A Winter Dream: A Novel Read online

  “That’s not a good idea,” he said. “Potts is a control freak. If you don’t take the office, he’ll leave it empty before he’d give it back to me. And he’ll be angry at you for defying him.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “It does to Potts. To him, life is about gaining power and the burden of protecting it.”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  “Maybe, but that’s how the world turns,” he said. He walked to the door carrying a box. “You should know that. That’s why you’re in Chicago.”

  That afternoon Potts called me into his office.

  “I’ve scheduled a meeting with the BankOne marketing team for Thursday afternoon. They’d like to brainstorm some direct promotion ideas for increasing clientele.”

  “What do I need to prepare?”

  “Nothing. They just want to talk things out. So how’s your new office?”

  I resisted saying anything about Timothy. “It has a great view.”

  A peculiar smile crossed his face. “Speaking of great views, what did you think of Brandi?”

  “Brandi?”

  “My fiancée. You met her your first day.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know her name. She’s beautiful.”

  “She’s a model. I met her on a photo shoot for Victoria’s Secret.”

  “Burnett has the Victoria’s Secret account?”

  “Had,” he said. “We lost.” He looked me over. “What about you? Anyone special?”

  “Had,” I said. “I also lost the account.”

  “What did you do to lose it?”

  “I came here.”

  “I had a wife like that. She didn’t want to leave Pocatello, Idaho.”

  I was as surprised to hear that he’d been married as that he was from Pocatello. “You’re from Pocatello, Idaho?”

  “Someone’s gotta be,” he said. “The thing is, some people dream in black and white. And some people, like us, dream in Technicolor. You can’t change them. All you can do is change the channel.”

  “I wish it were that easy,” I said.

  “It is,” he said. “The trick is to never fall in love.”

  CHAPTER

  Fifteen

  I think I’m in love. What a frightening proposition. I don’t know if I speak the language, but I’m pretty sure I don’t understand it.

  Joseph Jacobson’s Diary

  During the next week our team poured out a river of copy to support the new BankOne campaign. Even though I hadn’t been there long, I sensed the dynamic had changed. I figured that Leonard must have told everyone that I’d fired him because Parker and the women were acting strangely around me. Unctuous. Fake. I just hoped it would pass.

  The week had one highlight. April and I had made dinner plans for the following Wednesday. I told her that I’d meet her at her apartment. I took the Blue Line to her street, then, following the directions she’d texted me, found her apartment.

  She opened the door. She was more dressed up than the last time I’d seen her. She wore a light green sweater that accented the green of her eyes. Every time I saw her, I thought she looked more beautiful. “Come in,” she said.

  Her apartment was small, with a sofa and desk in the front room and no pictures on the wall. Actually, there was one—a picture of Jesus that looked as if it had been cut out of a book or magazine. Across from it was a black and white poster of Kurt Cobain smoking a cigarette. The contrast was strange. April noticed me looking at the poster.

  “That’s Ruth’s,” she said. “My roommate. How was your day?”

  “Busy. Strange.”

  “Strange?”

  “Ever since I was promoted, everyone acts weird around me.”

  “What’s strange about that? You’re the boss now. No more fraternizing with the enlisted men.”

  I laughed, not expecting her to say something like that. “I’m the least bosslike person you’ll ever meet.”

  “I bet you could get bossy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not in me. So where are we eating?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You’re the boss.”

  I shook my head. “Tonight, you’re the boss. It’s your call.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m taking you for pierogies. And I have the perfect place. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Famished,” I said.

  “Famished is perfect. You won’t be when we’re done.”

  We took the Blue Line to Belmont. As we got off the train, April took my hand and led me to a two-story brick building with a brass sign that read:

  Staropolska

  Polish American Cuisine

  I opened the door and we stepped inside. The room was dark, woody and pungent. A small dark-haired woman in a floor-length skirt and apron greeted us with a heavy accent. “You are two?”

  “Yes.”

  “This way, please.”

  “Dziekuje,” April said.

  I turned to April. “You speak Polish?”

  “Just a few phrases. Dziekuje means ‘thank you.’ ”

  The restaurant had an old-world feel, with iron chandeliers, and bearskins on the wood-paneled walls.

  Our hostess led us to a small table near the fireplace. A moment later our waitress came to the table. She put a basket of bread and a dish of some pale brown substance on the table. Then she handed us two menus. “What would you like to drink?” she asked.

  “Do you like wine?” April asked me.

  I nodded. “Yes, please.”

  “We would like some red wine. And water.”

  “With gas or still.”

  April looked at me.

  “Remember, you’re the boss,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Sparkling.”

  The woman nodded. “I will come back in a moment,” she said. She walked back to the kitchen.

  “I think we’re the only non-Poles in here,” I said, looking around at the rest of the clientele.

  “That’s a good sign,” she said. “If you want good Mexican food, you go where the Mexicans eat. You want good pierogies, find the Poles.”

  “So they’re really that good?” I asked.

  “Aside from Madame Curie, pierogies are the Poles’ greatest contribution to humanity.”

  I looked at the menu. “They also have salmon.”

  “No salmon,” she said. “I’ll do the ordering tonight. I’m the boss. You said so yourself.”

  “You’re right. But nothing too . . . different.”

  She gave me a smile that I knew meant she was about to ignore my request. “Trust me.”

  When our server came back, April was ready. “We’d like to start with zurek.”

  “That sounds like something on Star Trek,” I said.

  She shushed me.

  Our server wrote on her pad of paper.

  “And then?”

  “The pierogi assortment with sausage, potato and sauerkraut. And then the Old Country Plate.”

  “You are hungry tonight,” our waitress said.

  “We are,” April said, looking at me.

  After our server left, April’s eyes twinkled. “Are you excited?”

  I’d never seen a woman get so excited about food. Certainly not Ashley. “Yes. Very.”

  “You should be.” She scooped her knife into the pale brown substance and spread the mixture over a slice of bread, then took a bite. “Try some.”

  “Okay.” I started spreading some over my bread. “What is it?”

  “Smalec.”

  “That was helpful. Thank you.”

  She laughed. “It’s lard.”

  I stopped spreading.

  “Don’t be a baby,” she said, taking a bite. “It’s good.”

  Definitely not Ashley.

  Our server brought out the wine, left, then returned with our soup. The thick broth was grainy-looking, brownish gray and filled with sliced sausages and halved boiled eggs. I lifted a spoon and tasted it. It was flavor
ful but difficult to describe.

  “What’s this called?”

  “Zurek. It’s a sour rye soup.”

  “Sour rye?”

  “Like sourdough. It also has boiled pork sausage. The Polish serve it on Easter. But it’s good anytime. Especially when it’s cold. Do you like it?”

  “I do.”

  After we finished our soup, our server brought out two plates each with three dumplings. They were lightly browned and sprinkled with bacon. I poked one with my fork. “This does look like a gyoza.”

  There were three flavors of pierogies—potato and cheese, cabbage and barley, and spicy meat, covered in butter and bacon. All three were delicious.

  The pierogies were as good as April had promised, and I was already full when our server brought out our main course, the Old Country Plate—a large platter with a charred link of kielbasa and a cabbage roll atop a bed of sauerkraut and a potato pancake.

  “This is interesting,” I said, prodding the cabbage with my fork.

  “It’s kind of like a stuffed pepper,” she said.

  The roll was savory, filled with spicy pork and rice.

  “What do you think?” April asked.

  “It’s delicious. I should never have doubted you.”

  “No. You should never doubt your boss,” she said. For the next several minutes we ate quietly. About halfway through the plate I had to stop. “This is too much food.”

  “The Polish like to eat hearty.”

  After we’d eaten as much as we could, our server returned to ask if we wanted dessert.

  “I couldn’t eat another bite,” I said.

  “No thank you,” April said to the waitress. She turned to me. “But next time we’ll try the blintzes.”

  “On our next tour?” I asked.

  She nodded. “There’s still so much of the city I need to show you.”

  “It’s a big city. It could take months.”

  “Years,” she said.

  “Would you like coffee?” the waitress asked.

  “Please,” I said. “Decaf with milk.”

  “I’ll have the same,” April said.

  While I drank my coffee April looked at me pensively—like she wanted to ask me something but was afraid to. Finally she said, “I like being with you.”

  I smiled. “I like being with you too.”

  She looked down for a moment. “May I ask you something personal?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve thought a lot about what you told me last Saturday, about why you moved here. When you left your family behind, did you leave anyone else?”

  “You mean, a girl?”

  April frowned. “I’m sorry, that was forward of me.” She must have noticed the pain on my face because she quickly added, “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Her name is Ashley.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” she said.

  “Pretty girl,” I said. “I thought we were going to get married. I had started looking for rings.”

  “What happened?”

  “I moved to Chicago.”

  April looked puzzled. “. . . And?”

  “And she stayed in Colorado.”

  She still looked perplexed. “She wouldn’t follow you?”

  “No,” I said. “She wasn’t happy that I was leaving Colorado.”

  “But she understood why you had to leave, right? For your brother.”

  “I never told her about my brother.”

  “Why not?”

  “She didn’t like my brother. If I had told her the truth, she would have exposed him, and he probably would have ended up in prison. Instead, I told her that I wanted something bigger than Denver. I know it’s not honest, but I couldn’t take a chance with my brother’s life. Not that it mattered. She really didn’t want to get married anyway.”

  April was quiet a moment then said, “Ashley’s a fool.”

  Heading back on the train, we were both quiet. My thoughts were completely magnetized to what she’d said about Ashley. Or what she’d meant by it.

  We arrived at the Irving Park station a little after eleven.

  “May I walk you to your apartment?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’d like that.”

  I got off the train with her and we walked down the stairway.

  “I wonder how many Poles there are in Chicago?” I said.

  “Someone told me that Chicago is the second-largest Polish city in the world—second only to Warsaw. I don’t know if that’s true, but I wouldn’t doubt it.” She looked at me. “So, do you feel more Polish?”

  “I definitely feel more Polish than I did this morning.”

  “You look more Polish,” she said.

  I grinned. “How do I look more Polish?”

  “You look happier.”

  “Do I?”

  “Much happier than when I first met you.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. Are Poles happy?”

  “They invented the polka didn’t they?”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  Walking beneath the elevated track, the train makes a horrible, frightening sound, like a dragon’s screech. I wondered if Chicagoans even noticed it. I wondered how long it would be before I didn’t notice it anymore.

  Holding hands, we walked west on Irving Park Road to Keeler, against traffic on the one-way street that led to April’s apartment. The closer we got to her apartment, the quieter she became. At her doorstep she was suddenly acting shy, more like a teenage girl on a first date than a woman. She looked into my eyes. “That was really fun.”

  “You give really good tours,” I said.

  “Thank you. I like giving you tours.”

  “What are you doing this Saturday?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking down. A few seconds later she said, “Hopefully, spending it with you.”

  “I would like that,” I said. “Saturday morning?”

  She nodded. As we looked into each other’s eyes, I couldn’t believe how impossibly beautiful she was. But what I was seeing seemed to be more than just physical beauty. It was the unique space she held in the universe. She had an indefinable sweetness and femininity and maternal nature that made me want to cling to her and never let go.

  From the look in her eyes, I knew she too was feeling something powerful—the two of us drawn together by feelings stronger than either of us. I leaned forward and gently pressed my lips against hers. At first she just stood there, awkwardly, unsure, then she surrendered, returning my kisses. I put my arms around her and pulled her tightly into me, our kisses growing still deeper.

  We kissed for several minutes, then suddenly she pushed me away. “Stop.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking down. “I’m so sorry.” She didn’t sound angry. She sounded frustrated. Like me. She looked back up at me as her eyes welled up with tears. “I’m really sorry.”

  She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. Then she opened her door and went inside, leaving me standing in the hallway, wondering what had just happened.

  CHAPTER

  Sixteen

  I dreamed that I was at a ritzy party held in a swanky mansion. I had just taken an hors d’oeuvre from a server when I noticed a beautiful woman standing alone across the room staring at me. With one finger she gestured for me to come to her. Something about her eyes frightened me, but still I obeyed. As I stepped forward I saw she was standing in the middle of a giant spider web. The web behind her was lined with silk cocoons, most of which were still, though some of them were moving as the occupant struggled hopelessly to escape. I turned to run from her when I too found myself ensnared in her web. I looked back to see her coming toward me. I woke screaming, tangled in my sheets.

  Joseph Jacobson’s Diary

  I called April three times the next day, Thursday, but she didn’t answer. With each unanswered call I grew more frustrated. What was going on? What had I done wron
g? Was she ever going to talk to me again? The idea of another rejection was too much to consider. I needed to know what had gone wrong. I needed to see her again. Friday morning I decided I would leave work early and catch her at the diner.

  A half-hour before noon there was a knock on my door. Before I could get up, the door opened and Potts’s fiancée, Brandi, stuck her head in. “Anyone home?”

  I hadn’t seen her since my first day at the agency. I was surprised to see her. “Hi,” I said.

  “May I come in?”

  “Things are a mess. We’ve been so busy . . .”

  “I know,” she said, shutting the door behind her. “Peter told me that he had promoted you.” She walked up to my desk and reached out her perfectly manicured hand. “We were never properly introduced. My name is Brandi.”

  “I’m Joseph. Or J.J.”

  “J.J.,” she said, smiling. She was still holding my hand. “Sounds like a rapper.”

  I casually withdrew my hand. “I’ve heard that.”

  “What does your mother call you?”

  “Joseph.”

  “I’ll call you that,” she said. “So, Joseph, Peter said you saved an account your first day at work.”

  “I got lucky.”

  “It’s good to get lucky,” she said, looking me in the eyes. She sat on my desk. “Then again, maybe it’s not so lucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re setting the expectations too high. What do you do for an encore, save the world?”

  I grinned. “You might be right.”

  “I usually am,” she said wryly. “So where in the world are you from?”

  “Denver.”

  “Mile-High City,” she said. “So, what do you think of the Windy City?”

  “It’s big,” I said. “I’m still learning my way around.”

  “I can point you to all the hot spots,” she said. “What do you do for fun?”

  “Not much, lately,” I said.

  “I can help with that. We should get together for a drink sometime.” She hesitated just a moment before adding, “. . . Or something.”

  I pretended not to hear her addendum. She just gazed at me like she was reading a magazine. When the silence started to get uncomfortable, she said, “So what do you think of the big agency life?”