Things I brought back from Chicago include a Cubs t-shirt for the little white dog, two dresses and a lightweight rain jacket for myself, and a whopper of a head cold.
The cold started toward the end of the day Saturday. I was fine when Mica and I walked to a restaurant for dinner. By the time we paid the check, my voice was getting weak and my throat was becoming sore but I felt OK otherwise. Mica was exhausted so we split up and she went back to the hotel while I walked a few extra blocks to a Walgreens beside the Wrigley Building. After I bought a package of cough drops and an extra packet of tissues, I walked across the Michigan Avenue bridge and down the stone steps to the river walk that runs along Lower Wacker Drive.
The lower river walk used to be seedy after dark. In recent years the city spruced it up, and it's now a good place to hang out and appreciate the cityscape. I especially like it after dark when the buildings are lit.
I was leaning against the railing, looking downriver, when a text came to my phone. It was a group text from Eve asking if Blaine and I wanted to go to a murder mystery dinner on Friday. He replied right away that he would go if it was something I wanted to do. I responded that I was game.
I received a private text from Blaine asking if Mica and I were having fun and what we were doing. I told him I was hanging out at the river for a bit, and he asked if I felt like a phone call. "How about Facetime? I'll show you around," I typed. He has never been to Chicago, a fact I cannot fully grasp.
When we connected, he was in his living room next to the table lamp. I showed him my surroundings and managed not share every detail about every building and bridge. When I turned the phone back on me, he said, "You look happy."
Did I? Probably so. "It's my Chicago face." That seems to be a real thing. Over the years many random Chicagoans have commented on it. This trip, it was the woman working at the margarita counter at Wrigley who said my expression was "infectiously happy." The city does make me happy, it's true.
"Is that what it is?" Blaine looked at the phone, presumably at me in particular. It's as disconcerting to be stared at over the phone as it is in person.
"What are you thinking?" I finally asked.
He took another second. "Just thinking Chicago is lucky to have you look at it that way."
The thing about Facetime is it provides physical distance and with that an illusion of invulnerability. "It used to be that the only time I felt completely happy was when I was here. For a number of months now that happens more frequently, always on Saturdays."
I saw his eyes soften. Sometimes he holds back his smile, but he didn't just then.
We talked a while longer on Facetime, stopping when more people came around me and could hear our conversation. We continued on the phone until my voice had deteriorated to a croak.
The cold hit full force yesterday. I slept, ran down to the drugstore for cold medicine, slept again. Today was much the same. I called Blaine at noon to tell him I was up to going to the jazz concert tonight but would understand if he preferred I keep a quarter of the city between the two of us until I knew I wasn't contagious. "Not that I can't keep my hands off you," I over-explained. "But germs, you know, travel."
"Hold on. Going back to the first part of the statement--"
"The point being--."
"Don't interrupt. Let's get this on record. You stated that you can keep your hands off me, correct?"
"The context--"
"Yes or no is all that is required."
I laughed. "I plead the Fifth."
And so we went to the concert. And at no time during the evening did I touch him.
"It's for your own good," I told him when he dropped me off.
"This is like a low-tech version of Facetime."
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