Chicago
started as an escape. Well, it started
as San Francisco, but became Chicago.
You’ll see.
Mindy James, my ex-girlfriend, had been killed a
couple weeks before and Des Moines had been too much after that. The job—finding her killer--seemed like the
only thing that mattered. Friends--the
few that I had--and family faded into the background as I focused on
retribution. But, as you might expect,
the anger and depression made me sloppy.
Mindy and I had been in a relationship that had ended in tears, bruises
and a police report that I hid from the rest of the officers investigating her
death and the series of similar murders that happened around the same
time. And that’s how my career as a Des
Moines Police Officer ended. It had been
coming for a while before that, though.
Years of dealing with people on both sides of the problem had gutted the
parts of the job I liked, leaving just the husk. It’s easy to hate the thieves and pimps and
the myriad other people who act to make the city a worse place to live. But after years of working, I found myself
hating the victims too. Not that they
were at fault for their suffering, but the way they would look at me—their eyes
teary and red, or hard and expecting, or angry, or disappointed—it stopped making
me feel like I was helping. It made me
feel like I was just someone taking an order, same as anyone at a fast food
shop.
I still remember the last night as a
cop. I was sat down, and there was a lot
of yelling. There’s some dispute about
whether I was fired or I quit. Not that
it matters at this point, but I still contend I quit. I slid the gun across the Lieutenant’s desk,
happy to be free from the weight of it.
The badge, however, slipped from my hand almost the way breath seems to
slip from my lungs—without effort or thought.
As the Lieutenant closed his hand around that shining shield, the room
seemed to darken. I didn’t know
why—especially after the way the last couple months of alienating pretty much
everyone in my life. My partner suspected
me of murder. My best friend wanted to
believe in me, but he wasn’t sure after my erratic actions. And the woman I had once thought I loved was
dead. And I didn’t have a dog, so I was
alone. Alone, but I felt free—at least
that’s what I told myself.
That night I came home angry. I stopped to get a bottle of cheap whiskey a
couple blocks from the apartment I rented.
I left my car in the parking lot and started to walk home with the
bottle. By the time I was home, I’d
drained the whiskey and was trying to remember if there was anything else at
home. I found a couple odd beers in the
fridge and opened one up before heading to the closet and pulling out a
suitcase. I tore the drawers out from my
dresser and dumped the contents into the suitcase, zipped it shut and sat on
the bed and started to cry. The tears
were warm and smelled of whiskey and as I sat there, I could feel the morning’s
headache start to crawl into the sides of my head. “Always have to pay for the stupid shit you
do,” I muttered to myself as I snuck under the covers and waited to fall
asleep. It was a long wait with the last
couple months sitting on my chest, but finally the night was shrouded by a
foggy state, which I guessed was sleep.
I awoke in vomit, as the sunlight
streamed through the window splitting the room, and my head. Dust motes played in the light playfully and
for a minute I smiled at the beauty, before my stomach lurched and I threw up
again. I climbed out of bed and clumsily
brushed the cold vomit from my mouth and chest as I sat up and looked at the
mess I’d made. I picked the suitcase off
the bed and stood it by the closet door as I went to the bathroom holding my
head and barely making it to the toilet in time for another round of
sickness. The next few mornings started
about the same way. And the days passed
as you might expect, I’d watch TV during the day, nursing myself back to a
state resembling humanity. I’d get calls
from my former partner that I wouldn’t answer—her voice on the answering
machine seemed genuinely concerned, but she never dropped by to check on me. I would tell myself this was the last day of
this bullshit—now I needed to figure out what the hell to do with myself. But I always ended up passing a bar or liquor
store and stumbling home and waking up with a headache that was more
excruciating than the day before. Some
days the headache was joined by bruises and scrapes that I couldn’t explain
until I would try to enter a bar either later that night or soon after and the
bartender would explain to me, usually rather colorfully, that I was no longer
allowed to enter that establishment.
And then, one day as I was watching
Price is Right sucking down some orange juice and trying to decide if I was
going to be able to keep down some breakfast, I got up out of the chair, picked
up the suitcase and got into the Toyota that I’d bought a year before. I was going west—the decision was made. San Francisco maybe. I’d wanted to visit since reading the Maltese
Falcon. San Francisco would be good for
me. No more snowy winters. New people.
No family. No partners. No expectations. Just a warmer climate with some sun and the
ocean. I had never seen the ocean,
couldn’t imagine something so massive. I
tried to imagine myself sitting on a beach staring as far as I could across the
ocean—straight into eternity, maybe—but my mind couldn’t picture anything
larger than Lake Ahquabi. Yes, San
Francisco was the place for this defrocked police officer, I thought as I took a
right onto I-80.
I was smiling suddenly. San Francisco was going to be great. It was exactly what I needed, I thought to
myself and flipped on the radio. “Ain’t
got no cash, ain’t got no style. Ain’t
got no girl to make you smile. Don’t
worry. Be happy.” I smashed my hand into the radio five times,
before the music stopped. It was also
then that I noticed the sign that said I was 6 miles from Grinnell. I was headed the wrong way. I entertained the thought of turning around
at Grinnell, but I didn’t want to see Des Moines again, so I kept on going.
Five and a half hours later, I found
myself in Chicago.
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