Exchanging cell phone numbers turned out to be something of a mistake, if only because Nate's indiscriminate text messages over the next couple of months, often informing me of random though interesting facts about his day (
Abby given access to J's old lipstick and my face. Send help!
), created a Pavlovian reflex in me, a little skitter of happiness that ran through me whenever my phone trilled with a new text.
There was no point denying to myself that I was still attracted to him, though I kept that route closed off with a dozen rolls of mental caution tape. Whether he felt the same I didn't know, but neither of us broached the subject, happy enough with the status quo of occasionally getting together for lunch or coffee and idle chatter.
"Hey," he said one day over the phone when I picked up with a feeling more of curiosity than anything since his communication method of choice was usually texting and I hadn't yet been conditioned to perk up at the sound of incoming calls.
"Hi, what's up?"
"I want you to say hi to somebody special," he said, bubbling over with ebullience. His voice became distant as he talked to someone in the background. "Hey, come here. Come say hi to Emory, babe."
My heart sank before I could save it, and then buoyed back up again out of morbid curiosity when I heard some shuffling and then a bark. "Uh, Nate?" I said, not sure whom I was addressing on the other end of the line.
"I got a dog!" Nate announced.
"Congratulations," I said, somewhat breathlessly, feeling my heart swim back to its moorings.
"I think this will make it at least thirty percent more likely that people will come and talk to me on the street when I'm out walking her," he said. "No one can resist the face of a Lhasa Apso; it's been scientifically proven."
I laughed. "You got a dog so people would talk to you? That's really sad, man."
"Nah, that's only the side benefit. Chicago's awesome just as she is. Aren't you, Chicago?" he said, eliciting another happy, faraway bark.
It took me a minute. "You named the dog--"
"After my favorite musical, yes. Well, not my absolute favorite, but it would be cruel to name a dog Les Miserables, right?" he wittered, but I could hear a big, wide smile in his voice that told me the truth.
I smiled into my chest. "I'm sure the two of you will be very happy together," I said, not entirely sure whether or not I was actually speaking in code.
"One can only hope," he said.
We hung up, and I stood with my cell phone pressed against my chest for a moment, where hope and caution were starting a slapfight with each other.
What were we doing? There was always an element of flirtation in our interactions, just because that was the best way we knew how to operate with each other, but this was something on an entirely different level.
Maybe we weren't so happy with the status quo after all.
After deciding that the surprise dog announcement had gone over with me well enough to keep calling, Nate called again a few nights later, this time because he was bored.
I glanced at my bedside clock as I picked up the phone and turned down the volume on my TV, while the weatherman gestured to cartoony icons of sunbursts all over the state, just as he had almost every day for the past month, in an unusually dry summer.
"How did you know I'd even be awake?" I asked suspiciously.
"Because you're an informed and responsible citizen who watches the news every night," he replied, and damn him, he was right.
"Well, I never claimed to lead an exciting life," I sighed, as a truck commercial rolled by.
"I never said you needed to," he said diplomatically. Abruptly switching subjects, he added, "Do you think it's weird that after we kept running into each other in Thailand and then here, we haven't at all these past couple of months even though you live four blocks from here?"
I made a face at him, though it lost most of its effectiveness over the phone. "Did you call just to ask why we never see each other even though we saw each other last weekend?"
"No," he said. "I called to ask if you wanted to come with me and Chicago to the dog park on Saturday."
"Oh, I was supposed to get that from all that rambling?"
"Excuse me, Harrises don't ramble; we hold enlightened discourse."
"Oh, is that what you call what happened last week when you spent ten minutes telling me about the new Canadian bills after I asked if you had change for a twenty?"
A chuckle tumbled through the line, the familiar sound of it immediately bringing up an image of the way his eyes crinkled whenever he laughed. "Yeah," he said, "and don't you feel more enlightened now?"
I slid an inch down the headboard, switching the TV off now that there was no more news to be had. "I feel sleepy now."
"Do you need a bedtime story?"
"Yeah, tell me more about Canadian currency."
Nate laughed again. "Fuck off. I'll text you about Saturday."
"Okay," I said through a yawn. "Night."
Setting my phone back onto the nightstand, I turned off the light and shimmied further down the bed, pulling the bed covers up. My mind replayed our conversation, and though there was nothing particularly interesting or informative in it, I couldn't help but smile into the darkness.
Somehow, the switch from exclusively texting to actually speaking to each other over the phone opened a kind of gateway for us, and instead of the occasional coffee of simple acquaintances, we began making the kind of plans friends do, long, sunny days of casual meanderings across a windy city in which I had lived for years.
That seniority made me the default captain of our wanderings, something of a reversal of the us in Thailand when Nate had been happy to sport the imaginary tricorn and I content to tag along. It was nice being able to share the little things I liked about what I suppose could now be considered my hometown with someone else; the skyscrapers and museums were great for passing through, from what I'd heard, but it was the small, inconspicuous places, I thought, that glimmered like little pieces of its soul.
I brought him to my favorite bar, where they didn't try to deafen you with the Top 40 and had a shelf of board games you could play with for hours; let him in on the secret of a fantastic little Cuban restaurant tucked away in the back of an unassuming Rogers Park grocery store; introduced him to a beer garden with the best burgers in the Upper Midwest a few short blocks from where we both lived.
It was something I had never quite done with Michelle, who'd always preferred the artsy glamour that the city exuded with equal aplomb.
Not, obviously, that I had anything against the arts, and decided one day, realizing with a bit of a start that summer would soon be coming to an end, that Nate needed to experience the season closer of the Grant Park Music
Festival.
"Hey," I said, calling him from my office phone, "you
free tonight?"
"It's Friday night; sadly, of course it means I'm free." "Do you have any kind of blanket you won't mind getting
dirty?"
Nate was quiet for a moment. "Why?" he asked. "Do you
have a corpse you need to dispose of or something? Oh my
god, who did you kill?"
"Really? I ask if you have an extra blanket and that's
where your mind goes? I'm seriously starting to reconsider
this friendship."
He tutted. "I think the point you're missing is that I was
willing to come and help you dump a body into the lake. If
that isn't the mark of a good friend, I don't know what is. A
little appreciation would be nice, man."
"Let me rephrase," I said. "Do you have a blanket you
wouldn't mind getting
grass stains
on?"
"Yes," he said primly.
"Okay, bring it. Meet me at Michigan and Washington at
six, right by the park?"
"Done," he agreed. "What are we doing?"
It hadn't occurred to me, several months ago, occupied
with trying to remember how to breathe after Michelle had
left, that I had missed the spontaneity of being on my own -
doing, eating, seeing whatever I wanted without having to
check in with anyone, making plans on the fly, answering to
myself alone. And it was nice that there was somebody else
as unencumbered as I was to be spontaneous with me. "Just bring the blanket. See you at six," I said, settling the
receiver back in its cradle before Nate could ask more
questions.
With that taken care of, I slipped out of my desk chair to
go and get a client file from the cabinets in the clinic's front
office.
As I thumbed through the files in the R section, I became
increasingly aware of Marybeth eyeing me sideways. I
removed the file I wanted, sticking an orange out card in its
place, and closed the file drawer carefully; as it snicked into
place, Marybeth pivoted in her chair to face me directly. "Why are you smiling like that?" she asked suspiciously.
"You've been smiling like that for weeks."
I froze, my hand still on the drawer handle, as though I'd
been caught doing something unseemly. "Like what?" Marybeth frowned, not really sure herself, and went
with, "Like you have some kind of juicy secret you're not
telling me."
"Well, that is the nature of a secret, not telling people," I
explained, which was exactly the wrong thing to say, though
I'm not sure that denying the existence of a secret would have
made much of a difference.
"What is it?" she demanded, the chain of her reading
glasses swinging pendulously as she leaned forward, an
expectant glint in her eye.
"Nothing," I said. "There's no secret. I'm not even
smiling. You know I don't smile; I am stern and unyielding." Marybeth narrowed her eyes at me, my litany of
refutations obviously falling on deaf ears. "Okay," she said
airily. "Keep your secrets if you must."
"I shall," I said, removing my grip from the filing cabinet
and heading back out into the hallway behind her. "If I had
any to keep."
"Mmhm," she said flatly.
Whether it was the power of suggestion or whether her
eyes really hadn't deceived her, I began noticing too that my
face was occasionally going rogue the rest of the afternoon,
smiling when I had little reason to smile. Maybe my facial
nerves were developing a neurological condition; I resolved
to keep a close eye on it.
When the work day finally came to a close, I packed up
quickly and said hurried goodbyes to anyone I happened to
pass by on my way out, including Marybeth, whose best
wishes for a nice weekend came with the bonus gift of
another one of her oblique glances.
I squeezed onto one of the Red Line trains, shoulder to
shoulder with all the other commuters eager to leave work
behind, and it spat me out at the Monroe stop, where I
popped into a nearby deli to pick up a couple of sandwiches
and drinks to go. A couple of blocks north, I found Nate
waiting, a dark green fleece blanket rolled up under one arm
and the white string of a pair of earbuds disappearing into
his back pocket.
He extracted the earbuds on my approach, smiling.
"Where's the body?"
"You're a very disturbed young man," I said. Jerking my
head toward the deeper recesses of the park, I added, "We're
going this way."
Once he realized where we were headed, his grin
widened. "Cool," he approved. "I've been meaning to come
all summer."
We unrolled and flapped the blanket out onto a patch of
the expanse of lawn that yawned around the open-air, silvershell stage of the Pritzker Pavilion; chairs and music stands
for the orchestra were already set up, patiently waiting for
their players. It was still early, and there was a steady
stream of people arriving and staking out their spots on the
green. A couple of small children tottered past us, squealing
as they chased one another through the warren of picnic
blankets and lawn chairs.
"I didn't even think of it till now; tomorrow's the last
performance for the season," I said.
"Well, at least we get today," Nate said, kicking off his
shoes and settling himself onto the blanket, lying on propped
elbows.
Comfortable on the fleece, we stared up at the sky for a
moment, the exact shade of cornflower blue you get in backto-school crayon packs and dotted with tiny wisps of clouds
that scudded by on invisible currents. We couldn't have
asked for better weather for a free outdoor concert. The wind made the plastic bag at my side rustle, and I
remembered that I had brought dinner. Rooting for our
sandwiches, I found Nate's first and handed it over. "Roast
beef," I said. "I told them no onions, extra tomato. Correct?" "A-plus," Nate said, a note of surprise in his voice. I tilted my head in acknowledgement. "I am amazing." "That you are," he said, and tipped the soda bottle I passed to him in cheers. He cranked the cap off and took a swig of it, looking around at the rapidly filling up lawn. "Man, I'm really glad I have you to do all this stuff with. I mean, I have Jules and Abby, but that all has to be kid
friendly, you know? Not that this isn't, but."
I nodded, carefully unwrapping my pastrami on rye.
"Yeah, I get what you mean."
"It's hard to meet people, you know? Well," he amended,
"not hard to meet them; it's hard to keep them."
"Everyone's already got their own things going on," I
said.
"Yeah," Nate agreed. "And there's work, but then there
are only three people who work at my studio, including me.
There's, y'know, Rita, who does all my bookkeeping, and
then my assistant Valerie -- you met her that one time." "Yes," I said, remembering being confronted with very
blonde, very bright, youthful exuberance when I'd stopped by
Nate's studio once, a modest street-front office space he
rented slightly north of downtown.
"Rita's sixty, and she spends her days off with her
husband and cats and diverticular disease," he went on. I
gave him a perturbed look, and he appended, "She tells me
these things; I can't make her stop. Besides, she's a superstar
at accounting, so if she needs to tell me about the degree to
which she feels bloated on any given day, I'll take it." I chuckled. "That's very big of you. But yes, I can see
why the two of you might not socialize well outside of work,
though."
"Yeah, and then of course Valerie's, like, ten. Fresh out of college, so she goes and does whatever it is the nation's
youth do for fun these days."
"Drink?" I suggested. "Breakdance? Use the Twitter?" Nate patted me solicitously on one shoulder. "Well, at
least I'm not as old and out of touch as you."
"Only by a few months, my delusional friend," I pointed
out, returning the gesture, a little harder. "I look forward to
the day when you're as cranky and confused as I am. What a
great day that will be."
"No," he said. "I refuse."
I clicked my tongue at him. "Okay, Ponce de Leon." He laughed. "Ponce de Leon? Wow."
"See, that's one of the benefits of being friends with me.
You get a higher class of reference," I said. "You thought I
might go with Peter Pan, or even one of your Botoxed
celebrities, but no, you get sixteenth-century apocrypha." "Impressive," he conceded. "And still so old." We finished our sandwiches contentedly, watching the
people around us settle in. A young couple spread a blanket
a few feet in front of us, the male half of whom was one of
those unfortunate souls afflicted with the disorder that
convinces them the world needs nothing more than an allaccess view to their underpants.
"That's unseasonal," I said, of the young gentleman's
candy cane boxers. They were red and green on dingy white. "Stop staring," Nate laughed.
"It invites judgment," I sniffed. "Are belts so difficult to
manipulate? It's a
loop
."
Nate lay back, framing his supine head with crossed arms, and closed his eyes, half a smile on his face. "Simmer
down, grandpa."
I thwacked him lightly on the arm. "That is no way to
speak to your elders."
He reached up and yanked me down onto my back as
well. "There," he said, pleased with himself, "now you don't
have to look at his ugly underwear anymore."
"That's no way to treat your elders either," I said, though
I made no move to lever myself up again, comfortable where
I was. I was vaguely aware that lying down after eating may
occasionally result in heartburn but decided not to mention it;
the wisps of cloud that waved to us from above were too
pleasant to spoil with talk of esophageal reflux. Plus, I didn't
want Nate to never speak to me again.
Eventually, the performers began to stream onto the stage
to smatterings of applause from the people who had opted
for the plastic chairs immediately in front of the stage rather
than sprawling on the lawn like the rest of us common folk. Over the next hour, we let the music weave its threads
around us, telling haunting stories of love and loss. When the
story was over, applause thundered over the lawn, and Nate
opened his eyes and smiled, his skin burnished with the light
of the setting sun. Its burnt orange rays stained the stage
shell's curves and boughs in its likeness, and it reminded me
of a past life, when Nate and I had watched the sunset
together. A cool lake breeze blew in, and if not for the lack
of sea salt in the air, I might have easily imagined we were
back in that life long gone. I let the thought go on a gentle
coil of wind.
The orchestra exited the stage, giving way to a low hum
of a hundred conversations starting up at once -
where did
we park again; wasn't that fantastic; Mommy, I gotta go
potty
-- though Nate and I added nothing consequential to the
rabble, merely turning toward each other with the shared
smile of a shared experience.
We waited out the crowds as they picked up their
belongings, all headed toward the restrooms or parking
garage or back to the street, where they would travel in large
herds on the L until handful by handful they fell away to
wherever the night intended to take them.
When the crowd had dispersed to less of a bovine
situation, Nate and I picked up our garbage and rolled up the
blanket. He tucked it underneath his arm, and we walked
together back to the train station, lucky to have a train come
rolling in after less than a minute's wait.
Against the rumbling clack of the train speeding through
the underground, it was quiet in the car, most of the
passengers intent on showing off the latest in handheld
devices. Neither of us broke the silence, content to simply sit
side by side, contemplating the subterranean dark and then
the low-rise facades that whizzed by once we made it out of
the tunnels.
At Argyle, the train lurched a little more violently than
usual, knocking our knees together, and when it carried on
chugging along, neither of us moved away from the contact. It
didn't mean anything -- at least, it most likely didn’t, but I
was aware of the light thrum of nervousness underneath my
skin anyway, a staticky sort of energy building restlessly on itself, like it was waiting for something to move, waiting for
something to change, though nothing did.
My stop came first, and I swung around the handrail,
breaking the tenuous bridge between our bodies, and waited
for the doors to ease open. "Night," I said to Nate. He smiled, enigmatic. "See you around, Chicago."