The smart phone was more than three generations old, but it may as well have been fresh out of the box. It was the only luxury he had afforded himself once he left the halfway house and moved into his apartment, several blocks from Howard University. He still couldn’t afford to turn on the phone service, but Frank’s Burgers had free WiFi, not to mention pretty decent burgers. The restaurant was just off of Dupont Circle, a place where WiFi signals ran strongly, nonstop.
David Stembrook poked at his french fries while combing through a job website he visited each day. His current gig of bouncing at a strip club over on Connecticut Avenue was sure to lead to trouble at some point. Too many of the wrong kinds of people came through there, and he didn’t want to get too close to a situation that might cause him to go back to the joint. This was just something temporary so he could send Tasha some money for their daughter, Kara. The website didn’t have much posted that day, but he still forwarded his resume to a few places in the city, mainly busboy positions at restaurants, where he had heard they often gave jobs to people like him.
David had been in Frank’s Burgers for nearly half an hour before the men and women in suits came into the restaurant, requesting to see the manager. David glanced out the window and noticed several large black SUVs blocking the street in front of the restaurant, with police cars flashing lights on either end of the caravan. Probably some foreign dignitary, David figured. He had been in DC long enough to see how they flaunted their power throughout the city.
A few minutes later, the manager came out and spoke to the handful of customers eating their lunches.
“Excuse me, everyone. The men and women you see here are with the secret service. If you’d like to get your food to go, I can get you set up, but when our guest comes in, everyone will need to remain where they are until he leaves.
“If you decide to stay, I will need to ask you to comply with the instructions of the secret service people here,” the manager said, his face perspiring heavily over his reddened skin.
The energy in the room suddenly became electric, and no one made any attempts to leave.
“Who do you think it might be?” a forty-something-year-old blonde-haired white woman asked the older balding black man seated at the table next to hers.
“Secret service? Probably Uncle Joe. This seems like a Biden kind of spot,” he responded.
“Wow. That would really be something,” she responded.
“It’s President Obama,” David said, unable to take his eyes off the SUVs.
“How do you know?” the older guy asked him.
“I don’t know how. I just do.”
“Well,” replied the woman, “that would be amazing, wouldn’t it?”
Neither David nor the old man said anything, weighing the magnitude of such a possibility.
The secret service team swept the restaurant and then checked each of the handfuls of customers, along with all of the employees, with metal detectors, frisks, and examinations of personal effects.
David could feel his stomach bubbling with gas, a nervousness so unfamiliar to him sitting dead on his midsection. The last time he had felt that way was when Tasha had told him she was pregnant over eight years ago. He was only seventeen at the time and had a year to go before he graduated from high school. At first he was unsure of whether or not Tasha would have the baby, since she had confided to him that she had gotten an abortion when she was fifteen. But with graduation looming for both of them, Tasha had decided she wanted to have the baby.
David didn’t know what kind of father he would be. His own father had never been around, and his grandmother had raised him since his own mother decided to chase after some man in Chicago. When he had told his grandmother he was going to be a father, she was not pleased.
“I knew that little girl was fast. Well, I’ma tell you this: I’m not raising no more kids,” she said, licking the gums around her dentures.
Knowing he was on his own, he pulled a few burglaries in an effort to build the kind of nest egg that dropping fries at McDonald’s couldn’t have provided. He was told that the key to burglaries was to be fast, exact, and not carry any weapons (being armed could multiple your sentence if you were caught). And like many people who did things with a bit too much ease, David did one job too many and found himself behind bars, begging Tasha to bring Kara by so he could see the daughter for which he would have sacrificed everything.
He couldn’t have expected Tasha to stay with him during those years. After all he knew they had been kids, teenagers who were never really in love, but he had Tasha promise him that he could still be a part of his daughter’s life—no matter who she chose to love.
Tasha upheld her end of the deal but married a guy from Arlington two years after David went away. By all accounts, he was a good stepfather, and Tasha made no efforts to collect child support from David, mainly because she already knew he would have given whatever he had to Kara.
The new job search was all for Kara, too. David wanted to be able to do more for her, financially, and for that to happen, he needed a more stable income. He was determined not to get sent away again, so he would do it all on the straight and narrow.
“Sir? The older woman said, her face flushed with excitement.
David turned away from the window to face her. “Yes?”
“Do you think we’ll get a chance to meet him?” she said, almost breathless.
“Probably ain’t even him,” the older guy said. “No point in getting all worked up for someone you ain’t gonna ever meet.”
Just then, one of the employees bussing a table nearby whispered, “It’s Obama,” before shuffling away to leave the three customers’ mouths agape.
“Well, I’ll be damn,” the older man said. “We are gonna see the president.” He immediately picked up his cell phone and began texting someone.
So did the older woman.
David, the youngest of the three—by far—picked up his phone and realized he had no one to tell the news to. He wasn’t on any of the social media networks and Kara was too young to have a phone or tablet or any of that fancy Internet stuff, so he would have to silently digest this new update on his own. Now he wondered about the older woman’s earlier question. Was it really possible that he would get a chance to meet the nation’s first African-American president, a man for whom there seemed to be no ceiling, whereas nearly everything in David’s world was a ceiling?
For several long minutes everyone seemed to stare nervously at the black SUVs in front of the restaurant. No one said anything. David didn’t want to miss a single moment of President Obama, and from the looks of the customers around him, they didn’t either.
If he were to get a chance to shake the president’s hand, what would he say? He normally didn’t give famous or important people much thought. It was just part of growing up in DC. You couldn’t be fazed by stars. They were always in and out of the city.
But this was Barack Obama, and if ever there were an exception to the rule, this was it.
Less than a year ago, he was in a cell wide enough to turn around in and do a few push-ups. It was only large enough to accommodate the small bed that would serve as his desk for writing poetry and raps (his hobby) and reading books he heard about through the inmates who worked in the prison library, writers like Etheridge Knight, Henry Dumas, and Amiri Baraka. All the time he was in his cell, the hours so late he didn’t know what the sky looked like outside, he told himself in almost a full-blown mantra that he would do right by his daughter. He would one day make her proud to call him her dad.
Now he was on the verge of seeing, up-close, a man who had overcome obstacles that made the years David served behind bars seem negligible in comparison. Who was David to be in a position to be there at that moment? What kind of lottery had he won to be at the one restaurant in all of DC that would host the president, if only for a few minutes? Maybe the tide was turning and his life was finally locking into the right direction.
Then he had an idea: he would take a picture of President Obama when he came into the restaurant and find some place to print out the picture from his phone. He would then send the picture to Kara to show her how close he had been to greatness. Maybe a little of President Obama’s glow would rub off on him in his daughter’s eyes.
“Is he ever getting out of the truck?” the older guy asked. “This is taking forever. I got other stuff to do today.”
No one acknowledged the man’s remarks. They all knew he was talking big, more than likely to steel his nerves.
Swiftly, the secret service opened the door, and like a bird being set free, President Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. emerged from the back of the second SUV and floated in fluid, soulful strides into the door being held open by one of the security team.
The detail created a path from the door to the register, but David, who now stood on his chair, aiming his smart phone at the scene, felt the electricity of the air glowing around his entire body. He snapped pictures furiously.
That was when one of the aides who had come in with the president began quietly approaching certain people in the restaurant. When the aide approached David, she asked very directly, “Would you like to shake hands with the president?”
At first David couldn’t comprehend the question. It was like the words were in a foreign language. Then his brain woke up and kicked in. “Yes!” he said firmly, unable to conceal his excitement at having been asked.
The aide guided him over to a line that was forming off to the side of the entrance. The older woman and older man were already in the line, and David’s arrival was regarded with a warm smile and nod from each of them.
Once President Obama finished glad-handing the employees, making a few jokes, and picking up one of the bags of food for his staff, he made his way quickly to the customers lined up to shake his hand.
In the moment the president started down the line, David was able to hear his voice clearly for the first time. He could see the president perfectly from where he stood, and he couldn’t help but take as many pictures as his hand would allow him to take.
Before David knew it, President Obama was shaking the hand of the man right next to David. He was next in line.
Once the president finished shaking the man’s hand, he eased over directly in front of David. David looked up into his eyes (how tall was he? Definitely taller than he looked on TV) and took in that warm, familiar smile.
“Nice haircut,” the president said, taking David’s extended hand.
“Thanks,” he responded, feeling as if his voice belonged to another body. “I just came from a job interview.” And then, totally unexpectedly, he unloaded his life story on the president, confessing that he wanted to do right by his daughter since he’d gotten out of prison, but that it had been a struggle.
He was surprised to discover that the president was actually listening to him, David Stembrook from Northeast DC.
“Arty,” President Obama called out, raising his hand. The manager of Frank’s Burgers came over quickly. “My young friend here is looking for a job, an opportunity, so he can do right by his daughter. What’s her name?”
“Kara,” David said.
“Kara,” Obama repeated, then looking back at Arty, “Surely we can find something for this young brother. Can’t we?”
Arty nodded, clearly put on the spot. “I’m sure we can find something.”
“Good,” Obama responded.
“Can I take a picture with you, sir—for my daughter?” David asked.
“Sure.”
After the picture, the security detail ushered the president quickly toward the door. In less than a minute, the caravan of SUVs had pulled away, leaving the people in Frank’s Burger’s dazed and light-headed.
David looked at his phone and began fanning through the pictures he had taken. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. Picture after picture, he relived everything he had just experienced. Now he needed to find someone to help him get prints of the pictures made so he could send all of them to Kara.
“Excuse me, young man.”
David looked up. “Yes?”
“I’m Arty, the manager here. Were you serious about a job—just now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, let’s step back here to my office and talk. I’m sure we could find something around here for you.”
David glanced at the last picture, the one of him and President Obama. He smiled. He then put his phone back in his pocket.
“He was really something, wasn’t he?” Arty said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, let’s get to it and see if we can get you set up.”
“Yes, sir.”