The South Side Tour Guide

by Shelter Somerset

  His sister had fallen. Andy intended to soar. Choices had to be made. Andy opted to move with the currents rather than fight them. The alternative? To be dragged underneath and drown.

  He fanned the money under his nose, inhaling the scent of bills. Yes, he’d returned to Chicago, where he belonged. His pulse had quickened, near to racing, and the city’s congestion began to bleed into his consciousness once more. It was almost—almost—as if Ken had never forced him to leave. Looking back, he realized Iowa was nothing but a blip in his life’s radar screen.

  The next day, red-eyed and uneasy, he met his friend Skeet for lunch at an Andersonville eatery.

  “You look like you’re possessed,” Skeet said once he sat opposite him at the outdoor dining area. Mid-September temperatures had risen above sixty, and the sun beat hot on Andy’s face.

  He wiped sweat from his brow with the thick paper napkin. “Nice to see you too,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m trying to get back into my old sleep schedule.”

  “The South Side Tour Guide,” Skeet muttered. “See any murders last night?”

  A death databank scrolled through Andy’s mind. “Nothing too much,” he said, preferring to speak about other subjects under the full brightness of day.

  The waiter crept up behind Andy and startled him. Skeet, the type who noticed every wince, every twitch, shook his head and asked the young waiter to take their orders in a few minutes.

  “Wake up there, jittery boy,” Skeet said, snapping his fingers before Andy’s eyes. “Maybe you need a lunchtime cocktail.”

  “Or a lunchtime—” Andy closed his mouth. He was in no mood for crude banter with his best friend, who he’d first met at a gay bar when he’d moved to the city ten years ago. Andy had made it clear from the start he wanted friendship, nothing more. He suspected Skeet still desired something physical, and he avoided leading him on with dirty jokes. “How’s Chicago treating you?” he said instead.

  “One hell of a hot summer, but not always in a good way,” Skeet said. “I still have a job. That’s the best news. Tell me, why on earth were you gone for so long? I thought summer was the high season for your weird tour business.”

  “There were issues to deal with. And then Lilly showed up. One thing led to another.” A bus screeching to a stop made Andy jerk. He calmed his breathing and tried to laugh off his skittishness.

  “You act like you’re afraid of everything,” Skeet said.

  “A person adapts to things fast, I guess. I’m not used to loud noises, especially in the middle of the day. Took me a while to acclimate to driving the South Side last night too, but then it came back to me, like riding a bicycle. I’ll be cool in a few days. In Iowa, things are a bit slower and quieter.”

  “I can imagine.” Skeet sipped his ice water. “And more boring.”

  Andy looked off down Clark Street. The collage of shops, vehicle traffic, and Saturday strollers filled his view. He shrugged. “It’s not too bad.”

  “I couldn’t picture myself living in a place like that,” Skeet said. “There’s no nightlife.”

  “After a while, I grew to like some of the differences,” Andy said. “My niece and nephew were a lot of fun. They’re the cutest kids. They’re like tiny adults, and much better conversationalists,” he said with a sardonic lilt while eyeballing Skeet. “Living way out on a farm, they have few neighbors or nearby friends. They play outdoors by—”

  “What about the brother-in-law?”

  Tall grass in oblong planter boxes separating the eating area from the sidewalk captured Andy’s attention. He watched the green blades, soft like corn tassels, sway back and forth and coil against each other, imitating the smoke from an extinguished taper candle.

  “Yoo hoo,” Skeet said, snapping his fingers in front of Andy’s eyes again. “What about the brother-in-law?”

  The flaming flush came too fast for Andy to control. Skeet deciphered it right off. Andy’s cheeks burned further. He tried to hide behind his menu, but Skeet slapped it down.

  “You got the hots for your brother-in-law!”

  “Shut up, will you? He’s my ex-brother-in-law, and I don’t have the hots for him.”

  “My God, you’re simpering!”

  “Skeet, people can hear.”

  “Strangers aren’t interested in your sordid illicit affairs,” Skeet said. “But, my God, I am. I can’t believe you held back from telling me about this. What does he look like?”

  “Is that all you think about?” But the question spurred Andy onto a grand and sweeping ride, allowing him to recall the best of Harden Krane. His different stances, postures, expressions, the clothing he wore. His magnificent, pouchy jowls.

  And what had become Andy’s favorite, Harden’s girth, matching a corncob’s thickness.

  “Yoo hoo. You’re still in Iowa, my dear,” Skeet said, waving his hand before Andy’s face.

  “I guess my head’s left behind.”

  “What other body parts did you leave? Tell me the truth. Did you two do anything?” Skeet studied him. Next he slapped the table, rattling their water glasses and flatware. “My God! You did! I know that look.” It was Skeet’s turn to flush. He turned redder than the fire truck that raced past. Andy cupped his ears, and Skeet allowed the blaring to fade before going on. “I can’t believe it. It’s true. Now I get why you were gone for so long. My God! Why didn’t you tell me this before? Details! Details!”

  “Calm down, Skeet. There’s nothing to tell. He’s a nice guy. I helped out with the kids. You know about my sister, about her issues. I owed him one.”

  “I bet. Did he enjoy it?”

  The waiter returned and took their orders. Once he left, Skeet repeated his request for the nitty-gritty.

  “We played house for a while,” Andy said, sighing. “A fun diversion, that’s all. He got too comfortable with me being around, and the time came to back off and come home.”

  “You were a farmer’s wife. Like that old movie. What’s it called?”

  “You’re thinking of The Farmer’s Daughter starring Loretta Young. And it wasn’t like that. Stop joking. Harden is a great guy.”

  “Well, tell me more about your husband.”

  “He’s a hardworking, educated man,” Andy said, disregarding Skeet’s characteristic sarcasm. “He rents his farmland to this man named Dick Carelli. He’s a real nice old guy once you get to know him. Most of the people out there are like that. It takes them awhile, but once they warm up to you, they’re really good, dependable people.” Andy sipped his water and leaned back in his chair. “Harden’s got this great big burr oak in the backyard. The farm’s named after it. The land used to belong to his grandparents, and they left it to him in their will. Sad thing is he can’t farm right now, what with caring for two small kids. That’s why he rents the land to Dick. But someday—” Andy shook his head and snickered. Skeet was gawking at him as if his face had sprouted purple polka dots. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m going on and on like an idiot.”

  “Sounds like you’re in big-time love with the whole state,” Skeet said.

  Andy grinned. A little corner of paradise, nestled among the cornfields of northeastern Iowa. Maybe life did come down to doing one little bit on one little patch with one person. But how much sitting on a porch swing listening to the corn grow could a man stand?

  He shrugged. “I started to appreciate how people look at life out there, that’s all. It’s different. Like how they think and do for themselves. Here, we expect someone else to do the thinking and doing for us. If our toilets stop up, we call the maintenance man. We need our dogs walked, we hire a service. There’re no challenges.”

  “Heavens, my dear. You moving back or what?”

  Andy scoffed and gazed at the foot of the neighboring table, where a blade of grass labored through a sidewalk crack. “Move back to Iowa?” he said to the struggling grass. “Me? Not likely.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”


  “Okay, I’ll let you off the hook for now. But I expect details about you and this brother-in-law of yours later. Tell me, what about you and Ken? Are you going to still see him after what he did?”

  “Even if he hadn’t made a fool out of me and himself, I think I’d still have dumped him before Halloween.”

  “I never did like him.” Skeet scrunched his face. “He’s one of those macho closet cases. You can never trust gay men like that. They’re always on edge, ready to explode.”

  “With Ken, it was always an image issue,” Andy said, pondering. “For other men… well, sometimes it’s a privacy one.”

  Skeet made one of his exasperating bogus pensive looks that Andy knew too well. “Other men? Hmm…. You mean other men like wannabe farmers who live in certain Midwestern states?”

  “Skeet….”

  Their lunch arrived, and Andy picked at his Hawaiian burger while Skeet described his summer highs and lows. Not too long ago, Andy might have been amused by Skeet’s elaborate narrations. Now, his tales tired him as much as Andy’s details of Iowa seemed to have bored Skeet.

  An hour and three beers between them later, they hugged good-bye on the corner of Clark and Berwyn and planned for another outing later next week. Andy returned to his apartment, napped for two hours, and prepped for his Saturday night tour. Another six passengers were lined up. All but one showed.

  By midnight, he was escorting them through the bowels of the South Side. An hour into the tour, a gunshot came from Kedzie Avenue. Andy did not share the information with his passengers. They appeared ignorant. The three Lake County suburbanites and two tourists from Wisconsin couldn’t distinguish a gun blast from a belch, he suspected.

  Rather, he drove down his favorite South Side block, the one with the tall evergreens and maple trees and Victorian homes outlined in gingerbread and latticework. He pointed out the planter boxes on front stoops brimming with bright flowers that seemed to glow at night, and the white picket fences that looked like something from a postcard.

  “Where’s the crime?” one man said, gaping out the tinted windows.

  A mere block away, the passengers saw what they’d come for. A house party had turned violent. The narrow one-way street teemed with teens shouting and shoving. Intermittent wrestling matches erupted. Andy pulled into an alley and parked with the lights off, allowing his passengers full view of the spectacle. At last, someone brandished a knife. Within minutes, a gunshot split the night. The teens spread like butter on a red-hot frying pan.

  The police were headed for the scene (Andy had heard through the scanner they’d been dispatched before the violence had even started), and he drove down the alley and turned left onto the adjacent street, out of sight.

  With his passengers cheering and breathing heavily, he headed for the Dan Ryan Expressway, eager to return to his Uptown studio. He collected forty-seven dollars in tips. Surprised how little he cared, he filed away his earnings for later deposit and fell across his bed.

  He was dozing when the door opened. A shaft of light from the hallway blinded him before the dark figure closed the door. Andy peered through the shadows. The figure stood by the kitchen counter, clutching the key to Andy’s apartment.

  Andy sat up, rubbed his thighs. “How did you know I was back?”

  Ken remained by the counter. “I texted Skeet, and he told me. Besides, my friends on the force mentioned your business is up and running. They’ve seen your van cruising the South Side again.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re not going to even say hi?”

  “Hi. Now what are you doing here?”

  “I’d think you’d be more accommodating after what you put me through,” Ken said.

  What I put you through?

  Andy locked his thoughts inside himself. What difference did it make if he hurled abuses at Ken? Numb with indifference, Andy muttered, “Sorry.” Same response he might have given him any other night. He’d take the full blame, shoulder every wrong. Responsible for atrocities in Chicago and the entire world.

  “You should be sorry,” Ken said, stepping closer to him. “I had to pay a ten-thousand-dollar bail bond and have to stand trial in that hick town those bozo deputies dragged me to, not to mention the force suspended me for an entire month without pay and confiscated my Glock. What a damn mess. I can’t believe I’d even consider taking you back.”

  Andy snickered. “I didn’t ask you to.”

  The old lady upstairs sneezed. Andy could almost feel her spray soaking the back of his neck. He wanted to race to her apartment and slap her. All of a sudden, he longed to console her. Did she suffer from loneliness too?

  After an irritating pause, Ken said, “You’re saying you don’t want to try again?”

  “Try what again?”

  “What’s wrong with you? Listen up. I’m trying to save what we have.”

  Ken moved to hug Andy. But he shifted his shoulder away from Ken’s touch, and Ken jerked his hand back.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “Don’t you want it anymore? Or are you getting it from someone else? You got your Farmer Joe living with you now?”

  “I’m not getting it from anyone, as you so eloquently put it, and no one is living here but me. Now why don’t you go, Ken. I’m not joking.”

  “I apologized for Iowa, if you’d bothered to read my text messages or e-mails. Besides, if you had listened to me and come home when I told you to, none of that would have happened.”

  “You ordered me to leave, you ordered me to come back. I’m not a slave. Yours or anyone else’s.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Andy sniggered and shook his head. “I don’t want to see you anymore, Ken. Period. Take a hint.”

  The scarlet shade spreading over Ken’s face matched his hair. “You better know what you’re doing.”

  “You terrorized my family, Ken. My little niece and nephew were home when you started to act like an escaped mental patient. You scared the wits out of them. And you want me to pretend it never happened?” Why was he even bothering?

  “I wanted you home, that’s all. How else was I to get you back?”

  “I’d already decided to come back to Chicago before your stunt.” Andy waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other. Just go, please.”

  Ken crouched before him, taking an uncharacteristically gentle hold of Andy’s forearms. He massaged Andy’s elbows, his breath sour. Ken’s thigh muscles stretched his tight jeans, expanding against his haunches. With Ken positioned perfectly between Andy’s legs, Andy only needed to sink back and let him envelop him with his brawny arms. Eventually, they’d roll around, strip off each other’s clothes, and Ken would push into him until Andy worried his neighbor would bang on the wall for them to quit. Good hot sweaty sex. Andy could use some too.

  Andy rested a hand on Ken’s shoulder, licked his lips, and gazed into his eyes. “Ken….”

  “What is it, Andy?”

  “Get… out… of… my… apartment.”

  In a flash, Ken stood. Andy fixed his eyes on Ken’s knees, feeling his searing scowl on top of his head.

  “I knew you were trouble when I first ran into you at that damn bar,” Ken said. “I knew you were bad news.”

  Ken spun for the kitchen. Andy lifted his head, watching Ken reach into his pocket, slip a key off his key ring, and slap it down on the counter.

  “You were a punk months ago,” Ken fumed, facing him, “and you’re a punk now.” He turned, stopped with his hand on the doorknob, and said over his shoulder, “But you’ll call me. I know you. You’ll wise up and call me. You’ll be begging me to take your key back.” And he was gone.

  The sense of loneliness that had stunned Andy moments ago intensified with Ken’s swaggering out the door. He dropped to his side and battled for sleep the rest of the morning. He was none too surprised when Ken texted him around noon. “Did you wise up?” Andy sniggered, shook his head, and deleted the message, although Andy re
frained from deleting Ken’s name and number from his phone’s address list. He noticed the key Ken had left on the kitchen counter, and an odd sense of regret sapped his breath.

  Sunday night, Andy carried four more passengers. They witnessed no actual shootings or stabbings but saw the aftermath of an armed robbery. Five police cruisers blocked all but one lane of Marquette Road near the liquor store. The police officer conducting traffic snarled at Andy as he idled past.

  A half hour later, they witnessed an old-fashioned brawl at a neighborhood park. The two Texans seemed thrilled with their experiences and didn’t complain when Andy hopped on the expressway at one thirty and dropped them off at their Michigan Avenue hotel. The other two passengers, locals from Lakeview, said they’d seen worse after a night of Halsted Street barhopping. Andy collected a total of sixteen dollars in tips.

  On Monday, three colleagues from Toronto, in town for a digital animation convention, called Andy for a last-minute tour. They were noticeably inebriated when they piled into his van at the Grant Park Best Western. Disappointed when they saw not a single felony after two hours of patrolling the streets, one of the men tried to hop in the front passenger seat and roll down the window. “Somebody shoot somebody!” he kept shouting at pedestrians. “Somebody shoot somebody!” Andy used humor and a few light shoves to force him back.

  Though it was only twelve thirty, Andy drove toward Grant Park and pulled up to their hotel’s front entrance without their expecting it. They complained Andy was “fucking the dog” and that he had ripped them off, while staggering out of the van. Andy headed north on Lake Shore Drive, indifferent to the obnoxious two-dollar-and-twenty-three-cent tip among them.

  He drove straight for the Clock Tower parking lot, although he had no other passengers to drop off there. He wanted a place to park without worrying about street congestion. He slipped on his jacket, paid the meter, and headed for Broadway, a street that might have activity even on a late Monday night.