“I don’t want to be obligated to dash out of here in the morning to get money. And if I don’t go now, I’ll probably forget anyway. No big deal.” I grab my purse and keys and open the door. “If I’m not back in seven minutes, avenge my death.”
From his horizontal position on the couch, he says, “Sure; you betcha.”
I close the heavy oak door behind me and double-lock it. The second I enter the yard, our security lights flash on, flooding the whole neighborhood with light. It’s so bright, we could perform surgery out here. Or at least play a televised major league baseball night game.
I cut through the yard and notice that at some point this evening, a ginormous spider web cropped up in front of the door to the garage. I smile and recall that old Far Side cartoon where a couple of industrious spiders build a web at the bottom of a playground slide and one says to the other “If we pull this off, we’ll eat like kings.” I gently nudge the web aside with the end of a pooper-scooper—better luck next time, little guys—and I’m on my way.
I could go to the Amoco right down the block and use their ATM, but it’s after midnight and my defenses are down. Their food shop stocks every variety of Dolly Madison and Hostess product, and I don’t want to be left alone with them and a handful of twenties, still warm from the machine. I have willpower now, but there’s no reason to force myself to confront temptation.
Also, the gas station is skeevy.
I drive down Elston Ave to the Harris Bank branch by Kohl’s. A new building is coming in between the store and the bank, and it’s wrapped in a giant green construction canvas. Completely innocuous in the daylight, after midnight it looks cavernous and foreboding. The entrance to the bank is temporarily altered due to the construction, and to get to the ATMs, I have to drive down a narrow path and circle back in the darkened parking lot.
As I slowly swing around, out of the corner of my eye I see something out of place in the shadows just on the other side of the ATMs. I look closer and see two women sitting huddled together with their sweatshirt hoods pulled up, faces tense, clutching backpacks to their sides.
Back when I worked retail, it wasn’t all selling prom dresses, swiping ice cream, and spitting out brownies. I learned an awful lot about how shoplifters behave. A normal shopper comes into the store and looks at the merchandise. Shoppers pay attention to sale signs and fancy displays of banana clips and artfully stacked sweater pyramids they insist on pawing through, even though all of them are exactly the same size and color, and please stop unfolding every single freaking crewneck, for the love of God!169
Even if shoppers acknowledge the clerk with a “just looking, thanks,” the one thing they don’t do is make eye contact, because there’s no reason to—why look at the clerk when there are three racks of bathing suits to inspect? And sun-dresses on the clearance rack? Plus, accidentally make eye contact with the clerk, and he or she will go into sales mode. Suddenly you can’t get away because you’re trying to be polite and there’s a likelihood you’ll find yourself talked into a pair of stirrup pants or an acid-washed denim vest.170Shoplifters, on the other hand, watch the clerk’s eyes and avert their own when the clerk looks back.
The two women in the hooded sweatshirts are doing exactly this.
In the four seconds it takes me to drive past them and up to the ATM, thoughts race through my head. Why are they in this parking lot? Why are they sitting in the dark? What’s in their backpacks? Why are they clutching them like that instead of wearing them on their backs? How come they look nervous? And, since it’s still almost eighty degrees outside with a zillion percent humidity, what the fuck is up with the hoods?
I pull directly through the ATM, and when I pass the support post the hooded two were hiding behind, they’re both on their feet and are lingering an arm’s length from my window, right on the other side of the pole.
Our eyes meet again and I give them both a jaunty single- fingered wave. I step on the gas and the car explodes out of the ATM lane like a shot. I drive away like I’m making an escape, even though they didn’t actually threaten me.
Then again, I wasn’t about to give them the chance.
As I head to a different ATM in a more well-lit area, I dial 911.
“Chicago Police. What’s your emergency?”
"Hi. I’m at the corner of Webster and Elston and I’m just leaving the Harris Bank branch. I’m calling to report suspicious behavior.”
“Suspicious behavior? What kind?”
“Um, technically this isn’t an emergency and I don’t want to waste your time on a call.” Shouldn’t there be 611 for stuff that’s important but not life threatening? “I just encountered something odd and I wanted to make you aware of the situation.” I briefly explain my experience to the highly disinterested dispatcher.
“Did anything transgress?”
“Well, no. But it seemed suspicious, and I thought you’d want to know before it turns into a problem.”
“Can you describe the people you saw?”
“Yes, there were two kids—”
“Kids? How old?”
“I’m sorry, not children kids, but young, maybe late teens or early twenties.” The older I get, the more likely I am to call anyone younger than me “kids,” but I feel the dispatcher will not be enlightened with this angst-ridden ode to my fleeting thirties, so I spare her. “One Caucasian female with a dirty blond ponytail hanging out the side of her hood and one girl with dark, curly hair. I can’t tell ethnicity on the second gal. Actually, I couldn’t see much of their faces because they were obscured by the hoods they’re wearing.”
I do not add “on this sweltering-hot evening” because it’s patently obvious.
“They’re women?” The dispatcher sounds incredulous.
“Right.”
“So you want to report . . . what?”
I’m sorry, do chicks never break the law? If that’s true, then why do they have women’s prisons? Just to add sexy scenes to B movies? And how do you explain Bonnie Parker? And that woman Charlize Theron got all ugly to play?
Even if these girls are completely guileless, sitting in the dark right where a speeding car could swerve and run over their feet seems like a terrible idea. Maybe my call won’t prevent a robbery or carjacking. Maybe I’m just keeping two stupid girls from walking with a limp for the next three months. Or maybe I’m paranoid. I readily admit that the camera on my cell phone is completely full of photos I take of bad drivers’ license plates.
Further, I understand the police have a whole bunch of real crimes to pursue, and I don’t want to give the dispatcher a hard time, because she works one of the most stressful jobs in the world. I’ll guarantee you she has better things to do than deal with a highly strung yuppie tooling around in a snappy car she probably doesn’t deserve.
Yet the fact remains, there were more than thirty-two thousand robberies and aggravated assaults in the city of Chicago last year.171
Stunned, I reply, “I guess I thought two homeless-looking teenagers crouching in the dark by an isolated ATM, masking their identities with sweatshirts on a hot summer night, might just be cause for concern.”
“Oh.” There’s a long pause. “We’ll send a cruiser by. Elston and Webster?”
“Yep. Thank you.” I snap my phone shut and shove it back in my purse. I get to the light at Webster and Ashland, and there are two cars idling in front of me side by side, having a conversation through their open windows. Even though the light’s green and there’s plenty of room to pull over, the drivers chat with each other well into the next red light. I honk and shout and seethe and am completely ignored. I may or may not shake my fists, and it’s possible I point angry fingers at them in a threatening manner.
After I get cash, I’m driving down Clybourn, and a bunch of drunk girls stagger into the street, waving their arms like crazy and yelling “Taxi!” I look around to make sure I’m not in the way of a speeding cab and realize I’m the only car for a couple of blocks. They’re ye
lling “Taxi!” at me.
Did I just get hailed?
And as I round the bend to get home, I see an old-school VW bus stuffed full of people and weaving all over the road in front of me, almost clipping off the side mirrors of three separate autos on Fullerton. I slow down to ten miles an hour and give them a wide berth. I flip open my phone again, trying to decide whether I should call the police or take a photo. I wonder whether it wouldn’t have been useful just to stay on the line with the 911 dispatcher so I could narrate my entire trip to the cash machine.
As I pull down the alley and click to open the garage door, a thought strikes me like a van full of hipsters hopped up on Fat Tire Ale and self-loathing. . . .
I don’t belong in the city anymore.
Don’t misunderstand me—I believe Chicago is the greatest place in the world. For the rest of my life and no matter where on the globe I might find myself living, I’ll proudly tell anyone who asks that I’m from the Windy City, damn it. When Fletch and I were unemployed, the reason I struggled so hard to stay afloat was because I couldn’t bear the idea of being away from here. I was so afraid that if we left, even temporarily, we’d never find our way back. After ten full years, I still can’t look at the skyline without losing my breath for a minute. Stand in the bar on the ninety-sixth floor of the Hancock building and soak in Chicago’s majesty, and I guarantee you’ll go weak in the knees. Carl Sandburg was right—this City of the Big Shoulders, my city, is proud to be alive, and it’s strong and coarse and brutal.
But everything I love about this city, everything that makes it so unique and exciting, is also causing me to be a raving bitch.
I think if I’m going to finally embrace this whole being-a-grown-up business, I have to give up my hackneyed notion of being a hip urbanite. I’ve always enjoyed my smug sense of superiority when telling people, no, I don’t live in the Chicago area, I live in Chicago. But who cares if I sound cool to some asshole on a plane I’m never going to see again? At this point in my life, I’d rather be uncool and have a lawn requiring more than a set of household scissors to trim.
Come to think of it, I want to go to a grocery store where the meat isn’t either brown or $34 per pound.
I want to open a window without burglar bars on it because it doesn’t need burglar bars.
I’d like to have a barbecue and not have to tell guests to tuck their pant legs into their socks due to the nightly Running of the Rats.
I want to drive five miles and have it take five minutes.
I want to stop flushing thousands of dollars down the toilet every year in rent and own a home.
I’ve been so frustrated because I want Chicago to be all these things. If it were, then it would be Mayberry, not Chicago. Maybe part of my process of growing up is realizing the futility of trying to force everyone in the city to change to suit my needs. I can’t make cashiers be polite. I can’t force the homeless to stop trying to wash my windshield with spit and old newspaper. I can’t keep sending anonymous letters to my neighbors hoping my clever words will finally make them care enough to replace their garbage-bag-covered windows with panes of glass. What’s that definition of insanity? When you keep doing the exact same thing and expect different results? Because that’s the hamster wheel I’ve been on for the past few years.
The only change I can control—the only difference I can make that isn’t insane—is to modify my own circumstances. If garbage in the street makes me crazy and it won’t go away no matter how many times I pick it up, I need to live somewhere clean. If I get apoplectic when there’s noise, I should be somewhere quiet.
The solution is so simple.
I pull into my garage. Waiting ’til everything’s locked and lit, I get out of the car and walk into the house.
“Hey, dere!” Fletch greets me with a mouthful of crackers. Little particles fly out, which means I’m going to have to vacuum the living room again tonight, too. “Where were you? You were gone a while. Anything exciting happen?”
“Sure, you could say so. I was almost carjacked. . . . I practically got into a fistfight at a stoplight. . . . I nearly ran over some stupid girls who thought I was a taxi. . . . Oh, and I didn’t get killed by a VW bus full of drunk hipsters, but only because I was paying attention.”
Swallowing hard, Fletch looks at me, dumbfounded. “The heckya mean?”
“I mean maybe next time you should come with me.” I begin to walk up the stairs to grab the vacuum, but when I reach the landing, I remember the most important point. “By the way? You win. I give in. Uncle. We move to the suburbs next spring.”
There’s a pregnant pause, and right before I get to the bedroom, I hear Fletch say, “Real good, then.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I wake up to some sort of strange noise outside. I squint at the clock to see what time it is. It’s 8:48 a.m., which means I’ve been asleep for only four hours.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Fletch and I went to bed really late because we were busy making plans for next year. The more we talk about moving out of Chicago, the more sense it makes. We won’t go far; we want to be close enough to take advantage of everything the city offers without feeling like we’re missing out but far enough that the rats can’t follow us.
Bang! Bang! Bang! What the hell is that?
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Groggily, I peek out the window and see a woman in a babushka with a bucket pounding on our front door. Huh. Apparently the cleaning service is two hours and twelve minutes early, a new record.
Suddenly I’m way less bothered by the idea of a topless maid. As long as she’s wearing a watch, I’ll be happy.
Session Thirty-five
Deep in the throes of a summer cold, I’m coughing and sniffling all over the place. And I spent the morning sneezing on my computer monitor, so now I need Kleenex and Windex.
I had to miss a couple of training sessions earlier this week because I was too under the weather. I used the time to work on my manuscript, marveling about having gotten to the point where I’d rather work out than write. I’m really excited to be back in the training room right now and am trying to keep my nose-blowing breaks to a minimum.
We’re catching up on our week when Barbie says, “Everyone ’s been kind of out of it. I’ve had half a dozen cancellations. One of my clients came in this morning, and he was so tired and sore, he asked if we could just spend the hour doing some stretching.”
I’m on a stability ball, hands hooked behind my ears, in the middle of doing what I call “Captain Crunches.” “Whoa. Stop right there. You’re telling me a client asked you to take it easy on him and you did? Are you kidding me? What the fuck? I’ve asked—no, begged and pleaded—for you ten thousand times to take it easier on me, and you never, ever have. Why did this guy get a free pass and I never did?”
“He’s one of my older clients and he legitimately needed a break.” Barbie smiles and shrugs. “With you? Never. Because I knew you could do it.”
Who’d have guessed she was right?
After my session, I’m home and showered. When I dress, I choose the khaki shorts I’ve practically worn out this summer. They’re a couple of sizes too big, but I like them and they look cute. The interior plastic button popped the first time I wore them because they were too tight, so now each time I put them on, it feels like a huge victory. I zip them and do up the two metal snaps. Nice and roomy!
I’m supposed to be working on my manuscript, but I keep procrastinating. I decide I can’t possibly start writing until Angie and I have chatted. We talk for about an hour, and then I realize I can’t possibly do any work until I have a venti iced latte172running through my system. I grab my purse173and head to the Starbucks in Target. Besides, I need more Kleenex and maybe some throat lozenges, so it’s not a wasted trip.
I place my drink order at the counter and am waiting for the baristas to make it when an old Mexican grandmother begins to cry, “Mira! Mira! Look!” She bends over and picks up a praying
mantis that’s somehow found its way into the store. Everyone watches as she holds the bug up and shows her granddaughter, and then the security guard. I’m not grossed out because I find praying mantises fascinating and I wonder how he ended up here. I don’t think Target is their natural habitat.
I scan my internal database, trying to remember what other information I have on praying mantises. I know they eat roaches and gnats, and as I take in the overflowing garbage cans in the food court area, I suspect that’s the answer to my Why here? question. I once read that they hiss, pinch, and bite when pissed off, which is probably why I like them. We’re kindred spirits.
Aren’t they a protected species, too? I vaguely recall a story once about a family keeping one as an exotic pet somewhere Asia-y. Aren’t they supposed to be good luck? Or, like, a good sign? One time I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law and their kids and I spotted a praying mantis on their front porch. I warned my niece and nephews to leave it alone because it was a “good” kind of bug. Then I tried to nudge a soccer ball out of the way so one of the kids didn’t inadvertently kick it into the mantis and I accidentally did just that. The sickening crunch could be heard all the way to the mailbox, and I felt so bad. Not long after, I got laid off.
While I ponder the coincidence of the gruesome mantis death and the end of my career in corporate communications, my sinuses and throat begin to tingle and I can feel a massive sneeze coming on, and . . . a-choo! The force of my sneeze causes me to bend over so quickly, the paltry little snaps on my shorts give out and the zipper flies open.
It takes me a second to realize why there’s a breeze where thick cotton khaki should be. Or once was.
Apparently my pants, without the benefit of the excess rolls of fat, and due to the laws of gravity, have fallen down.
Such a pretty fat: one narcissist's quest to discover if her life makes her ass look big Page 26
