bed.

The person knocking could also have been Bina or Gretchen coming to check up on me and find out why I hadn’t been present in either of the classes we had together today. It was atypical for me to blow off class, and I appreciated that a friend might think to wonder why I’d gone AWOL. I wasn’t prepared to explain my night with Wesley to anyone yet, however, as I hadn’t even had a moment to process it myself. So, as I stumbled across the floor, I started preparing health-related excuses, fake-coughing into my fist with gusto as I yanked open the door with my other hand.

“Finally!” Wesley raised his arms in triumph.

“Wesley!” My hand flew to my chest in an involuntary gesture of surprise, and I realized two facts simultaneously. First, Wesley’s sculpted features had not been a figment of my imagination and were, if anything, only heightened in the light of day. Second, I was currently standing in front of him in nothing but a tiny tank and barely-there boy shorts.

His thoughts seemed to be on the same trajectory as mine. He made no effort at subtlety as his eyes traveled down my body inch by inch, perusing at their leisure. They lingered on my chest before sliding back up to meet my gaze.

“I was about to apologize for disturbing your long slumber, but”—the corners of his full lips lifted—“it seems that the element of surprise has worked in my favor. I like your outfit.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to ignore the heat in my face. I knew my cheeks were turning pink, and I wished I had some sort of switch to shut off the blushing. It’s an occupational hazard of sporting such a fair complexion, the tendency to turn colors at the slightest provocation. I could only imagine that in the present situation, my cheeks must be a darker red than Tabasco. This was curious, too, since I was reasonably comfortable with my body, never one to shy away from changing clothes in crowded locker rooms. But the way Wesley was looking at me, his green eyes alight with hunger, made me feel particularly exposed.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to sound calm, like his checking me out in my near-naked state wasn’t making me self-conscious. I crossed my arms more tightly against my chest, praying that my nipples weren’t sending out messages all their own from beneath my top. I wanted to run a hand through my hair, to make sure it was behaving at least somewhat reasonably, but this was now a triage situation, and covering my braless breasts seemed a higher priority. Wesley turned slightly, and I noticed my silver backpack slung over his broad shoulder.

“We forgot about this last night. This morning. Whatever.” He slid the bag off his arm and arranged the strap over the knob of the door so the bag was now hanging between us. “We also forgot”—he paused as he reached into the pocket of his faded jeans for his cell phone—“to program in your number.”

He held out his phone to me, but I was not about to remove my arms from my chest and expose myself further, so I just started rattling off the digits.

“Hang on!” He laughed as he pulled the phone back toward himself.

Voices started floating toward us, other students walking through the hallway, getting closer to my room. Wesley shifted, squaring his shoulders so that he somehow suddenly filled the entire door frame, and I realized he was intentionally using his size to keep my scantily clad figure hidden from anyone else’s view. He kept his eyes locked on mine as the voices passed, and then looked back at his phone.