Those Across the River

by Christopher Buehlman

  Somehow I turned into an old man. I got arthritis in my hips so now I go with a cane. Not a fancy walking stick; just a cheap, sad bastard cane with a rubber tip. I don’t need it every day, but more and more of them, especially in the winter.

  And, on top of everything else, I’m ugly now.

  Not much hair on my head, but plenty in my ears.

  Thick, boozy face and veiny nose.

  Sloshy gut.

  But she doesn’t see that.

  Eudora, I mean.

  You see, she’s in Chicago.

  I was sitting in Wicker Park, off the wagon again, drinking my government check, eating free peanuts and smoking, trying to ignore a fat younger guy telling Polack jokes. I was thinking about telling him I was a Polack and asking him to step outside; he would have creamed me, but he might have just shut up. There’s no glory in fighting old lushes in Wicker Park, unless you’re one, too. Then maybe you can be king of the old lushes.

  Anyway, he was getting to the part where Kowalski holds his hand in front of his face and dares his coworker to hit it with a shovel when I looked across the street and saw her.

  My Dora.

  My wife.

  Still in her twenties, by the look of it. Wearing a thin headscarf and sunglasses like the girls wear now. Holding hands with that boy. That damned mulatto boy. It was daytime. She took her sunglasses off and I saw her eyes.

  I rushed out of there, but they were gone.

  That was two weeks ago.

  I thought I imagined it, but I’ve seen her twice more since then.

  Once, on the el, in the next car, with her hand pressed to the glass.

  Once, when I was walking past the cemetery, across traffic from her. Always when I can’t get to her.

  But she’s always looking right at me.

  And she doesn’t see an old man.

  I can tell that.

  She sees what I was.

  What she can make me.

  She’s coming for me.

  I saw the moon today and it was waxing, better than three-quarters along, hanging there in the daytime like its own ghost. Jet contrails stretched a lazy A that just missed enclosing it.

  It will be full by the weekend.

  And Eudora will come.

  I have this idea that she will ask me a question, and the question has to do with how many legs I wish to go on.

  I had better figure out what I’m going to say.