Free Chicago by Brian Doyle

or what?
    He caught me by surprise, and also I was at that moment holding up my end of a huge bedstead that weighed a ton and surely once belonged to Gargantua or Pantagruel, so I was silent for a moment, and then I said well, yes and no, or properly no and yes—that I was not dating anyone seriously, but that I’d had a few dates, here and there, when I could squeeze them into my busy schedule.
    Your busy schedule, came his voice from behind the bedstead, being basketball and jazz clubs and blues clubs and prowling alleys with Edward? Those are the things keeping you from romantic exploration?
    I explained that basketball was the greatest of games, and invented in America, as were jazz and blues, and as a man new to Chicago I felt the need to see and feel and hear and smell and touch the bone and thrum of the city myself, fully present and attentive, undistracted and alert to idiosyncratic and unique flavor and rhythms as I could be, Chicago being, as he himself had said, the most American city of all, what with it being in the middle of the nation, and shouldered by great waters, and roaring with industry while surrounded by agriculture, a visionary city open to the world but sure of its own place and grace, king of the plains, dismissive of the arrogant flittery cities of the coasts, a vast verb of an urb, but one still built for people, one where neighborhoods were villages, and all the villages from far South Side to far north, from the far west to the Loop on the shore of the lake, threw in together to worship together at common altars, for example the Bears and gyro sandwiches and a decent outfield for the Sox for a change. And if you admire Miss Elminides so much, and she clearly admires you, and you are single and she is single, why don’t you ask her out?
    That floored him for a moment and I expected him to come out from behind the bedstead but he didn’t and after a while his voice said quietly Did I tell you whose storage stall this is?
    No.
    The old lady in 3C, the lady who used to be an actress in the Broncho Billy films. She died this morning. Her name was Eugenia. She really was an actress in the first Westerns filmed in Chicago and she loved it but she married a guy who hated that she was an actress and he made her get out of the game. She put all her costumes and posters and props and stuff in trunks and boxes in their house in California and never opened them again as long as he lived. When he died she sold their house in two days and came right back to Chicago on the train with all her trunks and boxes and got an apartment here and all that stuff is in her room. This stuff is all his stuff that she didn’t want to sell or give away but she didn’t want it in her room either. I used to go up there some days to pretend to fix something and she would be happy as could be, all dressed in character from one of her movies. One movie she was the sheriff’s daughter and another she was a girl rustler and another she was a wrangler and another she was a Comanche princess. All that stuff is still up in her room. She was the nicest lady you ever wanted to meet. She was in plenty more movies but I don’t know their names. The only thing from the movies that she couldn’t fit in her room was this horse, which is why he is down here. I don’t think she had any kids, so we will have to do something about this horse. What a nice lady. Never a harsh word for anyone. All she ever wanted to do was be an actress, I guess. Let’s haul the bedstead out into the alley and then call it a night. Tell me if you know anyone who needs a stuffed horse.
    *   *   *
    Not only did I climb to the tops of hotels and other buildings to try to see the city as a whole; I also haunted alleys then, being young and supple and swift afoot if necessary, and I made a conscious effort to cut through every alley I could find, on the theory that alleys might show me more of the real salt of