Chicago Blues

Mr. and Mrs. Holloway walked down La Salle Street and W. Monroe, arguing. They kept their voices low, yet every few minutes Mrs. Holloway burst out in strange noises. She sounded like a woman on the verge of combusting. Her piercing words bounced through the crowd of Chicagoans walking home from work, weaved around the corners of the dingy high-rises, and floated into the cracks of box heaters jammed between windowpanes. Homeless peddlers leaned on the sides of buildings and bundled up; their shoulders hunched against the wind.

“Reg, I told you to get the nonfat milk a thousand times yesterday. What am I supposed to do with a gallon of two-percent?” Mrs. Holloway said.

“I don’t remember that,” he said. They turned a corner onto W. Madison Street. “You

know what, Addie? You never thank me. Jesus, I give you everything you could want and all you ever complain about is the fucking specifics of milk fat? Every goddamn time I go to the store…” his voice trailed off into a series of imperceptible grumbles. His mustache quivered. Addie made clicking noises with her tongue.

A rail-thin woman in her late fifties, Adelaide, or “Addie” for friends, wore warm clothes from head-to-toe. Shearling lining peeked out the tops of her leather boots followed by dark pantyhose. A downy beige coat and a pashmina scarf shielded her neck from the wind. An off-white fleece hat with flaps covering her ears completed her ensemble. She might tip right over on the sidewalk from the weight of it all. Addie colored her hair honey blonde every three weeks and liked it cut short “like Twiggy.” Tufts of her hair stuck out around each ear flap. She held herself in a way that suggested a former grace.

“You know, I don’t like it when you swear, Reg. It’s not gentlemanly.”

A homeless man held out a cup in her direction as they walked toward the crosswalk. “Spare change, I need some coffee, any help I can get,” he said, mumbling.

She glanced at him and wrinkled her nose.

“For Christ’s sake – nonfat milk is practically water. What’s wrong with two percent? I

drink it all the time,” Reg said. He contorted his face, using his right hand to drink from an

invisible cup. He chugged the imagined liquid in one exaggerated gulp. “Ah, refreshing.” He looked back to see his wife stopped a few yards away on the sidewalk. “Now, my dear, let’s get to the show already. Hop to it.” He looked down at his watch; it read 6:21pm.

Adelaide looked away, shrinking even more in size. She sidestepped a bright piece of gum smeared on the sidewalk as she caught up.

Mr. Holloway’s eyes gleamed as he raised his head towards the darkening sky, waiting for his wife. The first thing people noticed about him were his small, glassy black eyes, like on a porcelain doll. A stocky man, Reg walked with a wide gait. His shoulders swung with each lumbering step and every three or so minutes he twisted the edges of his mustache. Mr. Holloway worked his way up the corporate ladder in Chicago in the late 1970s after being drafted in the Vietnam War. At last, he landed a high-paying bank job in 1989 to his wife’s satisfaction. In the last twenty years, he never saw her as happy as when he brought home the biggest Christmas bonus of his career and a diamond necklace. These days he spent money on Cuban cigars and thought about his impending retirement.

“Don’t mock me. I can’t drink two percent. It…you know…it shows on my thighs. The very next day it’s on my hips. I’m practically asking for it,” she said, looking down at her waist, which was bulging out abnormally due to the layers of winter clothing.

It started snowing as they waited idly for the walking signal to appear so they could get to Upper Wacker Drive, where Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” was playing. Neither of them had a clue about the Italian language, but Mr. Holloway liked to listen to the bel canto singers, who steeped emotion into each lyric, because he didn’t feel many emotions himself. It was outwardly classy, but also provided a kind of release.

Steam rose up from a street cart where a man sold hot dogs. Reg glanced over and sniffed the air, the salty meat, and almost walked right over. A line of people materialized in front of the cart.

“A little weight could do you some good,” he said under his breath.

“What did you say?” she said.

The walking signal came on and he started across the street, momentarily lost within the crowd. Car horns blared. She could smell the wool of her boots getting wetter. The sky faded from pale blue to dark grey along the horizon. White flecks melted on Adelaide’s hat.

The couple walked under the shade of the underpass that hovered above S. Wells Street and emerged on the other side. Red and green lights flashed periodically, disfigured by the reflection of the snow-speckled floor-high windows of the Centura Software building.

“You know,” Reg said, slowing down and turning to face his wife while still standing in the middle of the street. Bystanders thinned out and the fading light outlined Reg’s giant form, backlit by a streetlamp. He paused, not knowing if he should continue in fear of being exiled from their bed, but did anyway. “Even though I never see you naked anymore…” He eyed Adelaide.

“Reginald Holloway, sometimes you disgust me. Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not working,” she said in a tone less menacing than she had hoped. Instead, her voice came out mangled and tight.

Adelaide grabbed her pashmina and wrapped it three times around her neck, tighter than before. She walked out of the intersection to the right side a few feet away and stood there, arms crossed. Her head looked like it floated above a mass of bird feathers, a smoked Cornish game hen on a platter. Mr. Holloway remained in the middle of the three-lane street, distracted by a snowflake that landed on the bridge of his nose. He looked at her.

“I had that same dream last night, Addie,” he said, looking back at the snowflake slowly melting on his hot skin. “We were in bed and we were kids again. You looked beautiful. Light came in through some of the cracks in my bedroom window shutters and fell across your cheeks. You were looking at me. But then… your face went… dark and you turned away from me. You looked at the wall. The wall turned into a mass of tree vines, dark green, and… they sucked you in. I reached into a dark gap to pull you out, but my arm just kept going farther and farther inside, touching nothing. And then… I realized… I was crying… and I woke up.” The snowflake on his skin was now gone.

“Reg, a car – REG!”

A Buick Enclave swerved into the intersection from around the corner, the stoplight now blazing green against the sky, narrowly missing Reg’s backside, and drove away honking. Reg hadn’t moved except to pluck another snowflake delicately off his nose and blow it from his fingertip like an eyelash.

“The light is green, Reg. What are you doing in the middle of the street?” she said. “If he had hit you, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything. He had the right of way; it was a green light.”

“Pedestrians always have the right of way… Did you know that in 1988 scientists found two identical snowflakes? Everyone always says there are no two snowflakes that look alike, that they’re all unique,” he said.

“We’re two blocks away. Come out of the street.”

“Alright, alright. When we get home, you’re trying the milk I bought for you, see if it

changes anything,” Reg said, unfazed.

Adelaide ignored his comment and walked towards S. Franklin Street. She squared her eyes toward the river that she knew hid somewhere behind all the concrete and bodies. She wondered how cold the water felt. As the walk signal illuminated for the second time, Mr. Holloway shuffled onto the sidewalk and wrapped his arm in hers.

“Reg?”

“What.”

“I’m sorry about the dream.”

“Oh, well...”

“I’m still mad at you,” she said softly, looking towards her shoes on the pavement.

“I thought so.” He patted her on the back, and they resumed a brisk stroll towards the Lyric.

As they came up against the large stone pillars of the opera house, people walked inside as if siphoned up into a great abyss. They all had purpose, she thought, a goal; to see “Lucia di Lammermoor”, listen and watch and cry, to drive back home in the darkness and then fall into bed and dream, of love maybe.

Almost three inches of snow covered the sidewalk now, but the footsteps on the powdery surface flattened it down and made it slippery. Casting her eyes upward at the falling snow, Adelaide checked the buttons of her coat. She pulled at the bottoms of her gloves until the outline of her fingernails came through the leather. Fresh snow shone white on her padded shoulders like epaulets.

A never-ending stream of cars sped across the street in front of the Lyric Opera. Stoplight beams caught in car windows, stretching out like glossy taffy across the glass until disappearing into the air, then catching up again by the next car. Two men stood on the ledge of the center divider of the street. The men glanced over toward W. Washington Street and gestured at the McDonalds sign at the corner, then walked over at the green light.

Great stone pillars flanked the sign that hung above the main entrance to the building, reading “Lyric Opera of Chicago” in white lettering across a black plaque bordered in gold. A broad stone arch adorned with two reclining, naked human statues and two carved classical Grecian theatre masks below capped off the pillars above the sign; a stately mixture of Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

Adelaide and Reg stared at the building for a minute as if for the first time, their breath spilling out like thick white smoke. Finally, she decided to break the silence.

“How much time do we have until the show?” she said.

“Nearly two whole minutes, my dear. We are on time,” Reg said, re-shaping his mustache into an upward point.

“I want to take a walk.”

“What? Right before the show?”

“It’s too stuffy,” she said. She gazed to the left side of the building, looking for the river in the dark.

“It’s warm inside,” he said, carefully examining her, trying to see if she was really his wife or some look-alike that he’d brought all this way. “What’s gotten into you?”

She realized in that moment that if she and Reg walked closer to the building they would be absorbed by the crowd, turning into unrecognizable shapes, a mass of darkness and bodies.

“I - I need fresh air,” she said.

Without another word, Adelaide walked out of the lights and disappeared around the corner. She looked back – Reg was nowhere to be seen. She continued on, the pashmina slipping down her neck with every step.

Farther down W. Madison street, the light began to fade. She came to a stop on the corner where the river and the bridge crossed paths with the sidewalk. Her watch face, frosting over in the cold, read 6:32. Cars proceeded in an orderly line down the suspended bridges that streaked across the river on every block like iron tourniquets stopping the flow of water beneath the concrete. A bright green hue reflected across her face from the stoplight at the intersection. Yellow. Red. She resumed her walk, slower than before, and stopped when she reached the center of the bridge.

The occasional huddled figure walked past in a hurry. The muffled hum of tires running across the asphalt soaked through the air. Immediately, she smelled the river water, all sewage tang and road salt. Adelaide gazed across the water, squinting her eyes but all she saw were bridges cutting up the river, some splitting in the center and rising up toward the sky, folding inward. The faint sound of a string orchestra and a wailing female voice crashed through the silence. Adelaide turned from the expansive water and walked farther across the bridge, landing on the other side of the river from the Lyric.

A man approached her. He stared into her eyes for a moment quizzically, ripped from his thoughts. She peered at his pale blue irises.

“Shouldn’t you be getting home, Ma’am? It’s nearly freezing,” the man said, rubbing his hands together. He turned and moved a step closer.

“Oh, I’m quite alright, thank you,” she said, her voice shaky. She wrapped the scarf again around her neck and checked her watch; 6:38.

“Where is your house? I can take you back. You don’t want to keep walking that way,” he said, pointing a gloved hand toward the River North side. “If you keep going, you’ll follow the river for a while until the road tapers off. Then you’ve just got the Navy Pier, the water plant, and the lighthouse on an island in the lake. If I were you, I wouldn’t go alone,” he said, getting closer. She looked into his face; his eyes were dull.

“My husband will be coming shortly, thank you.”

She looked down at her watch; 6:40.

“Okay. Don’t get lost out there.” He pulled his hat closer to his face and resumed across the bridge. She noticed for the first time the faint clicking sound a stoplight makes when it changes colors. Red to yellow sounded like a plastic cup being placed deliberately onto a table, while yellow changing to green seemed like the pushing down of a pen tip on paper.

The sky darkened completely now, and the streetlamps lit up the road and the air around her. She held out her hand and reached at a snowflake.

Adelaide thought about what Reg told her; not every snowflake was special. A snowflake might melt or get swallowed up with the rest before realizing it had a twin. A few flakes rested on her warm cheeks, melting into a small puddle. She brought her fingers up to touch them and couldn’t tell if she was crying.

Adelaide crossed back over to the side of the bridge she came from and walked in the direction the man pointed. She roamed around families and couples growing sparser and sparser until it got later in the evening and she was alone. The music that swelled from inside the opera grew fainter as she walked. The jarring blare of car horns disturbing the night faded, too, until all Adelaide could hear were her own footsteps falling beside the river.

After walking for a while, she noticed her arms and legs shivering beneath her coat. Her watch read 7:20. She felt as if she might quake into ten million pieces right there beside the Chicago River. The pieces would melt into the snow until both she and the snow mixed together into a cold soup.

“Lost, are we?” said a man a yard away, wearing a smart blue coat and a sport jacket underneath. Adelaide looked at the man, desperation streaming from her eyes, and paused. He was handsome, maybe in his forties.

“Yes, sir, thank you… how might one get to the lighthouse from here?” she said.

“Lighthouse? That old place must be miles away, plus, you’d have to go by boat.” His eyes crinkled into a concerned smile, yet he refrained from approaching her and remained at a distance. He leaned confidently against the side of the railing that separated the Riverwalk from the water churning below.

“Would I be able to walk to the pier tonight, feasibly, I mean?” Something about this man made her feel comfortable. His eyes gleamed green.

“Would take you all night. Are you not from around here?”

“I’ve lived here since the ‘80s, but I’ve never walked around this part of town.”

“What’s your name? I’m Matthew.” He smiled and stuck out his hand but then dropped it when he noticed she hadn’t seen. She looked across the river longingly toward Lake Michigan, realizing from his words that she would never get there.

“Adelaide,” she said, still looking away. An awkward pause grew between them as he struggled to find something to say. She seemed content to stand there in silence forever.

“What do you do, Adelaide?”

“I’m retired but I used to be a writer – I wrote children’s books… I was quite successful,” she said, looking him straight-on.

“Cheers to that,” he said while shaking out his damp hair. “I’m an elementary school

teacher, but sometimes I feel like I’m not really living my life stuck in a room with little kids all day, you know. I have enough to worry about with my own.”

“Do you like teaching?”

“It’s alright. After a while it all seems the same, year after year. The kids learn, but then they move on. Sometimes I come down here. I like the water; the way it smells of rusty copper, like the blood of the city.”

“I bet it’s hard to say goodbye to the kids.”

“Well, that’s the way it has to be…” he paused for a minute, uncertain if he should continue on with his next question. “Why do you need to see the lighthouse tonight? I’m sure you can go tomorrow.”

“I have this vision of walking to the very top, where the light is, to see with my own eyes what it gazes at… It can’t be daytime, because in the daytime lighthouses have no use… I won’t be able to see what it sees. You must think I’m foolish.”

“Mm.” He peered at her from the darkness as if from across a chasm. “It’s really getting cold out here, no place for a woman like you. I was just on my way to the House of Blues before we started talking – eight o’clock show.”

Adelaide stopped looking at the river and turned to him. She could see the outline of his face, strong jaw, lean body, yet the dim light almost completely concealed him. A flickering streetlamp lit up the right side of his face in spurts.

“I love The Blues.” She hadn’t expected to say anything.

They walked. A few cars still drove across the bridge, their tires bumping up against the ridges of the street. Adelaide stretched out both of her arms and hugged the air that whipped around her face. Matthew smiled then gently placed his hand against the small of her back until they arrived at the entrance.

The architecture of the surrounding buildings had changed since she last paid attention. Now, instead of tall glassy office buildings and monumental Grecian columns, the House of Blues looked like a large, urban barn constructed from flat gray tiles. The same tiles covered the roof and a thick, beige rope-like trim clung to its edges. The “House of Blues” sign glowed neon blue against the black night. They waited for a while in a line that trailed from the door.

“I can’t wait to see the show. This should be good,” he said.

She nodded.

“I’m excited, too,” she said, trying to make her voice sound higher than normal.

Inside, a hostess seated them at a table for two a few tables away from the stage. A candle glowed next to two flyers for upcoming shows. They sat there for a couple minutes in the dimly lit room, straining their eyes to see some of the band members tune their instruments as other couples streamed in and filled the room with the buzz of small talk. A few notes from the piano rang out, sharp, as Matthew turned to her and said: “I’m going to the bar. You want anything?”

“Martini,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

The band, Tizzy and the Features, made up of a saxophone player, a piano player, a

singer, a guitarist, two horn players, and a drummer, walked onto the stage and immediately burst into a number called “My Baby’s Gone”.

She noticed for the first time that night she was sweating. She hadn’t taken off her winter clothes since entering the building, her scarf still tucked tightly around her neck, her hat still plastered to her hair.

In the bathroom, the bright fluorescent light alarmed her, and she cast her eyes to the floor. She went over to the side of the room and dusted off her clothes, damp from the snow outside that had accumulated over the several hours since she left home. Slowly, she pulled off each finger of her gloves and stuffed her wedding ring into her coat pocket. Then she peeled her hat off, ran her fingers through her flat hair, and took off the winter coat, revealing a black dress underneath that surprised her. She stood there examining her slender figure reflected in the mirror. Her cheeks had been beaten into a rosy hue from the chill air.

The scarf and the coat had become her new shell. Now she stood there in the light, naked and stripped. She felt skinned of her own hide, plucked and raw. Was she still beautiful, as Reg remembered her in his dream?

Back outside, Matthew sat at the table, waiting. He passed a Manhattan back and forth between his hands and drank from it every so often.

The florescent light cast strange shadows across her face. A red cloth had been draped across an ugly section of the bathroom ceiling, obscuring some of the light. A shadow streaked across her right eye and down her cheek. Bringing her hand up to the dark patch, she shifted a few inches to the left and the shadow moved, sitting on her face more broadly. Put off by her reflection in the mirror, Adelaide smoothed down her dress and walked out.

She sipped her Martini and looked at his eyes. The stage danced across his corneas. A red light beat down on the top of his head and a floor light glowed up underneath his chin, casting a dark, red shadow under his face. Sweat beads bloomed across his forehead. Looking around the room again, she noticed the people there looked just like him, transfixed by the blues and enraptured by the deep, raspy voice of the singer. Each one hunched forward in anticipation, wound up like a ball of wire as the band’s cascading rhythm escalated into a climax of rich tonal pops and surges. The saxophone leapt into a solo as Matthew locked eyes with Adelaide. In that moment she realized they were all strangers. She sat there, suffocating, watching Matthew’s sweat beads. She looked down at her watch; 8:15. Two hours since she’d left Reg. Maybe he was out there somewhere, looking for her in the cold.