Chicago Noir [Anthology]

I dropped everything in the trash and headed toward the bathroom, wondering what was taking Andy so long. The nut and candy stand by the bathroom was closed. I heard someone yelling. I started to run. I heard words now:

“Favre sucks. Why don’t you get a real team?”

My hands were on the door.

The bathroom reeked of stale whiskey. The fluorescent fixtures cast a nicotine-yellow glow. I looked past the bank of stalls and saw Andy. He was pressed up against the wall near the sink. His eyes were wide and wet. His fingers were spread against the tiles. The only parts of him moving were his carotids, throbbing.

The man standing between us had half a head and fifty pounds on me. A Bears helmet patch was stitched on the back of his army jacket. Wiry black curls sprung from under his knit Bears cap. From the way he rocked in his heavy boots, I was sure he was the source of the whiskey odor. Then he started slurring.

“What, are you going to start crying now, you little pussy?” He stuck his gloved hand at Andy. “That faggot Favre likes to cry.”

And then the man’s body tensed as if to take a step toward Andy. And maybe he did, I can’t be sure. I don’t remember it clearly. I remember what happened next as a fragmented sequence of impressions.

My hands against the man’s back. His headlong fall toward the stall door. The door opening as his face hit it. The sharp, hard crack. The heavy whumpf on the floor. The door bouncing back and forth several times before settling shut. The man’s boots sticking out from underneath it. Then the smelclass="underline" sharp, sweet, and sour at once. Like something rotting.

Andy was shivering. I realized we had to get out before someone else walked in. “Andy,” I said. He didn'’t look up from the floor. I said his name again; no answer. Then I saw he was looking at something.

The liquid was black in the yellow light. The first trickle streamed along the grout line on its way to the sink. But it was chased by a faster current moving across the tiles.

“Get over here, Andy.”

He looked at me, looked at the floor, and looked at his shoes.

“Andy, get over here right now. We have to get out of here.”

His eyes repeated their motion. Then he broke for the stall. I hopped over the widening puddle and cut him off. I hugged him and lifted him off the floor. Just as I stretched my leg over the puddle, he kicked the stall door open. I caught a glimpse of the stain the man’s head made on the toilet. I don’t know how much Andy saw.

I set him down at the exit door. “Walk,” I said. “Walk, just fucking walk.”

Mama Bear’s hand was locked on the forearm of her crying daughter. The lines were getting deeper at Wendy’s. A kid was playing the mechanical crane game near the doors, trying to maneuver the claw toward a stuffed rabbit in the corner. No one said a word to us, no one looked at us. No one shouted, “Stop!” We were just two sorry-ass Packers fans scurrying on our way home.

Driving, I figured the scenario. A hidden camera in the bathroom must have caught me pushing the guy. Cameras in the parking lot probably followed our escape. At least the film would show I didn'’t mean to kill the guy. They wouldn'’t try to get me for murder. Manslaughter, maybe, but even then I'’d probably get some slack; the guy could have hit Andy for all I knew. But there would be a trial. And even if I won, I would lose my job. No reputable consulting firm could employ someone who killed a stranger in a rest stop bathroom. They’d treat me well—no doubt partly out of fear I'’d go postal. At a minimum we’d have to leave Wilmette; Nat might very well move out.

The next toll came up. Did the workers have my plates and description? I imagined my foot pressing on the gas pedal—the grill could take out the toll gate, I had no doubt. But then I realized: They wouldn'’t stop a killer without backup. No police cherrytops were spinning up ahead and a state employee wasn'’t going to try to be a hero. I slowed down and in my pocket my fingertips effortlessly set on a dime, a nickel, and a quarter. The toll booth worker was wearing headphones and smoking.

“Go Packers!” I shouted before I rolled up the window.

I got off at Tower Road and followed it through leafy Winnetka. I stayed five miles below the speed limit. But even as I kept my eye on the speedometer, my hands didn'’t feel the steering wheel; every tiny bone still rang from the man’s shoulder blade. The balls of my feet were still pressing against the wet tile floor. My calf muscles ached from stretching for maximum push. I couldn'’t see Andy in the darkness but I knew the fear I'’d seen when I opened the door still filled him. The men’s room was staying with us.

A BMW brighted me and sped by in the other lane. He honked once he passed by. I waved, sincerely. Having somebody behind me would have made me nervous.

I went south on Green Bay Road along the Metra tracks. The stores in downtown Winnetka were dark and the auto repair shops looked abandoned. I flipped off the ridiculous cursive Kenilworth sign, a joke Andy and I shared. But once again, he didn'’t take the bait. I went east on Lake and a few blocks later turned onto our brick-paved road. I always said the best part of our suburban battlewagon was that you couldn'’t feel the ruts.

We sat in the car for a while after I pulled into the garage. I was waiting for Andy to say something until I realized he was doing the same. I was the father, so I went first.

“Well, I’'ve got some work to do before I turn in. You?”

“Social studies homework.”

“Okay. Well, we’ll get them the next game, right?”

“Right.”

Listening to his footsteps overhead, I went to the liquor cabinet and poured a Scotch. Then I went to my office. Two Macanudos lay in the top drawer. They were to have been lit up by us if the Packers had won. Looking at them now, I couldn'’t believe I had conceived such a horrible idea. It was so horrible I couldn'’t help but laugh. When I calmed down, I unwrapped one and sliced off the end with my Packers cutter. I lit it. After a couple puffs I went to the front room. I wanted to see the police as they came for me up our bumpy narrow street. Or maybe they would walk over; the Ridge station was only a few blocks away.

I stared into the lit windows of the Georgians and bungalows across the street for a peek of my neighbors. No luck. Scaffolding loomed in John Doolin’s backyard. He’d blown out the back to add a home theater. During the summer it had been copper gutters. He was a broker.

“It should really help the value when we try to sell,” he said at a block party over the summer. “People expect that kind of viewing experience today. It’s getting to be like central air.”

“When are you moving?”

“Oh, no, we don’t have any plans now. But when the time comes.”

“Right, when the time comes.”

“And I'’ll say now, I couldn'’t have picked a better time to liquidate some stocks to raise the money.” He paused and looked both ways. “I unloaded in February.”

“Did you tell your clients you were doing that?”

He’d laughed, twisting a fallen leaf under the toe of his loafer. “One or two.”

When Andy and I set off to watch the Packers lose, John’s son Steven, who was in the same grade as Andy, had been playing catch with his little sister. Both were wearing Cade McNown jerseys. It made me laugh. How was I to know? But now as I stared at the dark, empty lawn, I recalled a day years back: Steven running in circles and kicking up leaves in a Favre jersey. And in the seasons after the Super Bowl, he wasn'’t the only kid on the block sporting No. 4.

And that’s when it struck me: For as much as I hated the kids who were going to torture my boy the next day, it wasn'’t entirely their fault. If their parents, most of them nominally Bears fans, even some of the ones from out of town, couldn'’t teach them to hate the Packers, you had to wonder what exactly were they being taught. I tried to imagine a kid in my Milwaukee neighborhood of duplexes and bungalows wearing McMahon’s jersey. I couldn'’t. So no wonder they walked around Old Orchard gabbing about nothing on their cell phones and buying movie tickets with plastic. If they weren'’t being taught something as basic as you don’t wear a Packers jersey, what were they being taught? The question answered itself.