I’m on the patio deck. It’s upstairs overlooking the alley between our place, a bank parking lot, and the backside of a restaurant. The sun is setting behind the not-so affordable mixed-use town home that went up last year, likely for the sole purpose of stealing the evening sun away from me. My phone is propped up on the overturned milk crate that makes for a fairly effective side table. A can of beer in a coozie is cracked open, and sweating as the weight of the heatwave that has reached even as far west as the coastline just begins to slip off the edge of this land for the evening.

I’m reading “Becoming,” by Michelle Obama. It has been a fun, leisurely read so far. I’ve traveled through the former First Ladies youth, her trajectory through Princeton and first year as a lawyer in downtown Chicago. As the daylight around me begins to fully commit to dusk she meets Barack Obama. The better part of the chapter explains why he was so appealing, but maybe not for her. Until the chapter’s end when they share a kiss out in front of a Baskin-Robbins in Chicago’s Hyde Park.