i am dancing in my recently-reversed metra seat, inbound from kenosha to chicago, as the steam comes off of the pavement and the cooler, still-damp air gets swept down beneath the heat. i’ve become rather intimate with this commuter train lately, and i keep imagining the train eyeing the same puddles i stare into, becoming gratefully hypnotized by the same pattern of trees. i’ve cried, slept, drooled, inadvertently entangled my foot in the rails of the luggage rack, and gotten dressed for dinner, all in various three-square-foot plots of weirdly polished blue pleather. highlight: putting on stockings between two beefy, balding, polyester business men as they carried on a conversation about college football.
dad was in town for the AHLA annual meeting this weekend, and we went to the art institute party last night for open bar, speed dating, and an assortment of cheeses. there were oversized name-tags with no stickum, meant to be displayed in an enormous, loudly sponsored velcro wallet-necklace contraption. i took my father’s and pretended to be Bob, President, PPSV, which somehow led everyone to believe i was about to finish law school. “no, no, i haven’t finished my undergrad; i’m just in town for the summer, working on publications for a software consulting firm.” a funny man with freckles on his head trailed us around the stock exchange library babbling about annapolis in an attempt to recruit supporters for the university of maryland hospital project. we had dinner by the fountain pool, and i drank a bloody mary with my feet in the water. when i got up, the surface rippled quickly and then glossed over, strangely thick, lapping faintly at the edges like dark blue tempera.
