Wicker Park

This was when we lived in Wicker Park, Annie and I, in a fourth-story walk-up on Crystal Street, before they gentrified it completely, before the sidewalks grew lousy with hipsters, before the trendy eateries marched their way up from Division. There were gangs then, first the Gangster Disciples, and then the Latin Kings. You could date their possession of the neighborhood by the layers of spray-painted tags under the fire escape.

Once we came down and cops were blocking the road, Crystal being a one-way street. They were harassing some kids—black teenagers—for sitting on cars, and I, completely high at the time, blew my horn at the cruiser. I think Annie wanted ice cream, and these cops had parked in the dead center of the road so that I couldn’t even pull into the alley.

One cop stopped what he was doing and stomped over, and it didn’t take me two seconds to realize what I’d done, but he looked right past my bloodshot eyes and just saw a scrawny white dude behind the wheel of a reasonably respectable Honda Accord. I apologized right away. “This is for your benefit,” he lectured. “We’re here to protect you from gang activity. You people come crying to us when bangers commit crimes in this area.”

I had enough sense not to point out that even I, a mild-mannered, if not mildly intoxicated white dude with a philosophy degree from a liberal private school, had the sense to know that these kids were not gangbangers. They looked preppy. Plus, they were black, therefore they could not be Latin Kings, therefore they were not banging in Wicker Park.

Another time, I smelled smoke, and after Annie and I sniffed all around the apartment we looked out the window and saw a burning car four stories down, parked in front of the boarded up crack house.

The people were crazy friendly, even the bangers, who always had something nice to say to Annie. She told me about seeing four homeless guys at party in the alley. They were sitting on overturned milk-crates, with a forty-ounce of malt liquor and a single, sullied Dixie cup. The guy whose territory it was poured shots into the cup, and each man drank his in turn. It was like a tea party, she said, like little girls playing pretend.

If a homeless guy panhandled Annie, she’d usually say, “I’m sorry,” but if he could make her laugh, she always gave him a quarter. I never would.

One time, when we were walking down to six corners, a woman fell in step with us like we were old friends. She chatted about the weather, prayed it wouldn’t rain, and explained that she wanted to sleep in the park. She said goodbye before we hit the Double Door, waving like she would truly miss our company.

Annie said they must not have homeless people like that other places. Once I talked to a homeless guy in Dallas and out of nowhere he punched me in the face. Broke my tooth, too, and fractured my jaw. Annie said I couldn’t have known.

Coming back from the Note after hours, we saw an old Chevy parked under a streetlight on Damen. It was a weeknight and there was no one else around, no traffic, no pedestrians, just me and Annie, and this car had the dome light on, the windows down, and the radio blasting. We couldn’t help but look as we passed. Annie said later, he wanted us to look, this guy, in his car with his pants down and his hands around himself, pulling it furiously. His eyes met ours and he never stopped tugging as we walked past and Annie laughed so hard I practically had to carry her home.

But the next time we walked to the Double Door, Annie saw a guy lying in the gutter, a young guy, like our age. Annie was a social worker then—she still is—and she knelt by his side. “Are you OK?” she asked. “Can I help you?” She couldn’t hear his answer the first time, so she bent in closer. “Hold me,” he moaned, and she jumped back into my arms.

When the Bulls won that last championship, we were out there with everyone else, screaming in a crowd six-deep on the sidewalk, watching the Puerto Ricans cruise the streets with their trunks popped, kids sitting inside waving flags while everyone cheered and danced and drank. It felt real; it felt solid, like a place you could be a part of and stay forever. But that was right before Annie and I split up. It was mutual. I wanted to bum around Europe. Annie wanted to be a social worker. We waited until the lease expired on Crystal Street. Then she moved to Logan Square and I went to Prague.

We found each other, later, on Facebook. There were no hard feelings. I still call her when I’m in Chicago, even though most of the time she’s working. Sometimes we’ll meet for drinks at the Violet Hour and a bite at Big Star Tacos. We would have liked those places, if they had existed when we were together. But we don’t fit in Wicker Park anymore. The sidewalks are jammed, and the gutters too. A lonely drunk boy couldn’t lie down there now; he’d be run over by a fixed gear bike in about six seconds flat.

The Wicked Stepmother

On the surface, it’s the simplest job in the world. Maybe I make a couple extra sandwiches. Maybe I drive across town twice a month to pick up the carpool. I am the purveyor of periodic bedtime stories and fresh Band-aids, the recipient of dutiful hugs and the occasional handmade card. From a historic standpoint, I am successful in my job if I merely refrain from slaughtering, roasting, and devouring them in a red sauce.

Some days, I really enjoy the trips to the zoo, walks in the park, raucous birthday celebrations. Some days I feel like they keep me young.

Some days I look at them and think, “Man, I’m really hungry.”

The Edge

The edge of the world appealed to me, because sometimes the tide washed up amazing artifacts, and because everyone else feared the edge, so I could be alone. My brother used to say that if that water even touched your shoe, your whole foot would wither and fall off, but the spray hit me full in the face a thousand times, and nothing ever happened. You taste salt, that’s all.

Nobody liked me going down there, but they pretended not to know, because almost always I could find something amazing, or useful, or, at the very least, metal, and bring it back to the safe zone. But scavenging was just an excuse. I went to the edge to sit on the twisted, charred remains of the old world, and to look out at the things left behind, tilted battered monoliths, frozen in their death march miles off the coast. The jutted from the water like broken blades of grass. Some people say that humans used to live in there.

Yesterday I found a broken plastic box, with wires and other old things jumbled up inside. It could be valuable. But the important part about yesterday happened after that, when Marina yelled at me from the last road.

“Hey, aren’t you scared of ghosts?”

Probably, it would have surprised me, since you get used to total solitude, but when you spend all your time at the end of the world, nothing can surprise you anymore.

“No, are you?” I turned back to the water, watched it dance around the shattered infrastructure. Every wave tore the crumbling remains down a little further. You’d think she would run away scared, but I heard her feet leaving the safety of the last road, crunching through the fragmented debris, and finally climbing up to sit beside me.

“They said I’d find you here.” But she didn’t chastise me, or warn me, or ask any stupid questions. She just said, “Thanks for saving my sister’s life.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. And I figured, if you found that thing down here, the edge of the world can’t be as bad as people say.”

Years ago, I had figured that out. “It’s spiritually bad; it’s not physically bad. Bad things happened here, but now nothing happens here, except for the ripples of that first bad thing.” The winds were strong and constant, but I could actually feel her body heat beside me, and in one second, I went from craving my solitude to requiring her company.

“You’re really brave,” she said. “They say the ocean ate the world here.”

I nodded. “Once. Not like it’s going to happen every day. It’s safer at the edge than the center, with bandits and mutants and fighting.”

“How do you find things?” she asked.

“Just look,” I said. “You just look.”

So she jumped down and looked and after a while she squealed, “Metal! I found metal.” The thing she found was so big we had to put my thing on top of it and carry it back to the center together. Before she went to tell her family what she had, she kind of bumped her elbow against mine, and it felt different from an accidental bump, like in a crowded market. It felt like a meaningful bump.

And today I’m sitting here on the same chunk of wreckage and looking out past the edge, but for once, I’m not thinking about the past. I’m thinking about the future. It’s different from being lonely with ghosts. Is there an opposite word, I wonder, a word for a thing that’s not dead and gone, but is still a kind of seed that hasn’t happened yet?

The Spring of My Content

At seven forty-five, he called the room, just like he promised the night before, and at five after eight, he knocked at the door. I answered, wrapped in the stiff white hotel towel, still damp and slightly steaming from the shower.

“I’m not ready,” I apologized. “I tried.”

“That’s OK.” He rubbed my chin and bent over for a fast, open-mouthed kiss. “We’re important. They’ll wait.” He sat on the bed, not talking about the night before, because that was something we didn’t talk about. We would have to spend the entire day not talking about it. We had spent years not talking about it.

He watched the towel slip to the ground as I knelt to dig around in my bag. My naked body, softer and slacker than it had been all those years ago, still held his attention. “Oh!” I cursed, softly. “I was going to iron this blouse.”

And he leaned down, plucked the wrinkled fabric from my hand. Still kneeling on the ground, I watched him slide an ironing board from the closet, an iron from a clip set in the wall. He unfolded the ironing board, plugged in the iron, and watched me drying my legs as I watched him. By the time I’d extracted bra and panties and stockings from my bag, he was pressing my blouse, thick hands dwarfing the iron so you could almost imagine him smoothing the wrinkles with the strength of his fingers.

“Thanks,” I said. “If you couldn’t guess, I suck at ironing.” And he nodded his head, a silent acknowledgment that spoke of all the things we could not talk about.

There, I felt a heat that surpassed the greatest moments we had shared, dozens of nights in dozens of hotel rooms. Now, the pure and unadulterated care of his big hands, ironing my little blouse because he wanted me to look professional at his side, although I was anything but, overwhelmed any false detachment. Naked, I smiled, my eyes gulping up the scene as I struggled into the stockings.

If I could have held that moment, isolated it from all others and stretched it into infinity, I might have chosen to live there, in the small quiet gesture of his love.

The Postmodern Prometheus

For all that six long years had unfurled since the passing of my darling Evangeline, the ocean’s damp seemed to cling to her porcelain skin and dark, curling tresses. I dismissed the illusion as a trick of the cryogenic chamber’s glass cover and glanced at the radar animation on the computer monitor. Outside the lab, the sky squeezed out a thin crackle of lightning.

For six long years, I had perfected my method, on frogs and rats, cats and dogs, chimpanzees, and finally, an executed convict. His remains, having outlived their usefulness after nine successful attempts, chilled in the chamber beside Evangeline’s. His temperature reading held at five degrees below zero. The display on my beloved’s clicked up from eight to nine.

The storm drew closer. There were injections to be given, electrodes to attach, connections to be adjusted, all with the greatest of care.

An hour later, the process well underway, the pounding on the lab door began. “Vick, please open this door.” After so many years of being ignored by my supervisor, I had no trouble ignoring him at the moment of my greatest triumph. “Tell me you’re not doing what your FaceBook page says you’re doing.”

Electricity flowed through the conduits. My eyes remained glued to the stark, smooth flesh of Evangeline’s face, marred only by the oxygen tubes snaking from her perfect mouth and nose.

“It’s not science,” the voice beyond the lab door hollered. “It’s an affront to science. You’ve got to let this go, Vick. It’s disgusting.”

But love would not be swayed, and love was undying. Thunder argued overhead, and the mechanical bellows massaged her adorable heart beneath her perfect breast. A final stab of lightning lit the windows and it was done.

The veins pumping beneath the white cheek filled it with a pretty blush, her eyelids twitched, and her hands, with frantic convulsion, ripped the oxygen tubes from her face, ripped the mechanical bellows from its mount. My Evangeline lived.

Her wide eyes gaped behind the glass panel. Anticipating the shock and fearing her fear, I ripped the cover open.

A low, gagging noise emanated from her throat. She half sat up, then scuttled back. “Oh, god,” she moaned, her voice faint and hissing. “Oh, god. I’m in hell.”

“No! Evangeline! You live! I have stolen you back from the arms of death. For you, I have conquered mortality. We shall never be parted again.

The pounding on the lab door increased in volume. Many men and women demanded entry, like the proverbial angry mob bearing pitchforks. They called themselves scientists, but, no better than ignorant peasants, they would not understand.

Unsteady, like a child, she clambered from the chamber, fell, and glared up at me from all fours on the lab floor, hissing, “Pervert! Can’t you take a hint? I committed suicide to get away from you! What do I have to do? Immolate myself?”

“We were meant to be together.”

She tried to dash for the lab door, which shook with the rage of the crowd outside, but she could not control her newborn muscles and collapsed like an invertebrate. She must rest, convalesce on beef tea and my undying love. In her weakened condition, she needed me more than ever. “Help!” she screamed and crawled past me, this time catching her hand on the locked door and turning the deadbolt. It swung open and she fell into the arms of another.

She disappeared from view as the fools descended upon my equipment.

The Weight

165 lbs.: Daniel can’t stop watching Connie’s ass, like two helium balloons stuffed into her size 16 Levi’s, as they march down the football field during band practice. He clenches his drumsticks so he will not squeeze her instead. On the way off the field, some jerk in the bleachers spits on her.

180 lbs.: It’s OK to talk to Connie in chess club, because only geeks go to chess club. It’s OK to invite Connie to his place, because nobody can see them eating together, since his kitchen’s in the back of his house.

195 lbs.: Daniel almost wrecks his dad’s car while fantasizing about prom. In his imagination, Connie wears a backless gown, revealing ample ass cleavage. He screws her in the limo once on the way to the dance, and once on the way back. In reality, he takes Tina Gillespie, who weighs exactly half as much as Connie. Connie stays home.

225 lbs.: The summer after his sophomore year of college, Daniel spots an inviting arch of flesh at the grocery store. He stays cool, jokes, bumps his hip into hers, and takes her to his parents’ house for dinner. When his parents go to bed, he seduces Connie in the basement. The second time they have sex, he begs her to get on top. “Won’t I hurt you?” she asks. He laughs.

250 lbs.: “What are we doing here?” she asks him. “Are we together or not?” All he can do is kiss her, mount her again, feeling like a mountain climber achieving the summit.

260 lbs.: “Why don’t you tell your parents we’re together, at least?” she asks him. He shakes his head. Two weeks later, she moves to California. He dreams of mountains for weeks.

310 lbs.: He ends up in San Francisco five times in the next two years, and she stays in his hotel room each time. She takes up most of the bed, and he fits himself around her curves as they sleep. Then he gets promoted and stops traveling on business.

270 lbs.: After a year with no contact, he surprises her. “You lost weight,” he says, unable to hide his disappointment. She kisses him in his rental car, and he relishes the crushing sensation. “Didn’t I tell you I’m married now?” she says. She comes back to the hotel anyway, but he can’t get his fill in a just couple hours.

300 lbs.: He hates the affair, but he can’t stop. She fills his imagination the way she filled the passenger seat of the rental car. He dreams about her, writes her steamy emails, which she deletes after reading, and waits.

325 lbs.: He begs her to leave her husband. She refuses.

335 lbs.: He begs her to leave her husband. She refuses.

345 lbs.: He begs her to leave her husband. She refuses.

350 lbs.: “We need to dial this down,” she tells him. “I love my husband. Sneaking around makes me sick.” He tells her how much he’s always adored her, how much he wants her at his side, always. “You had your chance,” she says. The earth moves as he watches her ass walk away.

Art Imitates

“Listen,” he said, and I listened.

What we heard was the couple in the next apartment, their voices pressing through the walls with the urgency of conflict. A domestic situation, as they say.

“Should we be listening?” I asked.

“They know the walls are thin.”

And the argument escalated, words indiscernible, emotions projecting, louder and louder, the sounds of impending violence. Vitriol seeped through the drywall. Hatred penetrated the air ducts. Rage shook the air. The couple in the next apartment would not, it seemed, be a couple much longer.

“Should we call the police?” I wondered. If we called now, they might arrive before the unseen neighbors began heaving the cast iron at each other’s heads.

“Just wait.” He grinned, winked.

My stomach turned. Next door, she shrieked. He thundered. I shook, afraid for both of them, afraid for a world that allowed for such aggression between lovers.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“Hold on,” he said.

As the voices reached their fiercest pitch, I slumped in my seat, resigned. And the male voice, booming through the vents shifted tone, moved toward melody, and then exploded into song. The female voice joined in, lilting above it. They harmonized, sang a passionate duet, and then fell into silence. The walls hum with quiet resolution.

“Theater majors,” he explained. “They’re always doing musicals.” He sighed. “I love this apartment.”

I pushed back from the table and walked toward the door.

He Kissed Her First

He kissed her first. He told her he loved her first. He touched her first. She only allowed herself to follow suit because her body told her it was all right, and because he told her that he would love her forever.

Because he promised and swore, she didn’t believe the rumors. He would never lie to her, never cheat on her. He didn’t want anyone else, ever.

“Together forever,” he would say to her.

“And ever and ever,” she would answer.

They went away to college. He promised and swore that he would love her forever. In the beginning, he promised every day, on the phone. Then, he promised twice a week, then once a week. By sophomore year, it was twice a month. Then once a month, whenever she called him. He always promised to call her back, but he never did. Wrenching herself away from the tear in her heart, she suppressed her desire to hear him lie about his love and ceased contact.

Ten years later, he sent her a chatty, lighthearted email. Her success in business could now be tracked on the Internet, along with her contact information. She read between the lines, saw his unspoken plea for professional help, and returned a chatty, lighthearted email. He dropped off her radar again.

After three more years, he started leaving chatty, lighthearted comments for her on social messaging sites, but now his jokes and opinions left a bad taste in her mouth. Had he changed so much, she wondered, or had she? Would she ever have kissed him, if he hadn’t kissed her first?

For the Soul

I rough-cut the onions, because I am tired, and hurried, and I don’t eat onions anyway. It’s easier to eat around big pieces. Rough-cut it all. Carrots, celery, garlic. Lots of garlic. A small red pepper, withered in the back of the fridge. Throw the lot into a big pot of water. Plenty of salt. Dill, basil, and parsley from the garden. Add a splash of olive oil; it gives vegetable soup a little meatiness, the mouth-feel of chicken soup. Chicken soup is better for you, really, but I don’t eat meat.

A bowl of broth is all I can manage. My appetite doesn’t run to so much as a Saltine. I sleep.

When I wake up, the sun is low in the west. My head doesn’t pound quite so much, but the ringing of the phone jars it anyway. “Hello?”

“Oh, god, baby, I’m so sick.” His voice drips with pathos. “I can’t breathe. I can’t move.”

Something creaks within me. “You want some soup?”

“That’s sounds great. You have some?”

A half hour later, I’m in his kitchen, short of breath, fumbling with the stove. He leans against the door, his dark hair plastered to his face with sweat.

“Too bad it’s not chicken soup,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. “I’d make you chicken soup if I had some chicken.”

“I have some chicken.” He pulls a takeaway carton from the fridge. It’s tandoori chicken, bright pink. Why not? I cut it up, add it to the pot. “You are so good to me, baby,” he says.

Even though I don’t eat meat, I have to check, to make sure the soup is OK, and damn him if it isn’t a thousand times better this way.

Technophobia

David turns the flat black plastic over in his hands, wondering why he stays.

“Davey, are you even listening?” Lance is still sitting across from him, cables snaking from his hands. David hates being called Davey, and he’s afraid he’ll turn to stone if he looks straight on, although Lance is no Medusa. Lance is the most beautiful man he ever met, with blond hair past his ass, and cool blue eyes set in a cherubic pale face.

“It’s a monitor,” David parrots. “I slide the iPod into the dock to watch videos. I plug it into the USB port to recharge it.”

“With this cable, right. But you use this cable if you want to just plug it into a wall socket. And this one goes into your car’s cigarette lighter.”

Why would I be watching videos in the car, David wonders, but he accepts the cables, sets them to the side of his plate, dares to look into Lance’s face. He does not turn to stone. Lance squeezes his hand.

“With all the traveling you’re doing lately, Davey baby, I figured it would be easier than trying to watch on a tiny screen. Do you like it?”

David nods, squeezes Lance’s hand back, blows a kiss for good measure. Lance gave him the iPod, and the laptop, and the cell phone, and he uses them, because when your lover gives you an expensive gift, you can’t let it gather dust in the closet like you do with the ice skates your mom gave you when you turned eighteen, or the waffle iron from your aunt. He uses them, but he doesn’t like them. They are alien rocks, chunks of silicon that betray and befuddle him. Lance never asked him what he did in airports before. David used to enjoy the people watching, the invisible anonymity of airports. It used to be that everyone watched everyone in airports, while pretending to read books. Now everyone is wrapped up in cords and cables, alone in their worlds of music and movies and wifi.

He programs numbers into his cell phone, but speed dial always calls the wrong person. He stores music on his iPod, but when he hits shuffle, it only plays Lance’s techno music. Despite Lance’s best efforts, David fries his hard drive an average of once every nine months. But Lance keeps trying.

Now, Lance smiles his angelic, cupid’s bow smile, brushes the satin hair back from his face, stirs his coffee. David’s cell phone buzzes in his pocket—Lance helped him set it to vibrate—but he’s put on some weight this year, and by the time he drags it out, whoever it is has hung up without leaving a message.

“Who is it?” Lance asks. David shrugs, and Lance reaches, impatient for the device. “Unknown name, unknown number,” he says once he has it, and hands it back again.

David leaves the phone on the table. It’s too embarrassing, trying to get it back into his pocket while sitting down. “You know the theory of resistentialism?” he asks.

“Tell me.” Lance’s blue eyes sparkle, as if he’s actually interested.

“It’s the belief that machines are aware, and they’re hostile to their owners. It’s why copiers always break down when you’re in a hurry. And it’s why everything I touch malfunctions.”

Lance laughs, grabs David’s hand again and kisses his fingertips. David lifts his head, so Lance won’t see his double chin. “That again,” Lance says, laughs. “You’re crazy, Davey baby. Look, machines are machines. They do what we tell them to do. You just have to speak their language.” When he drops David’s hands, he nods at the pile of cables and technology on the table, then glances down at his iPhone, starts tapping on the screen with one hand.

Without looking, he reaches his other hand out for his coffee. David admires the muscles in his forearm, the white skin and golden hair, the manicured fingernails. Lance always smells good, like a baby straight out of the bath, and his clothes don’t wrinkle, no matter how he sits. And Lance never sweats, either, or if he does, it smells like talcum powder.

Lance sputters into his mug, but even that is graceful, like blowing bubbles. “It’s cold,” he mutters, but his mutters are the warm-up scales of an opera singer. His eyes intent on the screen of his phone, he opens the microwave on the counter beside him.

David can’t take his eyes off him, the graceful arc of his arm as it whisks the coffee from the table to the microwave. Light glints off the metal spoon still resting inside the mug. David says nothing as Lance shuts the microwave door, hits the start button without ever looking up from his phone.