Is Rafael Anchia the Hispanic Obama?

State Representative Rafael Anchia could be governor of Texas within 10 years. If he’s not a U.S. senator by then. Or running for president. Which path, if any, will he choose?

By by Eric Celeste
D Magazine MAY 2009

Rafael Anchia has only been in his new Victory Park high-rise office for a few weeks, but the few items he’s unpacked already suggest a man at a crossroads.

Although sparsely decorated, the shelves above his computer hold pictures of his family: his stunning wife, Marissa, and beautiful daughters Sofia, 4, and Maia, 2. Beside them sit more unusual curios—a long xistera, the wicker basket attached to the hand in the game jai alai, and, next to it, a handmade jai alai ball, or pelota. It was made by his father, Julio, a former professional jai alai player from Spain who came to Miami at 19 to find love, fame, and fortune. He found only the first, Anchia’s mother, Edurne, born in Mexico City but of Basque heritage herself. When his father’s playing days ended, he made pelotas to pay the bills. Anchia takes it from its place on the shelf and proudly hands it to me to inspect. “A work of art,” he says, beaming.

When he leans forward, though, the political yang to his familial yin becomes apparent. Behind him, sitting on the sill of his floor-to-ceiling office window, waiting to be hung, are a number of framed awards, posters, and memorabilia. One is a large Barack Obama poster with the word “hope” running along its base. Next to that is the front page of El Pais, the largest newspaper in Spain. The headline, Es la hora del “Obama hispano,” says it’s time for the Hispanic Obama. That would be Anchia, pictured on the floor of the Texas House, smiling as he lowers his jacket to reveal a basketball jersey underneath his suit, his surname stitched from shoulder to shoulder.

“It’s nice, huh?” Anchia says. He hands to me the framed article and shakes his head. “It says ‘the Hispanic Obama.’ ” He rolls his eyes. “It’s flattering, but not true, you know? I’m just trying to be a good representative for my district. I’m not interested in anything beyond that right now.”

You wouldn’t think his ambitions are that modest from the article, the sub-head of which says Anchia “leads the electoral roll of Latinos in Texas.” Nor from the press he’s been given by Texas Monthly, which has in turn named him the Lege’s “rookie of the year” in 2005 and one of its 10 best legislators in 2007. His next run for office has been the subject of much media speculation: perhaps mayor of Dallas, or Kay Bailey Hutchison’s U.S. Senate seat. TexMo proclaimed he could be the state’s first Hispanic governor by 2018. “If the Legislature were a stock market, Rafael Anchia would be Google,” the magazine wrote. “Recommendation: Buy.”

Anchia, though, isn’t buying. Despite pressures from within the state and other young Hispanic politicians around the country, he swears he is not on a fast-track plan to emulate his political hero, Obama. Over months of interviews, Anchia’s stance never wavers, on record or off. Despite the headlines, now is not the time for Rafael Anchia to follow the Obama playbook (statewide office, U.S. Senate, national stage).

“My goal is to stay in the House,” he says before running to meet with Dallas city staffers on behalf of a day-job client (Anchia is a corporate finance lawyer for Haynes and Boone). “I love what I do. If I didn’t, I would just stay home and practice law. But I love going to battle for the folks I represent. I plan on running for a fourth term in 2010.”

He leans back in his chair and looks toward the window, as if addressing the Next Job, which he knows exists somewhere, out there, some day. “There will be opportunities, sure. In Texas. In Washington.” He swivels in his chair and points to the family photographs and smiles. “But I’m not looking to leave right now.”

Few political watchers believe him. Yes, they believe he’s sincere in his desire to avoid the consuming grind of national politics at the next level. He’s not one of them, the smooth-talking careerist politicians who trot out the term “family” only when convenient (e.g., as a place of refuge to avoid scandal). And he’s not worried—well, not too worried, anyway—that by discussing higher office he’ll seem as though he regards his current position as unimportant, doing time in the minors before the inevitable call-up to The Show. They just don’t think he’ll have a choice. “Put it this way,” says a Republican legislator who works on a committee with him, and therefore didn’t want to be named, “the Texas Dems, other Hispanic politicians, his friends, they’re not going to start giving him less pressure to run for [U.S.] Senate or whatever. A lot of people are already fitting Rafael for his next suit, as it were. He just has to make sure he doesn’t bite off more than he can chew.”

He knows all this, of course, which is why he hates to talk about it. Because there’s nothing to talk about. Nothing is imminent. And yet, because that is true, it only makes the speculation worse. Because everything is possible.

So he’ll run down the list, the reason why he’s going nowhere anytime soon. He loves being a state rep. He doesn’t want more strains on a young family. He has a thriving law practice. But he also knows he can’t forever ignore the expectations placed on him by those within the party who see him as one of the most electable Democrats, let alone Hispanics, in state- or nationwide races in recent Texas history. “Look, it’s pretty simple,” says Los Angeles City Council member Eric Garcetti, who works with Anchia in a nationwide group of up-and-coming young Democrats. “He’s a rising star. He’s smooth, he’s smart, but not at all arrogant. He’s got a little superstar in him, you know? He can go as far as he wants.”

This sort of heady talk can make anyone start believing his own press clippings. But a few things keep him grounded and will make any upcoming run for higher-profile office a tough sell: his strong-willed wife, Marissa, his impeccable sense of timing, and the story behind that basketball jersey he wore on the floor of the Texas House.

Liz Zornes, chief of staff for Rafael Anchia, begins to move her hips. It’s 15 minutes before the opening session of the 81st Legislature in mid-January, and Anchia’s office, deep in the subterranean maze of the State Capitol basement, is filled with family, friends, and well-wishers. Children mill, staff is harried, and Anchia’s madre is wondering aloud in Spanish as to the whereabouts of her son. Zornes, though, is taking a moment to invite a photographer to that evening’s celebration of the new legislative session at a nearby nightclub.

“Have you ever seen Rafael dance?” she asks the photographer, who enthusiastically notes that she has indeed. Both women smile. “Rafael loves to dance.”

Anchia appears, walking quickly but, as always, put together as though he sprang to life from a political consultant’s dream: perfect suit, hair in place, twinkle in his eye. Only his hurried voice and wide eyes give hint that the Anchia posse is running very late. “We gotta go, people,” he says loudly. “Big, big day.”

The buzz on the floor of the Texas House is strong, and it sends a charge through the packed crowd. Today the autocratic Speaker of the House, Tom Craddick, was being ousted in favor of moderate Republican Joe Straus (R-San Antonio). Anchia, who prides himself on his ability to work with members of both parties behind closed doors, seems positively giddy. (Both are considered Young Turks of the Lege: Straus became a representative in 2005; Anchia in 2004.) Months earlier, when I asked Anchia for names of Republicans with whom I could discuss his backroom bargaining style, he gave me two: John Carona (R-Dallas) and Straus. In a word, he’s stoked.

A few hours later, after the largely ceremonial opening afternoon festivities and speechifying have concluded, Anchia strolls up to Straus at the buffet table set up in the hallway behind the House chambers. They glad-hand, talk pleasantries, and briefly exchange game-faces as they discuss work to be done. “I’m hoping he doesn’t appoint me to the Elections committee,” Anchia later tells me. He’d served on it the past two terms, and he found it too partisan and divisive, which made it hard to get work done. And SB 362 would not help.

Voter ID, or Senate Bill 362, is the most divisive issue in this legislative session. Republicans say they’re simply trying to avoid polling fraud by requiring that voters show a photo ID or two alternative forms of identification before voting, beginning in 2010. Democrats say this is a disenfranchisement bill that unfairly targets minorities, the poor, and the elderly, and they say it is really just designed to stem the rising tide of Democratic victories statewide.

Alas, when the committee assignments are doled out in February, he is placed on the Elections committee. (He is named to three committees, and named vice-chair of one.) He becomes the House Dems’ point man on the issue. “And I’ll fight the good fight,” he says. It also just happens to be a made-for-TV fight, guaranteeing him time on TV stations through the rest of the legislative session. Irrelevant circumstance, or good political timing and fortune? A little from column A, a little from column B.

Not that his central role in the Voter ID battle disheartens him. Anchia’s grandfather was a shepherd in the Basque region of  Spain. The offspring of shepherds, as Malcolm Gladwell has noted, are notoriously comfortable fighters, as they come from a culture where they must constantly defend the family’s livelihood against thieves and animals of prey. Later in February, Anchia shows he is ready to do everything he can to protect his flock from a bill that he and others consider particularly harmful to the poor and elderly:

“When I looked at the [committee] assignments on the Elections committee, the speaker didn’t really follow through on bi-partisanship in that committee,” he tells WFAA Channel 8. “He didn’t even put a veneer of bi-partisanship. On most of the committees, you have a Democratic chair with a Republican majority. He didn’t do that here.” He concluded by predicting, “They’re going to have a fight on their hands.”

It’s in the trenches where Anchia shines. When he walks toward the mike in the back of the House to argue a point, observers say, the person in front of the House better be ready for a verbal battle. Anchia in fact is famous for a video on YouTube in which he systematically eviscerates the screeching arguments of Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R-Wylie), calmly telling the screaming representative, “Just because you yelled it doesn’t make it true.” In that way, he’s not unlike Steve Wolens, his predecessor in District 103.

“Anybody, on either side of this debate, who watched Rafael Anchia fight that voter suppression legislation from the back mike of the Texas House of Representatives last session had to have been deeply impressed,” says blogger and BurntOrangeReport.com contributor Harold Cook. “It reminded me of when Steve Wolens was in the House. If Anchia is in a fighting mood, the Republicans are sure gonna know they were in a fight.”
(It would seem natural, then, that Anchia would be a trial lawyer. But that was never in the cards, he says. “I didn’t like evidence class in law school,” he says. “A silly reason not to become a litigator, I know. But there it is.”)

A week before Senate Bill 362 is to reach the House in early April, Anchia is spending every moment possible working to kill it—or, at the very least, maim it. As the public face for the Democrats on the issue, he takes every opportunity possible to argue for provisions to be added like one that would criminalize voter suppression (which Dems are convinced is actually the goal of SB362). He calls late in the evening on Sunday, after a full day spent in meetings about Voter ID strategy, driving to his Austin apartment. He sounds weary, the hope of January’s opening day long forgotten. “Maybe they will actually offer us a good bill by the time we get to hearings next week,” he says. “But there’s not a lot of trust there.”

In the weeks that follow, he will look for places to strike a conciliatory tone, like when it is suggested that Republicans will wait until 2014 to implement the changes. He understands the game: carrot and stick, pick your fights, compromise when necessary.

“I love the challenge of this job,” he says. “The challenge of learning everything I can about an issue, from stray dogs to transportation to plastic bag taxes to border security. You have to have a breadth of understanding.”

That is, of course, only half (or a quarter, or an eighth of) the battle. “There’s also dealing with 149 other egos and personalities. It’s fascinating. And, trust me, finding commonalities is a challenging exercise. And it’s vital that the people you work with trust and respect you, so you can best represent your constituents. So you can get things done. That’s what I’m here to do. Get things done.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was supposed to be a jai alai player, like his father, who was rescued from a delinquent youth by the game, eventually landing a contract to play professionally in Florida. Rafael picked up the game at age 4 and was a star by his teens. By the time he was to graduate high school in Miami, he was selected to play for the United States in the 1986 world championships in Spain. Most jai alai players have nicknames. Anchia went by “Raffy Miami.”

Everything changed when he attended a college fair in Miami, where a representative from SMU told him and his father the school had a scholarship with Anchia’s name on it. At first, Anchia balked. His father told him the sport was dying. He told his son, “Don’t you end up like me.”

Coming from Miami, where Hispanics and Cubans run the city, white-bread ’80s Dallas was a culture shock for Anchia. As was the wealth of his new school: his roommate—who, when he saw the name “Rafael Anchia,” feared he would be rooming with an Iranian—asked Anchia what his father did for a living. He told him that his father made jai alai balls. The roommate’s father owned an oil company.

Those who knew him in college, though, are not surprised by his career path. Even then, says fraternity brother Andrew Moss, Anchia was serious-minded, sober, and whip-smart. “You knew he was special,” Moss says. “He’s the kind of guy who, even though he’s easygoing, you always feel like, deep down, he knows a little more than you about everything.”

It was in law school at Tulane and during his first few years as a junior law associate when Anchia finally allowed himself to have some fun, to party a bit. Like most things he tackles, Anchia threw himself into his new role with passion. Co-workers at Patton Boggs, the firm where Anchia worked prior to Haynes and Boone, speak in reverent tones about the bacchanalian excursions on which Anchia would lead other young lawyers. “I can’t tell you any details,” one says, speaking obliquely, as though his phone line were being tapped. “Just ask Raffy about the company trip to Washington, D.C. That’s all I can say. And I’ve said too much.” (Anchia’s response: “This interview is over. Now I have to kill you.”)
Another lawyer friend tells of Anchia mixing it up in Miami. “Some guy tried to start trouble with us,” he says. “Raffy’s friend and he finished it.” The part the friend remembers most about that night, though, was what happened at 3 a.m.

“We’d had a few beers, and we really, really needed something to eat, you know? So we’re headed in this place, and Raffy sees this homeless guy, a neighborhood guy everyone knew. Raffy says, ‘C’mon in with us. Get something to eat.’ I’ll never forget that. Not many lawyers do that.”

The one who settled him was Marissa. He interviewed her for a job at the firm where he worked out of law school. He told his boss, “We can’t hire her. I want to ask her out.” Not only did his boss ignore Anchia’s request, he placed her in an office next to his and sent her to travel with Anchia on business trips—and told him not to date people in the office. “That lasted for, oh, let’s see—about two weeks,” Anchia says, lauging. They dated, got engaged, and flew to Spain to get married. (Before the wedding, he ran with the bulls in Pamplona, along with his best man, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes.)

Marissa was a calming influence on him, as were the children. Without them, he knows he would become a workaholic, be unable to detach from the dual grind of Austin and his law job. (He says now the only bad thing about juggling politcs, law, and family is that he needs a new exercise routine to take care of his “Lege gut.”)

There was one other influential event that has shaped the lawmaker Anchia is today. One he doesn’t like to talk about. For obvious reasons.

“The thing that really affected him, though, was when his legislator friend from Houston died,” his friend Andrew Moss says. “That’s when he -seemed to really bear down, you know? Like he was racing against the clock.”

"So we’re headed in this place, and Raffy sees this homeless guy, a neighborhood guy everyone knew. Raffy says, ‘C’mon in with us. Get something to eat.’ I’ll never forget that. Not many lawyers do that."

Even now, four years later, Anchia doesn’t like to talk about it. He sees the man’s family members every year when the session begins, and it just opens old wounds. But Anchia doesn’t deny the profound effect the tragedy had on him.

They were to take a much-needed break, a road trip to Houston to watch some basketball. Anchia would accompany another state representative, his friend Joe Moreno (D-Houston), to a playoff game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Houston Rockets. They already had a friendly wager on the series: If the Mavericks won, Moreno would have to wear a Mavericks jersey on the floor of the House. If the Rockets won, Anchia would wear a Rockets jersey. So Moreno drove Anchia and a legislative aide to Game 6 in Houston. Anchia watched his friend gloat through a decisive Rockets victory to force a Game 7 in Dallas.

On the ride back, without warning, Moreno’s truck veered onto the shoulder. When he overcorrected, the truck smashed into the median. Anchia emerged largely unharmed. Moreno died at the scene. (Toxicology tests would find no drugs or alcohol in Moreno’s system.)

Anchia won’t talk about the accident. The pain is still fresh in Moreno’s family, and he doesn’t feel comfortable discussing it. But everyone around him acknowledges how deeply the tragedy affected Anchia. To this day, when he rides in the passenger’s seat, he is prone to putting his foot quickly and nervously to the floor, as if to press an imaginary brake.

It’s a cliché that good can come from tragedy, one that may hold within it a kernel of truth, but only a kernel. For the most part, only sadness comes from it. Perhaps Anchia emerged a more focused, mature person, but that means nothing compared to the loss of  a colleague. Loss diminishes; it does not enrich. He would rather be a bit more carefree, a little more irresponsible, if that meant having his friend at his side. But the fact is, his friends say, after the accident, Anchia seemed even more determined to honor his friend Moreno’s memory: work hard every day to be a good representative, make the right decisions, don’t put off till tomorrow what can be done today. It is also why, even though the Mavericks won the series, Anchia wore the aforementioned Rockets jersey on the House floor: simply to honor his friend.

Recommitting to what one feels is important is natural after a tragedy, but what if both family and work can be seen as important? Which one wins out, then? If the answer is family, as Anchia says it is, that still doesn’t settle the question. Because in the Anchia family, his wife is unafraid to remind him of the responsibilities of public service.

That’s how he got where he is in the first place. When Anchia decided to run for DISD school board in 2001, he barely beat a five-person field with just over 50 percent of the vote. He liked the job, enjoyed the responsibility that went with it, the sense of accomplishment in trying to right a slow-moving ship. But when District 103 state rep Steve Wolens called in 2004, Anchia wasn’t looking for a larger political role.

“He told me that he’d decided he wasn’t going to run again, and that I was the first person he was telling, because he wanted me to run for the seat,” Anchia says. “I was honored, but I didn’t want to do it. My wife was expecting. I was starting a family. I had a good practice going. I was up for partner. I would be away from the family, and I’d have less earning power. Timing is everything, and the time didn’t feel right.”

He told Marissa about the phone call, figuring his pregnant wife would agree he shouldn’t complicate their life anymore at that point.

Instead, she told him a story about her father. He was a county judge in the Corpus Christi area. His work was time-consuming, and so she understood family sacrifice for public service.

Then Marissa told him about her father’s dreams, the grandest of which was to one day be a state representative. Finally, her father ran for office, losing to longtime legislator Ernestine Glossbrenner.

“If you don’t do this,” Marissa told her husband, “you will always wonder, ‘What if?’ ”

Let’s assume, for a moment, that history will repeat itself. That Rafael Anchia will answer the siren’s call, at some point in the near future, and run for mayor or U.S. Senate or try out for American Idol. Make a grab at real power, in other words. If that indeed is the case, you need to know who he is now, before he becomes big-time.

The easy answer is that there are two Rafael Anchias. (At least for public consumption. For all we know, there are 12 more skeletal versions of him in various closets throughout Dallas and Austin.) There is Raffy Miami, the vestige of that first-year lawyer who did unspeakably awesome things in our nation’s capital. The one who doesn’t allow a party to start until he arrives. The one who is so charming it seems absurd. The one who likes to talk March Madness. The one who notices that the belt you’re wearing is from Banana Republic. (“Dude, I have the same belt.”) The one who invites the very gringo-ish D Magazine photographer on the floor of the House with his family on the session’s opening day because, as he tells the security guard, “She’s family, too.” The one who loves to dance.

That version was on full display in Denver during the Democratic National Convention. We’d had our first meeting of several in his office a week before. We had a wonderfully professional discussion. We talked about the difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in person. He is one who believes Obama has less magnetism in the flesh because he’s just such a regular, easygoing guy, unlike Clinton, whom he says has a very commanding presence. (Onstage, flip that.) We chatted about the possibility of Texas U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards getting the vice presidential nod. (Anchia thought he would have been a great choice.) We chatted about Dallas going Democratic, about how even with the urban centers becoming more Democratic, Republicans still control the state. “There are still large parts of the state that haven’t experienced the change in political leaning that the urban centers have.” (He would be proven correct in the general election.)

But once we entered the “Rising Stars” party at 5 Degrees, a hip downtown Denver dance club near the Pepsi Center, we got to see Raffy Miami in full effect. He already had that one-half-drink-too-many gleam in his eye. He was the host with the most, entertaining national and Dallas-area media, politicians, and Sean Penn. He was all smiles and handshakes. He was also a little starstruck. “You see Sean Penn here?” he asked excitedly.
I decided I should try to play a reporter, as I had the week before.

“So, Hillary did what she had to do tonight, I guess,” I began. (The party followed Clinton’s convention speech.) “Make immediate concessions to the Obama camp that the party needed to get behind the candidate and stop the talk of division just because she was snubbed.”

Anchia looked at me with a grimace that said, if it could talk, “Are you kidding me? Are you seriously going to try to talk politics in here? Do you not hear the krush-groove stylings of DJ Diabetic?” He actually said, “Uh, yeah, sure. I really didn’t stay for the speech. I had to get ready for the party.”

And with that, all pretense of political discourse ended. It was time to dance. And, as his chief of staff knows, Rafael Anchia can flat-out move.

Even then, dancing wasn’t enough. Every half hour or so, he would bring another Rising Star to meet and dance with the D Magazine photographer. This included, but was not limited to, Michael J. Sorrell, the president of Paul Quinn College, who is about 6-feet-4 of dancing machine; the aforementioned Eric Garcetti from the LA City Council; and a line of other young up-and-comers.

By night’s end, Anchia had entertained hundreds of well-wishers. He was spent. But he was going to make sure he out-danced every last rock-star pretender in Denver. Ultimately, he was rewarded when a song from his teen years, the Outfield’s “Your Love,” blared. The last song of the night saw Raffy Miami fist-pumping the air, singing in full throat:

Josie’s on a vacation far away
Come around and talk it over

"Dozens of Hispanic families reach out to him as they pass, shaking his hand, talking about change and hope and promise. If he is a rock star to them, he is an accessible one."

Then there’s the other public Anchia. Not a rock star, but a rock-star politician. The one who manages to make unprepared legislators look foolish on YouTube, and do so without breaking a sweat. The one loved by television reporters, English- and Spanish-speaking, because he can talk in perfect sound bites, in either language, and throw in a handsome, made-for-TV smile at the interview’s conclusion. The one who is media-savvy enough to be shot as he’s walking across moving traffic, because it will make the photographer happy.

Not that he’s all talking head. To the contrary, the reason Wolens was so impressed with Anchia was his policy research and nuts-and-bolts preparedness. (You don’t do multimillion-dollar deals with huge corporations, like Anchia does at Haynes and Boone, with a wink and a smile.) Before agreeing to run, for example, Anchia spent hours with Wolens talking process and policy. He hates to be unprepared.

“Everything you work for can come undone in one moment,” Anchia says. “I’m well aware of that. It takes one time for you to be embarrassed on the mike laying out a bill. One time for you to be caught backing out of a promise. And that can forever undermine your credibility. So all I can do is prepare. Like Lincoln said: ‘I shall prepare, and my time will come. I believe that.’ ”

Which is why it appears at times that everything Anchia does is scripted, that he’s a little too “on.” This Anchia was in full effect on election night, at the Bishop Arts District street party.

It was a wonderfully diverse outdoor celebration. In the road, in front of Eno’s, spreading down the street, was a block party filled with people of all ages and races. On the stage were all the important Dallas Democrats—Craig Watkins, Lupe Valdez, Royce West, Domingo Garcia, Terri Hodge, the whole megillah.

Anchia, however, did not join them. He was positioned behind the cheering crowd, standing on a smaller platform, where all the television reporters and cameras were stationed. This allowed him to do three things. One, have enough alone time to constantly check and send e-mails from his BlackBerry to colleagues across the state. Two, shake every hand of every will-wisher who passed by.

Before we get to three, it should be noted there is an undercurrent of disdain among some Hispanic politicos in Dallas when it comes to Anchia. Not on the record, of course. He’s too popular for that. But talk to enough folks, and you witness a few subtle eye-rolls. The problem seems to be that he’s a little too lawyerly, that he is good on big issues like voter ID but spends too much time on things like bills that provide condoms to prisoners or place a tax on plastic grocery bags. That he doesn’t take up enough down-and-dirty issues that matter to his Hispanic constituents. That, like the Dallas he found in 1986, he’s become a little too white-bread.

None of which is on display here. Dozens of Hispanic families reach out to him as they pass, shaking his hand, talking about change and hope and promise. If he is a rock star to them, he is an accessible one.

And, really, the root of that complaint can be found in No. 3: being on the back stage instead of the one in front allows Anchia to be interviewed by local stations during the top of the evening newscast. He’s media-savvy enough to know how to feed the 10 p.m. beast. People see that, and they think, like they did of Clinton, he’s just a little too slick. (Slick Raffy?)

It’s understandable. Watching him put on the perfect political show, not miss a step all night, it’s hard to believe the timing couldn’t be just right for him to take the next step toward the Governor’s mansion, or look for a challenge in the Obama administration. So what if he loses his first time out? So, too, did Ron Kirk when he ran for U.S. Senate. It has not hurt the career of our current U.S. Trade Representative. You see Anchia expertly summarizing the passion and import of the night on Univision, and then Channel 8, and you say to yourself, What are you waiting for? Follow the trail Obama has blazed. It’s your destiny, isn’t it?

 “There is a classic prayer,” he says. “Something like, ‘God, if you want me to walk through the door, open it wide, so a fool like me doesn’t miss it. If you don’t, close it really tight.’ ” He laughs. “Right now, I don’t even know where the door is. When I find it, I’ll let you know what I see.”

Write to ericc@dmagazine.com.