My Kind of Town

by John Sandrolini

  I didn’t mind. I liked that Claudia was interested. “I was much better looking then—the white uniform helped.”

  I got an eye roll from both of them for that one.

  Leaning down between them, I peered down at the old leather binder my sister was holding. Photos of me aboard various navy vessels and in the cockpits of several aircraft stared back at me. So did my old flame Iliana, wearing my flight jacket and showing off her lovely smile. God, Iliana. How did that all slip away? I asked myself.

  Before I got an answer, Cesca flipped a page and there it was: a photo of me and Pete, our arms around each other’s shoulders, big-league smiles on our faces.

  I could feel myself locking up, an instant sadness rising within me. Francesca caught my freeze, glanced down at the page, flopped the book shut. Claudia must have detected something, but she didn’t let on.

  Straightening up, I summoned a smile. “Claudia, I’m so happy to have you in our home. . . . It’s a very pleasant surprise.”

  We made small talk about Frank’s movie-trailer shoot and the typically impulsive Sinatra decision to rush on over to Taylor Street to find me afterward. Then Francesca made an excuse to sneak out of the room in order to leave us alone. I winked at her when she looked back at me on her way out.

  With Sinatra afoot, I knew I had to act fast. Otherwise, he’d find us and announce where and when he’d gotten us all the best table in town, and how we must—must—go to that spot for lunch.

  “Like the family?” I inquired.

  “Oh yes, Joe, I like your mother. Your sister too. They both invited me to come visit here anytime. Is important to me because I’m here all alone in Chicago.”

  “How convenient,” I replied.

  “How do you mean?” she asked, her face twisting.

  “That way I’ll know where to find you.” I showed some teeth to sell my pitch.

  She smiled a decorous little smile in return but said nothing. Those Italian girls—they show you a lot from a distance, but the closer you get, the less you see.

  Downstairs, Frank had broken into song with Zio Nello manning the piano. We hustled down to check it out. A dozen or so family and neighbors had gathered by this time in the living room. Sal had located Gina and had her locked tight in his arms. It appeared that Ol’ Blue Eyes had gotten him out of Dutch.

  I sidled up behind his ear, hissed, “Need a favor, Sal.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m slipping out, can I borrow that Nash of yours?”

  Without looking, he slipped his hand into his coat pocket, hauled out a set of keys, and dropped them into my palm. His eyes never wavered from Frank, his head never moved. Neither did Gina’s.

  If Sinatra’s spell could work for Sal, I figured it could work for me. I walked back to the base of the stairs, reached out, and gently tugged on Claudia’s pinkie.

  She looked over at me, grinning cautiously. Frank Sinatra was doing the singing today, but I channeled Chet Baker instead. “Let’s get lost,” I whispered, flashing the car keys.

  She mulled it over a second, looking to my sister for reassurance. Francesca nodded subtly. Claudia broke into a broad grin. “Sì . . . andiamo!”

  I took her hand and we scampered down the hallway and ducked out the side door.

  Frank was breezing through “High Hopes” for the children when we left, regaling them with the improbable optimism of “that little old ant.”

  That ant wasn’t the only one with heightened expectations.

  33

  I had no idea what I was doing with Claudia, but I couldn’t stop myself. Truth was, even three years after everything with Helen burned to a cinder in Baja, I was in no shape to expose my heart to the cruelties of amore, but something about Claudia drew me to her. Clearly, she was hard to reach and more than a little old-fashioned. She also lived fifteen hundred miles from Southern California and carried some kind of hidden weight inside her. I suppose that would pose a problem for someone who was easily deterred.

  We ran back down Roosevelt, then banged a left at Central Station and started up Michigan. The temperature had risen to the low sixties, warm enough that we actually had the front windows down, the sounds and the smells of the city livening up the drive. Catching that first look of afternoon sun on the brilliant blue water of the lake, I recalled the sights along Chicago’s grand lakefront esplanade. “Ever seen Buckingham Fountain?” I inquired.

  Claudia shook her head. “Only in a postcard.”

  Just like that, I had a plan. Three blocks up, I turned east on Balbo. We caught a red light at Columbus, but that was a nice spot for recounting the enormous cultural significance of General Italo Balbo’s arrival at the 1933 World’s Fair with his magnificent squadron of flying boats. Millions of Chicagoans attended the spectacular Century of Progress exhibition on the lakefront that summer and fall, but all of the Italian community flocked to the lake to see the great amphibians that had crossed the Atlantic from Rome in a remarkable demonstration of Italian airmanship and daring. It was the seminal event of my youth and inspired me to become something more than a bricklayer’s son, to dare to dream of being a pilot.

  “He was fascista, you know,” Claudia said bitterly, the hardships and folly of the Mussolini years resonating clearly in her voice.

  I raised a hand in acknowledgment, slapped it back on the wheel. “Yes, I know he was no saint, dear, but we didn’t understand that then; we were just kids happy to have a reason to be proud of our heritage. It wasn’t so easy to be Italian back in those days.”

  “I understand. I’m glad you were proud, Joe—and I’m glad you became a pilot too. Your family is very proud of you.”

  “That’s nice of you to say.”

  “È ironico, no?” she mused, looking out the window at the cars zipping by and the lake beyond, surging waves cresting as they neared the shore.

  “Che?”

  “That we needed Italian American soldiers and pilots like you to save us from those monsters Balbo and Mussolini in the end.”

  I nodded in assent, knowing that there was a list of the boys lost over there on a church wall in every Italian American community back here.

  The light turned green. I gave way to a bus and then made a left on Columbus. Changing the mood, I pointed out the large street sign honoring the famous Genovese sailor/explorer. “At least there’s a hero who’s held up over time—nobody will ever kick ol’ Christopher Columbus around.”

  “How could they?” Claudia replied with a laugh as we moved up the street toward one of the city’s most famous landmarks.

  Clarence F. Buckingham’s eponymous fountain was one of those places Sal and I used to escape to on summer nights to meet girls from outside the neighborhood, frantically chewing Sen-Sen to cover the smell of garlic from our mothers’ cooking. In summertime, you could forget about finding a parking spot anywhere near Grant Park, but in mid-November, it was a snap. We got one just short of Jackson then catty-cornered through the tree-lined park to the center where we beheld the massive sculptured fountain shining resplendently in the afternoon sun.

  Much had changed since I’d last been in town, but the fountain was exactly as I remembered it. Even closed for the winter, the enormous Beaux-Arts masterpiece inspired reverence with its wedding-cake layers and muscular bronze sea stallions at each corner. Despite the surprising warmth of the late fall afternoon, just a few other people were traversing the vast open plaza or admiring the fountain. But the solemnity of Grant Park at that moment only served to heighten the austere majesty of Mrs. Buckingham’s gift to the city in her late brother’s honor.

  “È magnifico,” Claudia declared, running a hand across the smooth pink marble lip at fountain’s edge.

  “Mmhmm.”

  “But where is the water?”

  I gazed out toward the cold depths of Lake Michigan a hundred yards away, las
t night’s rain and the shifting wind kicking up the surface of the inland sea a bit.

  “It’s too cold now, that’s why it’s dry. But you should see it in the spring when they turn it back on—the lights and the water are amazing.”

  Funneling my hands up and outward, then letting them fall slowly, fingers spread wide, I imitated the motion of the fountain at play.

  Her lovely eyes grew even larger as she conjured the image in her mind, a gleam of white shining behind crimson lips. “I hope I will be here to see it. But the winter is long—and very cold I hear.”

  I turned to face her, stepped closer, took her hands in mine. “Cold days are coming, my dear. Let’s enjoy this sunshine while we can. It’ll be dark soon.”

  Claudia looked up at me. “Okay, Joe. You be my guide; show me around town. I haven’t been out too much since I arrived here.”

  “Okay, Beatrice,” I said, offering my arm.

  She smiled knowingly at my nod to literature, slipped a hand under my arm, grasping my bicep. As we set off toward the lakefront, I could feel the corners of my mouth curling in pleasant anticipation. It felt good to have her on my arm. Damn good.

  We crossed Lake Shore Drive and strolled along the lakefront, quietly admiring the day, lustrous waves cascading against the seawall in splashes of turquoise. First the Chicago Yacht Club, then Monroe Harbor came and went as we worked northward, me pointing out the landmarks I knew and both of us “wowing” at the ones neither of us had seen, like the two concrete cylinders rising like giant corncobs on the north bank of the Chicago River.

  Native son Nelson Algren had famously described Chicago as a “City on the Make,” a few years earlier. While it had always been that, it was clear to me that now it was also becoming city in full bloom—modern construction and conveyances jostling cheek by jowl with the old in pure Chicago roughhouse style, somehow everything settling in together in the end: the beautiful, the brash, and the just plain brutal. There was an energy to it. A hunger.

  At length we came to Navy Pier, a mammoth, half-mile-long quay ramming straight out from downtown toward the Michigan shore seventy-odd miles away. A servant of many masters in its life, the pier was the current home of the University of Illinois-Chicago, the so-called Harvard on the Rocks. During the war, the navy had actually docked two training aircraft carriers at the pier, teaching navy fliers how to land aboard ship in a safe, inland environment. The carriers were long gone, but the sight of their former mooring place stoked my interest to see yet another old haunt, especially one with such gorgeous views of the city skyline from the far end of its long reach into the lake.

  Pointing toward the raised towers on the east end, I said, “Claudia, the city looks amazing from there. Have another mile in you?”

  “Oh yes, let’s go see.”

  We passed under the University of Illinois marquee hung high on the brick-walled entrance and “matriculated” on campus, filing past the dozens of converted classrooms housing hundreds of students at lecture. We stopped briefly to buy a candy bar and a coffee at one of the snack bars then set off for the distant east end of the pier, taking in the sights outside along the south walkway, which ran past the freighters moored on the wall. Dozens of longshoremen swarmed around a ship of the Swedish Chicago Line, its overhead cranes jockeying pallets of unknown goods to the wharf below. A whistle blast warned of the advance of a locomotive, its big diesel engine rumbling low as it nudged forward with a line of empty cars soon to be filled with foreign wares.

  Eyes darting, heads moving, we observed the machinations of the metropolis at work: grunting, heaving, shouting, gesturing men doing some of the millions of daily tasks that kept the city’s heart beating. Near the end of the walkway, we cut through the auditorium full of milling, chattering young scholars and slipped outside again onto the promenade fronting the open lake, whose roiling blue-green water crashed upon the breakwater beyond in great spume-capped waves.

  Claudia gaped in awe as she glided toward the rail at water’s edge, pirouetting twice in graceful three-sixtys, captivated by the panorama of water, wind, and sky. The smell of sea life and industry hung heavy in the air, the great lake freighters, the pier’s paired Italianate towers, and the jutting silhouettes of distant skyscrapers dominating the vista, the ebbing sunshine warming our faces as we marveled at the brawny big city canvas.

  “Oh, Joe, is fabulous,” she cried. “Che bella vista!”

  I saw my moment. I took it.

  Grinning, grabbing, I snatched hold of her hand and spun us around, then put my shoulder into the rail, pulled her in, and kissed her. Not long, not heavy, but with purpose.

  Oversize brown eyes regarded me with surprise for a second, blinking rapidly as the sensation registered. Then she kissed me back. Brother, did she ever.

  It was a wonderful moment—the first I’d had like it in years. I held her close, looking into her probing eyes, beaming, knowing. You could feel the magnetism between us, damn near hear it hum. You know when you know, and I knew we both knew. The kids walking by with the big smiles on their faces knew too.

  Even the man who was following us had probably figured it out by then.

  34

  I’d first seen him at the fountain but didn’t think much of it. I spotted him again as we crossed the Lake Shore Drive Bridge and still didn’t sweat it—lots of people take that route when they’re out walking. But the third time, way out on the end of the pier, especially with the way he’d ducked behind his newspaper when he saw me looking at him, that’s when I knew he was a tail. He wasn’t very good at it, but I figured just maybe he was a reporter or cameraman who’d followed Claudia from Frank’s shoot, hoping to get a scoop on another Sinatra romance.

  Claudia wasn’t aware of any of it. Her back was to the man, her eyes on me, those great luscious lips mere inches away, glistening in the sunlight. Man, was I in a classic Buonomo fix now.

  I wanted to keep kissing her, to see where this thing was going, to feel like a complete person again for a few short minutes. But there was the guy, glancing furtively toward us from behind his Chicago American.

  To hell with him, I decided. Guy gets paid to watch—I figured I’d let him earn his money.

  “Beautiful city,” I declared. “Una bella città, no?”

  “Sì, Joe, bellissima.” Her eyes danced as she spoke, the sunlight behind her lighting up her chestnut hair. Her voice was soft and low, the cooing of a dove.

  I kissed her again, this time longer.

  We stayed there a few minutes more, holding hands, admiring the rhythm of the water, lost in that fog that comes over you in those moments. The sun dropped down behind the clouds and the temperature dipped, but I hardly noticed.

  As we gazed out on the undulating surface of the lake, Claudia made a funny face. “What is that?” she asked, pointing toward a small concrete structure rising from the lake’s depths several miles away.

  “A crib,” I said.

  “Ma che cos’è?”

  “A pumping station. They send the drinking water into the city from out there. There’s three or four of ’em—been there for ages.” Skimming the horizon north to south, I stopped momentarily on the other stations. “See the others?”

  “Chicago must be even more beautiful from there, no?”

  “It is,” I replied, recalling those long summer days spent sailing around the cribs on the park district sloops. “But they won’t let you on them. The city is kinda touchy that way.”

  Claudia just nodded absently, still staring out over the water, the eternal allure of the sea claiming another soul. Then she made just the faintest of shivers. I took her hand, said, “Let’s head back, okay?”

  She nodded, kissed me quick.

  “Have a dinner plan, cara mia?”

  “Your mother’s maybe?”

  “Let’s find out,” I said, steering innocuously toward th
e man with the newspaper, who buried his nose in the editorials as we neared. I smirked at him as we passed, but he didn’t look up.

  Several steps later, I leaned in close and nonchalantly said, “Claudia dear, I think a paparazzo is following us. I’ve been watching him awhile.”

  “Paparazzo? For me?”

  “Well, you did sing before Frank the other night. And I bet he had press coverage at the trailer shoot today, right?”

  “Yes . . . lots of it.”

  “So somebody probably followed you to my house. Maybe they thought I was Frank when we snuck out, figured they’d get a nice scoop.”

  I was soft-pedaling it, but I didn’t want to alarm Claudia, and I didn’t really know who it was anyway.

  “Wanna lose him?” I asked with a grin, making a game of it.

  She smiled uncertainly, then said, “Okay, sure.”

  We sauntered a little farther down the pier then quickly slipped through an open doorway into the hallway. I signaled to pick up the pace. Heels clacked on the linoleum as we hotfooted past classrooms full of collegians. When I looked back, I saw our man well back in the hallway, arms pumping as he double-timed down the corridor as softly as he could manage, the echo of his footfall still betraying him.

  Fate intervened at that moment. A long clang sounded in the emptiness of the chamber, signaling the end of a class period. Claudia, giggling a bit, looked up at me, knowing what came next. “Shall we run?”

  “Not yet.”

  There was a lot of shuffling and the groan of chairs on floors as hundreds of students got up in their classrooms. We kept walking.

  Backlit shapes appeared behind opaque panes. The tail picked up his pace.

  “Now?” she asked.

  “Wait . . .”

  Doors swung open throughout the hallway. Students in dungarees and skirts began filtering out by ones, then threes. The man behind us realized what was happening. He began to run, a steely determination on his face.