missed connections

You’re standing, staring past the virtual billiards of your illuminated cellular into the street beyond. The grimace of the wet asphalt meets your gaze. Puddles always seem to accumulate at bus stops, begging for cartoonish splashing and plunging expressions. A pedestrian drifts by across the street and her trailing black parka catches your eye. Its hood rests like a sheath over her neck, obscuring the ends of her lagging hairline. Her step is smooth but undetermined. You wonder if she is going out or heading home. She does not carry a bag of any kind, which causes you to wonder how much the pockets of the long, goose-down coat must go. Your bus should be coming soon, but it hasn’t, because it’s Sunday and you’ve misread the schedule.

You meet up with your friend, late, having walked a mile and quarter to the spot where he’s staying. The bus route is much chillier when taken without a bus. The two of you set off towards breakfast, now your second walk of the biting February day. Winds sweep between buildings and you feel trapped in the wide open city, claustrophobic in the quiet of the morning. It’s probably just your gloves, which have become speckled with holes in their faux leather shell.

The two of you walk along Michigan Avenue, nodding as he chronicles his weekend to your weary ears. The fog of a party seeps through his story as he describes girls and games coated with an alcoholic mist. You step onto the DuSable Bridge crossing the river and shiver, the cold perpetuated by dreary tales of “the best night ever.” He asks how you’re doing and you reply, “fine.”

Arriving at a diner, you realize it’s been over three years since those days when getting a bite was nothing, when the unity of classes and work and the occasional shared free period aligned opposing personality types like yours. But the Myers-Briggs test was starting to percolate through conversation, evidenced by your blank nods and winces every time he raised his voice. The pancakes were also sweeter back home.

He asks what you really learned back in high school, shaking his head with a deep, strong laugh. You nod slowly. “Things are better now,” he says, and you agree because that’s what you’ve always done.

He requests the check and you split it like old times, only now that means handing over plastic credit cards and trust to the waiter with a nod. Waiting for the checks, you look around at the busy tables circling you, watching parents chide their families and young people poke at their phones.

The small leather folder arrives and reach for your half, quickly etching in a respectful 20% as your friend reaches for the calculator app on his mobile. He catches you watching and smiles, assuring you he just likes to be precise, thorough.

You swing open the big glass door of the restaurant, buttoning your coat as he slips on his hood. Your friend tells you his flight isn’t until tomorrow, and that the two of you might as well grab some dinner too, “you probably know all the spots.” “You can never trust those online reviews,” he says, and you agree with a “sure” and a quick “see you soon.” You were expecting another walk but he strides over to an uber, ducking into the grey sedan and slamming the door.

You’d planned on going to the museum, because it really is the best, but he’d assured you he’d hit it next time and he had a few things he’d wanted to check out as well. Free until dinner, you head back to your apartment, riding the L past everything you could’ve shown him.

-     -     -

Entering the tight space you’ve tried to call home, you kick off your boots and jog to the crumpled slipcover of your sofa, inhaling the warm silence of the room. You look at the time and shake your head, then amble towards the bookcase propped next to the back wall of your tight abode. With a scan, you spot the withered matte spine of your yearbook, the final slice of those four years that somehow has managed to sneak into your carefully labeled boxes and moving crates each fall since.

You brush away loose leaf, textbooks, and a striped red tie to make room for the volume on your desk, setting it down with a pronounced thud. You remind yourself that it isn’t that old, not yet. Peeling back the thick cover, you try to remember the sixteen-year-old voice of your breakfast companion, filtered and distorted by phone calls and Skype. The sound is there, but fleeting. You catch your outline in a candid shot, one used to fill blank space between the class pages and clubs. With your thumb, you flick pages back, retracing to your year, semi-consciously looking for someone.

Memories don’t come flooding back until you find her, and you remember how long it was before you found out that was her full name. Your friend had mentioned her back at the restaurant - the two of them now go to the same university, but the context you were unsure of; you’d tuned him out and were at the time preoccupied with barricading the river of maple syrup that was slowly invading your scrambled eggs. You turn the page quickly, faster than you’d like to, but the rest of the memories haven’t yet hit; the boys’ nights out, the rowdy sports games, the inside jokes and pranks… But the greyed ink stays put, and you curse the tuition for not coloring in your memento from the best and worst four years of your life. A name, and the outlines of a face, imprint your thoughts and override the good times all those penned signatures and notes in the back seem to suggest.

It isn’t worth the time, you tell yourself, and you crack open your laptop and stare at the fourteen new messages of your email. Maybe you’ll get some work done and be productive, it’ll be a good day.

-     -     -

You sit at your desk typing, hammering away at plastic keys to no avail. It is almost five o’clock. You decide it’s better to be early than late and set out, pulling on your hat and parka and heading towards the station. You board the L and ride the Brown Line towards the Loop, thinking about the same thing you’ve been thinking about since he said it seven hours before. Twelve minutes into the ride, you realize you’ve been staring at a child who seems worried and perplexed by your gaze. You mumble an apology and her mother squints at you, then gets off at the next stop. Sixteen minutes later you realize you’ve passed downtown and missed your connection. You get off at the following stop and walk back up North to the restaurant where your friend insisted you meet over text two hours before.

It sits at the corner of a bustling city block, flanked by a colossal Gap and a small family-run convenience store. “Everyone tells me about this place,” the text read, his words echoing through your brain as you catch a glimpse of him at the bar. Despite the public transit, you are early, but he was earlier, already half a glass down, gripping the handle of his mug and licking foam from the corner of his mouth. He was talking to an older man to his left, who seemed mildly interested in whatever it was your friend had to say but mostly seemed interested in his tequila, which kept refilling each time he turned to laugh. Just as you try to imagine which tour book recommended the bright orange buffalo wings whizzing by you, your friend catches a glimpse of you and calls you over from the door, smiling ear to ear. You step away from the now alluring outside air into the depths of the bar, greeting him gingerly and flinching at his exorbitant embrace.

He asks you an exasperated “Isn’t this place great?”, spinning around and surveying the television-lined brick dining room roaring with appetizers and alcohol. You ask if the two of you can find a table, and he shrugs and nods, reluctantly leaving the bar and squawking at the hostess for a pair of menus. You sit down and ask him about his day, what he did and how he liked the city, and he responds with high praise for his hotel. With a pause he reaches for his phone and shows you a photo of a swan made of bath towels sitting on his bed.

He asks you what you did, how you’re doing, “What is it you study these days?”, and you recount your unsuccessful bid of typing, stabbing away at a thesis that has sat by your desk for a week now. “When’s it due?” he prods, and you tell him you’ve still got a while, and you’ll be okay. With a nod he takes another sip and settles back into his own agenda. “So I told you about that girl, right?”, he asks, and you look up, staring, averting your gaze from the froth of craft beer gathering on your coaster. “She called me again today, told her all about Chicago and the buildings and all. Said she’s never been.” You raise your eyes, cautious of his direction, but engrossed nonetheless. “Told me she’s visiting her folks for the break, down south. Asked if I’d come along.”

You nod slowly.

“Funny how people catch up with you like that, it’s like high school never ends, man.” You lift your glass to your face and feel the chill sweep over you. “Hey, didn’t you two know each other pretty well back then?”, he asks, still looking around, sitting sideways, head half cocked towards a basketball game screening back over at the bar. The old man is still there, his head lowered, gazing up at a TV where a bright commercial plays. His glass is finally empty, and you’re just able to catch the bartender surveying him out of the corner of his eye from several feet away.

The only other occupied table seats a couple, chattering over sandwiches and munching slowly on fries. The man is gesturing to his reuben, then points across the room at a oar hung haphazardly on the wall beneath another TV. They are just out of earshot, but the dynamic is clear. She pauses him with a finger and carefully slides out her chair, rising and pushing it back in eloquently, whispering to him all the while. Then she turns and sets out towards the bathroom, and the man whisks out his phone, stabbing furiously and glancing back frantically towards the door to the ladies’ room.

“She didn’t respond to my texts fast enough,” you blurt out, too quickly, and your friend looks at you confused. Then with a bellowing laugh, he says “Girls man,” and raises his glass, then takes a drink, not waiting for you to return the toast. “Alright then… another round?”

-     -     -

You say your goodbyes and pledge to visit him next time, and he says to let him know because you’re always welcome and he’s really not just saying that or anything. He asks how you’ll be getting home and you say you’ve mastered the public transport, and there’s a stop right around the block. He nods, and with a wave you leave the babble of the restaurant and find yourself back on the cement of downtown sidewalk again, alone, once again ready to return to the three-hundred square-feet you call home.

You walk for a while along the river to a far train stop, gulping the clear air of the sprawling city rolling in from Lake Michigan. You wonder absent-mindedly if your friend will make his flight tomorrow, you seem to remember it being quite early. You stop and stare at a man walking his dog across the channel, an older fellow in a houndstooth jacket with khakis and white leather sneakers. It’s late, but both move slowly, without a care in the world, assessing the city they call their own.

You reach the brown line platform, now far outside the Loop, freeing yourself of the task of connection. Boarding an empty car, you crumple your Ventra ticket and throw it across towards the opposite window. It blows around a heating vent momentarily then comes to rest three seats down. You turn and watch the skyline recede as the Sears Tower levels and scales each highrise. You swear you see a light go out in its grid of windows, but as the L whisks you away you can’t be sure. The windowpanes dissolve into your vision and you can no longer make out each square, each level, and finally the different jointed towers that comprise its structure. In your mind, you try to picture that yearbook spread of ninety-six photos, their perfect rows and columns, but their edges blur like a vignetted portrait, and the details meld together until they are lost, and only a portrait of your friend and those two words of the girl’s name remain. With one last lurch the train skirts around a bend and the skyline moves out of sight. Your eyelids flutter and you drift off to sleep, the train slowly nearing your stop.

© 2017