Sweet Home Chicago
I was sitting on a park bench, reading a book, minding my own business, when up comes this little girl with a dollar in her hand and she says to me:
“’Scuse, me, miss? You look poor. My mommy said that I should help poor people.”
She shoves the dollar in my hand and then runs off. I don’t understand what about me makes people think I’m homeless, but she’s too young to know the word “bohemian” so I’ll give her some slack. So now I’m sitting on a park bench, holding a dollar, and minding my own business when someone else just shuffled up. Never seen the man before in my life. He’s wearing a trench coat and fedora, like Al Capone, and I wonder at what kind of town I’m in that he looks perfectly normal.
He asks to sit down. I comply. He asks me about the dollar. I said lost of people have dollars what’s it to him. He said,
“Did a little girl give you that?”
I said: “The bank tellers look younger every day.”
And he laughs.
I was thinking something like the Devil in Damn Yankees, but he wasn’t nearly as sadistic. I mean, he just laughed, and it didn’t send shivers up my spine. He didn’t ask for my soul, he just wanted to know where I got the dollar. He reaches into his pocket and gives me another dollar and thanks me for the joke and leaves.
“Besides,” he says walking away. “You look poor.”
Three more people who do that and I’ll have enough to get a cup of coffee. Ninety-eight more and I can get a blouse at Ann Taylor. Ah, well. I decided sitting on a park bench wasn’t good for my image, so I get up and start walking into the actually downtown area of the city. New York’s all right if you know what to look for. If you don’t have any money its just like Chicago, so I wasn’t missing much from the city I left. Except maybe Marshall Fields.
But I wasn’t in New York because I’m an artist and that’s where artists go. I went because I was supposed to meet someone here who could give me a job. I put everything on the line. The modeling contract went to someone two sizes lower than me. I have no figure, I looked starved, I’m glad I’m not a model. But I’m stuck here until I can get money to go back. I liked Chicago anyway. It had better museums.
So I’m thinking of just putting myself in a box and mailing myself there when the girl comes up to me again and tugs on my pants leg.
“What?”
“Where’s my brother?”
“Who?”
“My brother.”
“Um, I don’t know. Ask the police.”
“Nu-uh. The birds said you were with him.”
“Yellow trench and fedora? That’s your brother?”
“Uh-huh.”
I shrugged.
“Will you help me find him?”
Eh. No money and all the time in the world. “Sure.”
That was probably the best thing I had ever said. The looks I got: a skinny, rag-dressed, got-to-be-eighteen-year-old woman holding the hand of a prim, proper, rich-guy’s-daughter little girl. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
She led me into the Macy’s building where my fashion originated. Basically, I took what Macy’s had and I patched it up. Anti-Macy’s; that’s me. So whatever. She leads me to the elevator and we go up to the twelfth floor and when the elevator dings, I’m pretty much in the manager’s office.
His secretary does a double take.
“Well, welcome Miss Lenoire.”
I did a double take. How the hell did she know my name?
“Welcome to the fashion offices of Les Beaux, Beau. We’re a private company,” she added to my look. “I see you’ve brought the manager’s sister back; thank you very much.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I suppose you’ll start on Monday?”
“Wait, what?!”
“Very good. Eight o’clock sharp.”
“I-I-I…”
Takes a lot to make me speechless. I stormed into the manager’s office and yep, there was the strange gangster I had met in the park. He looked nicer now and his sister was playing a card game in the corner. Gosh kids look littler and littler every year. I asked him what the meaning of this was. He said he gave me a job; be grateful. I said I try not to get jobs from strangers in the park. And, I added, I was not homeless. He said he knew.
“About what?”
“Just about everything. Don’t worry about it, we’ll get you a ticket home once you’ve earned enough.”
“Fine, but don’t think I’m not coming without pepper spray.”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t expect you not to.”
Feh, double negatives. Well, against my better judgment, I started work. The strangest family you’ll ever meet. They’re not human (he said fairies, or something like that), so I suppose that sort of made life easier for me. And like his promise, I’m on my way back home; sweet home Chicago!
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