Opportunity
Robert Sachs
I knew when I took the job that burlesque was dead. The husk of it lay rotting in Malloy’s on the frayed south end of the Loop, frequented by sad old men—a strip joint, nothing more. Now, late in the summer of ‘52, even that’s gone. I’m standing in the darkness across the street from Malloy’s with three of my girls watching a web of fire hoses diddering in front of us, flames playing with the rotted wood like sharks feeding on chum. I’d gotten everyone—the three strippers and a handful of customers—out of the building before the fire spread.
The marquee, hidden behind dense black smoke, explodes with a pizzazz more appropriate to a time when burlesque was king. We step back, eyes wide. Bits of metal and shards of glass shimmer in the firelight and fall like hot summer rain, bouncing dully off the helmets of the fire fighters. I catch myself smiling. I can’t help but think it’s a better burial than the old place deserves.
But for that brief explosion, the fire isn’t worthy of note. There will be an investigation, of course, insisted upon by the insurance company, but in the end they’ll write it off to faulty electrical wiring or a gas leak. There’ll be an article in the paper listing the headliners who played Malloy’s in its heyday, describing how low the theater had sunk as America entered the second half of the twentieth century.
“What now, Hindy?” Venus asks taking my hand and looking up at me, as if I was her older brother. She is Chicago’s first midget stripper. I hired her four years earlier, shortly after I was made manager, and she became one of my top attractions.
I squeeze her hand. “Now, I’m going home. I need sleep. You won’t have trouble lining something up. You’re a star.” Venus, whose real name is Janeene, says she isn’t worried about that. She’s worried about me, she says. And, as I think about it, with good reason.
I’m thirty. Leave out Malloy’s and there’s not much to tell about me. I was four when my parents died in an automobile accident. Raised by an indifferent aunt, I didn’t look like college material when I graduated high school. When I turned nineteen in ’41, the army didn’t want me because I was missing two fingers on my right hand, a souvenir of the accident that killed my mother and father. A family friend found me a gofer job at Malloy’s. I was grateful, and I worked hard at doing what I was told. Five years later I was handed the chance to manage the place when the wife of the previous manager found him diddling one of the girls and shot him. The owner, a man named Pincus, called me from his New Jersey home and asked if I thought I could handle being the manager. I assured him I could.
“Feldman,” Pincus said, “I’m going to give you a shot. If I catch you with your hand in the till, I’ll cut it off. Understand?” Looking at my three-fingered hand, I smiled and said I understood. “Then it’s a deal. You start tomorrow. Problems or questions, you call me. Trouble with the police, you call me. And Feldman, try to keep your hands off the girls.”
It was a crazy life with no future. Business was bad and getting worse. I had to be at Malloy’s at five in the evening and couldn’t leave until four, four-thirty the next morning. Six days a week. The only women I knew were hookers and strippers. I worked all night and slept most of the day.
It runs through my head that the fire will change all that. What I want is a normal life: wife, kids, a decent job. I’m making good money for someone my age without a college education, but if I stay in the business, I know I’ll be doing the same thing at fifty I was doing at thirty.
The flames peter out, the remaining timbers smolder; not much left to watch. It won’t be light for another three hours. The other two girls hail a cab and kiss Venus and me goodbye.
“Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do,” one of them shouts.
Venus laughs. “There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do. Come stay with me tonight. We can both use the company.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” I say, surprised by my lack of enthusiasm.
I played by the rules. Kept my hands off the girls. But now things are different: there’s no Malloy’s, no job, no rules. We walk the two blocks to the El. It’s a hot, sticky August night, the kind that finds families sleeping at the beaches. The windows on the creaking wooden elevated train are open. Between the squeal of the steel wheels straining against the tracks and the lub dub sound of the train speeding past close in apartment buildings, we find it difficult to talk. The flickering yellow electric lights of the train render the rosiest complexion pallid. Venus insists on holding my hand and we sit like that with me looking out the window, trying to get a glimpse of my future.
The morning after the fire I awaken in Janeene’s bed. The small efficiency apartment is frilly, neat and clean—a woman’s apartment. She makes me breakfast.
“What’s that you’re humming?” she asks.
“Something my mother used to sing to me, a nonsense song. Only words I remember are, with your hands in your pockets and your pockets in your pants, all the little fishies do the hoochy coochy dance.”
“Hoochy coochy, huh. I heard it different.” She has me sit up, sits on my lap and begins a slow, undulating dance that gets my complete attention.
“Definitely a different hootchy coochy,” I hear myself murmur.
“I should call Pincus,” I say after recovering. “He’s probably been trying to get hold of me all night.” Pincus has heard about the fire. He isn’t upset and he doesn’t think he’ll rebuild. He thanks me for doing a good job and wishes me well. And, he adds, there’ll be a little something extra in my last paycheck.
“The son of a bitch torched his own place,” Janeene concludes. “There ought to be a big something extra in your pay check.”
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t,” I say. “Look at it this way, no one was hurt. You and the other girls will move on to the next strip joint or whatever. No offense. Pincus has a way out of a bad situation and life goes on.” What I didn’t say is what about me. Where does Hindy Feldman go from here?
After breakfast, Janeene pulls me back onto her bed. I find sex with her especially thrilling, but more than that, I’m surprised at how easy it is to be with her, to talk with her. I tell her about my parents, the accident, my aunt.
“She was nice, but she didn’t know what to do with me, so she pretty much left me alone. It didn’t seem like she expected much from me and neither did I.” The job at Malloy’s had given me confidence, I tell her. I found myself thinking there was no reason I couldn’t hold down a good job, make good money. Janeene agrees: no reason.
The gray, pimply fellow behind the counter at the unemployment office is a guy I knew from high school. “No shit,” the guy says. “You were managing Malloy’s? What a dream job that must’ve been. It’ll all be downhill from there, huh?”
I force a smile. “It was just a job—long hours, low pay. Not very glamorous, really.”
The guy licks his thin, bureaucratic lips and says something about the fringe benefits. Anxious to be signed up and out of there, I wink at him and whisper, “You have no idea.”
“There’s a night shift opening with the CTA,” the guy tells me, flipping some sheets on his clipboard. “Conductor on the Ravenswood line. Here’s the number to call for the interview.” The guy stamps some papers and hands one of them to me. “Your first check should come in about a week. We need evidence that you showed up for the interview, Hindy. Good luck.”
I spend the next few days at the library, reading The Law of the Higher Potential, by Robert Collier. This was the book the librarian got for me when I asked for something about getting on with your life, about becoming successful. “The first principle of success,” I read, “is desire—knowing what you want.” Seems easy enough. I know what I want. I write the phrase into a small notebook. I also copy an idea about conflict: “One might as well try to ride two horses moving in different directions, as to try to maintain in equal force two opposing or contradictory sets of desires.”
The CTA interview goes well. The woman behind the desk raises an eyebrow when she reads my work history, but doesn’t comment on it. The job is mine, she says. I’m to show up the following Monday for training. I ask about the possibility of getting on the day shift. She tells me it would probably take a couple of years, but there’s enough turnover that it should work out.
That evening, Janeene tells me she’s going to visit her friend Marla in Louisville for a few days. She begs me to go along. “Marla strips at a place out near Fort Knox,” she says. “You’ll like her. It’ll be like a vacation.” She puts her arms around my waist. “Please,” she moans, looking up at me.
I agree to go as long as I’m back in plenty of time to start my training on Monday.
On stage, Janeene always wears a bright banana-yellow wig and looks like a coarse caricature of Marilyn Monroe. Now she decides, over my objection, to wear the wig on the bus down.
“Why call attention to yourself?” I ask. “It looks ridiculous.”
Janeene stares at me, putting her hands on her hips. “Attention is something I get whether I call for it or not.”
I’m not amused. On the bus I grab a window seat and press my face against the cool glass, looking out at nothing in particular.
“You’re sulking,” she tells me.
I tell her to leave me alone. I don’t like the look the bus driver gives Janeene and I’d rather not see the expressions on the faces of the other passengers as they board.
The bus crosses into Indiana and Janeene rests her head on my arm.
“That’s not going to discolor my jacket, is it?”
“Asshole,” she says, taking a crossword puzzle and a pencil out of her bag. At West Lafayette she asks me for a Cubs’ left fielder in five letters.
“Sauer,” I say.
“Sour is four letters, sour puss.”
“Hank Sauer. S-A-U-E-R. How can you live in Chicago and not know that?”
“Okay, okay,” she says. “Hank mother fucking Sauer. So shoot me.”
A young man in military uniform behind us laughs. From Indianapolis to Louisville, we’re the only passengers not in uniform. “Knox,” she says. “Marla pulls down big money right nearby.”
A man in front of us turns around with a smile, as if he’d like to hear more.
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “Enough. Keep your voice down.”
Janeene goes back to her crossword puzzle. When we pass Sellersburg, she asks me if I’m going to change clothes for Marla’s party.
“Party? Shit, Venus, this is the first I’ve heard of a party. And what’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Nothing. But you might feel more comfortable with something a little more....” She means hip. I understand she wants me to wear something a little less like an undertaker or an accountant. “It’s a party, Hindy, not a fucking job interview.”
I glare at her. When we’re alone I find her swearing titillating, but here on the bus it makes me squirm. I imagine what the soldiers think of me. I know what they think of her.
Marla turns out to be over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. She has a one-bedroom garden apartment a block off of Dixie Highway, the main drag from Louisville to Ft. Knox. A keg of beer holds the front door open to the muggy night air. A likeness of Audie Murphy in fatigues, hammered out of an automobile fender, hangs above her bed. Music is honking from a portable record player. The guys, half local, half army, begin showing up around ten. Janeene produces a bag of dope.
“Jesus,” I say “That’s enough hash to land us all in jail. And you brought it on the bus?”
Janeene smiles and shrugs.
“Look,” I say, “I’m going to take a walk. Be back later. Do everyone a favor and get rid of that stuff.”
I’m never that comfortable at parties and the dope is a good excuse to bow out. I walk over to Dixie Highway and down a few blocks to a White Castle where I sit sipping a Coke and wondering why I agreed to go with Janeene in the first place. Isn’t this the kind of life I wanted to get away from? Isn’t the plan to meet some nice people for a change, get a regular job? The fire had given me that chance. And here I am, hanging out with dope-smoking strippers in a run down apartment in Loserville. It’s your life, I tell myself. Take control. I decide to tell Janeene I’m going home.
Back at the apartment, everyone but Marla and Janeene is gone. Janeene is sitting on the bed crying and Marla is sitting on the floor, holding a blood soaked towel to her head. There’d been a fight. One of the locals pulled a gun and a bullet caromed off Audie Murphy and creased Marla’s temple. The dope is gone. It’s about two when the police arrive. The three of us are taken downtown and questioned separately. As soon as it’s light, I ask to make a phone call. A guard leads me from my cell to a holding area where there is a pay phone.
“Hello, Mr. Pincus? It’s Hindy Feldman.”
In an hour it’s fixed. A lawyer named Diamond shows up at the Jefferson County jail. The three of us are released, the charges to be filed away. Marla kisses Janeene, says she’ll find her own way home. Diamond tells Janeene and me to take the next train to Chicago. He gives us first class tickets and drops us off at Union Station. “Courtesy of Mr. Pincus,” he says.
We sit in silence at the station for an hour. Janeene gets fidgety, walking back and forth in front of me. “This is stupid,” she says finally. She’s no longer wearing the blond wig and I think she looks older and somehow smaller than before. “Let’s cash in the tickets and go back to Marla’s. We came down here for a good time.”
“We dodged a bullet, Janeene. What if Pincus couldn’t get us out and I missed my training?”
“But we’re out. C’mon, lets do some howling while we’re down here.”
I hold out one of the tickets. “Here,” I say, “Go. Have fun.” She snaps the ticket from my hand.
“Change your mind, you know where to find me,” she says and heads for the ticket counter.
It’s good that she leaves. Now I can go back to Chicago and concentrate on building a life. The job as an elevated train conductor is a start. It will give me time to take courses at the junior college. I’ll meet regular people for a change. It could be a good start.
The early morning sun forces its way through the grime covered windows of the station. The Monon train bound for Chicago pulls in on Track One. A handful of gray, tired people struggle to get their suitcases off the train. I wonder if they’re going home or leaving it. They look dazed, unsure of which way to go. Are they starting something new or picking up where they left off? Perhaps they’re looking for someone. I imagine how different it is on the Chicago El: People hopping on and hopping off, knowing where they’re going and being in a hurry to get there.
I can see myself in the blue conductor’s cap, calling out the next station on the Ravenswood line. “Kimball. Kimball next. End of the line.” It’s just the kind of opportunity I’d been hoping for. In a couple of years, day shift. It can lead to something.
I smile thinking about Janeene taking that bag of hash on the bus. Got to laugh. Janeene and Marla, a real Mutt and Jeff act. Thank God I wasn’t there when the shot was fired. Marla’s lucky to be alive. And Janeene takes it all in stride. Nothing fazes her. My Venus. I can really pick them.
I check the time, take my bag and walk slowly over to the first class coach. Standing with a foot on the first step, I look at the ticket in my hand and then over at the ticket office some thirty yards away. I still have time to cash it in and head for Dixie Highway.
The marquee, hidden behind dense black smoke, explodes with a pizzazz more appropriate to a time when burlesque was king. We step back, eyes wide. Bits of metal and shards of glass shimmer in the firelight and fall like hot summer rain, bouncing dully off the helmets of the fire fighters. I catch myself smiling. I can’t help but think it’s a better burial than the old place deserves.
But for that brief explosion, the fire isn’t worthy of note. There will be an investigation, of course, insisted upon by the insurance company, but in the end they’ll write it off to faulty electrical wiring or a gas leak. There’ll be an article in the paper listing the headliners who played Malloy’s in its heyday, describing how low the theater had sunk as America entered the second half of the twentieth century.
“What now, Hindy?” Venus asks taking my hand and looking up at me, as if I was her older brother. She is Chicago’s first midget stripper. I hired her four years earlier, shortly after I was made manager, and she became one of my top attractions.
I squeeze her hand. “Now, I’m going home. I need sleep. You won’t have trouble lining something up. You’re a star.” Venus, whose real name is Janeene, says she isn’t worried about that. She’s worried about me, she says. And, as I think about it, with good reason.
I’m thirty. Leave out Malloy’s and there’s not much to tell about me. I was four when my parents died in an automobile accident. Raised by an indifferent aunt, I didn’t look like college material when I graduated high school. When I turned nineteen in ’41, the army didn’t want me because I was missing two fingers on my right hand, a souvenir of the accident that killed my mother and father. A family friend found me a gofer job at Malloy’s. I was grateful, and I worked hard at doing what I was told. Five years later I was handed the chance to manage the place when the wife of the previous manager found him diddling one of the girls and shot him. The owner, a man named Pincus, called me from his New Jersey home and asked if I thought I could handle being the manager. I assured him I could.
“Feldman,” Pincus said, “I’m going to give you a shot. If I catch you with your hand in the till, I’ll cut it off. Understand?” Looking at my three-fingered hand, I smiled and said I understood. “Then it’s a deal. You start tomorrow. Problems or questions, you call me. Trouble with the police, you call me. And Feldman, try to keep your hands off the girls.”
It was a crazy life with no future. Business was bad and getting worse. I had to be at Malloy’s at five in the evening and couldn’t leave until four, four-thirty the next morning. Six days a week. The only women I knew were hookers and strippers. I worked all night and slept most of the day.
It runs through my head that the fire will change all that. What I want is a normal life: wife, kids, a decent job. I’m making good money for someone my age without a college education, but if I stay in the business, I know I’ll be doing the same thing at fifty I was doing at thirty.
The flames peter out, the remaining timbers smolder; not much left to watch. It won’t be light for another three hours. The other two girls hail a cab and kiss Venus and me goodbye.
“Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do,” one of them shouts.
Venus laughs. “There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do. Come stay with me tonight. We can both use the company.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” I say, surprised by my lack of enthusiasm.
I played by the rules. Kept my hands off the girls. But now things are different: there’s no Malloy’s, no job, no rules. We walk the two blocks to the El. It’s a hot, sticky August night, the kind that finds families sleeping at the beaches. The windows on the creaking wooden elevated train are open. Between the squeal of the steel wheels straining against the tracks and the lub dub sound of the train speeding past close in apartment buildings, we find it difficult to talk. The flickering yellow electric lights of the train render the rosiest complexion pallid. Venus insists on holding my hand and we sit like that with me looking out the window, trying to get a glimpse of my future.
The morning after the fire I awaken in Janeene’s bed. The small efficiency apartment is frilly, neat and clean—a woman’s apartment. She makes me breakfast.
“What’s that you’re humming?” she asks.
“Something my mother used to sing to me, a nonsense song. Only words I remember are, with your hands in your pockets and your pockets in your pants, all the little fishies do the hoochy coochy dance.”
“Hoochy coochy, huh. I heard it different.” She has me sit up, sits on my lap and begins a slow, undulating dance that gets my complete attention.
“Definitely a different hootchy coochy,” I hear myself murmur.
“I should call Pincus,” I say after recovering. “He’s probably been trying to get hold of me all night.” Pincus has heard about the fire. He isn’t upset and he doesn’t think he’ll rebuild. He thanks me for doing a good job and wishes me well. And, he adds, there’ll be a little something extra in my last paycheck.
“The son of a bitch torched his own place,” Janeene concludes. “There ought to be a big something extra in your pay check.”
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t,” I say. “Look at it this way, no one was hurt. You and the other girls will move on to the next strip joint or whatever. No offense. Pincus has a way out of a bad situation and life goes on.” What I didn’t say is what about me. Where does Hindy Feldman go from here?
After breakfast, Janeene pulls me back onto her bed. I find sex with her especially thrilling, but more than that, I’m surprised at how easy it is to be with her, to talk with her. I tell her about my parents, the accident, my aunt.
“She was nice, but she didn’t know what to do with me, so she pretty much left me alone. It didn’t seem like she expected much from me and neither did I.” The job at Malloy’s had given me confidence, I tell her. I found myself thinking there was no reason I couldn’t hold down a good job, make good money. Janeene agrees: no reason.
The gray, pimply fellow behind the counter at the unemployment office is a guy I knew from high school. “No shit,” the guy says. “You were managing Malloy’s? What a dream job that must’ve been. It’ll all be downhill from there, huh?”
I force a smile. “It was just a job—long hours, low pay. Not very glamorous, really.”
The guy licks his thin, bureaucratic lips and says something about the fringe benefits. Anxious to be signed up and out of there, I wink at him and whisper, “You have no idea.”
“There’s a night shift opening with the CTA,” the guy tells me, flipping some sheets on his clipboard. “Conductor on the Ravenswood line. Here’s the number to call for the interview.” The guy stamps some papers and hands one of them to me. “Your first check should come in about a week. We need evidence that you showed up for the interview, Hindy. Good luck.”
I spend the next few days at the library, reading The Law of the Higher Potential, by Robert Collier. This was the book the librarian got for me when I asked for something about getting on with your life, about becoming successful. “The first principle of success,” I read, “is desire—knowing what you want.” Seems easy enough. I know what I want. I write the phrase into a small notebook. I also copy an idea about conflict: “One might as well try to ride two horses moving in different directions, as to try to maintain in equal force two opposing or contradictory sets of desires.”
The CTA interview goes well. The woman behind the desk raises an eyebrow when she reads my work history, but doesn’t comment on it. The job is mine, she says. I’m to show up the following Monday for training. I ask about the possibility of getting on the day shift. She tells me it would probably take a couple of years, but there’s enough turnover that it should work out.
That evening, Janeene tells me she’s going to visit her friend Marla in Louisville for a few days. She begs me to go along. “Marla strips at a place out near Fort Knox,” she says. “You’ll like her. It’ll be like a vacation.” She puts her arms around my waist. “Please,” she moans, looking up at me.
I agree to go as long as I’m back in plenty of time to start my training on Monday.
On stage, Janeene always wears a bright banana-yellow wig and looks like a coarse caricature of Marilyn Monroe. Now she decides, over my objection, to wear the wig on the bus down.
“Why call attention to yourself?” I ask. “It looks ridiculous.”
Janeene stares at me, putting her hands on her hips. “Attention is something I get whether I call for it or not.”
I’m not amused. On the bus I grab a window seat and press my face against the cool glass, looking out at nothing in particular.
“You’re sulking,” she tells me.
I tell her to leave me alone. I don’t like the look the bus driver gives Janeene and I’d rather not see the expressions on the faces of the other passengers as they board.
The bus crosses into Indiana and Janeene rests her head on my arm.
“That’s not going to discolor my jacket, is it?”
“Asshole,” she says, taking a crossword puzzle and a pencil out of her bag. At West Lafayette she asks me for a Cubs’ left fielder in five letters.
“Sauer,” I say.
“Sour is four letters, sour puss.”
“Hank Sauer. S-A-U-E-R. How can you live in Chicago and not know that?”
“Okay, okay,” she says. “Hank mother fucking Sauer. So shoot me.”
A young man in military uniform behind us laughs. From Indianapolis to Louisville, we’re the only passengers not in uniform. “Knox,” she says. “Marla pulls down big money right nearby.”
A man in front of us turns around with a smile, as if he’d like to hear more.
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “Enough. Keep your voice down.”
Janeene goes back to her crossword puzzle. When we pass Sellersburg, she asks me if I’m going to change clothes for Marla’s party.
“Party? Shit, Venus, this is the first I’ve heard of a party. And what’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Nothing. But you might feel more comfortable with something a little more....” She means hip. I understand she wants me to wear something a little less like an undertaker or an accountant. “It’s a party, Hindy, not a fucking job interview.”
I glare at her. When we’re alone I find her swearing titillating, but here on the bus it makes me squirm. I imagine what the soldiers think of me. I know what they think of her.
Marla turns out to be over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. She has a one-bedroom garden apartment a block off of Dixie Highway, the main drag from Louisville to Ft. Knox. A keg of beer holds the front door open to the muggy night air. A likeness of Audie Murphy in fatigues, hammered out of an automobile fender, hangs above her bed. Music is honking from a portable record player. The guys, half local, half army, begin showing up around ten. Janeene produces a bag of dope.
“Jesus,” I say “That’s enough hash to land us all in jail. And you brought it on the bus?”
Janeene smiles and shrugs.
“Look,” I say, “I’m going to take a walk. Be back later. Do everyone a favor and get rid of that stuff.”
I’m never that comfortable at parties and the dope is a good excuse to bow out. I walk over to Dixie Highway and down a few blocks to a White Castle where I sit sipping a Coke and wondering why I agreed to go with Janeene in the first place. Isn’t this the kind of life I wanted to get away from? Isn’t the plan to meet some nice people for a change, get a regular job? The fire had given me that chance. And here I am, hanging out with dope-smoking strippers in a run down apartment in Loserville. It’s your life, I tell myself. Take control. I decide to tell Janeene I’m going home.
Back at the apartment, everyone but Marla and Janeene is gone. Janeene is sitting on the bed crying and Marla is sitting on the floor, holding a blood soaked towel to her head. There’d been a fight. One of the locals pulled a gun and a bullet caromed off Audie Murphy and creased Marla’s temple. The dope is gone. It’s about two when the police arrive. The three of us are taken downtown and questioned separately. As soon as it’s light, I ask to make a phone call. A guard leads me from my cell to a holding area where there is a pay phone.
“Hello, Mr. Pincus? It’s Hindy Feldman.”
In an hour it’s fixed. A lawyer named Diamond shows up at the Jefferson County jail. The three of us are released, the charges to be filed away. Marla kisses Janeene, says she’ll find her own way home. Diamond tells Janeene and me to take the next train to Chicago. He gives us first class tickets and drops us off at Union Station. “Courtesy of Mr. Pincus,” he says.
We sit in silence at the station for an hour. Janeene gets fidgety, walking back and forth in front of me. “This is stupid,” she says finally. She’s no longer wearing the blond wig and I think she looks older and somehow smaller than before. “Let’s cash in the tickets and go back to Marla’s. We came down here for a good time.”
“We dodged a bullet, Janeene. What if Pincus couldn’t get us out and I missed my training?”
“But we’re out. C’mon, lets do some howling while we’re down here.”
I hold out one of the tickets. “Here,” I say, “Go. Have fun.” She snaps the ticket from my hand.
“Change your mind, you know where to find me,” she says and heads for the ticket counter.
It’s good that she leaves. Now I can go back to Chicago and concentrate on building a life. The job as an elevated train conductor is a start. It will give me time to take courses at the junior college. I’ll meet regular people for a change. It could be a good start.
The early morning sun forces its way through the grime covered windows of the station. The Monon train bound for Chicago pulls in on Track One. A handful of gray, tired people struggle to get their suitcases off the train. I wonder if they’re going home or leaving it. They look dazed, unsure of which way to go. Are they starting something new or picking up where they left off? Perhaps they’re looking for someone. I imagine how different it is on the Chicago El: People hopping on and hopping off, knowing where they’re going and being in a hurry to get there.
I can see myself in the blue conductor’s cap, calling out the next station on the Ravenswood line. “Kimball. Kimball next. End of the line.” It’s just the kind of opportunity I’d been hoping for. In a couple of years, day shift. It can lead to something.
I smile thinking about Janeene taking that bag of hash on the bus. Got to laugh. Janeene and Marla, a real Mutt and Jeff act. Thank God I wasn’t there when the shot was fired. Marla’s lucky to be alive. And Janeene takes it all in stride. Nothing fazes her. My Venus. I can really pick them.
I check the time, take my bag and walk slowly over to the first class coach. Standing with a foot on the first step, I look at the ticket in my hand and then over at the ticket office some thirty yards away. I still have time to cash it in and head for Dixie Highway.
