Chapter 24 — Blood Bond on Chicago Chronicles

Return to the Faculty Club — Thursday, March 7, 1991, 5:47 PM

Thu, 07 Mar 1991 17:47:00 +0000

University of Chicago faculty club / Devon Avenue / South Pilsen (Kaspar & Sons haven)

Chicago, Illinois

The faculty club at the University of Chicago keeps a fire going on Thursday nights for the same reason it keeps the limestone scrubbed. Nobody needs it. The building would look unattended without it. Sable came in out of a wind that had run unbroken off the lake for six miles, and the change of temperature registered on her skin as information rather than comfort. Thirty-five outside and falling, maybe sixty-eight in here, the difference living mostly in the cuffs of her coat.

Last Call — Wednesday, March 6, 1991, 5:46 PM

Wed, 06 Mar 1991 17:46:00 +0000

South Pilsen / Ashland Avenue / Cermak Road / Blue Island Avenue / Halsted Street / Kaspar & Sons haven

Chicago, Illinois

The alley behind Kaspar & Sons held two smells that never fully separated. Freezer exhaust, which was just cold pushed outward into colder air. And under it the other one, sweet and chemical, soaked into the brick from forty years of a trade the building had been built to serve. Darius had stopped noticing it in February. He noticed it tonight because he was hungry, and hunger sharpened the inventory.

The Milwaukee Run — Wednesday, March 6, 1991, 5:41 PM

Wed, 06 Mar 1991 17:41:00 +0000

South Pilsen / Modius Mansion, Gary / I-94 / Hyatt Regency, Milwaukee / Kaspar & Sons

Chicago, Illinois — Gary, Indiana — Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The woman on the side street off Twenty-First wore a coat with a fur collar that had been somebody’s good coat in 1974 and was now a thing she slept in. She was moving fast in no direction, her legs getting separate news from her head. Fifty-two degrees at eight-thirty on a March Tuesday, no wind, the snow a week out of Pilsen and the alleys giving back everything they’d been holding since December.