"Who do you think you – Christopher!" she said, beaming suddenly. A few heads across the shop raised at the sound of her voice. "What on earth...?"
"Had to come into the city," I said. "Thought I'd stop and see what you're selling these days. Nasty crowd you get in here, Marj."
"Suppose that says something about you, then," she replied tartly.
"Don't be cruel! I've come to profess true love and sweep you away to my country estate."
"Hands to yourself," she ordered, then promptly leaned forward and hugged me. "Prodigal son. If you'd given me a little warning I'd have found a fatted calf."
"Well, if you can't find one in Chicago..." I grinned. "How are you, Marj? I know it's been too long."
"Overjoyed to see you, otherwise as well as ever. Business is down a little, though. Nobody reads anymore, Christopher."
"I know it," I said. "It's this newfangled television contraption, I hear it's quite the rage with the youngsters."
"It's a fad," she said complacently. "You look like hell, by the way."
I glanced at her, then past her to where someone on the other side of a bookshelf was straining to hear us talk. Everyone loves gossip.
"I had a heart attack," I said. There was a gasp from the bookshelf.
"Jesus, Chris," Marjorie said, laying down her crossword puzzle.
"Almost. I have the resurrection bit down. Kirchner – my doctor in the village, remember, I told you about him?"
"Something, yes. Bona fide house-calling, chicken-for-payment-taking country doctor?"
"He said I should get looked at by specialists. He recruited a young friend of mine to help him convince me. Lucas, the one who wanted a book we had to lie to get."
"The history scholar. Well, that's good, someone ought to be looking after you if you won't look after yourself."
"But I am! Anyway, I'm fine, it's just a routine checkup. I'm much more interested in your medical complaints. Is it the rheumatism or your spleen nowadays?"
"A properly vented spleen never acts up," she answered primly, and I was relieved to see she was taking the incredibly unsubtle hint to steer clear of my health.
I stayed for barely half an hour, though it was a good half-hour. Marj had a dinner she couldn't avoid attending, and I wanted to get an early night. I was meeting my old circle of friends for brunch the following morning, then spending the rest of the day being jabbed and photographed at the hospital.
The hotel room was quiet, considering how noisy the city is supposed to be. When I was at school I had an apartment near the El and I got used to the clacking and roaring and the occasional flash of light through my bedroom window. In Low Ferry I got used to people shouting across the street at each other early in the morning, and in winter the growl of the snow plow. In the hotel room there didn't seem to be much to get used to at all, other than the clean sterility of it.
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and let myself drop onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Why I'd bothered calling my city friends I couldn't even have said, other than that I knew they always had a Sunday brunch. I thought, in a fit of insanity no-doubt derived from my recent brush with death, that it would be fun to see them. It probably would be, but that night I couldn't fathom having the energy to get off the bed and undress, let alone leave the hotel and socialize with friends I hadn't seen in months, if not years. Even the hospital would be less tiring. At least at the hospital they let you lie down on a bed most of the time.
Finally, however, I pushed myself upright long enough to change into pajamas and pull the blankets back. I was unconscious not long after my head hit the pillow, and the next thing I knew was the alarm on the nightstand buzzing me insistently awake the following morning.
***
There were ten of us at brunch that Sunday, myself and seven people I knew plus two new additions I'd never met before. One of them, Derek – a bespectacled and earnest man about my age – was clearly my replacement.
Most of my friends hadn't changed much, except in circumstance: those who had been single were now married, and those who had been married were either parents or divorcees or both. Gone, too, was the champagne, which was what used to make our Sunday brunches last well into Sunday dinner sometimes. There were too many children toddling around the chairs for drinking to be an approved activity, apparently.
Oh yes, there were children. Two infants and three toddlers, plus a seven-year-old that Angie, whom I'd dated for about a month one time, was babysitting for a coworker.
"There's a new play at Steppenwolf, Chris," she said, chewing on a piece of fruit from the huge bowl of fruit salad in the middle of the restaurant table. "You'd like it. I think it's about the metropolitan identity or something."
"It's tedious," my replacement added. I grinned at him. "Old ground, shiny new costumes."
"I think he'd like to go out though," Mara waved a forkful of sausage before taking a bite. "Remember that little jazz club we used to go to?"
"I think so," I said. "The one with the rotten bartender who watered your margarita if you asked for it blended?"
"Where Angie did a striptease for the pianist," Steve said. Angie elbowed him and rolled her eyes at the kids.
Had that been me, in the club, cheering that business on? I remembered it, so it must have been, but it seemed more like something I'd watched on television once. Television itself seemed like something I'd read about in a book. I didn't own one in the village. A television, I mean. I owned a lot of books.
"Anyway, Chris, it's closed up but the little Chinese place next to it is now a hookah bar," Mara continued.
"A what?" I asked.
"Turkish food and hookahs. All legal, of course. Tobacco only."
"Yes – let's take him there, he'll love it," Brent said.
"Chris the romantic," Angie added, winking at me.
"You liked Casablanca, didn't you?" Steve asked.
"You wore blue; the Nazis wore grey," Mara quoted. Misquoted, actually.
"I'm afraid I can't," I answered, hoping I didn't sound as sharp as I suspected. A roomful of smoke would get me no gold stars from the doctor. "Business, you know how it is. I'm not in town long enough for much pleasure."