In the City by the Lake

by Taylor Saracen

  I was sated, bordering on happy, and perpetually waiting for everything to fall apart, just as it typically did. Cal was full of conviction, a quality I lacked. Perhaps it was easier to be assured when you had nothing to lose. The stakes were low for him, while they soared through the skies for me, tempestuous and ready to pour consequences down upon me with one wrong move. I envied him. Despite how pathetic that was, I think it was my strongest emotion toward him at the time.

  “Have you been following the batty shit that happened with Billy Jurges?” I asked Cal as we lay on a dandelion-dotted knoll, sweltering under the early July sun. Bughouse Square was bustling as it often was, packed full of people who bubbled with the ignorant energy of youth. We weren’t like them, not that day. We’d been young the night before, chasing each other on Cal’s bed while we slowed the eight hours that fled from us too quickly. In our dimwitted determination to retard time, we hadn’t slept, leaving us listless and lethargic, but glad just the same.

  “Who’s that?” Cal questioned, alabaster skin appearing ethereal among the phantom blooms. If he had been anyone else, his incomprehension of all things Cubs would have peeved me, but it was him, so it didn’t. Cal, who was blowing the seeds of the flower into the air, not knowing how much the act would entice me. He, who drove me crazy by simply holding the stem with tenderness before carelessly tossing it away when the bud was bare, a man who didn’t know anything about baseball, but knew everything about how to play the game.

  “He’s the Cubbies’ shortstop,” I informed him, picking a flower and studying it for a moment.

  “So, he’s not tall then?” he smirked, well aware of how to press my buttons.

  I chuckled and tossed the dandelion at him. “Are they flowers or weeds?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I think so,” I decided. “When they’re yellow, they look like flowers, but when they’re like this, I think they’re weeds.”

  “And why does it matter? They’re beautiful either way.”

  “Weeds aren’t supposed to be anything but a nuisance,” I answered. “But you treat these weeds like they're special.”

  “Can weeds not be special?” Cal inquired, a familiar gleam in his eyes. “Can they not be special, and beautiful, and worthy of being held?”

  He was talking about me. It was easy for me to recognize it since he often did. I felt my cheeks grow warmer than they were already, and didn’t doubt they were flushing the perfect pink of his lips at that very moment.

  “Tell me about your baseball player,” he prompted, letting me off the hook. “What did he do?”

  “He got shot by an ex-lover,” I stated, watching him push himself up on his elbows, suddenly a meerkat.

  “I didn’t expect that.”

  “You expected me to bore you with talk of the team,” I noted, laughing when he shrugged innocently. “She went to his room at the Hotel Carlos and asked him if he loved her or something like that.”

  “I guess he said ‘no’?” he wondered.

  It was my turn to shrug. “She pulled a pulled a .25 caliber pistol from her purse. I guess Billy tried to get the gun away from her and it went off. He got one in his side and a second in his hand.”

  “So, he got lucky.”

  “As lucky as you can be when getting a bullet or two from a batshit broad. She left a suicide note. She’d meant to kill him and then herself,” I said. “She didn’t do either.”

  “Imagine how exposed you’d feel if you left a suicide note and then didn’t get to die. People would read it. You’d be dripping the blood of your heart onto the page, thinking you’d never have to face it, and you would have to live it down,” Cal tsked.

  “Hers wasn’t so deep. She blamed Kiki Cuyler for telling Billy to break up with her.”

  “And Kiki Cuyler is … ?”

  “A Cub,” I sighed. “You would be nearly perfect if you—”

  “Weren’t so imperfect?” he interrupted, with an impish grin.

  “Paid more attention to baseball,” I filled in, smiling back at him.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, regardless.”

  “You probably should,” I confirmed. “Billy’s going to be able to play soon.”

  “And that’s all you worry about?” Cal asked, amused.

  “He’s a good player.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s a kook,” I replied, wiping beads of sweat off my brow with the back of my hand.

  We’d considered going to the Squattersville beach but had decided against it, thinking we would have a difficult time finding a stretch of sand to spread out on among the crowds. I was relieved Cal hadn’t wanted to go. While I enjoyed admiring the cuts of his tobacco farm–raised muscles in a swimsuit, I hated that birds and belles did as well. Though Cal wasn’t mine, I always appreciated the moments when I could pretend he was, when I’d beat down my brain and allow myself to believe one day I would let go enough to be his too.

  “Have you ever been in love with someone who didn’t love you back?” Cal asked, without a hint of irony on his curious face.

  “No,” I answered. I had never been in love at all.

  “Lucky you,” he mused, causing me to wonder if he continued to love this person who didn’t love him too.

  “It’s lucky not to be in love? You sound like my father.”

  Cal lifted his eyebrow at the statement, but didn’t press. By now he knew the best way to draw something out of me was not to ask at all.

  “It’s lucky not to be in love when the love is unrequited,” he clarified. “I understand her is all.”

  “The scorned woman?”

  He nodded. “Some people’s feelings are just …” he sighed, searching for a word, “really big. They feel things so intensely that they’re afraid if they don’t expel their emotions they’ll actually burst.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?” I asked, wondering if Cal had ever gone off the deep end. It wouldn’t have shocked me if he had. He was as unpredictable as he was interesting. Maybe they were interchangeable qualities.

  “Not personally, just stories I’ve heard,” he replied, just as he always did.

  Generously, I let him off the hook as he’d done for me earlier.

  Cal was a mystery to me, not in a dark and foreboding way, but as an incongruity. I knew his face, his body, perhaps even his soul, yet so little about what made him who he was. I wondered if I was a puzzle to Cal or if he saw right through me, the way he made me believe he could. I feared it didn’t make a difference either way.

  12

  December 1932

  I had related New Year’s Eves with Cal long before we’d had relations. From first watching him, to then touching him, Cal had brought an excitement to the holiday I hadn’t expected. I’d found celebrations prior to him to be a string of letdowns. It’s the buildup that spites a looked-forward-to-night, the romanticism of a person’s mind making reality reach for something unattainable. I had learned early in life that the hopes of others were rarely reasonable to me, yet there were times in my youth when I would grab for the brass ring, an exercise of infinite futility. While I could not deny I had carved out a way to do well for myself as of late, I didn’t forget that moments of happiness were borrowed and easily taken back, a belief my brother didn’t seem to share with me.

  “If I have to hear you hum that goddamn song one more time, Igor,” I groaned, draining the glass of hooch I had been nursing as my pre-party to the evening’s festivities. Since the Democratic National Convention in July, my lovestruck brother had “Happy Days Are Here Again” in a constant rotation on his lips. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign song seemed to resonate with Igor. It was as if he sincerely believed it was the truth.

  “What do you have against positivity,” Igor chided. “You didn’t want to believe me when I said things were going to be awful and now you don’t want to acknowledge that they’re going to be great. You’re a complicated fella, you know that?”


  “I’ve been told,” I stated. “Since when do you blindly trust politicians? You used to be more hip. Is it Millie? Does she influence you so much, Ig?”

  He rolled his eyes. “First of all, if she did it wouldn’t be a negative thing. When you’re in love, the woman influences you in ways you could not imagine.”

  I felt as though I may throw up.

  “Second, the country can’t keep crashing and FDR is going to be the one to pull the breaks, save us from the wreckage. Happy days will be here again. Just wait and see, Vik.”

  “You were right a couple of years ago,” I relented. It wasn’t as though it would be bad if the economy picked up, but I had my own disparate concerns to contend with.

  Igor wasn’t the only person feeling hopeful. It hadn’t been a surprise Roosevelt had decimated Herbert Hoover in the election a couple of weeks before. The nation was done with the prostrate President and showed him that in a landslide. It was all anyone could talk about, the country keeping its fingers crossed that FDR’s New Deal would pull them out of the Depression they continued to sink into.

  While the majority of the public was excited about the President-Elect, I was less enthused. Roosevelt may have been a promising prospect for the country, but the Democrat was dangerous for me. He spoke often, and loudly, about ending prohibition, an initiative that would strip me of my bread, butter and every other indulgence I enjoyed over the past several years. As soon as liquor was easy to acquire, I was unnecessary, a middleman who would be coolly cut by gin mill owners who had struggled with their margins for long enough. I was too isolated by self-interest to join the nation in their dreams of deliverance. Despite my skepticism regarding the state of the Union, I could not deny—though I tried—that things were as bleak as Igor had predicted they would be years prior. Dozens of North Side businesses had shut their doors and according to my brother, economists were anticipating there would be handfuls more. The South Side factories weren’t in better shape, laying off hundreds of workers as a result of significant dips in production needs. People were hungry, as evidenced by Capone’s soup kitchen being packed for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  Once again, I stood on the outside, looking in at a country that had always been foreign to me. My needs didn’t align with theirs, yet I didn’t feel like an alien anymore. While I didn’t fit with them, I did fit with Cal. He made me different in a way that didn’t pull me from people, but thrust me toward them, because that was where he was, so it was where I wanted to be. He wasn’t born with shame like I had been. He didn’t desire distance, and I remained close to him. Perhaps he’d changed me a year ago on the shore, when he saw me in the darkness and opened my eyes. Maybe he’d been the catalyst for everything, the beginning of a new era, and not only for me. Cal was the Big Bang, the Tunguska event, the Great War, the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, movement, progress, tomorrow. He was gravity and I was the sea, my patterns shifting for him.

  “You should join Millie, Ingrid, Maks and I at the party tonight,” Igor offered. He’d been making the same suggestion for weeks. “There will be some single broads for you to mingle with.”

  “I have my own thing going on,” I told him vaguely. Tagging along with Igor, Maks and their girlfriends sounded like a sentence rather than a good time.

  Over the past year, the “Mikhailovs don’t need women,” mantra had been eviscerated by every member of the family apart from me. Though my father didn’t disclose what was going on in his love life, it became increasingly obvious to Igor and me that he was seeing a dame who worked at the diner down the block from our apartment. He sat at the counter like a devout parishioner, keeping her company. It was pathetic and a true study in hypocrisy. Everything I’d been sold was a sham, easily abandoned after winks from wanton women. And just like that, I was the odd man out.

  “Where do you go when you’re gone?” Igor asked, tracing his finger along the rim of his glass. “You’re off on your own so often, what kind of trouble are you getting yourself into?”

  I belched and placed my glass in the sink. “Nothing that’s any of your beeswax.”

  “Millie’s friend has been asking about you. She’s a real looker. You could do worse.”

  “I could do better too,” I promised, putting my jacket on. “Have a good night. Happy New Year.”

  “Happy New Year,” Igor said, standing up to shake my hand. “Here’s to good things to come for all of us.”

  “To good things,” I nodded, intent on going to see mine. I pulled my scarf over my mouth, preparing to face the cold.

  As I walked to the L, I patted my pants as I always did to ensure my pistol was where it belonged. The down economy had roused a surge of crime. Regular Joes were taking to the streets looking for ways to feed their families. Between the fellas from other outfits, dirty coppers, petty criminals and the College Kidnappers still out there nabbing gangsters, Chicago was a jungle, and I knew I had to carry myself like the king.

  Boarding the train, I recognized there were less revelers riding with me than there had been in years past and more tired, dirty folks who looked to have found a way to survive the harsh winter, at least until they were sent back to the alleys or park benches. I wondered if they felt the same confidence Igor did. They weren’t humming “Happy Days Are Here Again.” They appeared to believe they would never see another.

  As difficult as Chicago weather was for the growing population of homeless, there was something about the frigid temperatures that made everything feel fresher to me. I walked down State toward The Gallery and relished the smell of burnt cedar and snow which was tangling with the Towertown air, reviving the buildings browbeaten by time.

  For the last several New Year’s Eves, I had occupied a stool at the bar, inconspicuously peeking at Cal, finding him more enchanting than any of the flashy fashions or spirited songs surrounding me. Though we now had a more intimate relationship, I took a seat in my safety zone, greeted Abe and sipped my whiskey. I watched Cal more brazenly than I had over the previous years, drawing glances and smiles from him that felt indulgent.

  We were playing a game, one perhaps we had played back then also, before I knew, before I understood him in a real way, before I believed he could understand me in a real way too. I felt his energy even when it wasn’t expelled toward me, as if the connection we shared was tangible, fibers of our hopes twisted like ropes, tethering us together. In those moments, when I felt his presence so profoundly, everything else fell away, leaving us bound by a shared life force, mangled by our trials, but resilient nonetheless. I’d been attached before, blood from my mother rushing into me, until it didn’t. I didn’t want to be cut from him like I had been her. I needed to know I wouldn’t be, that we could be more than that fleeting moment and the moment that followed, and then the one after that.

  I studied Abraham as he poured patrons’ drinks, wondering how I suddenly saw him so differently. How somehow he’d become my nemesis—though he didn’t know I’d grown to despise him—if only because he filled the frame when I wanted to gaze solely at Cal, always in the background, looming, reminding me merely with his presence that he was with Cal too. He touched him where I did, kissed his lips, held his hand.

  I drained my glass and, like a moth to the flame, Abraham was there, ready with the refill. I wished I’d sipped slower in an attempt to avoid his service. There was a lot for me to lose and Abe held much of it. Cal had been convinced Abraham didn’t concern himself with what we did, but I found it impossible to comprehend. How could anyone be alright with sharing Cal? How could I be? I didn’t think I was, but I didn’t think I had a choice. It was better to have a piece of him than none. I wondered if he viewed me in the way I saw him. If I was the silhouette at the end of his tunnel as he was for me. And what if one day I was his only love and I had nothing more to hope for because he’d fulfilled it all, would I wait for the inevitable crash that mirrored the surprise of 1929? Would it be the start of my depression?

  Gone
my lover’s dream. Lovely summer dream. Gone and left me here to weep my tears into the stream, sad as I can be. Hear me willow and weep for me. Whisper to the wind and say that love has sinned. Left my heart a-breaking and making a moan. Murmur to the night to hide its starry light. So none will see me sighing and crying all alone

  Rosie sang as Cal swayed, and I gulped my booze, convinced there would never be a scene more melancholy.

  Cal sidled up beside me after the song was over, standing between my stool and the auntie to my right. “He didn’t want to go with something more upbeat for the occasion?” I asked, drawing a laugh from my companion.

  “Would you have preferred ‘Happy Days Are Here Again?’” he teased, knowing from my countless rants, I would not.

  “You have a smart mouth, you know that?” I grinned. “I should do something about it.”

  And an hour later, in the warmth of Cal’s bedroom, we rang in 1933 doing just that.

  13

  April 1933

  Though Maksim took any opportunity he could to tell me I was a pessimist, I didn’t agree. At best I was a realist who saw the flaws in a country and its people that others were driven to ignore, and at worst I was too numb to think much of anything. Being the way I was insulated me from the disappointments so many had to cope with when inevitably the things they’d hoped for unraveled before them, sashes slipping off the shoulder of a statue who promised them liberty she could not afford. I never trusted her to follow through, I never trusted any of them, so I hadn’t been jarred when the government let the country down. The masses, on the other hand, had ingested empty promises as though they were sustenance and the growling of their stomachs nearly drowned out the sounds of their screams. And still they hoped, proving optimism was the most dangerous disease, one that would never be cured by reason or doubt. There was no logic in the minds of the buoyant, no way to anchor them with rationale. Instead, they floated toward the clouds, heads full of air, arms wide open, waiting to be lifted even higher, to be saved. One prick of a pin and they toppled to the Earth, a pile of limbs, waiting for words that always came, the vacant vows that had them ready to rise again. The cycle of hope.