It usually happens in crowds, usually when I’m not even thinking about it, maybe a young woman outside of Water Tower Place shakes her head just so, just enough to make her long black hair shuffle over her shoulders, tips becoming tiny brushes painting the world around her so full of promise and possibility, head turning to reveal a soft smile curling in such a way that it’s her, I tell myself. It has to be her.
Except it’s not her. Because it’s never her. So I keep heading south on Michigan.
+++
Danielle called out from the next room: “My friend Allison’s coming bowling with us.”
Kyle walked over to their bookshelf to retrieve a framed photograph of Danielle with her arm around some mystery woman, all porcelain skin and electric brown eyes and perfect smile beaming back through the four-by-six frame. In Danielle’s direction he called back: “I thought she was in London.”
“She was, but just for yesterday.”
“Who goes to London for one day?” I asked.
“Something for her job,” Danielle answered. “She’s a buyer for some store or something.” Then, as though she could sense my intrigue through the wall: “Don’t you get any ideas!”
“I wasn’t getting any ideas,” I said. (Yes I was.) “Uh, a buyer for who?”
“Trust me,” Kyle said, “it’s nowhere you shop.” Then, looking around to make sure Danielle was out of earshot: “But seriously, she’s fuckin’ hot.”
“I heard that!” Danielle said, walking back into their living room and taking the picture away from Kyle and I. “And Allison is gorgeous, but also . . . kind of a mess.”
Beautiful and wild? I thought. How could I not fall in love?
“No,” Danielle said, reading my laughably readable young man mind, “no, not crazy in that way that you like.”
So that settled that and I, already convinced that 27 was too old to be asking my friends to introduce me to girls anyway, instead got ready to go bowling.
+++
In front of the jewelry store at Michigan and Superior, a young woman rifles through an oversized purse for who knows what, eyes searching faster than the hands can dig for a wallet, keys, whatever it is people stop on sidewalks to find and something about her posture . . . but she lifts her head, and you can see it in the eyes, the eyes missing the spark that always made hers so compelling and no, no, it’s not her. So I keep walking.
+++
Allison and I were at that terrible bar by my old apartment in Logan Square, two self-styled intellectuals who had very quickly learned we liked going out as much as we liked making out and were obviously destined for great things, Allison more than ready to trade her usual upscale haunts for the heavy metal hellholes my grad student lifestyle demanded at the time—really anywhere being fair game because, as Allison put it, “Comfort is always a fair trade for adventure.”
“Besides,” she continued, “I don’t think you actually like most of these places. I think you just like knowing that somewhere there’s all this weird shit on the walls and freaky people hanging out.”
“But you keep going to them,” I volleyed, “so they can’t be that bad.”
“I didn’t say they were bad,” she countered. “I just think there’s more to you and these dives than the cool artwork.” She paused to take a sip from her beer, careful not to let her Jimmy Choos touch the bar’s disgusting floor. “No one really likes anything, Andrew. People like the idea of things; if you really think about it, everything is mostly immaterial.”
Now, I didn’t know if she was right. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure that statement even made any sense, but I knew I liked the way it sounded, this kind of barstool philosophizing I absolutely lived for and here, now, this girl—no, this woman sitting next to me was better at this than anyone I’d ever known.
“Let’s get some more shots,” she said.
I checked the clock. “I don’t know, we should probably leave.”
“Oh come ooooon,” she said, “just one more.” Then turning to the bartender: “Two shots. Vodka, straight up.” And I, never one to argue with a woman in a bar, cheerily indulged her, forcibly resisting the urge to cough mine up while looking on in bewildered envy as Allison downed hers as though it were water, or perhaps a drop of some exquisite wine.
“Okay,” she said, eyes focusing with an almost mischievous cool, “okay, now we should go home.” And then we went home.
+++
On the corner at Illinois, there’s a woman waiting to cross Michigan, and she’s got this kind of gracious intensity to her, as though she were doing the traffic a favor by letting it pass because this is her world, glamorous and wonderful and we are all just passing through it and there’s only one person I know who can pull that off and I start to wonder . . . but I get closer and no, no, that’s not her. So I keep walking.
+++
Danielle didn’t even look up from the magazine she was reading, her monotone barely masking her boredom from asking the question: “So Andrew, how’s it going with you and Allison?”
“Oh man, you guys, we got, like, SO WASTED TUESDAY NIGHT and we’re SO CRAZY and seriously, these past few months have been, like, the best months EVER and she’s SO PERFECT FOR ME!”
“Yeah,” Kyle said, still hypnotized by the TV, “yeah that sounds like her.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Andrew,” Danielle started, setting down the magazine and finally looking up, “look, for her, it’s not really about fun. And we think you caught her at a really bad time. Maybe the worst.”
“Oh come on,” I said. “She just likes going out.”
“Andrew,” Danielle said, “I’ve been watching her go through this for 11 years; how long have you known her?”
+++
I take a right on Wacker, walking along the north side of the street where the river meets the avenue, stopping to wait for traffic so I can cut across to the other side, and outside that shiny hotel with the blue-tinted windows, a young woman tries to flag down a cab, moving her arm just so, just like that, wrist leading the elbow as though to tell passersby “Notice me, for I am worth noticing,” and could that . . . no. No, it’s not her. So I keep walking.
+++
Allison suggested we spend that Wednesday evening at a place more to her liking. For me, a scotch; for her, cosmo with a vodka sidecar.
“Of all the gin joints in all the world,” I joked.
Allison’s face scrunched up, eyes not even bothering to mask her sudden contempt for me. “Fuck you,” she said, slumping a little to her side. “Not funny. Gin joint . . .”
“Hey,” I asked, “are you alright?”
Allison’s eyes rose from half-asleep to full-rage as she reached her arm back, bringing it forward and WHAM! smacking me across the left cheek. “Don’t ever judge me,” she said, now stabbing me in the chest with her index finger. “Ever.” Then to the bartender, pointing to the empty in front of her: “Another, please. Vodka. Straight up.” And all so pleasantly, so coolly, as though this had never happened or, perhaps, as though it had happened a million times before.
I felt the hot stinging sensation spread to the rest of my face, the things Danielle had said starting to finally making sense. “Wait, you’re not . . . alright, are you?”
“God,” she said, “you sound just like everyone else.”
So this was what they had meant: she wasn’t okay, she was going through something, and that was okay because that is what life is about, and there was no way I would let her suffer alone and I swore right then and there I would carry her through it, would rescue that amazing woman who’d disappeared four cocktails ago. “You know,” I started, “if there’s anything—”
“Andrew,” she said, face softening now as she rested her hand on my knee, “you know I’m not yours to help.”
+++
The 135 bus stops where Wacker meets Wabash and the second person off has her cellphone up to her ear, her confident strut leading her just up to the light and I tell myself I should run to her, stop her, say hello and how are you and I heard you’re doing great now and all the things I’ve wanted to for so long . . . but the girl looks to her right and I see the different arch of the brow, hair falling over her face rather than around it. So I keep moving.
+++
Allison was nowhere to be found that New Year’s Eve at Kyle and Danielle’s wedding and, truth be told, I hadn’t bothered to ask why yet when the clock hit 11:30 and I felt my phone vibrate in the pocket of my suit coat, without even looking I knew who it was and I knew I should ignore it. She and I hadn’t spoken for months; this had to be something really bad, something so awful she had to wait until the last half hour of the year to tell me about it. Don’t answer that, I told myself. No good can come of it and you know it.
The phone vibrated again. Stop fooling yourself, Andrew.
“Hi,” she said. I recognized that tone. Vodka shots. “What are you doing?”
“I’m at the wedding.”
She took a deep breath and instead answered the question I’d—we’d all, really—asked so long ago. “No,” she said. “No, I’m not alright.”
“Where are you?”
Another deep breath. “I love you,” she said. “I love you and I don’t know what to do about that.”
Watch what you say here, I thought. This girl is broken, but don’t forget how she broke you, too. You can be strong here.
Then again, just as quickly: Stop fooling yourself, Andrew.
“I do too,” I finally admitted, “and I don’t either. Look, I’ll meet you somewhere, we can talk.”
“No,” she said, “just . . . goodbye, Andrew. Goodbye.” And then she hung up.
And sure, okay, I thought, if that’s what she needs then I can at least do that for her. Can’t I?
+++
I take a left on Wabash, heading south towards that bar on the corner at Lake Street and notice a girl eyeing something in a window, and I catch myself wondering—again—if it’s her. The hair, the delicate shape of her fingers tracing something only she can see and she looks like . . . like . . . like someone I went out with for a little while. Someone I haven’t heard from forever, haven’t seen for even longer, who didn’t need what I was offering, who only asked that I just let go and I can’t even do that much right and perhaps this, Andrew Reilly, is why you’re out here in the cold. Alone. With nowhere to be and nowhere to go, killing yourself over some woman while a million others are walking right past you—women who haven’t disappeared; women who haven’t cut you down; women who haven’t reduced you to . . . to whatever it is you’re doing right now.
So goddamn it, Andrew, what did you think you were looking for out here?
Across the intersection, that lovely dark-haired woman is still looking into the bar, and I tell myself this time could be different, that this time I could see her and not see her, and I could catch this stranger’s eye and for a moment she and I could be the only two people in the world—that kind of fleeting, hopeful, oddball romantic episode normal, healthy people fall into every day, even days like this, in every city, even this one, and I could have a small reminder of what the good times feel like if I could just . . . if I could just . . .
But none of that has ever helped so instead, I try something new.
Stepping back from the light, I look up past the L rounding the corner above, past the alleys and rooftops and up to the sky, and I take a deep breath, and I finally admit it, finally say it out loud. Finally say it back: “Goodbye, Allison.”
“Goodbye.”
Goodbye. And you know, it doesn’t sound at all like the ending I had been so afraid of, but instead like . . . like the beginning of something else. And it’s all so sweet, so easy, so laughably simple that I can’t help but wonder: where was that word when I needed it? And for a moment, everything in the world seems so light and perfect, as though I had been walking around all this time with my eyes closed, and I pick myself up and cross Lake Street and that lovely dark-haired girl looks up from whatever it was she was studying but before I can do anything, say anything, think anything, I hear a voice, that voice, Allison’s voice saying out loud to me:
“Andrew?”
And it’s . . . her.
And she’s . . . there.
And I’m . . . here.
And I start to worry I’ll never . . . I’ll never . . . I’m sorry, what were we talking about?
Andrew Reilly is a company member of 2nd Story and co-editor of the anthology Briefly Knocked Unconscious By A Low-Flying Duck. His work has appeared in a number of fine publications and on a similar number of equally fine stages. Visit him online at andrewreilly.org or in person in Uptown Chicago.