Windy City

by Scott Simon

  At the beat of three, Sunny slipped a slender spatula under the left side of the oval and turned it over, once, twice, then a third time before lifting a browned dosa, successfully crisped at the edges, onto a thick ivory plate. Sgt. Gallaher clapped her hands.

  “Voila. As we say in Tamil,” Sunny declared. Matina took the plate and plopped a dollop of pale raita alongside the dosa and pinched small twigs of chopped cilantro over the top. Sunny had turned back to prepare the grill for more when Matina caught his arm and pointed to the screen above the kitchen counter.

  Arty Agras had just appeared. Sunny turned around. Wordlessly, Wilmer moved over to the grill to make dosas for Sunny's daughters while he watched Arty Agras wipe the back of his hand across his mouth and give off a wobbly smile, like a man trying to hold his balance on a shaky ladder.

  “God bless Arty,” Sunny said, and then wondered, “Whatever will he say?”

  He recognized a scuffed white wall of Arty's 1st Ward office on Ash-land Avenue.

  “TV crews must have put him there,” said Eldad.

  Arty had been stood up against the wall. He wore a brown-bag-colored suit and an orange tie and stood in front of a ragged row of snapshots, citations, and declarations that listed as if they had been hung just last night by a man who had come home drunk. Sunny thought he could see a shot of Arty standing on his toes to pose alongside Jennifer Aniston. He recognized the only pictures he had ever seen on a politician's wall of an office holder shaking hands with Spiro Agnew and Michael Dukakis.

  “Arty needs a good Eldad,” Sunny said.

  “Someone should at least drag a flag behind him,” Eldad suggested. “That flat wall—like a firing squad.”

  Arty licked his lips, darted his pale pink tongue over the back of his hand, smiled shakily, and stopped for a moment to reach deep into a pocket for a handkerchief, which he drew across his mouth and pressed against his nose. Microphones bristled in front of his face.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I know it's a busy day. I'll do my best to be subcinct.”

  Eldad groaned. But Sunny called up to the screen, “Take your time, Arty,” and onscreen Arty Agras paused and looked out with astonishment.

  “Am I dead?” he asked. “It's the first time so many people have been interested in anything I say.” The reporters stayed so silent, Sunny could hear someone's gum popping; someone's pen scratching paper.

  “Well: it's true,” Arty Agras announced in a slow, husky voice.

  “They got some details wrong. I'm sixty-three, not sixty-four. Get to be my age, you're in no rush.

  “But me and those two boys? I guess that's true. What can I say? My family knows. My kids, my wonderful kids, my wonderful wife. We spent some time talking about it. They … they say they still love me,” said Arty, his voice falling to a sigh. “They say we're still a family. I didn't want to drag them up here with me. They've been through … so much already. They didn't do anything. They have nothing to answer for. That's me. Only me.

  “I don't know if I can explain this,” he said. As he looked out, his blue eyes bubbled. “What are most of you folks—twenty-five, thirty? Are a couple of you forty? How many of you are married? I've been married thirty-five years. It's been good. Sofia—a lot of you know her—is a wonderful woman. Loving and kind. A wonderful mother. Tough, when she had to be. I … I can't live without her. I don't want to. But a marriage that long, I don't know if you're old enough to understand. You love each other. But love goes through seasons. Sometimes it's wonderful. Sometimes, it's not bad, it just gets a little cold to the touch. But you love each other and stay together because you know it's just a season. That's why you make a promise to each other. And to God.”

  Arty raised a quavering hand next to his face. His cupped palm was red and wrinkled, as if he had been pulling a rough rope through his fingers.

  “You don't quit on each other just because you're going through a cold snap,” he said, his voice rising slightly with defiance. “But sometimes, you get a little chilly. Ten years ago, it never would have happened. Ten weeks from now, maybe nothing. But something happened now.

  “Am I gay? I don't know. I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't care. All I know is I hurt my family, and that makes me ashamed. But nobody forced anybody. I don't know why this is supposed to have anything to do with being mayor. I guess some people must feel that way or you wouldn't be here.”

  Arty seemed to shiver in the scalding light. His mouth snapped open for an instant, as if he were gulping a hook. Then his hands tightened along the silvery neck of the microphone stand, his lower lip came back into his chin, and he pulled back his shoulders, which threw his voice into the horde of gnat-black microphones.

  “I'm going home to my family,” he said. “There are a couple of hours before the session begins. I've got my job. If somebody wants to take this to a grand jury, I'll walk the plank, take a plea. But today, I still represent my ward. I'll do the job I'm sworn to do. If you have questions, I may have a lot of time later—soon. But right now, I just want to go home to my family,” said Arty Agras.

  Sunny could hear a chorus of chihuahuas bark and cry, “Arty? Alderman? Arty? Arty!” as Arty Agras ducked his head, thrust his hands in his coat pockets, and walked away. Just as quickly, the shouts were shushed.

  “Not now,” someone snapped, and then another voice added more softly, “Not now.”

  A field of yellow sawhorses blaring POLICE POLICE POLICE in black block letters had been planted along LaSalle just after the river bridge. Sunny was leaning forward in his dark city car to tell Rula and Rita they would have to get out and walk when a red face, blinking cold tears under a blue-checkered police cap, pressed his forehead against their glazed window and billowed a string of steamy words.

  “Roopini! It's Roopini!” he called to officers behind him. Sunny heard the shouting through the glass, as another uniform thumped their roof and another smacked their trunk as Officer Mayer nosed the car through ranks of television trucks.

  “Which one of us do you suppose they mean?” asked Rula.

  Sgt. Gallaher, still smiling at that remark, led them onto the sidewalk just in front of City Hall through a row of uniformed officers. Reporters with bright, cold cherry faces flung questions over the sawhorses, hatching clouds of steam above their heads.

  “Sunny, what will happen today?”

  “The council will transact a little business,” he called back, his feet slowing and crackling over blue grains of salt that had been spread over the snow. “Then elect a new mayor.”

  “The one you want?”

  “The best one for the city.”

  “Did you see Alderman Agras's statement?”

  Sunny shook his head, sorrowfully.

  “And my heart goes out to him and his family. I think it's outrageous to drag people's private lives into headlines.”

  The reporters absorbed Sunny's reproach without any visible indignation.

  “Does Alderman Barrow have Alderman Agras's supporters all locked up?” someone shouted.

  “Locking up aldermen!” Sunny mused, as if someone had just suggested some small, surreptitious indulgence, like a glass of wine at lunch. They had reached the revolving brass doors, and as Sunny turned around to pitch back a last remark, uniforms inside began to push the door so that Rita and Rula could step in without delay. “Should we throw away the key?”

  Laughter followed Sunny into the door. He turned to push the glass around and found that Sgt. Gallaher was already on the other side, turning it with her long, sturdy arm. Rula and Rita turned to greet him with a grin.

  “That was exciting,” said Rula.

  “They were really listening to you, Pappaji,” Rita added.

  “Imagine,” said Sunny.

  His daughters took Eldad Delaney by his elbows and announced that they wanted to get coffee and muffins at a stand in the concourse below City Hall. They glanced kisses off Sunny's cheek and turned toward the escalator. When Sunny turned back, he
saw that a couple of uniformed officers held an elevator car open for him. Four uniforms waited. He rode up to the second floor encircled by blue shoulders, dripping brims, creaking boots, crackling radios, and jingling keys.

  “A lot of protection for a short-termer on a short ride up,” Sunny said as the brass doors pulled open. Sunny's phalanx of uniforms laughed and shook. They took him through the entrance into the warren of aldermanic offices, and as they came around the corner into a hallway, Sunny noticed a striking woman with tawny hair standing in front of the plum-colored door that said SUNDARAN ROOPINI 48.

  It was Dolores Carroll, in a brown alpaca coat that swept down spectacularly to the tops of her spiky black boots. She saw Sunny and his entourage at the end of the hallway, and looked to them with wide, beseeching brown eyes. Collie Kerrigan of the 14th had her trapped in a joke. His small eyes shone pink as he reached the punch line, his pate wrinkled like reptile skin, and gray flecks of ash and psoriasis sprinkled over his greenish-gray lapels. Sunny could hear Collie say, “So the judge says, ‘Mr. O'Rourke, I've reviewed the case, and decided to give your wife seven hundred dollars a week.’ And O'Rourke says, ‘Quite fair, your honor. I may throw in a couple of bucks meself!’”

  Collie turned his head to laugh, bringing up puffs of pipe smoke and coffee phlegm. Dolores Carroll brought her cheek besides Sunny's and smacked a kiss beside his ear.

  “Alderman Kerrigan has been entertaining me,” she said.

  “A gal like this goes all over the world,” said Collie, “and still hasn't heard these. Can you believe it, Sunny?” He reached over to bounce a fist against Sunny's elbow.

  “See you on the floor, sport. Hotcha-hotcha, rock and roll, hasta lumbago. We're riding different mounts, bucko, but we'll come at the same time together in the end, right?”

  “Beautifully put, Collie.”

  Collie patted Dolores Carroll's cheek so roughly, Sunny thought he could see the red imprint of three fingers along her jaw. Her smile hardened; it didn't crack.

  “And you, darling, later at the Ritz,” Collie told her. “While your hubby gallivants around Microfleasia or some place.”

  “Order room service and start without me, alderman,” said Dolores Carroll, smiling hugely, sending him down the hall with a soft tap on his ear.

  A uniform opened Sunny's door, and another felt the wall for the light switch. Sunny heard a low hum before he saw the small, drooping schoolroom flags lit up. Sgt. Gallaher strode ahead to open the door into the second room, and by the time Sunny turned the corner she had lowered the shades in front of his small conference table.

  “A precaution,” she explained, more to Dolores Carroll than Sunny.

  “He's a very important man,” said Dolores Carroll, and with a slight nod to Sunny the sergeant whisked almost silently back into the outer office with just three strides of her long legs.

  “Well, at least for a couple more hours,” said Sunny, and he and Dolores Carroll broke into a laugh at the same time in front of the patchwork quilt of listing certificates. Her hair had been lightened slightly, but her eyes seemed more than ever to be glistening brown-black cinders that a man would want to touch, even as he knew they would burn.

  Sunny muttered something about coffee. Dolores Carroll held up a tall paper cup, dangling the string of a tea bag.

  “We haven't seen you,” she began. “Since … I'm sorry Peter and I couldn't be there. We were at a conference in Dubrovnik.”

  “Your flowers were beautiful,” said Sunny. “Your call. Your contribution.”

  Sunny couldn't exactly remember if it had been to an Israeli-Palestinian student orchestra in Jerusalem, or an Israeli-Palestinian summer camp in Maine. They had gotten a card, a coffee mug, and five blue-green wristbands emblazoned SHALOM SALAAM—so he said simply, “What they're doing is so important.” Dolores Carroll nodded.

  “March fifteenth,” she said after a pause. “We're having a party for Turkmenistan. The president there has suspended the Halk Maslahaty—the People's Council. The jails of Ashgabat are filled with dissidents, Christians, homosexuals, and reporters.”

  Sunny pursed his lips and smiled.

  “That's an outrage,” he told her. “The first three should be freed immediately.”

  “Come. Please,” she said. “In fact, we'd like to put you down as a co-sponsor.”

  “What does it …”

  “Your name would be the most important contribution,” she said smoothly. “I saw your two lovely daughters downstairs. They must come, too. We had Wyclef Jean over the other night. Do you know his music? I'll bet they do. Lovely man. We're organizing a benefit for the Fanmi Lavalas party in Haiti.”

  She opened her coat by slipping a single tie at the center and sat down on the other side of Sunny's table.

  “You've shown a great deal of poise over these last few days,” she told him. “The city has been fortunate.”

  “Poise is the word that people seem to pass around,” said Sunny. “Like saying that a schnauzer has dignity. Actually, it's been a treat. But Peter's commission will help reassure the city.”

  Dolores Carroll smiled—but the mild kind that people sometimes hid behind a hand.

  “If I were investing in political stock, I'd buy some of yours,” she said. Sunny shook his head.

  “Would it surprise you to know I'm thinking of getting out of politics?”

  “It would surprise me if a man as bright as you thinks he can,” she told him. “People who sell shoes are in politics, Sunny. Surely you've learned at least that.”

  Sunny drummed three fingers over a yellow pad at his elbow.

  “I need to provide for my family,” he said. “Finally. I've been thinking about the restaurant business.”

  “We're interested in restaurants, too.”

  “I didn't mean the Guide Michelin,” he replied. “There's an old bus garage near Clark and Devon. With a loan, a few investors who recognize my name now, I might be able to swing that.”

  Dolores Carroll drummed her own three sharp wine-red nails on the other side of Sunny's pad.

  “I know a space,” she said. “Ground floor of a rehabbed bank building in Lincoln Park. Clark right off of Eugenie. They're looking for something classy.”

  “Sounds pricey.”

  “You have to interest the developers into taking a position in it. It would give him—or her—an interest in seeing it succeed.”

  Sunny sat back from his edge of the table, but did not move his chair.

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Business partners,” said Dolores Carroll imperturbably.

  “That would make us partners.”

  “I've always thought that made sense.”

  “I didn't know you were interested in restaurants.”

  “I'm interested in partnerships,” said Dolores, and when Sunny turned to look into the shade that had been drawn down over the boot crunching and traffic whistle hooting of LaSalle Street, she went on quietly.

  “You keep a little cash in a political action fund,” she said. “Vera appoints you to boards here and there. Crispus Foster won't go long without making trouble for himself.”

  As Sunny turned around, she splayed her fingers, as if putting quotation marks around pirouetting headlines.

  “‘Pretty Welfare Mom gets two a.m. Visits from County Board Pres.’ ‘Foster Drunk at Board Meeting.’ Three years from now, the presidency of the county board is up, and the party will want a quality replacement. We could help. From there, it's secretary of state. Or governor. By then, Peter and I are in the senate. I know it would make some people cringe to hear it laid out so coolly,” Dolores Carroll said almost sweetly, as if cooing over a sleeping kitten. “So—nakedly. But nobody gets anointed in this business, Sunny. You want to change things, you need clout. You roll up your sleeves. You get dirty hands. Clout isn't a chocolate they put on your pillow at night to bring you sweet dreams.”

  Sunny looked across the table. Dolores Carroll's eyes flared a
nd did not blink.

  “Outside the city limits, people think Roopini is some kind of corkscrew pasta,” he said finally.

  “That's not fair, Sunny,” she told him. “This is Illinois. We have our little hatreds. But Illinois has elected Jews, blacks, Greeks, cranks, and crooks for quite a while. An Indian? No stretch at all. People know a family that runs the motel, an optometrist, a friend from school. I doubt you'd let your daughters make that kind of excuse.”

  Sunny was genuinely stopped. He started to reply, heard it a half-sentence ahead in his mind, and drew back.

  “I'm sorry,” he said finally. “I assumed something. I was wrong.”

  “Carroll is a name my grandfather saw on a street sign,” she said.

  “He asked, ‘Who's that?’ They said, ‘A founding father.’ He said, ‘Well so am I.’ The family name was Pekary. Romani from Hungary. Our son, who's at Cranbrook, wants to be called Kyle Pekary now.” Dolores Carroll bit down on her thin, eggshell smile. “So no one will think he's taken advantage of all of his advantages.”

  Dolores stood up from her chair. They could hear other office doors around them creaking and groaning as aldermen arrived, coughing and sniffling, clicked on lights, shucked coats, and murmured, “Whaddya know?” The wall behind Sunny shuddered briefly as Salvatore del Raso of the 39th, who had taken the Brown Line in from Kimball Avenue, beat the toe of his boots against the baseboard of the wall they shared to shake off blue salt from the street. Dolores Carroll ran a finger just a fraction of an inch above the dream catcher Sunny had been given by the American Indian Center.