In Chicago

The lapse in time:  I've been housesitting in Chicago.

Chicago was supposedly your town, the city you had spent many years in, being young, prosperous careerists.  The city where you two met each other.  The city where you had a standing reservation at La Vie en Rose each bone chilling New Year's Eve.  The city where you drank martinis at the Ritz Carlton, bought suits at Nordstrom's, played with your dogs on the dog beach of Lake Michigan.

Do I believe any of this?  Now, everything you ever said is suspect, so skillful were you, are you, at creating fictions.

I rode the buses.  I climbed up and down the El steps.  I stood on the glass deck of the Sears Tower and looked down at the "city of big shoulders." I walked Michigan Ave.  I saw you everywhere and nowhere.  

I imagined bumping into you.  You were just around every corner. Would you have been shocked? Would you ignore me?  Would you be embarrassed?  I'd like to think of a sheepish face, a sorrowful, apologetic face.  But no, that's not the case, not possible.  As close as we had become in our months of five daily conversations, your intimacy was feigned because you harbored a secret the whole time, the secret of sitting on so many lies, living so many lies.

What I say is this:  your city, if it ever was, is a fine city.  "Your" Chicago is now mine.   It endeared itself to me in all the ways a city can, with spirit, humanity, ebullience. If I saw you today, I would tell you this.  I would talk about Gibsons and the Gold Coast, Boystown and Old Town.  I would revel in every word you could say about everything Chicago.

But, not.  No way.  No longer.  No how.  I am poorer for the knowing you.  And that, is the saddest thing you can say about another person.