She took me to the Belmont café on a summer morning, and it was rows of desserts: bittersweet chocolate, licorice gelato, pistachio cookies with eggnog cream. Bells chimed and there were pretty girls in hats. There was music for harp, viola, and flute, like a stream in sunlight.
We sat on black wrought iron chairs at white marble tables wisped with blue, and felt the cool flatness of the marble against our palms.
I said hello and ordered café au lait in a bone china cup. They set it down with a satisfying clack and its warmth dropped into my core, and it was like a happy healthy youth in Paris with fashionable blondes and buttery flaky croissants.
She said, overall, I think we were happy here, and I said we had to be somewhere for these five years and yes, there were moments of happiness.
She stirred her strawberry lemonade and drank deep and looked out the window and said, like what?
Outside, a girl was walking her whippet and they both looked young and full of promise and I said like the dark purple lunch we had that time at Topolobampo. Like the quiet minutes at the aquarium with the tiny jellyfish circle-pulse-circling around their thirty-gallon universe. Like the time at Lindberg Park when you called me to you and told me to run and said come on come on in the cool autumn dusk and hugged me and said now there, finally, you looked like a Marine.
They brought us toasted sandwiches and thick soups that tasted round and full, with a sharp tinge of fresh parsley. Outside, people walked by.
One time, she said, you stood naked in the kitchen and I placed chilled pineapple on your tongue. One time, we spent hours at the pen show selecting the color of ink that best matched your intellect. There were many such times and here we are now, in a favorite place, saying, in our own fashion, goodbye.
I remember, I said. I remember the times, but were they really Chicago? Chicago’s supposed to be Wrigley and Italian beef and the blues.
Yes, she said, they were Chicago. They were our Chicago.
