I slipped out of the apartment that morning with no more idea about what was going to happen that day than I have about any day. Sandra, my wife, and our son, Thomas, were still asleep, curled in dreams and tangled in sheets crisp in the early morning cool of spring. The city itself was just waking up, the sun rising over the lake throwing shadows of the El across the street, warming the night-cold brick of the storefronts and the dirty pavement of the sidewalk. Walking down the stairs with my bike on my shoulder, my only thought was selfish: to enjoy a peaceful ride along the lakefront before starting my job dodging traffic, racing upstairs, and convincing people in suits not to yell at me.
We hadn't been married all that long before we had Thomas, and Sandra's time at work meant that evenings were full of laundry, housework, and arguments about money. Winters are long in Chicago, with the wind whipping off the lake and snow piling on the streets; the long hours at home were eating at us, and the relief of spring was overdue. Bulbs sprouting in tiny front yards and the carpet-like grass in Lincoln Park brought color to a city long grey and dull with grimy snow.
It was selfish of me to leave early for a ride in peace, but I needed that time to myself. The city wasn't my home. Even though it was in Jersey, the house I grew up in was on the edge of a small town, where it crept into cornfields, dairy pastures, and the woods. In spring and summer, I rode in the woods, tires crackling on fallen leaves until thunderstorms turned trails to mud. In fall, I rode home from school through the scent of each field, hay bales toasted by the sun, cow manure, and the metallic bite of fertilizer marking the boundary of each farm. I could have ridden that road with my eyes closed, navigating by smell alone. In winter, only the crunch of pavement under ice gave any hint of where I was in a landscape surreally white and dimensionless, like swimming in a pool of milk. A fresh Chicago snow had the same quality, but in the summer, the heavy air reeked of bus exhaust laced with the rancid trash of a thousand restaurants. In the downtown canyons, riding packages from office tower to courthouse to bank, swirling in a never-ending whitewater of traffic, I felt trapped on the swampy days of July and August, desperate for green fields ribboned with two-lane roads, quiet woods and streams, anyplace but the heaving city of metal, sweat, and cement.
But in spring, the wind off the lake brought just enough chill to remind me that I was warm-blooded, and the expanse of rolling water gave me room to think. In the early mornings, I'd leave the trail to circle the harbors and ride out onto the piers into the rolling lake as far from people as I could get. Selfish, sure. But every day was noisy, and even the crashing waves were calmer than anything I was going to get.
That morning, though, I rode straight downtown, the warm kiss of the sun on my left and the chill of the city shadow on my right, just happy to be alive, to be pedaling, to be alone between home and work. My boss was special. Straight out of Bridgeport, Chris was one tough cookie. Nobody was fast enough, nobody was doing it right, but she paid well and she said she needed me, nobody else could do what I did, and since she paid me bonuses, I stayed—but I needed all the space I could find to get ready for her in the morning. One last lungful of fresh air and open sky, and then it was down into the Chicago Avenue tunnel, through the dank passage and then up into the rock tumbler of the streets.
When I made it down the alleyway and into the dispatch room by 7:00, Chris was there and already in a tear. Some professor didn't have his presentation for the conference he was flying to that morning, and my job was to get it to him before he left for the airport in ten minutes. This was no sheaf of paper or jump drive; this was an old-fashioned slide carousel in a black-and-yellow box. No way the guy was younger than 75, right?
I shoved the old Kodak box into my bag. The slides were locked in with a ring, but they still rattled like dice in a cup as I bounced down the stairs two at a time. Outside, the streets were starting to jam with traffic as the sun rose higher. Busses roared and wheezed on Michigan Avenue, creeping past the Water Tower as I rode west to take a quieter street north. The address seemed simple enough, 1348 Astor Place. Up State, over Burton, down Astor, a simple ride through the Gold Coast, if an SUV tearing around to drop the kiddies off at private school didn't squash you. Piece of cake.
My phone rang. "Aren't you there yet? Can't you go any faster?"
"Chris, I'm on it. Astor and Schiller are one-ways, and I don't intend to die turning left across Lake Shore Drive today—I'll save that one for when I need it." My phone beeped. "Sorry, it's Sandra."
"Mike, where are you? You just left." I could hear Thomas in the background between a whine and a moan. "I think the Monkey has another ear infection, he's cranky and he's hot. Can't you come home?"
"Babe, I gotta work. I'm on my bike, I'll call you later." I pushed the button and cut her off as she started saying, "But you're always on your bike!" It's true, I was. Early morning before work, weekend nights, weekend trips to Wisconsin; every chance I could get I was pedaling, and not pulling a kiddie trailer, either. By now I was turning onto Astor, one of the nicest tree-lined streets on the Gold Coast, very different from my neighborhood far to the north, where the brick apartment buildings backed up to the El tracks, the wooden porches and back stairs twisted and tilted with age, strung with laundry and burned-out Christmas lights. On Astor Street, the trees were starting to bud and leaf, promising a rustling canopy of green for the summer.
I crossed Schiller and headed towards Banks Street, scanning the addresses on the west side of the street. 1340 was "Astr House," some modern concrete apartment building with a wrinkled awning, and just north of that, the building was getting renovated. But there was no 1348. Shit! I called it in. "There is no 1348 Astor, Chris. What's the deal?"
"What the hell are you doing, Mike? That's the address. What's your problem?"
"I'm on freakin' Astor, staring at an ugly goddamn tower of luxury crapholes and I'm telling you, there is no 1348. What the hell are you doing?" The phone went dead as she put me on hold.
"Mike, write down the number. Call the man; he says he can see you on the street. Shit. I thought you knew how to do this job!" I scribbled the number on my hand as she hung up. What the hell? 312 was the old area code—not unheard of in this neighborhood, but the number must have been old. None of the buildings looked like the kind of place someone would have been living in long enough to have a legacy number, but I dialed it anyway. The voice on the line was calm.
"Son, do you have my slides?"
"Yes, sir I do, and I have your address but I don't seem to see your building. Can you help me out here?" How stupid could I be? I'd been doing this job for three years, and I'd always found every address. I'd made deliveries on time in snowstorms, heat waves, and rainstorms; through bronchitis and sprained ankles; up every alley, down every street, and here I was: on the street, no building, with a customer calling me "son."
"Michael, I can see you have a mirror on your bicycle. You're facing west. Look in your mirror."
I did. In the distorting curve of the glass, there was the reflection of a brownstone townhouse with a pair of Roman arches over the door and front windows, cast-iron Gothic revival posts on the limestone stairs leading to the glossy black door set with leaded glass. Three stories tall, the flat-fronted house with a rusticated stone façade and slate-tiled hip roof was cheek-by-jowl with a Prairie School limestone neighbor boasting a bay window clad in hammered copper. Over my shoulder, sunlight streamed through the narrow slots between the high-rise towers, cement beige and bulky, backlit against the pale blue sky. In the mirror, the row houses shimmered in the sunlight.
"Sir, I don't know what you're doing, but I need to know where you are. There is no 1348 Astor. What is the correct address?"
"Michael, I was told you were a smart young man. You can see my house, now come up to the door." Damn! I took another breath, and didn't turn off the phone, dump the slides in the street and ride away. I'm selfish and immature, but I'm not a complete jerk. I inhaled slowly, swallowed hard, closed my eyes and tried again.
"Sir, I need to know how to reach your address." There was a click, and then a dial tone. As I folded my phone and slid it into the holster on my bag, twisting as I shoved the bag back into place, and the slides rattled again, it occurred to me that cell phones don't have dial tones. The row houses were still in the mirror; a twist of the handlebars showed an empty lot next to the brownstone, another house behind it with a sidewall covered in ivy that swayed gently in the breeze. The trees on the street in the mirror were small—saplings, really—but the trees in front of me were big, not just tall but robust, supporting branches that met across the street and would tower above the three-storey houses in the mirror. As I reached out to wipe the mirror, I turned again, and then, in the light between the tall blocks behind me, there was the shadow of a building, a brown building with a shiny black door and two Roman arches on the ground floor.
I got off the bike, and wheeled it across the street, squinting as I tried to follow the view in the mirror while I chased the flickering shadow in the light that now moved like a candle flame. The tiny tree in front of the brownstone seemed to whip in the wind, and the house itself gave a shudder as I stepped onto the sidewalk at the bottom of the front steps and the front door swung open. When I pulled out my U-lock, the man at the door said, "No, no—bring your bike in with you." Nobody ever says that, but I shouldered the bike and climbed the stairs, squeezing past the white-haired man who held the door open for me. Past him, I stepped into a cool, dark hallway painted deep red, with a black-and-white checkered floor. On the right, a doorway opened to a sunny living room filled with books and plants. At the far end of the hallway, another door showed the way to a bright garden facing a street where there should have been another building. I turned back to look at the man, who stood, smiling, at the closed door.
"You have my slides?" he asked. I pulled the rattling Kodak box from my bag and handed it to him. "These are very important to me," he said. "Now, let me pay you."
"No, that's fine, sir. You can pay the office." The house smelled of floor wax, and the patterned wooden floors of the front room were slick and shiny. It was beautiful, comfortable and creepy all at once, a silent place where the only sounds were of birds and the gentle wind. From time to time a small bell rang in the distance. The tires squeaked on the floor as I turned towards the front door, but the man put his hand on the handlebar and stopped me.
"You don't understand," he said. "I'm paying you." He headed to the back door pulling my bike and me with it. A small garden of ivy surrounded by an ornate iron fence lay outside the house, and beyond it a street paved with smooth black asphalt. Across the way, two and three storey brick houses with gardens of flowers and vegetables stretched up and down the street. "There," he said. "There you are." He gave me a push towards the street, and I went, as the door clicked shut behind me.
It was still early morning. People were dressed for work, most riding south towards a downtown of mostly fifteen and twenty storey buildings, men and women alike, on all kinds of bikes. There were pedicabs, and grocery delivery bikes, tandems, three-speeds and fixed gears, streaming in orderly lines where there used to be cars. I joined the stream of bicycles and headed south. I don't know where I thought I was going, but the only thing to do was to ride. At the next corner, I turned left towards the lake. The Inner Drive was filled with commuters on bicycles, and where the Outer Drive had been, the wide lanes that used to crawl with cars, was a parkway lined with trees. An ambulance headed for a hospital up the center lane. Trolley bells and bicycle bells rang over the soft rush of the waves, and joined the laughter and chatter as riders greeted each other. Turning south, I rode downtown with the crowd, swept up in the freedom and joy of the riders.
I was riding along the pier to the planetarium before I wondered how long this would last. Looking north to the city's transformed skyline from Northerly Island, where the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower alone stood above the banks of limestone and brick, I saw a working city without cars, without the pall of smog that could hang in the humid summer days. It was smaller, cleaner, and quieter. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the light on brick and brownstone gave the city a warmer hue, tempered by the cool limestone. Small streets and alleys threaded between the larger blocks, cooler veins of shadows in the body of the city. Even this little distance into the lake, I felt the chill of the water in the wind, and finally I wondered: What the hell had I done? Where was I? Where was my family?
I tore across Roosevelt Road and up Michigan Avenue slicing and weaving through the crowds of cyclists, panting with the effort. I skidded around the corner at Schiller and came up short in the middle of the block; the house was gone, and in its place was a garden. I tried looking in the mirror, but any way I turned it, there was only sky. Across the street, where there had been high-rise apartments there were now brick and stone row houses, steep stairs leading to their front doors in stately rows from paved yards. None of them looked like the house I had been in and that I had walked through. What had the yard been like, when I left the house? I rode down the street looking for a yard of ivy with a fancy fence, and houses with gardens. Turning left onto Banks, the wide expanse of lake lay before me, until I turned sharply onto Ritchie. This was it—there were the gardens, the flowers and vegetables—but half of the yards were fenced, with ivy. Which house had it been? I could feel my heart pounding as my breakfast rose in my throat. I could find a job, and a place to stay, but how much call would there be for a messenger, when everyone rode bikes? And what about Sandra and Thomas? Who would look out for them? The quiet of the city that had once seemed so sweet and so serene now was loud in my ears, as if the only sounds I would ever hear again were my own thoughts.
My body tingled with the fear and elation I'd only felt after a wreck that wasn't too bad—adrenaline and relief—when I saw the old man waving to me from the porch of a small brick house. The front door was open, so that I could see through the house. At the back, I could see what had been the front door when I delivered the slides. I came in the gate and started to climb the stairs. The man stepped into the doorway, blocking my way into the cool dark hall.
"Well," he said. "How do you like it?"
"It's great, but what's the point? I have to get back," I said, pushing his arm. "I've got things to do."
"There are only two things, Michael." He pointed at my phone. "You can stay here, where the bicycle is king, or you can go back to the noise, the dirt and the danger. Which do you choose?"
Even on the porch I could hear the traffic at the far end of the house. I turned to the street of gardens where a young woman pedaled a red cargo bike up the street, her toddler chirping in the front carrier. I pulled out my phone and punched the number for home, hoping it would work. I heard the line ringing, and Sandra's voice saying, "Hello?" as the woman passed me, and answered her phone.
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| Comment from Otto on 2009-01-24 |
| wonderful story. reminiscent of the mid-western gothic of ray bradbury |
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| Comment from Pete Pawelski on 2008-12-03 |
| I enjoyed this story too--probably my favorite from the last couple of contests. Nice job and congratulations. |
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| Comment from jim matthews on 2008-11-17 |
| Great story Kirsten. My wife read it to me before bed time and we both were so impressed that she read it again. We just wanted to make sure we didn't miss some other hidden meaning. We and our mountain biking friends really enjoy the stories submitted to DR during the contest. |
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| Comment from Tim Daniels on 2008-11-16 |
| I thought this story was much better than the winner. Well done. Too bad those judging it didn't see it that way. |
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