“Give me your wallet, motherfucker!”

Shit. I was being robbed. Several minutes earlier, I’d been at a Christmas party hosted by my friends Chris and Patrick, happily stuffing my third and final piece of devil’s food cake into my mouth before washing it down with my fourth or fifth glass of white wine. And now I was standing in a dark, deserted alley, that I’d cut through in a misguided attempt to shorten my walk home, with a silver handgun stuck in my face. I glanced at the guy with the gun before reaching into my pocket for my wallet. He was black and dressed entirely in black: black knit hat, black down jacket, black pants, black boots.

“Hurry up!” the man in black yelled.

He snatched the wallet from my hand as I tried to hand it to him then he shoved it into his pocket and looked at me. I thought for sure he was going to shoot me in the face.

This is it, Mark Cross,I silently told myself as I closed my eyes. Your life is over.

But instead of feeling the blow of a bullet, I felt the butt of a gun strike me hard in the face, causing me to cry out in pain and drop to my knees. 1

“You don’t know how happy I am to see you here, Mark.”

I looked at my friend and realtor Christopher Riordan and smiled. Every year, Chris and his partner Patrick hosted a Christmas party at their Lincoln Park home and, usually, every year I attended. But, after I was robbed while walking home from their shindig two years earlier, I chose to skip the festivities for a while before Chris and Patrick managed to coax me back.

“I’m glad to be here,” I told him. And I was glad. I’d always enjoyed their Christmas parties and I didn’t blame them at all for what happened to me two years before. Still, I stayed away because their lovely home and wonderful Christmas party just brought back painful memories of being robbed and pistol-whipped. I’d grown up in Chicago’s northern suburbs and lived in the city for nearly twenty years and I’d never been the victim of a crime…until that night. But I didn’t let the robbery and assault run me back to the suburbs. I stayed in the city, albeit with a more cautious eye. I no longer walked the streets alone after dark, especially if I’d been drinking. I called a cab instead or had someone drive me home.

The police never caught the man who mugged me and I was virtually useless in giving them any kind of helpful description of the assailant. He was black, dark skinned, dark eyed, maybe in his late twenties, of average height, and he wore black clothing. That was all I could tell them. My wallet was found in a trash can a few blocks from where I’d been robbed. My cash and credit cards were gone, but my license was still intact. I canceled the cards before anyone could use them, got new ones issued, and tried to put the terrible incident behind me.

Chris was talking with me about a Streeterville condo he was having a “hell of a time” trying to sell when I noticed a man walk into the house. He was tall and muscular with very closely cropped hair that made him look almost bald. He had an oval shaped head, a soul patch beneath his bottom lip, straight white teeth—always a good sign—and smooth skin the color of caramel. Noticing my interest, Chris waved him over and introduced us. The man’s name was Darren Nichols and my first impression was that he was handsome, but that he wasn’t my type. I was forty and I assumed he was about ten years younger than I was. I later discovered he wasn’t—he was actually thirty-five. In addition to my concern about our age difference, I was uneasy about getting involved with someone of another race. I’d never been with a black man before. I certainly found black men attractive—and I found Darren veryattractive—but dealing with racial issues on top of everything else in a relationship just scared me away from any kind of interracial coupling. The pistol-whipping episode hadn’t helped either

“How do you know him?” I asked Chris after Darren excused himself to get a drink.

“He’s a friend of Patrick’s,” Chris said as we went out onto the heated patio so he could smoke a cigarette. “They’ve known each other for a couple of years. They both served on some volunteer committee to help improve childhood literacy in the city.”

Patrick had some kind of high-power public relations position with the city and was involved with a lot of community outreach programs.