My hand shook as I hung up again. Was he gone? I didn’t trust it.
I flipped the inside lights off and crept over to the door in the dark. The vestibule was empty, and the street, too, except for a late-nightrideshare heading up Milwaukee Avenue, too fast. Minutes ticked by as I made sure I was alone.
When I was finally convinced, I turned the dead bolt, reached out and locked the vestibule quick-quick, and then bolted myself back inside, panting like I’d sprinted the block. I crossed back to the stage, grabbed my guitar by her neck, and got the hell out of there. I didn’t know if I’d be able to sleep after a day like this, the exalted ups, the low downs, but there was no way to find out but drag my spangled ass upstairs to bed.
10
I woke up with a tongue in my ear, and not in a good way.
“Bear,” I moaned, pushing him away. I had a headache and had the exhausted feeling I had traveled a long, grueling distance. But it was only a nightmare, a dream of a void, the world falling out from under my feet. Tossing, turning. The bedsheet had pulled from all four corners of the mattress. “Go tell Oona you need out.”
The light behind my eyelids was too bright, though. I opened my eyes. The kids were both sitting pretty at the side of my mattress, hopeful.
These jerks. I hadn’t forgiven them for snuggling up to Marisa the night before.
Lemon yawned wide and whining, and their tails started wagging. It was Thursday morning. Oona would have already taken them for a walk before going to work, but it didn’t matter. I had said the magic word.Out.
A few minutes later I was standing on the street in my pajamas and leather jacket, my feet stuffed into some ski boots Oona used only when the snow was high. Just outside in freezing temps for dogs that weren’t mine, rethinking my life’s choices.
On our way out, I’d confirmed that the bundle of clothing that had been huddled against the bricks the night before was still gone. At a minimum, that guy with the dirty beard was on his feet, and I could forgive myself for the blanket I had not delivered.
The dogs sniffed along the front of the building instead of the narrow strip of parkway near the street, where the snow was tamped down to a hard, dirty shell over the grass. “Guys,” I said. “Over here. There’s abrand-name treatin it for you if you wrap this up fast.”
My hair, loose from all the pins and curls from last night, flew across my eyes. I pulled it back to find both of the dogs staring up at the window in the empty storefront next door to the pub. The brown paper in the windows had peeled away at a corner. Someone was inside, right at that moment slapping the corner up to close off the view into the room. The dogs sat on the ice, their tails sweeping the sidewalk.
Wouldn’t a breakfast place in that spot be nice? But maybe I thought so because I was hungry.
In the window, a hand smoothed down the paper, paused. I had the sense that whoever it was knew we were out here, and was waiting for us to move along.
“Are we doing this or what?” I said to the dogs, and tugged on the leash before we all froze our tails off.
THE BEASTS LED MEon their usual scent tour of the block. Around the corner from the pub, Bear found a spot of grass poking out of the ice that needed serious attention, every single blade, while I stood shivering. Nearby, a maroon mom wagon had badly parked, its tire up against the curb. It had already been rewarded with a bright orange parking ticket under its windshield wiper.
Finally, Bear could be convinced to turn the corner toward home. Down at McPhee’s entrance, a young woman in an over-puffed black coat stood at the vestibule door, rattling the handle.
“We open at noon,” I called.
She jumped. People certainly were skittish these days. The dogs pulled toward her, eager to say howdy, but I held them back.
She looked down at them. “I need to talk to someone.”
“You don’t want to see my hourly rate for therapy, kid,” I said. Patsy Cline always called everyonehoss, and that was gender neutral, useful, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it on the street this early in the day. “Come back at noon and you can get the cheap kind, by the ounce.”
“No, I need to talk to asupervisor,” she said, trying to sound more adult than she was. “I’m looking for someone who came here last night. She’s not answering her phone.”
I could see this was about to become my problem.
She was a skinny one under the coat, thin wrists poking out, and young. Her jeans were stuffed into high, suede boots, the kind that would be ruined by one interaction with sidewalk salt. The coat she was wearing, though, was made for polar exploration, one of those expensive brands they wore in the Yukon or wherever. Eight hundred dollars easy, except the logo on the shoulder patch, from a distance, looked exactly like the one on the coats for Chicago Transit Authority bus drivers.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said, for time. We got weird stories once in a while, and Alex would pour them a drink and listen—or not speak, which they took to be listening. But I didn’t have time for this now.
Well, I had thetime. I just hadn’t planned on spending it this way. I had my life to figure out, and I couldn’t show up to the special songwriting session with the band empty-handed.
I looked at this little chick shivering on the sidewalk, big eyes under a floppy pom-pom beanie, and knew I would have to hear the story.
What was thisempathy? It was probably the fault of that blanket I hadn’t taken out last night. This girl had caught me at a weak moment, and it was only getting weaker out here in the cold.
“Okay,” I said finally. “You can come in. But just for a few minutes.”
