“You’re good at this,” I said during a lull in the conversation. We’d migrated to a quieter corner of the terrace, where the view stretched across the harbor toward the lights of Cap Ferrat.
“At what?”
“All of it. The politics, the networking. Making everyone feel like they’re the most important person in the room.”
Jonathan shrugged. “Part of the job. You can’t just be fast anymore, you have to be a brand, a personality. Media training, sponsor obligations, all of it.”
“Do you miss the simplicity of just racing?”
He was quiet for a moment, looking out over the water. “Sometimes. But this is the world now. And there are worse things than drinking champagne in Monaco while talking to interesting people.”
“Is that what I am? Interesting?”
He looked at me then, something shifting in his expression. “You always were, Waldo. That hasn’t changed.”
The weight of his attention, the way he said my name, brought back every memory I’d spent ten years trying to bury. Jonathan in my tiny apartment, talking about his dreams while I traced patterns on his chest. The morning we’d made coffee together and he’d kissed me over the newspaper, tasting like sleep and possibility. The night we’d broken up, when he’d cried against my shoulder and I’d felt like I was cutting out my own heart.
“We should probably talk,” I said quietly. “Properly, I mean. Not here.”
“My suite’s in the Hôtel Hermitage. We could go there.”
“Too complicated.” I could imagine how that would look, how it would feel. Too much history, too much temptation. “What about a walk around the principality? It’s a beautiful night.”
Jonathan smiled, the first completely unguarded expression I’d seen from him all evening. “A walk sounds perfect.”
For a moment the harbor lights blurred, overlaid with another city, another night, another version of us walking toward something we didn’t yet have words for. I’d told myself that life was sealed off, filed away with everything else I’d chosen not to revisit. But as we moved together through the dark, I feltthe past loosen and rise, patient and inescapable, and I knew I was about to fall back into it.
3
JANUARY 2015
Everything startedwith a summons from the features editor at theDaily Pennsylvanian.
“Before you start complaining,” she said, “yes, it’s a profile. And no, you’re not getting out of it.”
She spoke from behind a desk that looked like it had been around since Benjamin Franklin started the university in 1740. Around us, keyboards clattered and someone recited sports scores like a mantra.
She waited until she had my attention before sliding the folder across the desk.
“Jonathan Hirsch,” she said. “Wharton senior. Hobby is racing fast cars when he’s not the president of the Investment Club. He’s been quietly collecting trophies for the last two seasons.” She paused. “And yes, that Hirsch.”
She meant the Hirsch whose family name graced a modern steel and glass building on the Penn campus, as well as an endowment that brought Nobel prize winners to campus.
Jonathan Ari Hirsch was a senior in the Wharton School, double major in economics and international business, magna cum laude track. His LinkedIn already read like a Fortune 500 executive’s resume and his photo showed someone who lookedlike what central casting would order for “privileged Ivy League heir.” Dark hair perfectly styled, strong jaw, expensive smile.
I was prepared to dislike him intensely. I trusted that instinct.
We met at 2 PM on a Thursday at the campus coffee shop on Walnut Street, the one with mismatched chairs and an espresso machine that sounded permanently offended. I arrived early, spreading out my notebook and recorder at a small round table, trying to look professional despite my thrift-store blazer and the fact that I’d skipped lunch to afford a coffee I didn’t want.
Jonathan was exactly on time.
“Wally Pulaski?” he asked, pausing at the edge of the table.
“That’s me.”
He smiled and set his cup down carefully before sitting. No entourage. No air of being late for something more important.
“Jonathan Hirsch. Thanks for meeting me.”
