Page 44 of The Secrets We Keep
“I’ll take you to another one of my favorite places. Today is all about favorite places. For me. For Lacy. I want you to know the woman I knew because I don’t think she was quite the girl you kept in your heart.”
Rob nodded. “I think you’re right. So where do we go from here, Jasper? What place do you want to show me through Heather’s—” He stopped and corrected himself. “—through Lacy’s eyes?”
Jasper stood. “You’ll see.”
Rob signed the Visa receipt the waitress brought over, giving her a tip about equal to the amount of the bill. He stood next to Jasper. “Can we please ride to this next place? My poor dogs!” Rob was thinking a cab or an UberBlack. Something comfortable.
A rumble almost drowned out his words, and Jasper smiled. “The Morse L stop is right across the street.”
Chapter 13
THE Lride was short, only one stop until Jarvis.
As Jasper rose to exit, Rob grabbed his shoulder, confused. “You got to be kidding me. We could have walked this.”
“You said you wanted to ride. Come on.” Jasper led him off the train onto the wooden platform between the tracks. Jarvis was the stop closest to his apartment on Fargo Avenue, so Jasper was very familiar with it—it almost felt like home. The station always smelled like urine to Jasper and, for some perverse reason, he was proud to share that with Rob. He thought the scent might broaden his elitist horizons.
Rob followed him down the stairs to the street. As he descended, Jasper recalled ascending those same stairs with Lacy close behind. They were scrambling to catch the train that was already in the station. It had been winter then, bitter cold, and the platform was icy. Just as they got to the top, Jasper slipped and hit his head on the wooden covering for the stairs. It had hurt and left a quickly rising goose egg, but Lacy had alternated between laughter and making sympathetic faces all the way to Boystown, where they were headed for yet another night of revelry in the bars along Halsted Street. Jasper could hear the tinkle of her laughter now.
He didn’t recount this adventure to Rob. It seemed private—belonging only to Lacy and him. Sometimes, Jasper thought, it was things being known to two people that made them special.
Outside on Jarvis, the dark clouds that had threatened rain were now making good on their promise.
Jasper gave Rob what he knew was an evil grin. “So our walk now is only about as long as the L ride we just took.”
Jasper couldn’t help but burst into laughter when Rob groaned as he looked up at the sky where lightning flashed, followed by an almost deafening thunderclap. “You know we could turn around and go back to the Four Seasons? Raid the minibar. Order room service. I think there’s two of those fluffy robes….”
“But the Four Seasons wasn’t one of Lacy’s favorite places. She would have said it was ‘hopelessly and helplessly bourgeois.’ Whatever that means.” Jasper didn’t know why he added the last part. He knew exactly what she’d meant. Now, knowing what he did about her and her background, he could identify, if not understand, her pronounced contempt for the upper class.
“So, we’re walkin’ somewhere?” Rob asked, leaning back against the wall of the train station. “I don’t have an umbrella.” It was dirty under the tracks, and it smelled. Litter and pigeon shit desecrated the sidewalk.
“Will you melt if you get wet?” Jasper asked.
“My beautiful wickedness!” Rob said and laughed.
Jasper wondered,Should I give him a break? Should we just go back to his hotel? Or at least wait out the downpour in the café down the street? A latte does sound good about now….
But no, the plan is to take him to Lacy’s favorite places.It was a plan that had only gradually come together, on the fly. The fact that it was raining would make the plan better. Lacy was the kind of woman who loved to frolic in the rain. He saw her in his mind’s eye, one dusky night not long after they met, dancing in her black dress and Stevie Nicks black lacy shawl at the end of the pier at Ardmore Beach, the gay beach. There was no one around, and Jasper remembered how she looked, her goth makeup running down her face, her clothes plastered to her body, black hair ropy and free.
She’d been beautiful.
Jasper took Rob’s hand. “Let’s go.” He pulled him out from under the L tracks and into the cold downpour. They both gasped as the first drops hit them.
“How far?” Rob shouted over grumbling thunder.
“Half a mile, tops.” And Jasper tugged harder so that they ran east down Jarvis Avenue.
“That far? Seriously?” Rob cried.
“Buck up. Be a man! Once we’re drenched, we’re drenched. You won’t feel it as much.”
“If you say so,” Rob mumbled. Jasper barely heard him.
JASPER TRIEDto experience the view through Rob’s eyes but ended up seeing it through Lacy’s instead. They stood at the top of a flight of broad concrete stairs leading down to Fargo Avenue beach. Jasper had not let go of Rob’s hand the whole five or six blocks it took to get there. The heat of his palm against Jasper’s, contrasted with the damp, chilly air, was sensual and caused Jasper’s pulse to rise, surprisingly.
The beach stretched out in full a little to the south. Right below them was a thin strip of sand, pebbles, and bigger rocks. The water, pockmarked with rain and pewter colored, rolled into the shoreline with fury, bashing itself against the rocks at the shore so hard geysers of spray shot up as though projected from a blowhole. An island of boulders a little offshore rose up out of the water. Jasper and Lacy, on end-of-summer days when Lake Michigan’s temperature went from icy to barely tolerable, would wade and then swim the few feet out to it and bask in the sun there, like seals. He could see her in his mind’s eye in cutoff shorts and a black T-shirt knotted above her waist.
Jasper had told the truth as they started out in the rain—once thoroughly soaked, one didn’t feel the cold and the shock of it as much anymore. Being drenched became a natural state, and the body gave up its shock and outrage and went along. At least that’s how it was for Jasper; he hoped the same was true for Rob.