CAMILLE
I’m not going to tell you everything. Just the things I think you should know.
I met him on the street. The corner of some city street, where it crosses beneath the “L” tracks. It was gritty, grungy there. The buildings, the tracks didn’t let the light in. Parked cars, steel girders, orange construction cones filled the road. The people, they were ordinary Chicago people. Just your everyday eclectic mix of hipsters and steampunk, hobos, trixies, the social elite.
I was walking. I didn’t know where I was going. All around, the city buzzed. Air-conditioning units dripped from up above; a bum begged for cash. A street preacher stood on the curb, foaming at the mouth, telling us we’re all hell-bound.
I passed a guy on the street. I was going the other way. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew his type. The kind of rich former prep school kid who never fraternized with the trashy public school kids like me. Now he was all grown up, working in the Financial District, shopping at Whole Foods. He’s what you’d call achad, though his name was probably something else like Luke, Miles, Brad. Something smug, uptight, overused. Mundane. He gave me a nod and a smile, one that said women easily fell for his charms. But not me.
I turned away, kept walking, didn’t give him the satisfaction of smiling back.
I felt his eyes follow me from behind.
I spied my reflection in a storefront window. My hair, long, straight, with bangs. Rust-colored, stretching halfway down my back, over the shoulders of an arctic-blue tee that matched my eyes.
I saw what that chad was looking at.
I ran a hand through my hair. I didn’t look half bad.
Overhead, the “L” thundered past. It was loud. But not loud enough to tune out the street preacher. Adulterers, whores, blasphemers, gluttons. We were all doomed.
The day was hot. Not just summer but the dog days of it. Eighty or ninety degrees out. Everything smelled rancid, like sewage. The smell of garbage gagged me as I passed an alley. The hot air trapped the smell so there was no escaping it, just as there was no escaping the heat.
I was looking up, watching the “L,” getting my bearings. I wondered what time it was. I knew every clock in the city. The Peacock clock, Father Time, Marshall Field’s. Four clocks on the Wrigley Building, so that it didn’t matter which way you came at it from, you could still see a clock. But there were no clocks there, on the corner where I was at.
I didn’t see the stoplight before me go red. I didn’t see the cab come hustling past, racing another cab to snatch up a fare down the street. I stepped right into the street with both feet.
I felt him first. I felt the grip of his hand tighten on my wrist like a pipe wrench so that I couldn’t move.
In an instant, I fell in love with that hand—warm, capable, decisive. Protective. His fingers were thick; his hands big with clean, short nails. There was a tiny tattoo, a glyph on the skin between his fingers and thumb. Something small and pointy, like a mountain peak. For a minute, that was all I saw. That inky mountain peak.
His grip was powerful and swift. In one stroke, he stopped me. A second later, the cab raced past, not six inches from my feet. I felt the rush of it on my face. The wind off the car pushed me away, and then sucked me back in as it passed. I saw a flash of colors only; I felt the breeze. I didn’t see the cab shoot past, not until it was speeding off down the street. Only then did I know how close I came to being roadkill.
Overhead, the “L” screeched to a stop on the tracks.
I looked down. There was his hand. My eyes went up his wrist, his arm; they went to his eyes. His eyes were wide, his eyebrows pulled together in concern. He was worried about me. No one ever worried about me.
The light turned green, but we didn’t move. We didn’t speak. All around, people stepped past us while we stood in the way, blocking them. A minute went by. Two. Still, he didn’t let go of my wrist. His hand was warm, tacky. It was humid outside. So hot it was hard to breathe. There was no fresh air. My thighs were moist with sweat. They stuck to my jeans, made the arctic-blue tee cling to me.
When we finally spoke, we spoke at the same time.That was close.
We laughed together, released a synchronous sigh.
I could feel my heart pound inside of me. It had nothing to do with the cab.
I bought him coffee. It sounds so unimaginative after the fact, doesn’t it? So cliché.
But that was all I could come up with in a pinch.
Let me buy you a coffee,I said.Repay you for saving my life.
I fluttered my eyelashes at him.Put a hand on his chest. Gave him a smile.
Only then did I see that he already had a coffee. There in his other hand sat some iced froufrou drink. Our eyes went to it at the same time. We sniggered. He lobbed it into a trash can, said,Pretend you didn’t just see that.
A coffee would be nice,he said. When he smiled, he smiled with his eyes.
He told me his name was Will. There was a stutter when he said it, so that it came outWi-Will.He was nervous, shy around girls, shy around me. I liked that about him.
