Chicago

by Brian Doyle

  But I did not.

  Also I mooned after the extraordinary creature who ran the register at the gyro shop on Broadway on weekend afternoons. Her name was Leah, although the old man slicing lamb for gyros called her Hypatia for some reason; she was the loveliest dark-haired dark-eyed lean gentle silent glorious female being I had ever seen then, but she was also seventeen years old, and I was five years older, and five years between ages when you are young is twenty years between ages when you are older; why is that, that a man of fifty might easily woo and wed a woman of thirty, but a man of twenty-two, gazing raptly at a stunning Greek girl of seventeen, soon finds himself being glared at by a stern man with a huge knife? Why is that?

  Also I mooned after a young woman on the Sound Asleep Bus, the dawn bus driven by Donald B. Morris, although in all the time I rode the Sound Asleep Bus she never once was awake, but slept soundly in her long camel coat the color of fawns, with her brown cashmere scarf and her long brown boots and long brown hair and long brown eyelashes closed firmly over what I could only imagine were lovely liquid brown eyes; but she boarded the bus before me in the morning and I left before she did, and for some strange reason I never did wait there by the Picasso statue on Dearborn Street to see her disembark, let alone greet her with a smile, or offer to buy her a cup of coffee, or just walk alongside her, bantering wittily, as she walked to work in those beautiful brown boots.

  I did not.

  The occasional riveting woman in a jazz club, sitting alone and mysterious; the occasional woman on the train, glancing at me curiously just as I glanced at her; the woman who stopped to watch a basketball game in which I was playing; that sweet soul picked up a loose ball that had rolled to her feet, and held it for me as I jogged over, and handed it to me with the most brilliant shocking sudden sidelong smile, which rattled me so that I was terrible the rest of the game, and was roundly chastised for poor play by the captain of my team afterward, the quiet slip of a boy called Bucket with tattoos and earrings, who hardly ever spoke, although he did that time, to the amusement of the other players; and by the time I looked up, after apologizing to Bucket for being so distracted, she was gone.

  But I did meet a woman that year, and a portentous meeting it turned out to be, for finally she was the reason I drove away from Chicago one crisp cold sunny morning, deeply excited and deeply saddened at once.

  I met her on the train; she was returning to the college I had attended; I was on my way to visit my dear and headlong friends there, for an annual campus basketball tournament in which I would play as a ringer; we struck up a conversation, and exchanged addresses, and sat together for the last hour as the train wound south around the shore of the lake, past steel mills and cornfields; and so began a longer denser conversation that would lead eventually to me resigning from the magazine, and giving up my apartment, and trying not to weep as I sat one last night with Edward and Mr Pawlowsky on the roof, and packing my worn shiny basketball and sneakers and books and few clothes into a borrowed car at dawn, and driving slowly down the street, toward the lake, into the sun, and then south along the lake, and then east to Boston, because she had gone there, and she invited me to be there too.

  That we did not last very long as a couple after that is immaterial here; what matters here is that during my time in Chicago I met the reason I would leave it. You cannot edit your life, and even if I was today offered the chance to never meet her, and so not leave the city I loved, I would decline, for life is a verb, life swerves and lurches no matter how cautious and careful your driving, and I would not be who I am, surrounded by those I love most in this world, had I not left Chicago when I did.

  Still, though, whenever I remember driving down the street at dawn, toward the lake, into the sun, it makes me sad, for that was the last time I ever saw Edward and Mr Pawlowsky and Miss Elminides, and even then, even so young, even so muddled, I knew a great sweet deep thing was ending that would not come again, not in that way, with those beings; and as I turned south along the lake, the city reflecting the first glare of dawn, I cried. I tried not to cry; crying was uncool; but I could not stop, and I cried all the way through the South Side of the city to where the Calumet River empties into the lake, and Indiana begins.

  13.

  IT WAS THE DETECTIVE who patiently worked back from the many dark greedy grasping fingers of the Third Awkwardness to its single root, a man named Giannis. It was Giannis whose last known mailing address was the boathouse in Greece, the one with a note pinned fluttering to the old wooden door. It was Giannis whose father had been the sole trustee named to watch over Miss Elminides’ trust fund and its attendant titles and fees. It was Giannis whose father had for many years carefully paid every bill and fee and cost having to do with the apartment building and its operation. It was Giannis whose father, while never setting foot once in the United States of America, had paid city and county and state and federal taxes, electricity bills, heating bills, water bills, fees for inspections, and all bills having to do with all the repairs that Mr Pawlowsky had performed in the last six years as building manager. It was Giannis whose father paid Miss Elminides’ health care premiums and fees, who established a healthy retirement fund, and who had bought and refurbished the boathouse, on a beach, on the chance that Miss Elminides would prefer ultimately to live in Greece and not in Chicago. It was Giannis whose father had died instantly when struck by a bus in the streets of Alexandroupoli, and Giannis who pawed though his father’s papers greedily that night, before his father’s attorney came in the morning to put his papers in order, and Giannis who found all the details of the trust, with its meticulously maintained account books and account numbers and codes, and Giannis who in the first few minutes the bank was open the next morning, drained the trust of every penny he could, forging his father’s signature to every document possible, a signature he had forged many times before on many checks. It was Giannis who left Miss Elminides’ address pinned to the door of the boathouse, right after he ransacked the boathouse for anything he could sell instantly as he made his way east and south across the Hellespont into Turkey. And it was Giannis who crossed the Hellespont by boat that evening just after dusk, not far from where Miss Elminides’ grandfather had swum the passage, and once safely in the Turkish city of Çanakkale, found a man who sold him a chunk of hashish the size of a baby’s fist. So it was that for the first time that money that was earned by Miss Elminides’ grandfather, and saved for her in a form that he thought would be safe forever from predation, did not go to her, but instead went to a sergeant in the Turkish Land Forces, who bought a crib for his new granddaughter, whose name in Turkish was Radiance.

  * * *

  We heard all this while sitting on the roof. It was a warm late afternoon. Edward was asleep with a Navy blanket over him. Miss Elminides and Mr Pawlowsky were sitting together in folding lawn chairs. The detective was sitting on the copper coping Mr Pawlowsky had built around the chimney. I was sitting against the wall soaking up the sun. No one spoke for a while and then the detective said he was awfully sorry to be the bearer of such tidings and Miss Elminides stood and shook his hand and said thank you so much for your hard work, Horace. The detective asked after plans for legal redress and restitution, and Miss Elminides said she would have to contemplate things for a while, and the detective said he would be happy to do whatever was required as a gesture of thanks and respect, and Miss Elminides said thank you, Horace, that is most kindly of you, and I am honored. The detective bowed and went downstairs and Miss Elminides sat down in her lawn chair and no one spoke for a moment and then Miss Elminides began to cry quietly and I gathered up Edward and went downstairs. After I tucked him into his bed I thought about reading Lincoln to him for a while but sometimes you can just feel where being kindly slips over into being intrusive and I tucked him in tighter and went down to my apartment and got my basketball and dribbled up along the lakefront for miles. I ended up so far north that I had to catch a bus back home, borrowing the fare from a large man
who was amused I was carrying my basketball and who told me he too had been a baller, long ago and far away now, son, but dear Lord your ball has seen some service, it’s worth the fare to me just to see a ball so shiny with use, yes it is. You can pay me back by taking one hundred shots with your left hand next time you practice. I never did work on my left hand and I surely should have done so. We all be better in life did we use both hands equally, yes we would.

  * * *

  Near the end of April it snowed one more time for an hour, just to get the last word in the argument with spring, but it was just a thin scatter of fat flakes, and the snow melted as soon as it touched the ground. After that the weather was instantly summer, and given the warm dry days and lengthening light, I spent many early evenings on the basketball court up the street, the one on the dividing line between the territories of the Latin Kings and the Latin Eagles.

  One evening we finished an intense game and there were a few minutes when guys sat around pondering whether to go one more or let it be, and I got to talking to Bucket and Monster. Monster was the muscular rebounding machine who hardly ever spoke and never ever took a play off and set picks firmly but fairly and never ever trash-talked or cursed. Bucket was the slim slight kid with tattoos and earrings who was as quick as a cougar and could score at will although he much preferred to pass and did so with flair and an uncanny knack for angles no one else could see. We were sitting on the asphalt leaning up against the school wall and I mentioned that a friend of mine was in some trouble and could I ask their advice on financial matters?

  “We not the best counselors in money matters,” said Bucket. “Got to have money to talk money, and I have no money, and Monster have no money. None of us have money. Not My Fault say he have money and he wears chain like he have money but he have no money. He have air for lunch and dinner, that boy, but good luck getting him admit that. His pride taller than he is.”

  I explained that my friend, or properly a friend of a friend, had been thoroughly robbed, and now she was in the hole for many debts.

  “Who rob her?”

  “A man in another country far away.”

  “Who own the debt?”

  “The City.”

  They turned to look at each other and Monster shook his head sadly and Bucket said, “Oh man you screwed. City the biggest robber of them all. City reaches for everything it can think of and good luck dodging them bills. They charge you for the air you breathe and the color of your shoes. They charge you for being left-handed and sneezing too loud. Your friend up a creek, man. City never forget, either. And all uniforms work for the City, man. You have a fire in your house and the firemen come they might put out the fire if you pay your ’lectricity bill first and deposit down on your water bill. Cash too, with extra for processing charge, you know? Way it is. City is king and king don’t play. You can try to dodge the City but good luck with that. We had a friend tried to dodge the City and pay no bills and ask no services, and he now in Joliet jail. City did not like him trying to duck the game. The City is the man and you must pay the man. You really be a friend to this friend you better find some serious money. Don’t even talk about talking about it. You got to find money. Money is what the City eats and you better feed it or your friend be in Joliet jail too, man. You don’t want that. Listen, one more game to fifteen, we got just enough light, us three against Not My Fault and his boys full court, what say, you in?”

  * * *

  Miss Elminides was able to hold off the City and the banks during the month of May by draining her own bank accounts and selling her instruments and maps; it turned out that they were far more valuable than anyone knew, some of the instruments made by famous luthiers or previously owned by famous musicians, and some of the maps of substantive historical or artistic value. I learned this from Mr Pawlowsky, who had the impression that the maps and instruments had also been gifts to Miss Elminides from her grandfather, perhaps as quiet hedges against just such a day. She also apparently sold some clothing and some or all of the lean wooden furniture I had noticed in my moment in her apartment; Mr Pawlowsky said her apartment now was filled pretty much with light and nothing else, although if anyone could make rooms of such sparse severity look inviting and graceful it was Miss Elminides.

  Also in May another letter came from the City, accusing Mrs Manfredi of running an illicit commercial enterprise in a residential zone, but this effort backfired completely on the City, for Mrs Manfredi was furious, and not only did she storm City Hall with fire and brimstone and bags of redolent empanadas for her alderman and his aides and the new mayor and her aides and the secretaries and photographers and newspapermen covering her attack with great high glee, but she also, in a brilliant stroke, went to a famous Daily News columnist, who knew a glorious small-brave-soul-against-greedy-bureaucrats story when he saw one, and wrote a scathing hilarious column that so embarrassed the City that another letter came forthwith, not only withdrawing the charge of illicit commerce but enclosing a check as payment for “procedural errors.” Mrs Manfredi, knowing full well that Miss Elminides would not accept the check directly, gave it to Mr Pawlowsky, who would know how to apply it to the Third Awkwardness.

  As Edward pointed out later, this episode might well have been the hinge upon which the defeat of the Third Awkwardness swung, for Mrs Manfredi, flush with success and grim in her pursuit of profit as vengeance against the City, then struck a deal with the owner of the gyro shop on Broadway to sell her empanadas daily rather than weekly, and she tripled her production; which elevated spirits in the apartment building, for now the extraordinary scent of her culinary genius wafted up from the basement six days a week, and elevated my spirits, for now I had an excuse to pop into the gyro shop religiously every Saturday and Sunday, ostensibly to buy bags of those magical empanadas but actually to gaze worshipfully upon Leah (or Hypatia), as she rang up purchases, and spoke tartly to her father in Greek, and laughed at sallies issuing from the invisible cook in the kitchen. I cannot remember now if she ever even looked at me, or said anything to me other than thank you when I turned to leave the shop, but at that age and stage I was not especially interested in actually getting to know the person, as much as I was interested in worshipping the idea of such grace and loveliness loose in the world, and incarnated in such an extraordinary vessel; it was enough and more than enough for me then to simply say six empanadas please, and watch happily as she turned to fill the bag, and then turned back and said two dollars, sir, and I would say these are the greatest things ever baked in the history of food, and she would smile and not say anything, and I would turn to leave, and she would say thank you, and I would say no, thank you, and I would walk out onto Broadway filled with joy, and pleased at the state of the world at present; a world which grew even better as I slowly ate the empanadas, savoring every bite, on my way home.

  * * *

  The month of May, then, was something of a respite or lull, and Edward, now wholly recovered and nearly manic with unspent energy, decided to show me every single obscure or little-known or essentially unknown cool place in the city of Chicago. We went to the house where Walt Disney was born, on the west side of the city between Blackhawk Park and Mozart Park. We went to the building on Cottage Grove Avenue on the South Side where Chess Records began. We went to DeKoven Street on the South Side, the street where a vast epic awful titanic fire in 1871 burned three square miles of the city and wiped out people and streets and churches and tenements and the Chicago Cubs’ first ballpark. We went to the Krause Music Store on Lincoln Avenue, which Edward loved not for the products sold there but for the unbelievably ornate terracotta façade, which indeed was remarkable and something you could gaze at raptly for hours, which we did. We went to the old Peerless Films building on West Argyle Street, where the lady who had lived in 3C, Eugenia, had acted in the Broncho Billy Western movies, and we left a glove from one of her costumes there, as a sort of offering or prayer or memento. We went to the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive,
where old Fort Dearborn was, which is where the Potawatomi people who had lived there for thousands of years fought back against the new people who were taking all the land and animals. We went to the Navy Pier so Edward could show me the hut in which the teenage Mr Pawlowsky had clerked during the war. We did not go to any places famous because of criminals like John Dillinger and Al Capone. We did go to Ellis Avenue on the South Side where the first nuclear reaction on earth occurred in a secret chamber under a football field at 3:25 on the afternoon on an autumn day in 1942. We went to the streets where the great musicians Paul Butterfield (south side) and John Prine (west side) and Lee Loughnane (north side) were born; Edward just adored Loughnane’s trumpet style. We went to the street where Shel Silverstein was born, on the west side, and to the street where Bob Newhart was born, on the south side, but not to the street where Ernest Hemingway was born, on the south side, because Edward considered Hemingway the sort of writer who was more famous for his escapades than for his work, which was a shame, because he was a very fine short-story writer, and ought to be remembered that way. And we did go to the street where Saul Bellow was raised, on the west side, even though he had been born in Montreal; but still, Edward considered him to be a Chicago man through and through, and so worthy of a visit, much as we journeyed all the way up into the north side to Waukegan to walk on the street where Ray Bradbury had run and laughed as a child; it was Edward’s opinion that other than maybe Samuel Clemens of Missouri, there was no finer writer ever born in this country than Ray Douglas Bradbury, who said himself that his whole childhood was running to the library and the lake and the wooded ravine where anything could and did happen, and he learned to “live feverishly,” as he said. That trip way up to the north side to walk on Ray Bradbury’s street, I remember, was the longest of our adventures, and by the time we got home that night it was long past dark, and Edward was sound asleep next to me on the bus, and I carried him up our street in my arms, marveling at the crystalline stars and the moon as thin as the blade of a knife in the sky.