Chicago Stories: West of Western (2 page)

“A little run down, hell.” At the door, Ellie poked at the corroded lock and grunted. “I can't get the damned key to work.” Turning, she flashed a triumphant smile. “Okay, that's it. We can't get in. Let's go.”

“Hold on, Ellie. I'm going inside.” Seraphy pulled herself off the car and strolled over to the door, her Nikes automatically avoiding the holes and debris on the pavement. “We'll get in. You have any WD40 in that briefcase?” Realtors always had WD40. Ellie sighed, dug out a can and tossed it to her client. Seraphy sprayed the lock. Waiting for the solvent to work, her eyes focused on nothing, her head began to fill with hope. Maybe? A place to start a new life? Two stories, three short lots wide, so that's about, what, seventy-five by, say, fifty feet deep? Lot line to lot line, no yard to keep up. Great space.

The sweet odor of WD40 blanked out the urine reek of the doorway. The key turned and the door opened a few inches, then stuck. Seraphy joined Ellie to force an opening wide enough to sidle through, the Realtor in the lead.

“Eeeww. Get back, let me out!” she backpedalled, shoving Seraphy back into the bricks, and stumbled out onto the sidewalk. Spitting and wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, she backed away from the building. “Ugh! Disgusting.”

“Ellie, you're such a wuss,” Seraphy grinned. “You've been in abandoned buildings before. It's just a little dirty.”

“Dirty, hell! It's a stinking pit. I can't go back in there, Seraphy,” Ellie shuddered, shaking her hands as if to fling the odors away. “It's hot as hell and smells like filth. I can't. Don't ask me.”

“No problem. Stay here, I'll be out in a minute. Better yet, get in the car and stay cool.” Seraphy slipped through the narrow opening, took a breath, and coughed. Jesus, what a stench. Years of rat droppings, urine, feces and, apparently, a dead critter or two? Ellie was right about the heat, too, must be at least 115° in here. She turned and forced the door open wide for some air. Okay. Breathe through the mouth. Filthy, too. Good thing she'd worn jeans and her old Nikes. Careful to step over the long-dead rats and drifts of droppings that filled space not occupied by piles of abandoned office furniture, discarded appliances and years of junk, she began to survey the first floor.

Less than ten minutes later, she'd maneuvered through years of debris and checked out the sixteen-foot ceilings, overhead door and concrete floor on the warehouse side of the foyer and industrial maple floors and bank of tall ten-foot windows on the workshop side. The structure looked surprisingly sound, the ground floor would make a great garage and workshop.

Upstairs she found four offices quartered on one side of the building, a large showroom on the other. Dividing walls between the offices were glass on top, fine oak paneling underneath. Stained, smelly mattresses littered with cigarette ashes and discarded food told her someone had been using the rooms, and recently. She could see the appeal. Even filthy, the littered offices glowed as dust motes caught late afternoon sun streaming through banks of west-facing windows. Bedrooms, an office? Put a kitchen on the west end and use the showroom for a living area? Across the landing from her future kitchen, a large bathroom with its original subway tiles, oval pedestal sink, shower, and green-painted lockers was grubby but looked workable. Seraphy hesitated at the top of the iron stairs, letting her senses feel the building around her.

She nodded, lifting one corner of her mouth in a half-smile, remembering what Vitruvius had said: a good building has commodity, firmness and delight. Ignore the stink and under the debris and bad 1960s remuddling, this one had them all. Good space, sound structure, beautiful lines. Her eyes crinkled, the faint smile still on her lips. She could be happy here. Half-way down the stairs, her thoughts deep in plans for the work ahead, she remembered Ellie, now leaning on the horn outside. Damn. She checked her watch. Seventeen minutes, not bad.

“What the hell took you so long?” Hiding in the car with the windows rolled up and air conditioning on high, Ellie started talking as soon as Seraphy opened the door. “Those guys down there by that wreck were watching us.” She pointed. “Drug dealers. This place creeps me out. No, don't look at them, they'll see you.” Her cell phone in hand with 911 on speed dial, she stared as Seraphy lifted her foot to get in the car.“Stop right there. You can't get in my car like that, you're filthy.” Nose scrunched in disgust, she tossed Seraphy a clothes brush and the package of wipes and waited, her mouth working, her acrylic nails tap-tapping the steering wheel. “You took long enough. I was about to call 911,” she said once her client had reached an acceptable level of hygiene and slipped into the leather seat. “What the hell were you doing in there?” She relaxed against the seat as the big Mercedes rolled up the street to Division, where she could turn east and escape back across Western Avenue.

“Looking. Planning. Ellie, calm down. You're imagining things. Those guys are just working on the car.” Seraphy didn't want to talk now, she had too many things to think about.

“No, they're not. They're dealing drugs. That's how they do it, pretend to be working on a car so the cops can't get them for loitering. Okay.” Ellie failed to notice the change in her client. She needed this commission. A deep breath and she forced professional cheer into her voice. “So . . . while you were in there I was thinking. Tomorrow I'll look over the new listings and give you a call. This time we'll stay on the good side of Western, okay?” She smiled, monitoring her reflection in the windshield. The time her client was in the dump she'd spent repairing her makeup and fluffing her hair. “You saw what I was talking about, so we can start again and stay east of Western. We're both tired, but tomorrow is another day.”

Seraphy didn't answer, wondering how to scrape up enough cash, how soon she could close and which contractors she could talk into starting ASAP.

Hell. Ellie wasn't going to like this.

Chapter 2

Seraphy had spent
her first five years in the Middle East with the Marines in Iraq and had accumulated a tidy sum by the time her hitch was up. Her next five years she worked undercover for Darkpool, the most clandestine of defense contractors, the work was dangerous and they paid their agents accordingly. Seraphy banked that money as well. When an IED ended her career and she was invalided back to the United States, she returned to Chicago with a $400,000 nest egg.

Furnishing her apartment with family cast-offs, she began to orient herself to civilian life. Her cheap and reliable fifteen-year-old Jeep Cherokee had no fear of potholed building sites, her chambray work shirts and neatly pressed jeans worked for both field and office. Jerrod & Etwin Architectural Investments provided living money and her nest egg sat unhatched until the day she fell in love with the abandoned drapery workshop west of Western Avenue.

With cash in hand, closing on the abandoned workshop was the easy part. Then, while she waited for Chicago's notorious building department to issue permits to convert her building to a residential loft upstairs and garage and workshop down, she worked alongside her friend Aldovar and his flock of Mexican immigrant workers to clean out decades of trash and bad remodeling.

At noon the Saturday after closing, Seraphy and Aldovar raided a Pilsen taqueria to bring lunch for the men. Happy to have work, even this filthy work, several of the men amused themselves trading Seraphy useful Spanish words not found in textbooks for tacos and mango slices and cold bottled water. At one o'clock everyone went back to work. By dusk the building was empty and swept, the debris carted away in Aldovar's dump trucks.

The next day Vittorio, Seraphy's older brother, brought a generator, and together they sandblasted all the interior brick walls.

September slid by, the days shortened and cooled. In October, silver maples shed their leaves, the days grew darker and the nights became colder. Neighbors grew accustomed to seeing the red Jeep Cherokee and the woman who sat and stared at the empty building.

Indian summer had come and gone and it was a damp and chilly mid-November before the permits finally came through. Seraphy arrived at dawn the next day, pausing to admire the façade for the hundredth time, until cold feet and hands drove her out of the wind into the recessed entry. There rough brick walls kissed her shoulder and worn limestone paving felt solid under her feet. She rejoiced in her new home, sliding her hands down the door, her fingers pricked by peeling paint, reveling in the strength of the old oak beneath.

“You know I'm here, don't you?” she murmured, placing her palms flat against the cool brick, feeling her pulse, for surely the faint thrumming was her pulse, beat against the brick. The building fit her. Or maybe she fit it, its gritty toughness, no-nonsense utility, form dictated by function, strength, elegant proportions. She thought of herself like that, tough, strong, and competent, unconcerned with her appearance, although in fact she was quite beautiful, but that fact belonged to a life she'd long ago lost. “We're a lot alike, aren't we?” She pressed her palms hard against the brick and leaned her forehead on the wall above.

Her communion with her building was cut short by the first of a fleet of ladder-bearing contractor vans.

“What'cha got, Pelligrini?” Gus, J & E’s plumbing contractor, was half-way across the sidewalk before she could answer. “This the job you got for us? Scoot over,” he said as he squeezed his weight-lifter's body out of the drizzle into in the recessed entry “Cold today. This your project?”

“Yeah, and I need lots of help, Gus, all I can get. I've got her cleaned out and ready for you. I'm putting a loft upstairs and garage and workshop down.”

“You're moving in? Here?” the big man said, startled. He pulled his baseball cap off and rubbed his bald spot like he always did when he needed time to think.“You're gonna live here?”

“Right,” she said, looking him in the eye and daring him to say more. “I've got a bunch of plans, a shell with no systems, it's getting cold, and I need to move in ASAP.”

Gus glanced up and down Rockwell, pausing in his survey to check out the gangbangers around the car on the corner. His mouth twitched. “Um-hmph. Your funeral.” The cap came down over his eyes and she could see the moment he decided to shrug off his doubts. “So, what do you need?”

She looked up as more vans pulled up and parked behind Gus's. “Maybe we should wait until all the guys are here and I can take you all in at once.” Gus nodded, silent and frowning as they waited for the electricians, heating and air conditioning contractor, the roofer and two carpenters, then started the tour.

By early that afternoon, the drizzle had moved on, leaving clear blue skies and colder temperatures. As the last of the white vans rumbled north on Rockwell, Seraphy settled down in the Jeep to go over the next day's schedule. She chuckled as she read. The guys hadn't expected her to be in such a hurry or to have working drawings ready. Good thing it was late in the contractor year, better that she worked for Jerrod & Etwin Architectural Investments. J. & E. kept most of them in business. And even better, the men liked her and while they might complain, they'd find time.

She knew Jerrod & Etwin's contractors had been unsure about the ‘girl architect’ when she showed up on the work sites last year, punctilious political correctness tinged the air whenever she appeared with rolls of drawings under her arm. Some showed it more, some less, but she understood why the men were uneasy working with ‘Miss Pelligrini.’

All that changed one weekend about a month after she started. She was on her own time that Sunday, checking drawings against work completed. She shouldn't have had company, no one except the watchman was scheduled to be on site. The day was miserably hot, over 95° with 80% humidity, the air as thick and sticky as warm Jello. Dressed for comfort in ragged cut-offs and an ancient t-shirt, she left the ragged red and white scars that ran the length of her left arm and leg exposed. Gus and his crew surprised her on the third floor.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn't mean to scare you.” He glanced at her legs and away. “We're finishing up the supply lines in on the left corner. Damned supplier shorted us on copper pipe, brought the rest in late yesterday. Drywallers come tomorrow.” Obviously uncomfortable and carefully not looking at her wounds, Gus turned back to his crew. “Let's go, guys, I want to get out of here ASAP.”

“Me, too,” she said to his back. “No problem. I'll be out of here in an hour.”

None of the men asked about the scars, but she noticed the furtive glances and the way they exchanged whispered asides while she talked to Gus. Unspoken curiosity and speculation thickened the air. Hell with this.

“Listen up, guys.” Her voice echoed in the cavernous space. Gus and his crew turned to look and she motioned them back. When the men gathered around her, she continued, “I'm only going to say this once. I know I'm the first female architect J & E’s had, and I'm new here, and you all know this is my first architecture job. And you're curious about these,” she gestured at her arm and leg. No one spoke. “I didn't get these playing croquet at the country club.” Fast-smothered snickers. A man in back turned to whisper to his neighbor, saw Gus glance his way, and was silent.

“Until last year, though I had an architecture degree and a license to practice architecture in Illinois, I was, well, I was otherwise employed.” She grinned. “I was a Marine for five years, mostly in Iraq, then an agent with Darkpool for five more, until an IED hit our convoy.” Shocked into silence, the men looked surprised and curious. She pulled her sleeve higher so they could all see her left arm from wrist to shoulder and heard the hiss of indrawn breath, ran her hand along her leg and pointed to the deepest of the scars, still an angry maroon color after more than a year. “This one's from a bad bit of shrapnel. I was lucky, only two of us survived, and the sergeant lost both legs. They airlifted me out to Germany, then on to Walter Reed, then finally here to the Rehab Center. You can see I'm fully functional, but I can't go back to Darkpool, so here I am. Any questions?”