Previously: Cornfield, silo, sky, sign for Hardees, cornfield, silo, sky, sign for Hardees … The last thing I remember is getting kicked … When I talk to America, I picture a man in a suit on a cable news station …
fernweh (fern-way) n.
1. An ache for distant places
2. Being homesick for anywhere but home
I was living in Logan Square, on Kedzie, in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store. Gangsters had given way to hipsters, while a few old Norwegian ladies still went to the Lutheran church on the square; when taco places called Gloria’s or Margarita’s were turning into cafés called GREAT, or NEAT, or some class of interjection. I was cooking my breakfast on a Saturday morning when the phone rang and a number
I didn’t recognize flashed on the screen.
There is a divide in our society, America, one of many. On one side are people who grew up with regular, landline phones, sans caller-ID, and in their formative years they developed the habit of answering the phone whenever it rang. On the other side are people who grew up with at least caller ID, if not cell phones, they got used to screening all their calls, and answering only if they knew what they were getting into. I grew up on the former side. Those on the latter side would probably have never found themselves in the mess I’m in now, at least not in the same way.
“Hello.”
“Grandma Millie?”
“Who?”
“Grandma Millie?”
The voice sounded like he was twelve.
“I think you have the wrong number,” I said.
“I’m trying to reach Millie Boones?”
“There’s nobody here by that name.”
“Oh, um, okay.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
I hung up the phone, and went back to the egg. The egg stuck to the pan a bit, and the yolk broke as I moved it to the plate. A yellow pool spread around the white. I mopped that up with a piece of toast, finished the egg, drank my coffee, and washed the dishes because if I left them sitting on the counter, there would be roaches, guaranteed.
Out on the sidewalk, it was sunny—nice high-in-the-sky-clear-blue-June-day sunny. My plan: get new shoes, my first new pair in two years, and then have lunch with Ana Riviera. Ana made power lines hum when she walked underneath them, and there was always a chance that we would plug into each other and jump start all the cars parked out on the street. Or we might totally short out, and the cars would stay stuck, up on cinder blocks, with weeds growing in the engine, to borrow an image from my Oklahoma home.
I never knew for sure.
One block later, on my way to the Blue Line, even though I was sweating, I turned around and went back to get a jacket.
There are two pieces of advice that I give to friends and family when they visit Chicago for the first time: give yourself at least an hour to get where you’re going, and take a jacket. My first summer there, I was watching a game at Wrigley and it was hot for the first pitch. My cup of beer was sweating and I thought it was a good idea to take my shirt off, be one of those guys.
Bottom of the fourth, Sammy Sosa up, the winds blows through the stadium, and the temperature drops, no shit, like twenty-five degrees. Now, I’m a skinny dude, skin and bones, it almost knocked me right over. I watched the rest of the game with my arms pulled inside my shirt and the tops of my ears tucked under my hat.
I scrunched the jacket like a football; I slung it over my shoulder; I bunched it up small and held it in my hand. When I got to the Blue Line, I tied it around my waist, which freed my hands, but made me feel like a child, which was not how I wanted to feel on my way to have lunch with Ana, who would be all woman, dressed just right, with everything in place, and nothing unnecessary in her hands.
I got the shoes, classic Chucks. I sat on a bench on the sidewalk outside the store and put them on. I wanted Ana to be impressed in some way. I hoped she’d at least notice and like me a little more. She was not really that shallow, but I was that insecure. I left my old shoes on the bench and returned to the train. I stepped off the train at 18th Street and walked east to Nuevo Leon. My phone rang again. I answered without looking.
“Hello.”
“Hello, is Grandma Millie there?”
“No, I’m sorry, this is still the wrong number.”
I walked across Ashland and made a mental note to always check to see who’s calling before answering.
“Look, I’m sorry, but this is my cell phone. I’ve had this number for four years. I don’t know your Grandma. This isn’t her number.”
“I’ve tried so many numbers.”
“Maybe you should check with your mom?”
Silence. Then a sigh. Then he hung up.
While waiting for the incomparable Ana Riviera, I drank three Sols and ate tortilla chips set on repeat — eat the basket, get a refill, eat the basket, get a refill. After three beers, I was a bit tipsy when Ana arrived, which made the light swim around her even more than usual as she walked towards me.
Hello, my name is Ana Riviera. I was born in Mexico City but my family moved to Geneva when I was five. At the age of twelve I traveled to Johannesburg to attend an exclusive international school where I studied diplomacy and learned to speak my fourth and fifth languages. When I was nineteen I moved to Chile and planned the redevelopment of central Santiago. Now I am working on my Masters in Economics at the University of Chicago because I have six weeks to kill and what the fuck else am I going to do? Here is a copy of my collection of short stories. Would you like me to sign it?
Ana Riviera is that kind of name.
The real Ana was born at home, in her mama’s bathtub, helped into the world by the wife of her mother’s cousin, her father’s mother, and the woman who lived next door. The woman who lived next door ran the show. Ana couldn’t remember her name, because Ana has a terrible memory — if she saw a picture, she’d remember — and because the woman died a few weeks later, Ana being the last of many children born on her watch.
So Ana was born, raised, and, until a few days ago, lived on the same block in Pilsen, a bio that, while it lacks the redevelopment of any nation- al capitals, still kicks a certain kind of ass.
I stood to give her a kiss on the cheek, a greeting that shows sophistication and control and confidence and, in our case, holds the memory of intimate moments and, in the case of the kiss I wanted to give, the reminder that I was a man worthy — more than worthy! — of more such moments in the future, possibly the near future, possibly that very afternoon. But I kicked the table leg when I stood up and spilled water on my cell phone.
I grabbed the phone and shook the water off. “Shit, sorry. Did I get you?”
Ana flinched as the drops flew.
“You nearly got me. I see you’re already smashed.”
Ana reached toward me, gave me a hug, kissed me on the cheek.
“Smashed. But I have had three whole beers.”
“Damn. You better sit down then, you’re in no condition to stand.”
“Yeah, but it’s Sol, so it’s good for me. No chemicals.”
She jutted her chin toward the empty bottles and finished off our little inside joke with a passable impression of black man in his sixties, “More natural and shit.”
Once upon an afternoon, I was in the liquor store buying a six-pack of Corona that I planned to drink while watching zombie movies. Seeing me make my purchase, a local drunk named Belmont — because he slept under the overpass, up there on Belmont. Know where I’m saying? — tilted his chin toward me and my cervezas and asked, “Hey, you like beer?”
I slid my wallet in my back pocket and answered Belmont’s question.
“Apparently.”
“You ever drink Sol?”
“No, I don’t know Sol.”
“Sol’s good. No hangover. That stuff,” pointing again with his chin at my beer, “has a bunch of chemicals and shit, I guess. Sol is, I don’t know, more natural and shit. I never get no hangover from it.”
“Okay, thanks for the advice.”
“Sure no problem, buddy. Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“What’s up?”
“You gonna drink all those beers?”
“You know, I think I actually am.”
We’d hit the ground running — there’d be no stupid, Hey, how’s it going, or anything like that. This joke would lead to more jokes would lead to stories would lead to more stories and soon she would be dazzled and would remember that I’m real fucking charming and skilled at cunnilingus and she’d insist we go to her place and stay there for three or four days. That was my hope, at least. That was always my hope.
We sat down, and the server came and took our order. More beer for me, a beer for her, a bean burrito for me, two tacos for her. She must have slept in, or at least showered late, because her hair was still wet, which made it even shinier and darker than usual. She scooted her chair in closer and apologized for being late and she smelled clean and it’s a wonderful kind of intimacy to smell someone who’s gone fresh from the shower to you.
“It’s been one of those mornings,” she said.
“I know those mornings. I just call them mornings.”
“But look at you, you got here first, and you had to come miles, so you must have been up and at ‘em today.”
“As much as I ever am. I got new shoes, too.”
“Look at you! Can I see?”
I held my foot out, feeling a bit like a fifth-grade boy, worrying that Ana saw me as a fifth-grade boy. I tried to speak of manly things.
“So, how’s it going?”
Damn it. Exactly the phrase I wanted to avoid. Ana hates general-speak like “How’s it going?” I don’t know how “it’s” going because I don’t know what “it” is? “It” could be anything. What do you want to know, Jackson? Are you asking about my day, my life, my work? “How’s it going”? That’s like saying, “Tell me stuff”, which, if you want me to tell you stuff, just say “Ana, tell me stuff.”
She must have been tired because she didn’t argue against my line of inquiry.
“It’s okay. Just tired today. How’s it going with you?”
For her to ask that question, man, she must have been wiped out.
“Yeah, okay. Same as it ever was.”
“Not the same. You got new shoes.”
She nodded toward my feet. There was sincerity in her voice. Most of our conversations were one smart-ass quip after another, so I wasn’t sure how to handle sincerity. I answered with self-deprecation.
“Life above the liquor store will never be the same.”
Sincerity gave way to impatience.
“You could always move. You don’t have to live above a liquor store.”
She was right, America, I didn’t have to live above a liquor store, just like Belmont didn’t have to live under the overpass. It’s not the same, I realize, but my point, America, is Belmont found the best spot that worked for him given his circumstances, and I found the best spot that worked for me given my circumstances. I was working in a grocery store, paying for my own health insurance, paying off student loans, getting no money from my parents, because I never got any money from my parents, because my parents never had any money to give, hence the student loans. I could move to a cheaper place, farther from work, farther from the train, but then I’d need a car, which I couldn’t afford, or I’d spend hours per week on the bus, and when I’d complain about that, Ana would point out that I don’t have to live so far away from work, lots of people have to ride the bus, they don’t have a choice. I’m aware, I’m so aware so many people have such miserable lives and people spend all day and all night riding busses to and from multiple jobs and they have children to feed and none of the privilege that I have. Am I aware of the privilege, America? I’m aware. I’m so aware, and yet it still sucks to be thirty-four and living above a liquor store in an apartment that will never not smell like grease.
I was determined not to whine or get bogged down in debates I couldn’t win. I was determined to be charming.
“Sure, I could move, but then I’d miss the samurai.”
“There’s a samurai in the liquor store?”
The server brought our drinks.
“Not in the liquor store, at the El stop. I didn’t tell you about this?”
She shook her head. “I’d remember if you told me about a samurai.”
There was no guarantee that she’d remember, but I wasn’t going to go down that road. “There’s this guy, I see him somewhat regularly at the Logan stop, there on the platform, dressed all in samurai garb. Hat, boots, everything.”
“Sword?”
“No sword.”
“Oh.” She took a drink of her beer.
“It’s still a pretty good story. I saw him this morning. He was wearing brass knuckles. That’s something.”
“I guess.”
“He kept pacing along the platform and punching the pillars. Punching them hard.”
“Okay, that is weird.”
“Fucking weird.”
“On Saturday morning?”
“Right?”
Ana leaned forward and whispered, “Do you think he was out all night?”
I nodded. “Prowling the streets, keeping us safe from evildoers.”
“We need more samurais. Fuck the missile defense bullshit or electric border fences. Train an elite team of samurais.”
She could, when she wanted to, hang with whatever dumb topic I was going on about and come back with something that made the whole conversation work. Ana Riviera, who studied Zen Buddhism in the mountains of Japan.
“Ana, you’re preaching to the choir. And now you see why I can’t move. Who leaves a neighborhood guarded by a samurai?”
“You’re right. No one. So what happened with the samurai?”
“He got on one car and I got on another car far-the-fuck-away from him. He’s still out there somewhere. He could be anywhere. He could be in this very room.”
“Well, you win for the most interesting morning.”
“Yeah, and then, as if the samurai weren’t enough, I got a call from this kid wanting to talk to his Grandma. Two calls, really.”
“Awww. That’s kind of cute.” She took a drink.
“Kind of cute. But he sounded sad. I think he sounded sad. There were all these pauses and I could hear him fidgeting around.”
“What did you say?”
I swished my beer in its bottle as I talked. “I don’t know, ‘This is my cell phone, your grandma’s not here, you have the wrong number.’ What else am I gonna say?”
“No, nothing. That. I mean that, that’s what I’d say.”
I put the bottle down. “I also said he should check with his mother.”
“Yeah, unless his mother’s dead or in jail or something.”
“Jesus —”
“It could happen. Mothers are sometimes dead or in jail.”
“Yeah, no shit, I’m painfully aware, but I’m not gonna — what am I gonna be like, ‘If your mother is not dead and/or in jail, you should go check with her?’”
“No, I know. Look, I’m sorry, that was a bitch thing to say.”
“It’s fine, I know. Anyway, then he sighed this sigh, this sad fucking sigh.” Our food hadn’t come yet. We looked at each other over a basket of tortilla chips bracketed by tiny bowls of salsa. Ana dipped a chip in one of the bowls and held it there mid-dip. “Then what?”
“That’s it. Then he hung up.”
Ana dipped the chip. “This kid needs help.”
“It could be a prank.”
I watched her mouth chew. “A prank caller wouldn’t sigh.”
It was a good point, two good points: the boy was not making a prank call, the boy needed help. I had meant for the story about the boy and the phone call to be a somewhat interesting thing that happened that morning, a conversation piece, one (brief) stop on the road to intercourse, but it had already taken up more space than I wanted it to. Ana was chewing chips and thinking about the boy. She was thinking about many things, I could tell, none of which involved taking me back to her house.
Thank you for reading. Next week starts like this:
We rolled up to the motel at two in the morning.
Then Jackson has desires and dreams and he and Ana have breakfast.