Story Potential

It was the perfect Chicago summer night and it was merely hours before my flight back to New York City.  The air was warm but the lake breeze was cool and strong enough to reach the streets of the South Loop.  The noise of the “L” was more of a feeling than a sound, and it was in me, the way it rattles into all its lovers.  I was just sobering up from an afternoon of Champagne and white wine and cigarettes and friends that had become an evening of margaritas and Mexican food when I ran into the man who had been sitting next to my friends and I at an otherwise empty wine bar in Wicker Park earlier that same day.  We smiled and said “hello” and quickly learned that we had gone to the same college and earned the same degree but we had never met.  Or else we did but we were both introverts who preferred watching people and inventing who they were to really getting to know them. 

Continuing on our common ground, I joined him in a round of drinks and French fries at a bar that we had probably drank at on the same night on more than one occasion, without knowing it.  Maybe he had seen me drink Coke while my friend drank rounds of vodka tonics every Tuesday night when I was just nineteen.  Or maybe I had seen him lean up against the bar as he ordered a whiskey ginger back when I wasn’t yet able to stomach the stuff.  Maybe I had bumped into him as we squeezed between the tables and the bar on our way to the bathroom.

Sitting together at a table by the bar, we looked across the street to the university dorms and then we raised our glasses and toasted to all the sex we hadn’t yet had when we were that young.  As we talked I noticed he carried a heavily marked up copy of the short story he was working on in his back pocket.  From time to time he would take it out and set it on the table like it was a security blanket or childhood stuffed animal who's presence assured him that everything would be okay.  I liked him for that.  And I liked him for asking me what saved me.  And we both liked the way it sounded when I replied, “My writing, or at least the idea I have of it.”  And then we had both agreed that nights like this also saved us.  We liked the story potential – which might be why we didn’t exchange numbers or last names: we wanted to stick to the possibilities.

Later we stood outside the bar, looking across the street down Printers’ Row.  I took him in: his careful smile, his short dark hair, his thin black rimmed glasses and his pale blue button down shirt with a pen tucked into the pocket.  He wasn’t particularly handsome but he was interesting.  Maybe the best part was that he didn’t expect me to kiss him.  He was just looking for a story, the way I was just looking for a story, and I would have given it to even if he hadn’t bought me the gin and tonic that I had drank like it was the cure to my drunk-sick stomach and every bad night I been having in New York.   

I thought about asking him to walk around the corner of Polk and Dearborn with me so I could kiss him there against the old Dearborn Station.  And I meant to do it.  I looked at him and I almost opened my mouth and I was almost once again the girl who walked into another dark haired writer’s bedroom, sat atop his desk, and told him she could think of an interesting way to pass the time.  But I didn’t say anything.  And finally he stuck out his hand and thanked me for having a drink with him.  I thanked him too and I watched him walk away down Polk, and I wondered if I looked like that these days in New York: sad and strong and alone.  And I thought about what it means to grow up.  And I thought about Chicago.