A Winter Dream - By Richard Paul Evans Page 0,31
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