Christopher Aque

I called an Uber to go to LaGuardia. Inside the black Toyota Camry, the driver asked, “Let me guess… American?”
“United,” I said, “but same thing.”
“Going anywhere interesting?”
“Chicago.”
“Oh, same thing,” the driver replied. “Just like here.”

Outside O’Hare, it was a beautiful May day—record high temperatures, big midwestern skies; bright and blue, flat and open. I got off the L at Logan Square and had an early lunch at Lula, just as I have dozens of times before.

I walked from Clark/Lake through the throngs of people eating al fresco on pandemic closed-off streets. I spent a few hours on my laptop and then decamped for the beach, a privilege I hadn’t yet enjoyed since my parents moved from my childhood home in Lincoln Park to their new condo in Streeterville. I sat against the rocks, a string of bodies passing in varying states of undress. It was the sort of day when everyone emerges from winter hibernation at once, the sun reaching their puffy pale skin for the first time this year. Likenesses coming in and out of focus.

“I could live here again,” I thought.

 

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