He quit Justice and went to work on a guy’s campaign. He ran it and won. You saw Bob on TV on election night, dancing in a hat he made out of a dinner napkin. He became a “media catastrophe consultant”—what’s that? He “befriended politicians under fire.” He sat in on meetings. Alone, just the two of us, he entertained me with their indiscretions: the congressman accused of photocopying his testicles, the federal judge who fell into fetal position when women said no. He needed somebody to be his friend, to help him grasp what he’d become, but I also got the feeling he went in and out of remembering I was there.

He bought a nice house. He got a smaller cell phone, a full-time squirrelly assistant cutting into our lunches to tell Bob he had to go. He went to work for Senator Sheslow, whose wife had just had a stroke, she was an invalid; Sheslow thought he might run for president. Bob was flying to Dallas and Japan, talking to folks. “It’s like fund-raising.” And Al Gore was calling to consider him for a job. These jobs didn’t have names anymore. “I’ll be the youngest member of Gore’s top guys,” he told me in his monotone robotic rambling into the speaker phone as he drove alone somewhere, exhausted. “It’ll be outstanding,” he said.

He had other distinctions. A booming voice, big hands, thick fingers, brown-colored dents on his car from backing into trees, pouchy bags under his bloodshot eyes, a colossal memory—he could produce anything ever said in passing, the name of my childhood pet turtle, how Sheslow voted on a tax bill fifteen years before, it all sat front row in his mind, it was all immediate. He knew George W’s weak spots, the trajectory of Chinese rocketry. He had constant weight problems. He shrunk and ballooned and went on diets. He was hungry. He kept popcorn in a lunch bag in his suit-coat pocket. He bit his fingernails till they bled like they’d been shoved inside a sink disposal. I felt for him, but he didn’t need my sympathy. I’d wonder, What’s he going to do next? Why did he like me? Why was Bill Clinton calling this guy for advice when he couldn’t park his car without hanging two wheels on the curb?