“You two took forever,” Mrs. Berger said.
The old couple bantered good-naturedly and I settled into the worn leather seat. The interior smelled like cinnamon. Mrs. Berger asked us if we'd buckled our seat-belts, speaking to Elly and me in the same tone. I rolled my eyes at Elly and she giggled silently.
Chicago had recovered somewhat since my last visit, but the aura of emptiness still lingered. Sidewalks that six years ago would have been packed from the beginning of the block to the end now contained no more than a few dozen pedestrians. Likewise, the gridlock of my youth had been replaced by a level of traffic reminiscent of a sleepy farm town, in marked contrast to a landscape of grasping steel, concrete, and glass.
My phone buzzed. A text from Ruth: “You make it to Chicago ok?” I responded: “Ya. Just got off the train. Her granddad told me how he survived the ATE.”
As we drove through the city, I hoped I wasn't getting a glimpse New York's future. In many ways Chicago was its opposite, with its wider streets and sidewalks supporting a more diffuse population. It still didn't have New York's pervasive grime, but there were too many darkened windows and the hot sun beat down on untended patches of green threatening to consume the half-abandoned city. The day-to-day frivolity of walking and shopping had been put on hold, replaced by the gangrenous calm of a mortal wound.
Mrs. Berger pulled out a blue lunchbox and offered us a variety of sandwiches: peanut butter and jelly, turkey, and pastrami. Elly wanted the pb&j and I asked for the pastrami, please.
“This sandwich is really good. The pastrami's delicious,” I said.
“I just bought it this morning. There's a kosher butcher just a little ways from where we live. Walter and I get all of our meat from there.”
“Do you keep kosher?”
She laughed. “No. We don't eat pork, but only because Walter hates it.”
Mr. Berger drove and Elly slept, and Mrs. Berger told me about her time in New York at the turn of the millennium. She'd been a lawyer at a midtown law firm that specialized in corporate bankruptcy. Walter had been an analyst at an investment bank. Their paths had first crossed during the first dotcom bubble, then again in the aftermath of September 11th. Walter had had the astounding confluence of good and bad luck to be caught in the midst of and survive the two major terrorist attacks of the century. Together they'd watched wars, financial panics, and natural disasters come and go. After the summer of Southern Revenge—when three hurricanes named Davis, Jackson, and Lee sank the bottom tip of Manhattan until the pumps were built—they'd decided it was time to return to their roots and so they moved to Chicago. It amazed me how much each of them had seen in their lifetimes, and I wondered what would happen before I died. And despite the steady beat of destruction, she seemed quite chipper. I was sure the money helped.
They lived in a bank of condos northwest of downtown, squeezed between the city and its suburbs. Walter opened a gate for their building and drove into a parking lot with ten foot fences lined with barbed wire.
I woke Elly and carried our bags inside. In the elevator, she jumped at the exact second it started and stopped, trying to suspend gravity for a second or two. I explained to her that the trick only worked when the elevator was going down. She nodded as the information soaked in.
Their condo was modest and well-kept.
“This is your bedroom, Elly-baby” Mr. Berger said, showing Elly an office. “We just had it remodeled.” There was a large screen built into the wall and it was furnished with a massive cherry desk, two chairs and a set of drawers. The floor was plated with copper.
“There's nowhere for me to sleep,” Elly said.
“Let me show you,” Mr. Berger said, grabbing a tablet from the desk. On it he brought up a three dimensional diagram of the room, furniture included. He swiped the desk on the screen, and hitherto unseen joints and creases moved, transforming it into a bed frame. Another swipe and it moved into the corner.
“The entire room is wired for mag-lev,” he said. “Now swipe this.” He presented the tablet to Elly. She did as instructed, and the wall opened and a mattress fell out onto the frame. Mr. Berger had oriented the bed in the wrong direction, however, and the mattress landed crosswise. It slid off the frame and across the floor.
“Shit,” he said. “I mean... Say Cliff, do you mind setting up the bed while I finish giving Elly here the grand tour?”
“What about the mag-lev?”
“It only works with the furniture. They're all part of a set.”
When I finished tangling with the mattress, which felt like it was lined with lead, Mrs. Berger showed me my bed. I would be sleeping on a regular, pre-digital couch.. She apologized, but despite my disappointment at not getting the sci-fi treatment I assured her I'd slept on many couches in my time and had no problem with the arrangement.
* * *
My strategy to quit smoking was a good one, and by the third day of our trip I only had cravings right when I woke up and after meals.
Sometimes I accompanied Elly with her grandparents, while other times I would leave them to spend quality time alone and park at a nearby brasserie and continue my journey with Brian Anderson as he settled in with his host family and toiled tirelessly to seduce the mysterious and flighty Felicity al-Nour.
Mrs. Berger was a wonderful hostess and every night we ate meals so unhealthy that watching her mother cook would've given Helen an embolism. Meatloaf, biscuits, and mashed potatoes; pierogis and kielbasa—wholesome midwestern food absent from the restaurants and kitchens of New York. I'd never eaten so well, and appreciated the spillover love from her doting on Elly.
Her grandparents wouldn't have minded if I'd been absent all week, as I was employed as a spy as much as a nanny, and no doubt they would have relished being freed of their daughter's surrogate. But I was a professional, or in any case I imitated one, and I made sure I was in the vicinity of, if not a vigorous participant in, all planned activities.
I texted back and forth with Ruth, though I tried to keep it to a minimum. This was my vacation, a time for me to relax from the craziness that had descended upon my life like a series of Biblical plagues at the end of May.
Mr. Berger drove me to the train on the Fourth of July. Edward had promised meet me on the platform. From there we'd see where the day took us. I thanked Mr. Berger for the ride and promised to be back tomorrow by two.
The further I traveled from the heart of Chicago, the less apparent the ravages of the economy became. The sprawl was less dense, and trees thrived without the assistance of block grants. They bloomed and grew taller even as buildings accumulated graffiti and roads fell into disrepair. If anything, nature was benefiting from the slump of mankind. No new housing developments, empty factories meant less pollution, and the death of the small town gave the wild a chance to creep back against the encroachments of civilization.
An article on The Cherry Tree had chronicled the wilderness's reclamation of an Ohio town. It had never been large—it's peak population had been less than a thousand, almost a century ago. When the children moved away no one replaced them, and eventually vines covered abandoned houses and weeds burst apart sidewalks and roads. The article had a series of images of an oak tree growing beside a telephone pole. Over the course of three years they stood side-by-side, until a storm knocked over the pole. The tree remained upright.
I got off the train several stops past where Edward went to school. A familar voice shouted, "Cliffster," and I saw Edward standing at the far end of the track.
"Edward, what's up?" I said, walking, then jogging towards him. He was wearing a pair of old cutoffs, a white t-shirt printed with grey cartoon bombs, and big sunglasses that covered most of his face.
We stood awkwardly in front of one another for a split second and he said, "Come on Cliff," then embraced me in a powerful hug.
"I'm glad the Midwest hasn't zombified you. I know you were worried it would turn your brain to mush." I said.
"Yeah, you haven't chan
ged a bit," he replied.
He'd ridden to the station on his bike—a powder blue fixie he'd just ordered the last time I'd seen him. That had been almost four years ago, but it may as well have been four minutes. Our friendship was on God's time, as Elly had once put it, where everything feels simultaneously new and ancient, the difference between a second and a year too trivial to notice. She'd been talking about her first day of school after summer vacation.
"Let's get coffee. I know the perfect place," he said. He pushed his bike along as he talked about his classes, students, and professors. His life sounded very structured, his place in the world well-defined and free from the uncertainty plaguing mine. I listened, interjecting a comment or question every so often to keep his bubbly nature flowing.
The coffee shop was called "Franky's," and had one of those chalk signboards that remind me of the yellow signs janitors put out after they've mopped the floor. Today Franky's had coffee from Tennessee, with a special decaf blend from Italy. When civilization is on the brink and we all live on the top and bottom of the planet, people will find a way to ship coffee from the South Pole to the North.
Edward locked his bike to a lamppost and we went in. He ordered for us, and pushed my card away when I tried to pay. "I'm treating my guest."
We sat at the counter. The stools swiveled, and mine squeaked if I rotated too quickly.
"So tell me—what's new with you," he said.
I told him everything, beginning with James's arrival on my doorstep and Ruth's subsequent, undesired entrée into my life. About my relationship with Mary, the Well-Tempered Clavier, and all the slacker loafing James did on my couch. I ended with the noise show and my explosive encounter with Ruth, and the now uncertain place she had in my life. He listened quietly, never once interrupting with a question or a comment besides "go on."
When I finished my coffee was half-empty and lukewarm. "So that's my story, what do you think?"
"Let's head towards my apartment. I'll tell you on the way."
"How far is it?"
"Less than a mile."
After we left Franky's the compulsion to smoke welled up inside me. Edward didn't have any—he'd quit after he graduated—and I popped into a gas station to buy a pack. Stopping cold turkey was impossible anyhow, this was really no more than a reward for my fortitude thus far.
"You want one?" I asked Edward
"Of course I do. But I can't."
"Suit yourself."
With the majority of its stores open for business and its well-maintained roads and greenery, this neighborhood was thriving compared to the rest of Chicago. While the casualties from the airborne toxic event and the financial shock of the Panic may have taken it down a notch or two, it hadn't collapsed like the rest of the city.
"First of all," he continued. "Kudos to you for finally hooking up with Ruth. That was, like, going on ten years in the making. But at this point in your life I think it's a mistake."
"How are you going to congratulate me and then say that? It doesn't make any sense."
"Look at it this way. You're living with not one, but two people you went to college with. And then, when faced with a Ruth—a girl with enough baggage to sink a ship—on one hand, and a new girl on the other, you picked Ruth."
"That's not fair..."
"I had friends who went to a state school ten minutes from where they grew up. Friends who lived with people they'd known since before they could read. Then they graduated and had to scramble for jobs. Now they all live in different corners of the country and have no idea how to interact with the wider world."
I walked along quietly, thinking about what Edward had said while he, I assumed, thought about his research. We passed between a pair of empty lots. Whatever had been there before was levelled, then abandoned to nature. Scrappy weeds dotted the sandy ground and poked out of cinder blocks, a small city at the foot of a mountain range of large rusty containers overflowing with chunks of cement stuck through with rebar. A trio of black SUVs with police antennae raced past us, stirring up a cloud of dust that made Edward and I hack and cough.
"It's like I'm back in Texas," he said.
"You wish."
"The winters here are brutal. And I thought New York was bad." We both laughed. "Look," he said, "You do what feels right. I was just giving you my perspective."
"I know. Thanks."
We stopped in front of a six story apartment complex smushed between squat office buildings. His place was on the fifth floor, a one-bedroom apartment with a spacious kitchen separated from the living room by a long corian counter. I threw myself on the couch and he remained standing as we discussed our plans for the day. He proposed we cook out; he had a small grill and a full bag of charcoal, plus we'd be able to see a local fireworks show from his balcony. That sounded like a solid plan to me, I said, and in anticipation of such a response he'd already purchased the necessary materiel. Five pounds of ground beef, two six packs, and a bottle of whiskey.
I helped make the patties. He took great joy in criticizing my craft.
"Look, you have the basics down, but you need to put more effort into it. You can't just make lumpy meat circles. They should have a uniform thickness, and you need to round out the edges..." He took the three I'd made and reshaped them. I put more time in the fourth one, and when finished it looked like a flying saucer made from ground beef.
"That one is... interesting," he said, and set it with the others. He'd made seven to my four—we had enough burgers to feed a family.
"I'm going to light the coals. Go wash your hands and bring out the burgers. Oh, could you also get two beers? They're in the fridge. Bottom shelf, on the right."
I did as instructed, balancing the plate under one hand and jamming the necks of the two bottles between the fingers of my other hand. Edward had me set it all down on a wobbly particle board table with a textbook under one leg that kept it from toppling over.
"I made it myself," he said proudly as he bent over the grill, holding the cover half-open to block the wind. It wasn't working, and he cursed under his breath as one long match after another went out in his hand.
The balcony was the size of a handicapped bathroom stall. Cluttered as it was with the grill, lawn chairs, the table, and a platoon of empty beer bottles, there was hardly room to stand. If Edward had given up smoking, drinking hadn't followed suit. The book keeping the table level was called Heterodox Econometrics: An Approach to Holistic Modeling. Fascinating.
The view left much to be desired: his balcony overlooked a parking lot and I could see people and their shopping carts trailing in and out of the supermarket. A car started and I saw a puff of smoke; at least half the cars were equipped with exhaust pipes. No electric or hydrogen transportation out here, only beat-up compacts running on 20th century energy.
A young black woman struggled to push a full shopping cart while a toddler ran around it in circles. Two teenagers—a boy and a girl—trailed behind. They looked at her sulkily when she asked for help unloading the groceries into a blue minivan. The passenger seat window was wrapped in cellophane.
I pointed them out to Edward. He told me he'd seen, variously, a stabbing, someone get hit by a car, and too many screaming matches and fights to count. Like the Berger's, his complex had a tall fence with razor wire separating its skinny parking lot from the supermarket's.
"Man that's terrible," I said. "How'd things get so bad? And so segregated?"
"I don't think it's really a race thing. They put up that fence about a year ago, after a few tenants had their cars broken into. As bad as the Panic has been for the middle and upper classes, it's been far worse for households clustered around the poverty line. And unfortunately, in cities those people tend not to be white. If you went to rural Illinois you'd see similar behavior."
"That doesn't mean this isn't indicative of a nascent apartheid state," I said, thinking of Beverly the barista and Leopold Heights.
"Sure. Or it could just be a fence. The battle f
or racial equality isn't going to be won or lost on the border between an apartment complex and a supermarket. Besides, 'Good fences make good neighbors?' Right?"
I lit a cigarette and watched the young woman unload the groceries by herself and mother goose the others into the van. Was she the oldest sister of the group? Or did she look very young for her age, while the two teenagers looked older, and she was in fact the mother of all three? Or she was the oldest of three, and the toddler was hers. Or they might all just be friends. In any case, I sent psychic regards in her direction as the minivan drove off.
Edward finally got the coals to light and not long after we had a stack of plump burgers to plow through. Two shots and three beers later I'd eaten two. Edward had managed to eat four. He set the leftovers inside, away from the sun, which had shifted to a brutal angle. Soon we were sweat-soaked and I wanted to get back to the air-conditioning, but Edward seemed to be enjoying himself and I couldn't bring myself to spoil the fun.
I asked if he had any friends who'd be joining us, and he responded with vague answers and blustering. When I wouldn't drop the issue he admitted that no, no one would be joining us, as all his friends were back home for the summer. He only had two, his PhD study buddies: a thirty-five year old Italian, and a guy from Berkeley visiting his family in California.
"That sounds so lonely," I said.
"I'm so busy with my research that there's not a lot of time to meet people." He paused, "And it's not like college, where you meet people who live in your dorm. I don't even know the name of the girl next door." I pulled out my cigarettes. When I'd lit mine, he stuck his hand out. "Give it here."
"You sure?"
"One's not going to kill me."
* * *
Before the fireworks started we had to run to the corner store to buy more beer and cigarettes. An empty bottle with its label half torn-off had been commissioned as our makeshift ashtray, and through the hazy brown glass the smushed cigarettes piled up like bodies in a mass grave. Tobacco genocide.
The Merchants of Zion Page 18