I saw the hopefuls on the streets and wondered when their faith would wane, when they would have had enough, what it would take for them to fail to be filled again. Most were leaden after Anton Cermak’s assassination. I thought it would be their final descent, but still they ascended, unable to be stopped by the violent death of a mayor they’d fought to elect, a man who they’d tied so many of their wishes to.
Cermak had died a hero in early March after the shooting, which occurred a month prior. During a photo-op with President-Elect Roosevelt in Florida, Cermak was shot in the lung. Newspapers reported that Chicago’s mayor hadn’t been the target, that a woman had bumped the assassin, Giuseppe Zangara, with her purse and caused him to hit Cermak rather than his intended victim, FDR. According to the Tribune, Cermak had said to Roosevelt, ‘I'm glad it was me instead of you,’ noble words no one could prove he’d said, but the valiant statement gave mourners hope, made them feel like they’d backed the right horse.
While the idealists drifted toward the horizon once again, high on an act of valor, hardened Chicagoans doubted the bullet was ever meant for FDR. Cermak had made enemies with his talk of cleaning up the sordid streets and putting a stop to prohibition. Whispers that Capone was behind the finger, behind the goon who fired the gun, were growing louder by the day. Yet, those who theorized remained in lines outside the monster’s soup kitchens.
I wish I’d had the capacity to be something I wasn’t, to harness even an iota of their insincerity so my life was easier to live. If you only believed what was convenient in the moment, you never had to cope with the longevity of time. The ability to shift and change based on the words of fickle men was more of a blessing than ignorance itself. How I desired to transform based on their lies, to forget myself and remain only in relation to them, a thoughtless mold who could not be let down because I did not exist. To be nobody beneath them was to be the epitome of self-preservation, a subservient voice, a blank mind, a faceless soldier in the fight for … nothing. Who knew what we were bucking against anyway? The ground had fallen out and nobody knew how to fix it.
Maybe Roosevelt was one of them, one of the hopefuls, but rather than listen to someone else’s words for assurance, he tuned into the thoughts in his head. Millions of people throughout the nation listened to his inaugural address, anticipating his sentiments, needing him to fortify them as they wilted in wait. And he gave them what they craved, presented on the same silver platter they had hocked to feed their families: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The problem was the American people wanted to believe their biggest opposition was fear, so they ate it up. It was more uplifting to think that way than to recognize their fear should be in the government they sought comfort from. Comfort wasn’t comfortable when one was held in the arms that strangled him.
I wasn’t suffocated by the establishment. How could I have been if I had never trusted the machine? The only organizations I subscribed to were Vlad’s outfit and the Chicago Cubs, beasts in blue who made me choke as much as they did. Despite their propensity to fall from grace at the most inopportune times, the Cubbies were the only men who made me a wishful thinker. Perhaps by believing in a team who proved unworthy of the belief, I wasn’t as disparate from the Roosevelt romanticists as I would have liked to imagine I was.
When Billy Jurges recovered from his gunshot wounds and led the Cubs to the World Series to face the Yankees, I thought it was a sign, like his recovery was a preternatural phenomenon that could only point to one outcome. My optimism was proven merely a delusion by the tip of another man’s finger. The series was tense, with years of bad blood between the two teams boiling over when the Cubs awarded former Yankee-turned-Cubbie Mark Koenig only half of his World Series share. The Yanks didn’t want to come to our house and we didn’t want them there, a fact we made obvious by showering them with lemons and other shit we could toss on the field. It could have been the jeering that inspired Babe Ruth to gesture to center field while at bat in the top of the fifth and then promptly send a monster homer streaming through the air to that very spot. If the hit had been a strategy to shut us up, it was effective. We grew more silent the following day when the Yankees swept the series, ending us in four games. It had gone worse than I could have imagined, a fate I blamed on my naivety and the fleeting thoughts I had that the universe somehow had a plan, that causes had effects and miracles had reason. I would have thought that like Ruth’s shot to the wall, Zangara’s shot—possibly intended for Roosevelt and absorbed by Cermak—would have dashed the dreams of those who dared to believe anything would be different, but it hadn’t. They continued to hope, and I continued to wonder why — until baseball season, when I did too.
Inviting Cal to join me for opening day made me feel more exposed than sleeping with him ever had. It was one thing to welcome someone into your body—I had done it so many times with people who never meant more to me than an orgasm—and another to reveal your world to them, show them what you value for no reason other than to share it because you want them to know you in a real way, to know all of you, even if just through peeks. So much of me was built in that stadium, an island in the middle of the city where I was a castaway, a shelter in the maelstrom.
“It’s not crowded,” Cal garbled, his mouth full of the peanuts he’d insisted on stopping for before we’d even gotten to our seats and settled in. His vehemence for the nuts should have frustrated me because it went against my routine, but it hadn’t. I wanted him to have fun, to enjoy the game as much as I would. I wanted him to smile at me with white teeth peppered with peanut skins and eyes full of new sights.
“Attendance has been down the last few years,” I said, “they tacked a ten-percent amusement tax onto tickets, and I guess they’re too pricey for working class wallets.”
“But alright for yours,” Cal hummed in a way that had me unsure if he was praising me or mocking me. “How much do I owe you for my ticket?”
“Nothing,” I replied. Though I would have taken care of his admission regardless, I wondered if Cal made money independently or if he got some kind of stipend for keeping Abraham’s company. The thought made me ill.
“Are you going to give me your pin next?” he teased. Peanut skins.
“Fuck you,” I grinned, averting my eyes. I liked when he joked like that. I debated whether I should ask, but the spirit of the moment compelled me. “How do you make money anyway?”
“I don’t,” Cal answered. “I’m direly poor.” There was no levity in his reply. “But rich in experience, which I prefer.”
“You eat,” I stated, watching as the Cubs took the field. “You use soap.”
“I’m glad you noticed,” he mused, holding the bag of nuts out to me. I took a handful.
“Those things cost money.”
He nodded. “They do. We live in a very communal way, a big pot of stew on the stovetop and shared soap.”
I grimaced. “Who do you share your soap with?”
“Everyone.”
I prayed we weren’t speaking in euphemisms. “You bought peanuts with your own nickel.”
“I did.”
“How did you earn that nickel?” I pressed, wondering if my theories were worse than the truth.
“You choose odd times to ask avoided questions,” Cal noted, laughing as he gave me a reassuring pat on my knee. “You’re supposed to be waxing poetic about all things baseball.”
“Why have we been avoiding questions?”
“Because you’ve preferred it that way.”
“Says who?”
“Everything about you,” he answered. “You want to know as little about me as you want to share about you. I realized a while ago that you’d rather know the me you’ve created in your mind than the one who sits flawed in front of you right this very moment.”
“Horsefeathers!” I disagreed, a knee jerk response. “Tell me who you are then. I dare you to. How do you produce your penny profits, Cal Connolly?” I wanted him to think I was accepting and open
. I would force myself to be so if I needed to be.
“I make horrible moonshine desperate men pay pennies for,” he said easily, as if he hadn't activated a bomb and tossed it onto my lap.
“Come again?”
“You heard me. Am I right to assume my answer surprised you?” Cal laughed. “You saw me as a gold digger because it was the most reasonable explanation, right? A kept man?”
I shook my head in disbelief of the nugget of information I’d knocked the dirt from. “Moonshine?”
“I’m an Irishman from Georgia.” He paused and corrected himself, “An industrious Irishman from Georgia.”
“And what about Abraham?” I ventured.
“He’s an industrious businessman from Boston.”
“You know what I’m asking you,” I chided, looking over my shoulder to ensure none of the game’s attendees could hear our impromptu soul-revealing conversation.
“He pays me for my modeling,” Cal replied without shame.
“But not for fucking him?” The words made my stomach churn, but I’d been dying to ask them and somehow, in my church, I’d mustered the courage to do it.
He shook his head, not offended by the inquiry. “I do that for free.”
I wanted to die. I had thought the worst possible thing he could have said was that he was a prostitute, but I quickly realized it was more devastating to bear that he wasn’t. “Why do you do that?”
“Sleep with him?” Cal asked, seemingly surprised by the inquiry. “I don’t know. I got used to it, I think it’s like brushing my teeth or reading a book.”
“Reading a good book?”
“A mediocre book,” he laughed. “Significantly less engaging than those I read with you.”
Suddenly, I felt inexplicably comforted. “Why don’t you toss it aside then? Are you afraid if you do he will do the same to you?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Cal promised.
I envied him. I was fearful of so much. I didn’t know how to respond as I stared at Kiki Cuyler, wishing he’d give me advice like he gave to Billy Jurges and that Cal would become so irate from the counsel he’d shoot me in the side.
“Do you want me to stop sleeping with him?” Cal asked after several quiet moments.
“I do,” I admitted, my mouth speaking before I had a chance to regulate it.
“Will you stop too?” he inquired, his voice more unsure than I had ever heard it.
“I haven’t slept with anyone since I slept with you,” I told Cal as I waved the hot dog vendor over to us.
“I hate that you have the advantage,” Cal said, thanking the man who handed him the wrapped delicacy. “What should we do about it?”
“I think it’s more about what you’re not going to do.”
“Sleep with other people?” he asked, nodding as he answered his own question. “For me it will only be you.”
“Because you want that or you think I do?” I attempted to clarify.
“It’s one and the same,” Cal said with such conviction I believed it.
Hope.
14
August 1933
Igor and Maksim must have thought I was an idiot. It was the only explanation I could come up with to justify Gladys’ arrival at the L stop as I stood waiting for the train with Ig, Maks, and their respective girlfriends. The assholes had been angling to match me with Millie and Ingrid’s friend for months, thinking a future full of triple dates was an appealing prospect rather than the nightmare I found it be. Unsurprisingly, I had shut down their propositions, and they had respected my wishes, until the day we planned to visit the World’s Fair.
I hadn’t particularly wanted to go, finding the theme, “A Century of Progress,” unbearably ironic given that the country was hooked to a backsliding pulley and slipping further into the abyss by the day. Progress. It was laughable, yet I found no humor in it. America prided herself on innovation, but she was only as good as her ability to flourish or even to sustain, and she currently exhibited the capacity to do neither.
As the train clanked over the tracks, carrying us toward our destination, I tried my damndest to avoid all discourse with the dame on my left and the saps behind me, though they all had attempted to engage. I regretted agreeing to join Maks and Iggy on the excursion, but I’d been trying to get out of the apartment more during the day. I needed to find ways to pass time so it didn’t crawl as I anticipated evenings with him. Over the past few months, my nights with Cal had become more frequent, both of us indulging our hearty appetites for sex and each other. It had gotten easier for me to let my regulations on our time together go once Cal let go of Abraham. Things with Abe and I were as companionable as they had been prior to me poaching his Peach. Though I was sure he knew there was something going on between Cal and me, we never discussed it. Still, he saw me in The Studio so often he offered me a bed. I didn’t tell him I already had one.
“What are you thinking about?” Gladys inquired. I hadn’t realized what an invasive question it was until that very moment and promptly flipped through the catalogue of conversations I’d had with Cal, trying to recall if I’d asked him what was on his mind. There was no doubt I had. How could anyone think they had the right to trespass in another’s mind? That they could create a footpath in the folds of someone’s cerebrum? It was jarring and compelled me to make a crass comment:
“Dysentery.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, so aghast that it was nearly comical.
I heard Millie whisper “why is he like this?” to Igor, but I chose not to acknowledge it, instead hoping it would cement my status as do-not-invite-again.
“There’s an outbreak of amoebic dysentery associated with the fair. Haven’t you heard about it? It’s been on the radio for weeks,” I answered, looking out the window as city streets blurred below me. The train was moving fast, but the ride to the fairgrounds seemed painfully slow thanks to my company.
“I haven’t,” Gladys replied. “What does amoebic mean?” She was worried now, but I didn’t care to lessen her concern.
“It means caused by amoebas, you know, parasites, those wily little fuckers who invade your intestines if you drink water laced with shit or someone serves you a hot dog with a dirty hand.”
Maksim laughed, earning him a stern “humph” from Ingrid, while Igor reached over my seat to give the back of my shoulder a warning squeeze.
“Vik, we’re trying to have a nice day,” my brother chided, pressing my nerves more than my muscles. He was lucky I was tired and didn’t have the energy to turn around and knock him out. The recreant rat who tricked me into a date. What bushwa!
“And these amoebas are at the fair?” Gladys asked.
“Yeah, they’re not sure of the source, but if you get infected, you’ll have abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea. Worst comes to worst, the amoebas perforate your intestines and get into your bloodstream, where they can worm their way into other soft organs and fuck things up,” I explained.
Gladys cringed, growing more repulsed with each word I uttered.
“Can we avoid the amoebas if we don’t eat or drink anything?”
I nodded, not entirely sure. “Hopefully.” At least I didn’t have to waste a dime on feeding her.
As expected, my afternoon at the fair left much to be desired. It was odd to watch hordes of people ooh and aah over dream cars and homes of the future when they most likely struggled to maintain their quality of life. Walking through the rainbow lit buildings, I was taken by the frivolous expenditures and considered what the pot of gold that had paid for the fair could have gone toward instead.
My stomach dropped when I saw Cal and Rosie walking among the crowd. It shouldn’t have surprised me they would attend, after all, Cal prided himself on being an innovator, growing more invested in his makeshift moonshine meshugas by the day.
A few months prior, after a fair amount of persuasion, Cal had agreed to show me how he produced his product. Acknowledging his tentativeness, I had assured him
I intended to stay in the Canadian Club business long-term and wasn't coming for his backwoods brand. I’d watched as he’d pulled a soup pot, coil, and saucepan out of the bottom of the closet and then laid on his belly on the floor beside his bed to remove four bricks, two wrenches, a hose and a big bag of flour from underneath it. I was in awe that his small room held so many items and mesmerized by him, taken by how proud he was as he explained the process.
“I drilled a hole in the lid and inserted this coupler,” he told me, pointing to the piece. “Now, all I need to do is attach the coil, loop it into this saucepan, secure the hose to the faucet and drop the other end in here to collect the condensate. It’s important to drain the hose when it gets too hot and then insert it again.”
“I could go somewhere with that statement,” I teased, drawing a laugh from the already giddy Cal.
He’d told me he used to use birdfeed back in Georgia but had started using corn when he moved to Chicago. Running back to his room to get a container of fermenting mash he’d mixed a few days before from under a pile of strategically placed clothes, he held it out for me to sniff, and I was enchanted by the sweetness of the scent, relating it to the candied quality stuck to Cal’s skin that I’d struggled to identify until that day.
“Now we have to make flour putty,” Cal said, mixing the white powder with water until it was a lump of mortar, which he applied to the lid of the pot. “You need to make sure it’s secure or it’ll blow through the ceiling.”
“And that’s what the bricks are for,” I guessed, handing them to him one by one so he could place them on the top of the pot.
In the City by the Lake Page 9
