Calumet City Read Online Free PDF Page A

prettier."
    "That too. Lots more money, boyfriends. Really something, isn’t she?"
    "Technically, yeah." I try not to smile. Julie’s very good at this for a big blond saloon keeper.
    "So? Practice for BASH or just show up Saturday and cripple your teammates?"
    Cripple? Maim? I can’t help but glance at Tracy sparkling in the lights. Julie laughs. I start to answer and she drapes her arm over my shoulder, "Come with me, stay upstairs, have a pizza. Be a Northsider for the night. You can borrow a good shirt for work if you don’t get any blood on it."
    A one-night vacation across the river in yuppie land. Won’t have to worry about the locksmith or phantom B&Es that make no sense.
    "Can we ride in your BMW and wave at the poor people?"
     
•  •  •
     
       The L7 is a "women’s bar." Take a look at the L and the 7 and you’ll figure it out. Julie’s version is brick-wall retro, a Beat generation coffeehouse combined with a full bar, behind which is a long mirror centered by a twenty-foot grainy photo of Julie and her Ducati café racer splattered into a sidewalk bistro in Nice. Four years ago on the anniversary of the crash she got drunk and autographed ten feet of photo in aerosol orange.
    The music is usually loud and bluesy—Bessie Simone, k. d. lang, Billie Holiday. The ceiling’s high and serpentine with flex A/C ducts painted like snakes that only get that big in your nightmares. Julie’s walls are covered with autographed rugby jerseys and pictures of her heroes: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey. At the back there’s a small stage, in front there’s a loyal clientele strange enough to be in a John Waters movie. Actually, there’s a picture of him too, autographed by Johnny Depp and kissed bright red by Traci Lords.
    We do not have this type of spot on the Southside, nor do we have the asshole comedian up there doing deaf-guy humor. He’s reading something, mimicking Lou Ferrigno’s impediment, and nobody’s laughing—at least you gotta give these Northsiders that. Guys like Cisco and Mr. Ferrigno deserve better; it’s got to be hard wearing your weakness for everybody to see and still having the balls to press on anyway.
    The TV above the bar is on but soundless, and I focus on it instead of the comedian. The running lines are the reporter reporting on the assassination attempt backed by video of the mayor and his wife. Julie leans across the bar, glances at the stage, then refills my water.
    "So?"
    I shrug.
    "Talk, sweetie. You don’t miss practice. Ever. Other than your fish, we’re the only life you have."
    "Thanks. I miss one day and Ms. Moens is playing my position?"
    "She and I
are
the sponsors."
    Tracy and Julie are partners in the L7. They were lovers once, but no longer, at least that me and the public know about. I shrug, not wanting to get into my day, the stuff I did and saw.
    Julie says, "Don’t make me come over there."
    She’s much bigger than me, but I have a gun and mention that.
    "Seen it, sweetie." She grabs my hands. "Is this about the mayor? Talk to me. No kidding."
    So I do. But not about the body in the wall. I talk about the Gangster Disciple shooting, about knowing the kid, knowing his mom. All the shit you don’t want to know, don’t want to share, and don’t want to relive after seeing it firsthand and then reporting it for eight goddamn hours to the wrinkle-free blazers.
    The comedian finishes about when I do, and now the small crowd applauds—so much for my new faith in the Northside. Better still, he pulls up a stool next to me, smiles so warm I almost blush, and stays with the deaf guy impression, talking directly to me from too close. I notice a cell phone on his belt and consider shoving it up his ass, then turn back to Julie because I missed what she said. The guy puts his hand on me and I’m off the stool before he can finish, my hand close to my pistol, eyes hard in his.
    "
Do not
put your fucking hands on me." I seem a bit on edge.
    Julie