My mind wasn’t really on writing. Instead, I was thinking about the lingerie shows that Kristen would give me wearing high heels, fishnet stockings, garter belts, and bras that didn’t hide anything. I was thinking about last autumn, when Kris and I would lay down on a picnic blanket, reading books, doing homework, and occasionally make love. I was thinking about how lovely Kristen looked despite her disheveled appearance when she was fast asleep after I tied her up the other night.
The people in the jazz band considered Kristen to be my muse, but I think she was more than that. She was becoming my reason for living. She loved me and I loved her. No matter what could happen, even having teachers that had some weird agendas against me, we still had each other. Isn’t that love?
The one thing that bothered me was Kristen’s apparent assumption that we would get married and spend the rest of our lives together. It wasn’t that I didn’t want this myself, because I really did. Although I had few doubts and may have just wanted to keep my options open, it worried me that Kristen didn’t seem to think that any other future could be possible. I knew that I would have to talk to somebody about that, most likely Patty.
At the end of the hour, Ms. Taylor asked for my essay. I realized that I was writing while fantasizing about Kristen. I glanced at what I wrote and found that I was a bit explicit in my descriptions. Since I needed to hand my assignment to the teacher, and she asked for a description of a happy moment, I just handed it in. She made up the assignment, so I’d let her deal with it.
I left the classroom and found Camille nearby. We walked together to her car in the parking lot.
Since we were going to talk about the tickets, I figured that maybe, just maybe, I might finally make some sense of things that were happening.
Chapter 12—Chicago and Confrontation
I picked up the phone in the kitchen and called my mother to tell her that Kristen was taking me somewhere—a surprise—and that I’d be home before ten o’clock tomorrow evening. My mother didn’t have a problem with that.
Kristen drove me in her Camaro to a small airport about ten miles away. Apparently, she chartered a flight that would take us to Midway airport in Chicago.
“Chicago?” I asked Kristen. “Why not just drive there?”
“I told you I wanted to do something special,” Kristen explained.
The pilot was a friend of Kristen’s father, who piloted Kristen’s family on many occasions. He knew Kristen as well, and greeted her by name when she approached him. “Hey, Kristen! Is this your boyfriend?”
“Jerry, this is Jim,” Kristen said by way of introduction.
“Daniel has told me a lot about this fine young man,” Jerry said, shaking my hand. “I’ll be staying in Chicago overnight, and I’ll be waiting to take you back.”
Jerry led us to a Cessna turbo-prop airplane. It was, to say the least, much smaller than the jets that Kristen and I took back in November. He stowed our luggage for us.
I was nervous when Jerry indicated that I was to sit in the co-pilot’s seat and Kristen took the back seat. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit in the front?” I asked Kristen, a bit afraid of being behind a steering wheel.
“Oh, I’ve done that before. I’ll let you have the fun today.”
Jerry noticed my nervousness and told me that everything would be all right. After I was belted in, Jerry got out of the plane and gave it a final once over to make sure that everything was as it should be.
“Tell Jerry that he should make sure he has enough gas to get to Chicago,” Kristen said, her nose crinkling at my obvious discomfort.
“Gas?” I stammered.
Jerry laughed as he entered the plane. “Don’t let Kristy here get you nervous,” he said, laughing. “I’ve only ran out of gas a few times, and not in the past few weeks, even!”
“That’s Kristen, and you know better, Uncle Jerry!”
Jerry winced at the “Uncle” prefix and said, “Stop torturing Jim, then,” Jerry insisted. “Is this your first flight, Jim?” he asked me.
“N-no, sir,” I answered. “It’s my first time behind the wheel, though. I never even drove a car.”
“Well, driving this baby is a piece of cake. The weather promises to be nice this weekend, so you might get a chance to control the plane. It will give me a chance to catch forty winks on the way into Chicago!”
“No, thank you,” I said, incredulous that he would allow a sixteen year old behind the controls.
“Uncle Jerry, you’re just as bad as me!”
“Kristen back there first flew… when was it, dear? You were twelve?”
“Eleven,” corrected my love.
“Really?” I asked.
“It’s really simple. The hard parts are the take off and the landing, and I’ll be doing those today.”
As it turned out, I did get a few moments at the controls in the air, and I was surprised how easy it was. However, I was quite nervous the entire trip, and Jerry seemed to notice this and understood. He made no further jokes about taking a nap.
Aside from that, the trip to Midway was uneventful, although it seemed to me that Jerry was quite distracted when he was approaching the city. In retrospect, it made sense… Chicago was a very large hub, even in the 1970s.
In Chicago, Kristen rented a car—a Datsun that looked a lot like Wendy’s except, to Kristen’s disappointment, it had an automatic transmission. We drove to a motel near the airport to unpack our bags. I noticed that we arrived before the normal check-in time, but they allowed us in despite that.
From the motel, we headed downtown, and I discovered that Kristen made reservations at the venerable Berghoff Restaurant.
“Good afternoon, Miss Swift,” the Maitre d’ said as she entered the restaurant. “Your table is waiting for you.”
My beloved Kristen and I walked past a few surprised tourists as we were led to our seats. The waiter handed us three menus, but Kristen and I declined the wine list.
“What’s good here?” I asked Kristen.
“Anything with a German name, of course. I’m partial to their seafood dishes,” Kristen answered.
As it was, neither of us ordered off the menu. The waiter arrived and described a list of daily specials, and the two of us chose our meals from that list. I ordered a Schnitzel that came with a mushroom sauce, and Kristen ordered the lake trout that the waiter assured us had been caught that very morning in Lake Michigan.
“So, what do you think?” Kristen asked after the waiter left.
“This place looks old,” I said, truly impressed. I heard people talk about this restaurant, but never thought that I’d ever set foot in it.
The waiter quickly arrived with our Root Beers, which was as close to the famous Berghoff Beer that we intended to get. The two of us clinked our glasses together and took a sip. Kristen, of course, managed to get some of the foam on her nose, causing me to giggle and offer her my napkin.