“Do you skate?” April asked.
“I can kind of skate.”
She took my hand. “Let’s do it.”
After an hour of ice-skating (and more falls than I care to remember), we ate Chicago dogs with kettle chips at the Park Café, then walked south to the neighboring Art Institute of Chicago.
The museum was hosting a Roy Lichtenstein exhibit featuring 170 works spanning his almost fifty-year career. Every adman worth his carbon knows Lichtenstein’s work, as he (like Andy Warhol and his tomato soup can) demonstrated that commercial art can be fine art. April’s response to the exhibit was much simpler.
“How fun!”
The sun was falling as we left the exhibit. We walked a mile and a half to the Navy Pier, which, in spite of the season and hour, was still crowded with tourists. The Navy Pier is an amusement park with rides and attractions and its crowning feature is a 150-foot-high Ferris wheel patterned after the first Ferris wheel invented by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
In keeping with our Chicago-themed day, we snacked on Cracker Jacks and had an ice-cream cone—both Chicago World Fair inventions. (Back then the cones were called cream-filled cornets.)
We walked through the funhouse maze and, at April’s coaxing, rode the carousel. Stupidly, I forgot about April’s phobia of heights and bought us tickets for the Ferris wheel as well. When I led her toward the amusement, she stopped, staring at the lit wheel in terror. That’s when I remembered her fear.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I forgot. We can just give the tickets to someone.”
She stared at the wheel for a moment, then said, “No, I want to do it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t want to let fear run my life.”
We shared our gondola with three other people, who seemed to enjoy watching April as much as the ride itself. She clung to me the whole time, which, frankly, I enjoyed, and pretty much kept her face buried in my shoulder anytime we were higher than 20 feet.
As we climbed out of the gondola, our fellow passengers applauded. “Thank you,” she said, bowing. “It was nothing. We’re going skydiving next.”
By 9 P.M. we were both exhausted. Breaking with all things Chicago, we ended up at a Japanese restaurant.
“What a day,” I said. “You were running me like a rented racehorse.”
She laughed. “I’m glad you like Japanese food.”
“Sushi is one of my favorites,” I said. “Especially eel.”
“I didn’t discover sushi until I moved to Chicago. Now I can’t get enough. At least when I can afford it, which isn’t too often on a waitress’s budget.” She lifted a gyoza with chopsticks but dropped it. We both laughed.
“I’m not so good with these,” she said.
“It takes practice,” I said. “Here.” I lifted the dumpling to her mouth.
“Thank you,” she said, biting into the dumpling. “You know, these are a lot like pierogies.”
“I’ve never had a pierogi,” I said.
“Then you haven’t lived. That will be our next . . .” She stopped midsentence.
“. . . Next date?” I said.
“This isn’t a date,” she blurted out.
I think her reaction surprised both of us, as she looked a little embarrassed. She added softly, “. . . It’s a tour.”
I wondered if this was her way of telling me she wasn’t interested in a relationship.
“Okay,” I said, still reeling a little. “On our next ‘tour,’ I would love to try a pierogi.”
She took a deep breath. “I know this really good Polish restaurant in Logan Square. There are so many good places to eat in Chicago. There are so many different ethnic neighborhoods, you can find anything you want.”
“I was here about five years ago with a client. We went to a seafood restaurant called Joe’s. Our bill was almost eleven hundred dollars.”
“You spent a thousand dollars on one meal?”
“I didn’t, my client did. And there were five of us.”
“That’s still more than two hundred dollars a person. That’s almost what I spend on groceries for the month.” She looked shocked, or disturbed, as if she were incapable of understanding how someone could spend so much on a meal.
“Some people have money to burn,” I said.
“Or eat,” she said.
After a moment I said, “You like Chicago, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes. It’s so different from where I’m from.”
“What brought you here?”
“Greyhound bus,” she said.