Painted Cities

CLIMBERS

They waved to each other like peeping toms. They had half smiles on their faces, unsure if they were happy to be seen — to be discovered meant the roof they were on, the perch they were on, was no longer sacred. The next day someone else was sure to be up there, potato-chip bags, coke cans, candy wrappers scattered carelessly like a slap in the face.

Some were hyper-secretive. When they were spotted atop a church steeple or warehouse roof, they scattered like mice. If there was nothing to hide behind, like at the top of one of the abandoned water towers, they raced back and forth like the Marx Brothers until it occurred to them that they could be out of sight on the opposite side. If you followed them around they kept themselves just out of view, like squirrels being chased up a tree, until eventually they stopped, and tried to blend in as much as possible with their surroundings.

Other climbers were proud, walking the edges of A-frame roofs, the ledges of dilapidated apartment complexes. They did tricks sometimes, like gymnasts on the balance beam, flipping and doing graceful cartwheels into dismounts where they arched their backs and threw up their hands in pride. They did this during rush hour, when even the side streets were packed with commuters searching for easier routes home. “Gapers’ block” it was called, when a car would stop, nearly causing an accident, to see a kid doing pommel-horse maneuvers atop the old pierogi factory on Oakley Avenue.

And some kids were sitters, thinkers. They sat and contemplated life, the state of the world, on the various roofs and ledges of the neighborhood. A subspecies of the sitter was the painter, who could be seen, sketchbook in hand, legs crossed, back stiff, painting skylines from various vantage points in the city. Sometimes there were schools of them, small herds who sat together and painted in much the same style, watercolor, surrealist, even Gothic — adding buttresses to the Sears Tower, complicated barrels and pinnacles that connected all the buildings downtown as if it were one large medieval complex. If you watched them long enough, you’d eventually see them turn to each other, give a smile, take a breath, shake their drawing hands for just a second, then jut their chins out and continue again, legs crossed, backs stiff as boards.

Then there were the subterraneans. Those who did their exploring, their investigating, underground, in the dark beneath the sidewalks. They wore flashlights attached to various parts of their bodies: foreheads, arms, legs. They looked like monsters, lit-up monsters, as they made their way through the caverns beneath the city: the old coal railways, the ancient pedways beneath the Loop. They knew the city’s complex system of tunnels like they knew the wrinkles in the palms of their hands. They were able to follow each tunnel, see where it was going, all this in advance, as if they were viewing it from above.

They initiated new members with a turn at the lead, telling them to simply calm down if they felt lost, because a true spelunker has this “sixth” sense. “Remember,” they said, “you always know where you are, always.” And they were always right.

From time to time a spelunker would pop up out of nowhere, through a basement door, coal hatchway, chimney flue, or in the subbasement of an L station or tavern. “Excuse me,” he would ask of anyone in sight. “Do you happen to know the time?” And the spelunker would wait, patiently, sweaty, his face covered in grime. Behind him, the flashing yellow lights of companions could be seen, small talk could be heard: “The best way is under Ogden Avenue, by far. Maybe Pershing as an alternate.”

“What about Archer?”

“Ends at Western.”

“Aaaah.”

The stunned civilian would check his watch and reply and the spelunker would always ask, “A.m. or p.m.?”

“Thanks,” the spelunker would say, when he had his answer.

“Eleven o’clock, boys,” he would say as he was turning. “A.m.!” And a small cheer would go up as the spelunker would shut whatever grate or door or wooden trap he’d come from, and disappear.

I remember these characters as if they still run through my life. I remember these characters like I saw them just yesterday, scurrying across the L tracks or down into a deep gangway. They were all so shy, so secretive, but when you saw them they’d salute, smile, just a little happy that they’d been seen.

DISTANCE

Chano says he’s never seen the wall open, but I know it’s a lie. It’s one of those things you never pay attention to, it happens so many times, like the sunrise, or a freight train running across your neighborhood. I pay attention when I see the wall open. You see things out there, the horizon, tiny stone islands like miniature castles. “Water-pumping stations,” the professor says. “Not castles. We don’t have castles where we live.”

The professor tells me the wall was first built to keep the Indians out, then the Russians. He throws up his hands. “It’s a relic,” he says. “A piece of machinery left over from an age of fear, fright. Things are different now.” Still, the wall stays closed, except to let the ships in. Those we sit and watch.

We walk along the piers with the professor. He is old and decrepit, so he has to hold on to my shoulder. The others walk ahead. Chano, Sylvia, Suzie. I can hear them talk, sometimes about girls, boys, sometimes about movies. Sometimes they make fun of me, call me an old man. They turn around and giggle. Mostly, though, I pay attention to the professor.

“All the time we used to go up there,” he says, looking to where the pedways used to span over our heads. “We used to fish and swim down here on the docks, then walk up the ramps just to sit. We’d watch the sun travel across the sky. We’d see birds, peregrine falcons, hawks. Sometimes they’d swoop down and pluck a fish from the lake with those huge talons. Ah,” the professor says. “It’s great to see birds in the distance.”

I look to the abutments, the ramps leading to nothing, and try to imagine bridges, pedways, crisscrossing over my head, the view that must have been afforded. All that’s left now are the rebar innards of the reinforced concrete, which bristle from the ends of the abutments like things to hold on to when you’re falling over a cliff. Layers of multi-colored graffiti cover the walls, and from one abutment a lone metal handrail just out of scavengers’ reach dangles and reflects the sun.

I seem to have a memory of looking over the wall. I seem to have a memory of watching the sunrise, seeing the pastel pink-and-blue shades of the horizon. I have a memory of fins in water, dolphins or sharks. And I have a memory of birds gliding, sometimes diving steep, bombing dives, and pulling up large flopping fish, only to lose them as they tried to carry them away.

DAMASCUS

“In Damascus they wear long robes. In Damascus they have white, pointy beards and they all look like the guy from Hills Bros. drinking a big cup of coffee.

“In Damascus they cut off your hand if you steal something. They blind you if you look at another man’s wife. They cut out your tongue if you tell a lie.

“In Damascus there are people with milky gray eyes who can see into the future, and you can sit by them in the marketplace during your lunch break and ask what crimes you will commit.

“In Damascus the fortune-tellers are walled in by carpets, tall, bright carpets that vendors hang on high rods. Everywhere you turn there is a wall of carpet, and it makes you think of flying carpets, like you can pull one down, start it up, and fly away.

“In Damascus the women hide their beauty. If they are married, they wear long black sheets; if they are engaged, they wear light blue; and if they are neither married nor engaged, if they are old maids, they just wear plain white. You never see their faces in Damascus. In Damascus the only things you see on women are their eyes, dark and Chinese-looking, and this is what men fall in love with, eyes. See, this is how Damascus is different.

“And they have camels. In Damascus they have many, many camels. And the camels crowd the marketplace, chewing their gums like old men, like Willy who sells the newspapers on Leavitt Street. And they smoke, oh do they smoke — the people, not the camels — they smoke night and day, like crazy. At any time you can smell the cigarettes, burning, rich and powerful, like a fog, sweet and damp. And they sit in their doorways, the people. They sit beneath their arched doorways that lead into their deep, dark apartments, and they smoke, exhaling thick exhaust into the tiny, twisted streets.

“In Damascus, when the sun goes down, all you see are shadows. Those buildings with the arched doorways, those that are built tight into each other, those buildings that form the streets, twisting and turning — at night, in Damascus, those buildings become lit from the inside, and crescent-moon-shaped windows, star-shaped windows, cast patterns on the white walls of the buildings across the way. In Damascus at night, no one speaks, and if anyone walks, his footsteps can be heard echoing down the corridors of street, scraping and shuffling. And the streets are so narrow that someone walking miles away can be heard just as clear as someone right around the corner.

“See, this is how it is in Damascus. I know. I have been there.”

SNAKE DANCE

Papo stepped to the DJ. He cocked his arm. He had that flair in his eyes. The same flair I had seen hundreds of times when Papo was drunk and he was about to kick someone’s ass. I held Papo back. I don’t know where I had him, maybe I just pushed back on his chest. I could feel Papo’s arms — that’s it, I had him by one arm. When I pushed back I had his biceps in my hand, in my palm, his long, thin biceps, like Bruce Lee’s biceps, defined, like the contours of the fenders he Bondoed together when we crashed our cars. Papo was a mechanic.

“What are you, a fucking Indian?” Papo said over my shoulder. I took a quick glance behind me, at the DJ, hoping he wouldn’t say anything back. I’d analyzed the situation. I’d anticipated everything. When the DJ showed up, I took a look at him, judged him: Goatee, a little chubby, doesn’t look like he’d start a fight, doesn’t look like he’d back down. He won’t get drunk. I looked at the DJ again, there, later, made eye contact with him, right after Papo asked him if he was a fucking Indian. I saw a smile, a placating smile, a back-down smile, an “I don’t want any trouble” smile, a “But why do you think I’m an Indian?” smile. I wondered the same thing. Where did Papo get that?

“It’s all right, Papo,” I told him.

“But he’s not doing it right.”

“What?” I asked him. I could still feel his biceps. He was still straining. The fibers of his muscle were fine and hard. “He’s not doing what right?”

“La vibora, the snake dance, he’s supposed to do it right after the dollar dance.”

“It’s all right,” I told Papo.

“No, bro, it’s your wedding. He’s supposed to do the snake dance. Fucking Indian,” he said to the DJ, this time louder. I could hear the clink of beer bottles. Someone was tapping on the side of a glass with a knife, kiss the bride, they were saying. This was a Mexican wedding. I didn’t know where my wife was.

I turned around and looked at the DJ. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Just go on with the dance music.” The DJ nodded.

I gently pushed Papo back toward the tables, toward the bar packed with people I hadn’t seen in years, friends I’d felt obligated to invite, people I could never not love.

“I just want it to be right,” Papo said. It sounded as if he was about to cry. I thought of Papo’s little girl, Crystal, his wife, Bernadette, who’d left him two years before, the cocaine habit that had him running to the restroom every hour, the.25 automatic he kept tucked under the armrest of his Cadillac Brougham.

“I want it to be right for you,” he said.

Papo turned and headed toward the bar. I put my arm around his shoulder.

“It is right, bro,” I told him. “It is right.”

Hours later I was in the banquet hall parking lot saying my last goodbyes. Most of the party guests had left, my in-laws, my father, my uncles. Only Papo was there, in the dim light of the streetlamps, and two other friends, Danny Boy and Mario, friends from many years past. Just to my left, sitting in the passenger seat of the car I had rented, was my wife. I could see her silhouette, the outline of her hair, the white shoulder of her wedding dress. I was anxious to leave, to start my new life.

“Go be fucking married, then,” Papo said. He was smiling, he shook my hand. “Good luck,” Mario said. Danny Boy gave me a hug like I was leaving forever.

“Go be fucking married, then,” Papo said, this time a little louder. “Motherfucker.”

He was standing behind me. I could feel him there. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look.

Danny Boy pulled at Papo’s arm.

“Motherfucker!” Papo said. He stepped toward me.

Mario got in front of Papo.

“Just go, bro,” Danny said.

“Motherfucker!”

I climbed into the rental car and shut the door. I could smell my wife. All night she had smelled beautiful.

“What was that?” she asked me.

“That was Papo,” I answered.

In the rearview mirror Danny Boy and Mario were struggling to hold Papo back. I turned onto Damen Avenue. The three of them started fighting, there in an empty parking lot, on the South Side of Chicago.