Free Etiquette for a Dinner Party by Sue Orr

Carbon Building: a champagne bottle topped with a golden foil cork.
    'Did you know,' the guide gushes into his microphone, 'did you know , folks, that the Chicago River flows backwards? Yes, before 1889 the river flowed into Lake Michigan. But the sewage contamination threatened the drinking water of this fine city, so a series of canals was built to make the water flow backwards. Away from the lake, towards the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.' .

    At seven o'clock Peter hurries through the door and throws his suit jacket onto the dirty laundry mountain. 'Come on, let's go,' he says, changing into jeans and a jersey. 'We're off to a jazz club.'
    'But we don't like jazz,' says Ruth, who is exhausted. 'Neither of us. We don't get it.'
    'I know we don't,' Peter says. 'But how could we visit Chicago, and not go to a jazz club?'
    At the Green Mill, the overweight doorman with the leather vest and the long beard takes their money and leads them to a booth. The seat backs are high, covered in gold velvet, and the bar full of dark shadows. Ruth holds her breath. She can barely wait for him to leave with their orders before she leans into Peter's shoulder.
    'This is it,' she says. 'This is the one.'
    She cannot understand how this has happened to them. How they have come to be seated here.
    'The one what?'
    'The booth. Al Capone's booth.' Her words are rushed, excited.
    'How do you know that?'
    'He always sat here because he could see both the doors. The main door, and the side one, straight over there.' Ruth points in both directions. 'He could see who was coming and going; who was coming for him. There's only one booth where you can see both the doors. It says so in the book.'
    She sits back in the seat and takes it all in. This special thing that is happening to them.
    There are long paintings of mountains, countryside and seashores, ornate in carved wooden frames. The light shades are wooden too; heavy Art Deco shell shapes and the four poles holding up the ceiling are decorated in black, white and mirrored tiles. In the far corner a white statue of Ceres, goddess of the harvest, clutches her bounty. Ruth knows that behind the bar there is a trapdoor — the same one used for illicit booze-running during Prohibition. She searches for the green mill and finds it in one of the paintings.
    The band is some group from Canada. Featuring, the bearded doorman shouts into the microphone, someone on piano, someone on bass and someone else on drums. Ruth claps and cheers.
    The men settle into their routine of random rhythms and surprising notes, and Ruth strives to understand the music. The pianist takes centre stage with his antics; leaping from his stool to pluck the strings inside the big black piano.
    But it is the drummer that captivates Ruth. She cannot take her eyes off him. .

    She is four years old and she watches from behind the couch. The wallpaper is white, with tiny purple flowers on it. Except just where she is crouching. There is a little train track on that bit, drawn in purple crayon. She hasn't been caught for that yet.
    She should be in bed, in the tiny back room she shares with her sister in the farm cottage. But she has sneaked back out in her warm fuzzy pyjamas to look. She knows her mum can play the piano — she plays it all the time and Ruth and her sister dance and sing. But she never knew about the drums.
    They are grey and white, with Premier stamped across the front of the biggest one. There are two smaller drums, and golden metal cymbals sitting together on a pole, like cupped hands. Sitting on one of the chairs from the kitchen are two wooden drumsticks.
    Uncle Ron and Aunty Kath arrive; she hears the clunk of bottles and the hellos as they come in. Uncle Ron has spotted her but he's given her a big wink, a promise not to tell. Then he takes a blue electric guitar out of a black case and puts the strap across his shoulder.
    She crouches low, hardly daring to breathe, and she watches and listens. Her