“I can see the diner,” I said.
“Really?”
“No.”
She hit my arm.
One thing I found peculiar was how many men stared at her. I caught at least a half-dozen of them, some with their wives or girlfriends, looking at her longingly. I wondered if she noticed the effect she had on those around her. I doubted it. I thought of what Timothy had said about Polish women and thought it applied to her as well.
When we had walked the entire deck back to the elevators, I asked, “Had enough?”
She nodded quickly. “Yes. Have you?”
I would have denied it if I hadn’t. “Yes. Let’s go.”
She still held my hand while we were in the elevator. Only when we were on the ground floor did she relinquish it.
“I made it,” she said.
“Thank you for taking me.”
“You’re welcome. Before I came to Chicago, I had never been higher than a two-story building.”
I looked at her quizzically. “Really?”
She nodded. “I’d never even been in an elevator.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “That was very brave of you to go all the way up.”
“I’ve done scarier things.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what they were. We walked outside of the building onto Jackson Boulevard. “Now where?”
“Millennium Park,” she said.
“Is that in walking distance?”
“Everywhere is in walking distance,” she said. “If you have the time.”
I laughed. “Do we have the time?”
“It’s only twelve blocks.”
Millennium Park ran along Michigan Avenue and we entered along Michigan and Randolph. The park’s centerpiece, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, rose ahead of us with the bandshell’s sheets of steel bent like a schooner’s sails, reflecting the morning sun.
We got to the edge of the pavilion and looked down.
“There was some controversy when they built this,” April said. “The structure was too high for the local ordinances, so they got around it by having it classified as art instead of a building.”
“Clever,” I said.
“They have concerts here. The acoustics are really good.”
“Who have you heard?”
“I’ve only been here once, but it was the Grant Park Orchestra. They played Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. It was so beautiful I . . .” She stopped.
“It was so beautiful what?”
“I cried.”
“It really made you cry?”
She nodded. “It was like heaven. I kept thinking, I wish I could be that talented, to leave something that beautiful to the world. But I never will. I’m just a waitress.”
“I think you have more to offer the world than you think.”
“Like what?”
“Beauty.”
“Stop it,” she said.
“No. I mean it. Real beauty. Soul beauty. I don’t think you’re like other people.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve known you for less than a week and I’ve seen you demonstrate more acts of genuine kindness than I’ve seen in some people I’ve known my entire life.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I bet you’ve never intentionally hurt anyone.”
“Why would you want to hurt someone?”
“See? That’s my point. It doesn’t even occur to you to hurt others. Yet you’re totally willing to give of yourself to help those around you—like taking the time to show me Chicago. Or going up 103 stories even though you’re terrified of heights, because you thought I would want to see it.”
“It’s not a big deal,” she said.
“Yes it is. People just don’t do things like that. Especially for people they don’t really know.”
She looked uncomfortable. “You’re embarrassing me. I don’t understand why you’re saying this.”
“Because you called yourself ‘just a waitress,’ when the truth is, you might be an angel.”
She blushed. “If I’m an angel, where’s my halo?”
“I think you just leave it at home.”
She rolled her eyes. “Shall we go?”
We walked along the length of the pavilion, then cut back near the AT&T Plaza. Ahead of us was a bright silver monument.
“This is my favorite,” April said. “It’s called Cloud Gate. But the people here just call it ‘The Bean.’ ”
“It looks like a big silver lima bean,” I said.
“Or a big drop of mercury,” April said.
We walked all the way up to the monument, then underneath, the smooth, voluptuous steel capturing and bending our reflections. Below us, on the other side of the monument, was an ice rink.