Chapter 13
13
After that last shot, I probably should’ve called a car. But transit is one of the reasons we all claim city living is ideal, so I usually guilt myself into taking the train when I can. Besides, the sign outside the station says there’s a brown line approaching in two minutes. And for the first time in forever, I don’t feel the ominous undercurrent of dread and stasis pulling me down. I feel happy—and, yes, tipsy, but not so drunk that I’m falling on my ass or anything. So, I take the L toward Lincoln Square, humming Christmas songs under my breath as the train rattles through Chicago.
“Nice shirt.”
Ready to accept the millionth grinning compliment of the night on my gaudy holiday sweater, I look up with a liquor-eased smile of my own.
But the man looking down at me isn’t smiling.
He’s a thin white guy. Young, maybe in his late twenties. He’s wearing a denim jacket, not nearly warm enough for this chilly night, but a cavalier attitude toward the cold is typical of Midwestern guys. He could be a grad student at DePaul or Loyola or something, with his crisp-cut blond hair and bland good looks. But there’s something unnerving about him.
It’s the way he’s looking at me.
Like I somehow pissed him off.
My smile freezes, along with the rest of me.
There’s an ominous tint in his pale blue eyes. My whole body has gone taut with a fear that feels ancient, familiar. I know men like this; a shadowy echo in the back of my mind agrees in a whisper: We have always known men like this .
“Fucking Jew,” he says, and spits on the floor of the train.
It lands, wet and bubbly, just to the left of my scuffed winter boots.
Everything suddenly feels hyperreal, every detail vivid. I’m looking around and realizing that there’s no one else in the train car. It’s just me and the skinny white guy, and this isn’t a hallucination.
Shit.
My heart has become a battering ram trying to bang its way right out of my menorah-clad chest. A thousand thoughts slam into me. There’s a reason they call antisemitism the oldest hatred. It’s ancient and omnipresent. It has never been eradicated, and periodically metastasizes like the cancer it has always been.
Think think think —just this week: the bomb threat at my family’s synagogue, the NPR piece about a record number of hate crimes this year, the world still reeling from recent tragedies and dreading the next ones, the phone alert from our neighborhood group about swastikas painted on all those garages in Albany Park.
How did I think none of this would ever directly impact me?
I’m sickened by my own stupidity. A single woman, taking the train alone, after midnight. Drunk. Flaunting my Hanukkah shirt, exposing my identity to the whole damn world. Having no backup, no protection, not even the mace I used to keep on my keychain when I first moved to the city.
My stomach audibly rumbles.
Now?
Seriously?
The man in the denim jacket’s lip curls. He looks disgusted, and I’m not sure if it’s because he heard my stomach or just finds everything about me vile. He takes a step toward me, flexing his fingers. His knuckles crack loudly, and I flinch like it’s a gunshot. His lips are forming a smirk now. He can tell I’m scared. He’s enjoying it. He swings his arms upward, catching the handrail above my seat, leaning over me. I can smell his too-heavy cologne and something bitter and oniony on his breath.
Just then, the train lurches to a stop, and I use the excuse of the motion to slide one seat over, then stand up like I’m about to exit. But I don’t know if I should—what if he follows me? The door slides open, and I’m flooded with relief when a whole crowd of Christmas carolers steps onto the train.
They’re in full Dickensian costumes, all clad in jewel-toned hooded overcoats and wide skirts, hand muffs, top hats on the men. There are at least a dozen of them, laughing and speaking in broad, fake Cockney accents. They fill the train with their voices and bodies, swarming around us, blessedly oblivious to the ominous encounter they’ve just interrupted.
“Sorry, guvnah,” a broad-shouldered caroler says as he accidentally bumps into the thin blond man. “Bit of an oaf, I am.”
The man in the denim jacket takes a step back as the other carolers mill around, mercifully filling the space between us. I stand up, zipping my coat and gripping one of the poles for balance, ensuring I’m firmly locked in to the crowd of carolers. I give them a watery smile, mutter hello, and nod my head idiotically up and down, trying to look like I know them. Trying to do whatever I can to become part of the group. There’s no greater protection than being claimed.
As the train bumps along, I keep half an eye on the man in the denim jacket. He’s pulled out his phone, and most of the times I glance his way he’s looking down at it. But twice I catch him staring at me. I shudder and look away, repositioning myself even closer to the nearest caroler, but never fully turning my back on the threat.
When the train pulls up to my stop five minutes later, I’m weak with relief to see that the caroling group is also exiting here. I practically cling to their petticoats as we all step out of the train, spilling out onto the platform. I’m able to walk with them for a full two blocks before they begin bidding each other farewell, breaking off into smaller groups of one and two. Should I try to stick with one of the pairs, or will that make me the creepy stalker now?
Glancing over my shoulder, I verify that there’s no one behind me. The man who spit at me must still be on the train, rattling toward the Francisco stop. But I decide I’m not going to take any more stupid chances, and I run the remaining block and a half to my apartment building. I already have my keys in hand, a weapon at the ready, and God help me, I’m going to put the right key in the exterior lock on the first damn try tonight.
When I finally make it into the lobby of my apartment building, a single tear rolls down my cheek. My breathing is ragged, my lungs seizing. I put my hand to my heart, and it presses damp fabric. Very damp—it’s more than just sweat. I hold my hand up to my nose and the sharp smell of alcohol makes me cringe.
Dammit.
I’d forgotten the whole reason I hadn’t zipped my coat up earlier—my sweater was soaked with gin. My coat, my shirt, everything reeks of body odor and alcohol. I could put off washing the Hanukkah sweater, but I’ll need the coat in the morning. It’s my only good winter coat, and tomorrow is supposed to be frigid. Even if it fully dries overnight, I can’t show up to the office smelling like a frat house. I’m going to have to do a load of laundry.
Swearing and still shaking, I make my way up to my apartment. I change into my comfiest red plaid pajamas and grab a laundry basket, quarters, detergent. Already unsettled, I’m dreading the trek down to the creepy basement. I’ve never wished I had in-unit laundry as much as I do right now.
But I tell myself I’m being childish. The laundry room isn’t that bad. I don’t have to go outside, and the lobby door is securely locked—I made sure to pull it shut tight behind me. I’m home. I’m safe. I’m an adult. I can wash a stupid load of laundry.
Still, when the dank smell of the lower level hits my nostrils, my stomach tightens. I hate it down here. It doesn’t feel like the rest of the apartment. It feels like a dungeon, where malevolent prisoners are just waiting to lunge.
The basement reveals the true age of the building. What’s that Nora Ephron quote, about how some features give away your secrets? “Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth.” When it comes to really showing its age, the basement is definitely the neck of the building.
The walls are cemented-in brick, the floors poured concrete. There are cobwebs in all the corners that no one ever bothers to brush away. While everything aboveground has been renovated at some point or another over the past century, the basement has not. It’s sectioned off, lurking beneath each of the sprawling arms of the courtyard apartment.
The U-shape of the building makes for three even sections, a really popular old Chicago residential-architecture style. Each section has its own utility room with a washer and dryer. Just one per section, which means you often have to wait on someone else’s load to finish before you can wash your clothes. But it could be worse. It could be one washer and dryer for the whole building. Or, like my last apartment, no on-site option at all.
I set my laundry basket down on the cement flooring so I can dig the quarters out from my pajama pocket. A clinking sound makes me gasp, and I drop one of the quarters.
Chill out, Eve. You know that’s just the steam heat clinking in the pipes.
I crouch down to see where my quarter rolled. If I can’t find it, I’ll have to go all the way back upstairs. Thankfully, it didn’t get too far. The basement had a lot of water seepage after the big storms this fall, and our super did a low-budget patch job with some construction clay he bought on clearance. After finishing his half-assed repairs, he had several bags of the stuff left over, which he shoved into the basement corner. The abandoned bags of clay had stopped my little quarter in its tracks.
Retrieving the coin, I wrinkle my nose. The sour dampness from the repeated water damage permeates the whole lower level of the building. Nothing down here is ever really repaired or replaced, just jerry-rigged and shoved back into place. The ancient washer and dryer down here, coin-operated and buzzy as hell, are easily older than I am.
Don’t make ’em like that anymore , Dad said when he first saw them.
He’d been helping move me in, and squirted mustard all over his shirt when we got Chicago dogs for lunch, so he bought a T-shirt from the hot dog joint and threw his own dirty shirt in the washer when we got back to my new place. He beamed as the beige-colored washing machine shuddered to life.
Lookit her go! Nowadays appliances like that crap out after ten years. These babies are vintage! Quality! They’ll outlast us all.
I never expected they would outlast him.
It’s stupid, but it’s hard not to resent shit like that. The week after my dad died, I found a half gallon of milk in my fridge that had yet to reach its expiration date. I threw the whole damn thing against the wall, screaming Fuck you!
Then I silently cleaned up the mess, poured the remaining milk down the drain, put the jug in the recycling bin, went to bed at five in the afternoon, and didn’t get up until nine the next morning. I haven’t screamed at unexpired milk since then, but the inclination to despise anything that shouldn’t have outlasted my father is still there.
Shoving my feelings down deep as I stuff my laundry into the washer, I slam the lid and hit the start button. With a loud buzz, the washer starts shaking awake. For no good reason, I kick the damn thing. Then I turn around and gasp.
Someone’s standing in the shadows, watching me.