Conflict of interest

The second wine bar was in Parkhurst, not Rosebank, and Naledi knew before she walked in that it was a worse decision than the first.

Rosebank wine bars were where lawyers went to be seen by other lawyers. Parkhurst wine bars were where lawyers went to not be seen at all. Rosebank was Tuesday-after-work. Parkhurst was Tuesday-night. Rosebank was a place you could explain. Parkhurst was a place that required no explanation, which meant it was a place that admitted explanation was needed.

She was thirty-one minutes early.

She did not mean to be thirty-one minutes early. She had told her assistant, Lerato, that she was going to dinner at 8 PM and she had left the office at 6:40 because traffic on Jan Smuts can be terrible on a Tuesday, which was the kind of lie that was technically true and which Naledi Khumalo did not, as a rule, tell. She told it tonight. She told it to herself. She got into her car and she did not look at the dashboard clock and she drove the eleven-minute drive to Parkhurst in twenty-two minutes because she stopped at a petrol station she did not need to stop at and bought a pack of mints she did not need to buy.

The bar was called Vine. It was small, brick-walled, candlelit. There were eight tables and a long bar and a chalkboard with the night's wines written in chalk by a person with deliberately bad handwriting. The bartender was a woman in her late thirties who did not look up from polishing a glass when Naledi walked in.

"Just one?"

"Two. The booking is for eight. I'm early."

"Name."

"Khumalo."

The woman looked at a small notebook. "Right. Yes. Booth in the back. Wine list at the table. I'll bring you water."

She walked to the booth. It was, she noted with the same forensic precision she had applied on Saturday at 2:14 PM, the most private seat in the room — a curved leather banquette, half-walled, with the candles set in low brass holders that lit faces from below in a way that flattered everyone. The booking had been made by Kelechi. Kelechi had specifically chosen the most private seat in the bar.

She sat.

She did not open the wine list.

She put her bag on the seat beside her and she folded her hands on the table and she looked at the candle, and she thought about leaving.

She could leave. There was nothing physically holding her here. She could pay nothing — she had ordered nothing — and stand up and walk out and text him at 8:01 saying something came up at work and Kelechi Ikuku, who had said on Monday night I will not ask again either way, would not ask again. He had told her this. She had believed him.

She did not leave.

She did not leave because she had spent the entire workday thinking about leaving and had come anyway, and the not-leaving was the data. The not-leaving was what she had not been able to talk herself out of in 33 hours of trying. The not-leaving was, she realised with a small dry clarity, the same shape of thing that had brought her to the office at 6:47 AM on Monday morning — a thing she could not name, doing what it wanted, while the rest of her watched.

He arrived at 7:59.

She heard him before she saw him. The bartender said Mr Ikuku in a tone that suggested she had been told the name and had been told to use it, which was an old-world kind of detail, the kind of detail Kelechi managed without seeming to manage anything. He came around the brick partition, and she watched him scan the room, and she watched him find her, and she watched the small thing happen in his face that always happened when he saw her — the half-second where he forgot to be careful, before he remembered.

He came to the booth. He sat. He did not lean in.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"You're early."

"I had a delivery to make near here."

"No, you didn't."

She looked at him.

He smiled — small, careful, the smile he had used on Friday in the conference room, the one she had said no to. "Naledi. I have known you for seven weeks. You have not, in seven weeks, been early for anything. You arrived at the Mondi pitch at exactly 2:59 PM. You arrived at the partners' lunch at exactly 12:30 PM. You arrived at the bar in Rosebank yesterday at the exact moment you would have arrived if you had left the office at 5:30. You are a woman who is never early. So either you came here directly from the office, which means you have been sitting here for an hour and twenty minutes, or you came from somewhere else, which means you went somewhere else first because you needed to not arrive too soon, which means — "

"Kelechi."

"Yes."

"Stop talking."

He stopped talking.

She picked up the wine list. She did not look at it. She set it down again.

"What are we drinking."

"Whatever you want."

"You said that yesterday. I'm not deciding tonight. You decide."

He looked at her for a second. Then he turned slightly and signalled the bartender, and when she came over he asked her three questions about a Cape red she had not heard of — questions about a specific 2019 vintage and a specific small producer and whether they still had it — and the bartender said we have one bottle left, and Kelechi said we'll have it, and Naledi watched this entire transaction with the kind of attention she usually reserved for cross-examination.

When the bartender left, Naledi said —

"You picked this place because you knew they had that wine."

"I picked this place for several reasons. One of which was the wine, yes."

"What were the others."

He looked at her over the candle. The candle did the thing the bar had designed it to do — softened his face into a version of itself that Naledi had not previously had access to. He was thirty-four. He was, she had recently established by a search she would not admit to performing, the second son of a Lagos lawyer who had served on the federal commission for two terms and a Yoruba mother who taught literature at the University of Ibadan. He had a brother who was a cardiologist in Houston. He had been engaged once, at twenty-eight, to a woman who was now an MP in the UK Parliament. He had not, as far as the internet knew, been in a public relationship in four years.

"The reasons," he said slowly, "were that I wanted somewhere private enough that you would not feel watched. Quiet enough that you could leave if you wanted to without anyone noticing. Far enough from the firm that we would not see anyone we work with. And — " he paused, "small enough that you would have to sit close to me."

She did not say anything for a moment.

"That last one was honest."

"I have decided, Naledi, that lying to you is not a strategy. It is a luxury I cannot afford. So when you ask me a question, I am going to answer it. If you do not want the answer, do not ask the question."

"Noted."

The wine arrived. The bartender poured. They both watched her pour. When she left, Kelechi did not pick up his glass.

"Naledi."

"Yes."

"Before we drink. I want to say one thing, and then I want to not bring it up again unless you bring it up. Is that acceptable."

"Say it."

"There is a fact about us that we have not addressed and that we should address before we drink wine alone together in a candlelit booth in Parkhurst on a Tuesday night. The fact is that the firm has a conflict of interest policy that, on its strictest reading, would require both of us to disclose this. Not the wine. The wine is fine. The wine is two colleagues having a drink. The fact is that I am — that I am attracted to you, and you are aware of that, and we are aware of each other's awareness, and the firm's policy would say that this awareness, in the context of us working together on a deal, requires disclosure to the managing partner. I have read the policy. I have read it twice. I am confident in this reading."

"Kelechi."

"I am not finished. I want to say that I have not disclosed. I want you to know I have not disclosed because I want you to know that the choice to disclose, or not, is one I am leaving to you. If you want it disclosed, I will go to Maartens tomorrow morning. I will accept whatever recusal he decides. I will continue to work the engagement as second chair if he allows it, and if he does not allow it, I will step off the Mondi work and continue with other engagements I do not share with you. I have already thought about which engagements those would be. I have a plan. I want you to know I have a plan, because I want you to know that I am not asking you to keep a secret. I am asking you to make a decision. Either we tell the firm, and we accept whatever they decide, or we do not tell the firm, and we both, with full awareness, accept what that means."

He stopped.

He looked at his hands on the table.

"That is what I wanted to say. That is the one thing. Now we can drink wine."

Naledi sat for a long moment with her own hands folded.

This was, she understood, the most strategically sophisticated thing any man had ever said to her in a wine bar.

He had not asked her out. He had not made a move. He had laid the legal architecture of the situation on the table between them, in the precise vocabulary she lived in eight hours a day, and he had told her that the choice — including the choice to make this a real thing or to make it a deniable thing — was hers. He had not coerced. He had not flattered. He had offered her a binary: disclose and accept consequences, or do not disclose and accept consequences. He had treated her the way he would have treated a partner across a negotiating table.

And in doing so, he had located the single thing about her that no man in fifteen years had ever bothered to locate, which was that she was most attracted to men who took her seriously enough to negotiate.

This was, she thought, the most dangerous thing he had done yet.

"Pour the wine."

He poured the wine.

She took a slow drink. She set the glass down.

"Kelechi."

"Yes."

"I have read the policy too. I have read it four times since Saturday. My reading is that the policy applies to a personal relationship, defined as a romantic or sexual relationship. Attraction, in the absence of action, is not, in my reading, a defined trigger. The policy is poorly drafted on this point, and I have made a note to suggest amending it the next time the partnership reviews it. But on the current language, I do not believe we are required to disclose anything."

"That is your reading."

"That is my reading."

"I disagree with your reading. I think the language could go either way."

"I know you disagree. That is what I am about to address. My second point. I am not — at this table, on this Tuesday — in a personal relationship with you. We have had two professional drinks. We have exchanged six text messages, four of which were about books. If we are required to disclose two drinks and a book recommendation, then half the firm should disclose. The policy is not asking us to disclose this. The policy is asking us to disclose if and when this becomes something the policy was written to address."

She paused. She took another drink.

"Which brings me to my third point. If, at any point in the future, this becomes something the policy was written to address — I will disclose. I will not ask you. I will do it myself. I will go to Maartens on my own. I will accept whatever happens. I will not, Kelechi, allow myself to be a woman who hides a personal entanglement from her firm. That is a different rule from the one I have about not dating in the office. The rule about not hiding things is older and it is not negotiable. If this becomes the thing that requires disclosure, I will disclose it before you have a chance to."

He was watching her.

"That is not what I asked."

"I know. I am answering a question you did not ask, because you needed to know."

"Why did I need to know."

She looked at him.

"Because, Kelechi, you have been very careful with me for seven weeks, and you are being very careful with me tonight, and you should know — before whatever else we do tonight — that I am not a woman who needs careful management. I am a woman who has built a career on disclosing what should be disclosed and managing what should be managed, and I will not have you protecting me from the consequences of my own decisions. If we end up in a situation that requires disclosure, I will disclose it. Not you. Me. I want you to understand that this is not your decision to make on my behalf. Are we clear."

A long moment.

"We are clear."

"Good."

She drank her wine. He drank his wine. The candle did its work on both their faces. Somewhere across the room, a couple was leaving, and the bartender was wishing them a good night, and the door opened and closed.

"Naledi."

"Yes."

"Can I tell you something."

"You can tell me anything."

"You just made me want you in a way I did not know was available to me."

She set her glass down.

"Kelechi."

"I'm sorry. I said I would tell the truth when asked. You asked nothing. I'm volunteering it. I would like the record to reflect that you didn't ask."

She laughed.

She laughed in the way she had laughed the night before — surprised, a little broken, with her hand half-up to her face — and the laugh was different in this bar than it had been in the last bar, because this bar was darker and this bar was further from the office and this bar had been chosen, deliberately, to be the kind of bar in which a woman like her might laugh that laugh and not regret it.

She did not, in that moment, regret it.

She was going to. She knew she was going to. She knew that at some point, probably between 11 PM tonight and 6:47 AM tomorrow morning, the regret would arrive in the way regret always arrived — not as a flood but as a small specific cold, in the back of her throat, around the same hour she usually woke to drink water. The regret was coming. She had thirty-six hours of grace before it landed, maybe forty.

She was going to use the grace.

"Kelechi."

"Yes."

"Move."

"Move where."

"Move to my side of the booth. You are too far away. I want to talk to you for the next two hours and I do not want to do it across this table."

He did not move immediately. He looked at her for the long careful moment he had used on her on Monday morning, the look that was a question wearing the costume of a statement. Then he stood up. He picked up his wine glass. He came around the booth and he sat next to her — not crowding, leaving a careful six inches between his thigh and hers, his arm along the back of the banquette but not touching her shoulder.

She felt the six inches.

She felt them in the way she had felt the not-looking across the office on Monday morning. The careful negative space of a man who was paying attention to where she had drawn lines and was not crossing them — even though she had just asked him to come closer, even though the asking had implied permission, even though every other man Naledi had known would have closed the six inches without noticing he was doing it.

He did not close the six inches.

She closed three of them.

He did not move.

She closed two more.

He turned his head — slightly, just enough — and she could feel his breath at her temple, warm, careful, not landing on her ear because he had angled himself precisely to avoid it.

"Naledi."

"Yes."

"I want to be very clear about something."

"Yes."

"I will not touch you tonight unless you ask. I will not kiss you unless you say. I am going to sit beside you and drink this wine and talk to you for as long as you want, and I am not going to do anything else. If you want anything else to happen tonight, you are going to have to say so out loud. I am sorry to make this difficult. I am being very deliberate about it. I think you would prefer it this way."

"I would."

"I thought so."

"Don't make me say it tonight."

"I'm not."

"I mean — I'm not going to say it tonight. The thing. Whatever the thing is. I'm not saying it tonight."

"I know. That's fine."

"I am going to lean against your shoulder for the next two hours, however, because the booth is uncomfortable and you are warmer than the booth. Is that acceptable."

"That is acceptable."

She leaned against his shoulder.

She felt him exhale — quietly, controlled, the smallest exhale of a man who had been holding tension she had not been able to see — and his arm moved, slowly, from the back of the banquette to a position that was around her shoulders, but barely, in the half-inch where the difference between resting on the banquette and resting around her was technically the same physical position.

She let her hand find his other hand on the table.

She laced her fingers through his.

They sat like that.

For two hours.

They drank a bottle of wine. They talked about the case. They talked about books. They talked about how Lagos was different from Joburg, which was different from London, which was different from the Cape Town his mother had retired to. He told her about his brother in Houston. She told him about her younger sister in Pretoria. They did not kiss. He did not move his hand. She did not move hers.

At 10:14 PM, the bartender came over and said —

"Last orders if you'd like another."

Naledi sat up. She did not let go of his hand.

"We won't," she said. "Bill please."

The bartender brought the bill. Kelechi paid it without looking at her, which was a courtesy — letting Naledi do anything she wanted to do, including not negotiate over the bill — and Naledi noted the courtesy and said nothing about it.

She stood up.

She picked up her bag. She put on her coat. Kelechi stood up too. They walked together to the door. The bartender said goodnight in a voice that was carefully not a knowing voice, and they walked out onto Fourth Avenue, Parkhurst, on a Tuesday at 10:18 PM, and stopped at the kerb.

"My car is that way," Kelechi said, pointing right.

"Mine is that way," Naledi said, pointing left.

"Of course."

"Kelechi."

"Yes."

"Do not walk me to my car."

"Okay."

"I want to walk alone for thirty seconds before I get into my car. Is that — "

"Yes."

"Okay."

He nodded. He did not move toward her. He did not, this time, even hold out a hand to shake.

She turned. She walked the half-block to her car. She did not look back until she was at her driver's door, and when she did look back he was still standing at the kerb outside the bar, exactly where she had left him, not looking at her. He was looking at his phone, holding it the way a man holds a phone when he is making himself not look up. She watched him for a second.

Then she watched him put the phone in his jacket and turn and walk toward his own car, in the opposite direction, and she watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the block.

She got into her car.

She drove home.

She did not text him.

She did not text him at 11. She did not text him at midnight. She did not text him at 12:30 AM when she was in bed in her flat in Sandton with the lights off, the regret she had predicted now arriving on schedule in the back of her throat, around the same hour she usually woke to drink water.

The regret was not what she had expected.

She had expected the regret to be about him. She had expected to lie in bed at 1 AM thinking what have I done, what am I doing, this is a colleague, this is a man I have to argue about charts with on Wednesday morning, this is a junior I am supposed to be evaluating for partnership, what have I done.

That was not the regret.

The regret, when it arrived, was older.

The regret was about every other man.

The regret was about Themba, who she had loved for two years at twenty-five and who had told her at twenty-six that she was intimidating in a way men find difficult, and who had left her in the kitchen of her own flat with the rice she had been cooking for him still on the stove. The regret was about the men since — three of them, none lasting more than four months, all of them in the same vague shape as Themba, none of them able to take what she actually was without translating it into something smaller they could be comfortable with. The regret was about Themba but also about the version of herself that had decided, at twenty-six, that the answer was the rule. The rule about not dating in the office. The rule about not letting work and want occupy the same room.

The rule had been the right rule for nine years.

The rule had also been a smaller life than she could have had.

She lay in the dark in her flat in Sandton and she did not cry. She did not, as a matter of long-established practice, cry about men. She had cried about Themba in 2017 for three days and then she had stopped, and she had not cried about a man since, and she was not going to start tonight.

But she lay awake, and her chest felt tight, and at 2:11 AM she picked up her phone and she opened a text to Kelechi Ikuku and she wrote —

The wine was very good.

She sent it.

She watched the message turn from grey to blue.

He wrote back at 2:13.

It was. Goodnight, Naledi.

She read it.

She did not write back. She put the phone face down. She closed her eyes. She slept, eventually, around 3.

She arrived at the office at 6:47 the next morning.

She was not the first person in the building.

This was an unusual thing.

Kelechi Ikuku was at his desk, three doors down, with the light on, with a cup of coffee already half-drunk beside his keyboard. He had not been at his desk at 6:47 AM on any morning in seven weeks. She had clocked him as a 7:10-to-7:20 arrival.

She paused at her own door. She did not go in.

She went to his door instead.

She knocked, once, the way she always knocked.

He looked up.

"Naledi."

"Kelechi."

"Coffee's fresh."

"Got a second?"

"For?"

"The Mondi pitch. The whole deck. I want to redo it. I think we've been pitching the wrong story."

He set down his cup.

"Come in."

She came in. She closed his door behind her — which she had not done, ever, in seven weeks, in his office or her own — and she sat across from him in the chair he sat in when he came to her, and she said —

"Show me slide one."

He showed her slide one.

They argued for an hour.

When the rest of the firm began to arrive, at 7:45, 8:00, 8:15, they walked past Kelechi's office one by one, and they noticed — though they did not comment — that Naledi Khumalo was sitting in there with the door closed, on a Wednesday morning, before any of them were in.

By 9 AM, the firm knew something the firm had not known the day before.

By 9 AM, Naledi knew it too.

By 9 AM, Naledi had walked the line back another two metres without saying so, and Kelechi had not asked her to, and the door of his office, the closed one, the one no one had commented on, was the smallest visible piece of a much larger structure that had been moving quietly for seven weeks and was now, irreversibly, visible.

The line had moved.

The firm could see it.

She had thirty-six hours, maybe forty, before someone said something to her about it.

She did not know what she was going to say back.

Module 04 drops next Friday.

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