Ch. 3 The
Brown Line to Auschwitz
It was an ordinarily wretched day at the
office. In the morning, Richard prepared for an important afternoon sales
meeting with a prospect of his, Goldman Sachs. The deal with Goldman was a big deal. In the meeting, he would recommend a reduction in
units through an investment in technology, which would lead to greater overall
profitability, accountability, and of course flexibility. Should Goldman
object, he would pull other abilities out of his ass. The reduction in units
was key. That meant the elimination of employees, of cost. Profitability! Huge
improvement in the bottom line. The head-count reduction alone would make the
business case. Return on investment? Yes, sir, vice chairman, sir. Our
preliminary, high-level study shows 375 percent, at least. That’s a
conservative estimate, by the way. Hamiltonian
conservative. Goldman has low-hanging fruit everywhere. More figures to come in
our deeper-dive analysis, set for the next phase. Don’t forget adaptability.
And scalability! Include terminal value and the tax component in our
calculations and we can double that return on investment. Yes, double. Thanks,
well, you’ve gotta think outside the box on this particular subject, vice
chairman. Sign here. No, thank you. Looking forward to working with your team.
In the meantime, may I suggest a drinkability? Did I say that? Haha hehe! Ha.
Long week. Great, thanks again. You have a fine weekend as well. Weather
looking brisk. All hands on deck next week! Great. Just great.
Throughout the meeting, fantasies of suicide
played out in Richard’s head. Luckily for him, the meeting ended early, and the
day was nearly over. He was happy to see it was happy hour. Just in time. He
could feel his fingers shaking and the delirium tremens coming on. Time for the
Friday call to the wife, insinuating he would be home extremely late, if at
all.
“Hi,
honey. Yes I’ll be home after I grab a drink or two at Stocks and Blondes no I
won’t be late I’ll catch an early train home I promise oh and did I mention we
can get that Downton Abbey kitchen you wanted no well we can get that kitchen
it will look beautiful just like in that godforsaken show yes tell Andy I love
him no I won’t drink too much wait Andy did what in preschool fuck me we’ll
talk about it when I get home goodbye no I will not be late Jesus holy fucking
Christ calm yourself woman I’ll only have a couple drinks no late nights I
won’t be pissed as anything tonight but don’t wait up I’ve been working all
goddamn week I’m thirsty as Moses wandering the Sahara fucking desert yes you
heard me.
“Sahara. Fucking. Desert.”
Let the
night’s adventure begin!
Richard
planned to walk from his office in the financial district across the river to
catch a Red Line north to a bar, where he would get dangerously drunk. He’d
then either take the train home or sleep with a certain intern, in which case
he would cab home at an extremely late hour. He’d rather not return home in the
event he slept with the intern, but lately he’d been on the thinnest of ice
with his wife. He worried his wife would suddenly leave him for her
cardiotennis instructor, or report him missing to the affluent police. The last
time a Richard Lyons missing-person report was filed, the affluent police had
suggested to his wife that he was cheating on her. Not good. The officer had
said they got these calls from wives in the neighborhood all the time. “How
dare they!” Richard gasped to his wife when he returned home the next morning,
stinking a strange stink, like vodka perfume.
Richard
set forth along the Michigan Avenue tourist route north across the river,
observing his surroundings with an uncommon interest for someone so familiar
with the city. He passed over the backward-flowing river, thinking to himself
how peculiar a backward-flowing river was. He walked by a monument honoring the
victims of the Battle of Fort Dearborn, then another, honoring victims of the Great
Chicago Fire. Toward the lake, he saw the Navy Pier Ferris wheel circling in
the last light of the setting sun. He tried to, but couldn’t, remember the last
time he’d ridden a Ferris wheel. A marquee advertised a Smashing Pumpkins
concert at the Aragon Ballroom, then an agricultural-equipment trade show at
McCormick Place. The agricultural show made Richard wonder when there had last
been an actual, operational farm within city limits. Had to have been a hundred
years. He was sure not to make eye contact with a homeless man collecting
change within an empty bottle of limoncello. He did, for some reason, accept a
green flyer advertising a show at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, from a girl
in green. He started to sweat as he walked. The temperature had risen,
unexpectedly, at least twenty degrees since the morning. His heavy coat was
suffocating him.
Near
his Red Line destination, Richard noticed with suicidal pleasure a “Caution:
Falling Ice” sign. Hundreds of such signs littered the downtown from November
to April, warning pedestrians of the potential for death-by-crushing. The signs
were a huge middle finger from the property management companies to the rest of
the world—an announcement from the mustache-twirling chief legal counsel, “We
are not liable for your death by falling ice.” Cue evil laugh.
Richard
was attracted to the “Falling Ice” signs. He walked toward them, danced around
them, smoked underneath them. They were like little holy shrines for him. Life
insurance is tax-free, he thought. Kid doesn’t need a father. I sure didn’t.
Then again, here I am standing in the middle of the city waiting to get crushed
to death by falling ice. Touché. Lightning would be a more likely death. Will
go out for a long walk during a thunderstorm in springtime. Write that down.
With metal car keys in headband. Does life insurance cover suicides? Think so,
but only after two years. When did I buy that policy?
Richard
stopped by the “Falling Ice” sign. He looked up hopefully for a microwave-size
iceberg, squinting at the rooftop’s edge, but found none. Unfortunate. No
reason to stay long. It was getting late, and he was thirsty. Golden Goldman
victory hops awaited.
As he
walked, he read three texts he’d received in a row from the friend he was to
meet at the bar.
Wherefore
art thou, King Richard?
The white
queen is frisky
From the
red whisky :)
The
texts made Richard’s heart jump. The white queen of course meant cocaine, and
red whiskey meant red whiskey. Hurray! He hurried on until he saw another
“Falling Ice” sign ahead in his path. Hurray again! Richard approached. There,
leaning against the sign, was a tiny homeless girl, not three feet high,
wearing a crown of gleaming red-leaf skeletons. She held a smaller cardboard
sign, which read:
qarter for a farry tail
The
girl had nothing with her but a plastic cup filled with change and a wooden pan
flute. She looked familiar, but Richard couldn’t place her. The familiarity was
distant. He sensed he’d known the girl when he was a boy. He wondered how that
could be possible, when she looked to be just a girl herself.
Richard
was intrigued by the “Falling Ice” sign and by the strangely familiar
fairy-tale salesgirl. He’d once liked a fairy tale. Hadn’t he? Hard to remember
that far back. He decided he’d pay for a fairy tale. As a bonus he might get
crushed to death by falling ice while he waited under the sign, listening.
He put
a ten-dollar bill into the girl’s plastic-cup cash register.
The
girl gave Richard a look of sarcastic surprise. Her eyes were intelligent and
looked older than the rest of her. “Mister, ten whole dollars will buy you a
different sort of fairy tale! For that much, if you like, I can make up a fairy
tale of you, just for you. Would that suit you, mister?”
“The
fairy tale of me? Ha! Have at it, by all means.” Richard laughed, but it was a
nervous laugh.
The
girl started without so much as the bat of a lash over her revelator eyes.
A poor boy grew up and into a fine specimen of a
businessman. One night, his wife said he would be
pissed as lord off his fizzy cross of gold, and
she was
right, he would be pissed, even though he promised
her he would not. The winter wind blew him home
with the storm at some ungodly hour of the night,
so
drenched in Chanel No. 5 you would have guessed it
was the flavor of the snow bucketing down. His
wife
went mad waiting for him. He’d crossed the line
one
time too many, she said to herself, but she’d said
that
many times before. Later that night, he snuck out
of
their bed, and his wife thought, sneaky devil,
always
sneaking around. His wife searched the house for
him. She found him in his son’s room. His wife
couldn’t imagine the boy ending up like his lying
daddy, but he would. Squinting through the
keyhole,
she couldn’t see anything until a white flash of
winter
lightning exposed them. Her husband was standing
near the window with the boy’s Spider-Man pajamas
knotted about him like red ivy. The boy wore his
father’s fancy necktie around his head like a
crown.
They were playing and dancing. They giggled
together, “God save the bachelors, the bachelors
of
finance. They’ve spent all their gold on golden
underpants.” The two danced around the room, and
the wife wished to be with them. She walked in and
asked if she might share in the dance. The three
danced, one last dance.
“That
is your own personal fairy tale, mister. Thank you kindly for your business.”
Richard
started sweating again, which was strange, because he felt naked. He knew the
story. The story was most definitely his. It was a typical Friday night, maybe
that very Friday night. His head started to spin. He pissed his pants a bit. He
stood there, staring at the girl, as if he should defend himself. But he
couldn’t think of any defense, so he just stared, and as he stared, she emerged
again as a memory from his childhood.
“Thanks, uh, ah, eh … thanks.” Richard
stuttered nervously. “You, um, look familiar. I, I … I think we’ve met?”
The
girl stared back at Richard, turning her head sideways in thought, as if she
were trying to remember him.
“Maybe
we have met. Did you ever believe in magic?”
He had.
As a
boy, Richard had thought the city was made of magic. The old-man magician had
told him so. He’d believed that mermaids swam within Buckingham Fountain. He’d
dreamed of water fairies dancing after dark on the backward-flowing river. He’d
been scared of the spirits of old Fort Dearborn, who haunted the high-rises
built on their graves. An oracle had seen into the future at the northwest
corner of North and Western. Rich had ridden the L as if it were a dragon
drenched in pixie dust, set to soar over the lake and along the coast. There’d
been magic everywhere then.
But
that was then, when he was a boy. As a man, spirits were drunk and not dreamed.
He snorted pixie dust, and while it made him high, he could never truly fly.
The only Oracle he knew was a software corporation he’d once consulted for.
Dragon was a text-to-speech mobile assistant app. Mermaids were mythology. The
city was all steel and asphalt. And magic was something only children believed
in, not Richard.
Richard
believed in nothing.
He
looked to the sky, not for falling ice, but for the place the magic had been
relegated. Dim shafts of red light glowed within the pillars of western horizon
between the skyscrapers, reminding him the sun had set not long ago. The moon
shone down from above white stars, which were indistinguishable from airplane
headlights, twirling together above the afterglow. It was the moment between
afternoon and evening when the moon and sun swapped ownership of the sky.
Twilight.
“What is your name, girl?” Richard asked. “Will you at least tell
me that much?”
“I’ll
tell you,” she said, smiling, “but only if you perform a magic trick for me.”
Magic
trick. Right. Without thinking, Richard pulled a 24-karat-gold fountain pen
from his jacket. The pen had once been sacred to Richard. It had been awarded
to him when he was promoted to vice president of something by a senior vice
president and group president. He usually kept it in a tiny frame in his
office. How it had ended up in his jacket, he couldn’t say. But he had to make
magic with it.
Richard
scribbled a large “M” on the “Falling Ice” sign. The sign now read:
Caution: Falling MIce
A bow
from Richard and applause from the girl.
“You’re
mad as the old king. Yes, you are. Total madman!” the girl laughed, pleased at
the trick.
Richard
bowed again. “Now, live up to your end of the bargain. Tell me your name.”
“It’s
Piper. But you wouldn’t remember my name, would you? We’ve met once before, but
that was when you were someone else entirely, and we were entirely somewhere
else. And anyway, a dandelion is a pretty flower to a boy, but no more than a
pesky weed to a man. Your life and everything in it, even this city, it’s all
become a tangled patch of weeds. Hasn’t it?”
“Piper,
Piper …” Richard whispered under his breath. He was getting close.
The
girl looked up at him, eyebrows raised, guessing his thoughts. “Tell you what.
Throw that stupid-ass golden pen into the river as far as you can, and if you
throw it far enough, I’ll tell you exactly how it is you think you know me.”
Fine.
Richard took the golden pen from his pocket, crow-hopped, and flung it into the
far depths of the river like a champion golden-pen javelinist. Problem was, it
had been such a long time since he’d crow-hopped. He’d lost all his
crow-hopping ability. His weak knees buckled under his fat beer belly. He fell
squarely onto his back, striking his head against the sharp edge of a sewer
cap.
As
Richard lay on the sidewalk in a daze, the mechanical clatter of the city
quieted, and he heard only a whistle from the little girl’s flute. She played
him a familiar song, one of those songs that carries with it the remembrance of
some great event. The song penetrated a dark, hidden corner of Richard’s mind
like a light from the past, helping him to remember. Richard opened his eyes
and stared up from the ground at the twilight. He saw a girl in a white dress
sailing through the sky. It was the same girl he’d seen during that college
adventure, soaring among the dark funnel clouds, her blonde hair like the tail
of a kite.
He
remembered. She was a character within a boyish adventure he’d had long ago, a
different adventure than the sort he’d grown accustomed to. It had been the
most peculiar adventure, with kings, queens, ghosts, cowboys, Indians, elves,
more. And there had been a girl.
No, not
the flying girl. Another girl.
Richard
closed his eyes again as he lay on the sidewalk. The lovely song tingled his
ears. And as it played, he remembered all he’d forgotten.
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