“I have a natural talent for it, and so I’ve indulged in it some,” he says. “And I’ve had great teachers. Tutors. International schools. Travel.”
“Okay. Well, please don’t get offended—”
“Great place to start,” Julian interrupts.
“Butwhatare you then?” I press on. “White?”
Julian grins, wolfish.
“Do I look white?”
I squint at him. I’ve never met a person more impossible to categorize. I’ve seen Italian men who look like Julian, but I also have light-skinned Black cousins who resemble him too. Middle Eastern, mestizo, all would be plausible. I could even see Southeast Asian; he’d probably look right at home in the middle of a salu-salo. It doesn’t escape my notice that the languages he names are all predominantly spoken by groups of people he could conceivably resemble.
“Maybe?” I say. “I don’t know. There might be a little seasoning in there. I just don’t know if it’s sumac, garam masala, or Cajun.”
This makes him laugh.
“I’m a bit of everything,” he says cryptically, regarding me through long, thick lashes.Sultry, I realize his eyes are. A little sleepy, like he’s just been roused from bed. “And given my whole family is dead, I don’t have much in the way of a detailed history for you.”
Right. Tragic backstory.
“Since we’re playing this game, Sean Sullivan,” Julian asks, “what areyou?”
“Black,” I say with a laugh. When he gestures for me to elaborate, I do. “Hyde Park, born and bred. My momma’s house is thirty minutes away, down Lake Shore. But her parents are from down south.”
His smile is restrained, an almost smug tilt of his lips.
“You mean you’ve been in the city all this time, and I’m just finding you now?”
“Well,” I say. “Have you spent much time south of the Loop?”
“You say that like you already think you have an answer to that,” he drawls.
“It’s a fair judgment, I think,” I say. “You feel very North Side.”
The sound Julian makes is half bark and so unlike him that I almost laugh too.
“What could possibly make you say that?” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.
I gesture in his general direction.
“How you dress, for one,” I say.
Julian looks down at himself as if he can’t quite remember what he’s wearing. He’s ditched this afternoon’s sweater, and his current outfit, consisting of a white shirt and navy trousers, is so finance-bro adjacent that he’d stick out anywhere south of Thirty-Fifth. If it weren’t for his inscrutableethnic-ness, I’d write him off as the kind ofguy who thought Hyde Park was full of bullet holes instead of bumbling university students.
“That’s not fair,” he complains. “I had a meeting today with the board of trustees at your hospital. I couldn’t exactly come in streetwear.”
The image of Julian dressed in the bold, unstructured styles that are in vogue among his peers almost makes me crack up. Instead, I pick up the piece of information that he dropped for me and ask, “Why were you meeting with the board of trustees? Are you working with them?”
Julian makes a gesture that is half nod, half shrug.
“Kind of,” he says. “It turns out that when you give an institution a lot of money, they like to keep you involved so that you consider giving more.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Oh? Your aforementioned philanthropy at work!” I exclaim. “Is there going to be a wing named after you? Will I be headed into work next month at the newly christened Conrad Catheterization Lab?”
Julian gives me a wry smile.