gear, but I unpacked the piano and climbed down with it into the hole. I knew I ought to be quiet, but I sang “Men of Harlech” in a loud deep voice so that the voles would keep their distance. When I had the piano hidden, I backed out of the hole as quickly as I could and jogged back to the Forty-seventh Street platform.
I was covered in dirt. I looked like that most disgraceful member of American society, a homeless woman. When a train stopped, the conductor insisted I ride in the vestibule, even though I proved I had a valid ticket.
All the way downtown, where I’d parked the Subaru, all the way north to my building, my mind was focused on a shower, but when I reached my front door, I realized that looking homeless was not just a disgrace, but a badge of invisibility. I couldn’t disguise myself any more thoroughly than this. I hated getting into bed covered in dirt, but I spread a sheet across the cover and removed only my shoes and socks before lying down.
I could have used help, but I was unwilling to put the life of anyone I knew at risk. Mr. Contreras was furious that I’d turned him down. Hadn’t he saved my life back when I was fighting off the Sturlese cement company? And down at Dead Stick Pond, and—
“And you’re the best. That’s why I’m not going to let you risk your life jumping in and out of trees on the South Side.”
Early the next morning, when the sky was turning from black to gray, I slipped out of my building, so quietly that the dogs didn’t hear me. I left Angela’s Subaru in a parking garage a mile north of my apartment. On my way south, I stopped at my office to stick my smartphone in the big safe there.
I rode the L to Thirty-fifth Street and walked the mile to the lakefront. I had a burner phone for emergencies, a driver’s license, and a hundred dollars in small bills in the heel of my left shoe, a handful of singles in my jeans pocket.
I was carrying my big backpack, packed with speakers, a remote, a groundsheet, some snacks, a toothbrush, but no clothes. I’d had a shower right before meeting with Cousins yesterday morning, but moving around in the heat with a heavily laden backpack was rapidly giving me and my clothes a sour smell.
By the time I reached the north end of the Burnham corridor, the sun had streaked the morning sky a wild orange-pink. Early commuters were backed up at the entrance to Lake Shore Drive. They were all focused on their own issues; no one paid me any attention. I skidded down the hill into the park, my pack banging against my kidneys.
I left a speaker under a wicker sculpture near the north end of the Wildlife Corridor and a second one under the stairs at the south end of the Forty-seventh Street train platform. Hiking several miles through the scrubby plants in the heat was exhausting, but before I joined my sister and brother homeless on the park benches, I rode the L back to the Loop to use a pay phone.
Luana Giorgini and I had worked out a simple code: hanging up after two calls meant no action. Hanging up after three meant she should put some text that we’d worked on into the Star’s online edition.
After that, I drifted into a coffee bar. To their credit, the young staff behind the counter took my order for two cortados. They gave me a plastic cup filled with ice water, only let me pay for one drink, and threw in a croissant. Customer reaction ranged from determined obliviousness through mimed disgust. One woman with a baby in an outsize stroller told me I shouldn’t be allowed in a facility with children in it.
“God bless you, miss,” I said. “And God’s blessing on your little one. May she grow up to have a compassionate heart.”
I took my drinks outside. When I finished them, I rode back to the South Side, to the rocky place at Forty-seventh Street where I’d swum earlier in the summer. Late on a weekday morning, it was deserted, and I took a chance on my belongings to strip and rinse off in the water. Even though I had to put my stinking clothes back on, I felt better.
After that, I waited out the hours until sundown. You don’t know