Under A Hot Chicago Sun

    "Non-recyclables this time," I yell.  I hoist the trash bag above my head as I descend.  I carry one of those unrippable bags that Glad makes, with the stretchy lines that make you feel like they're futuristic or qualified to be used in space.  But, like an unbreakable comb that you can break, this bag tears in the lifting. 
    My neighbor told me I should recycle last week after seeing me cart several bags of cans out my door and down my stairs to the alley.  He laughs from across the gap between our deks.  As usual, he is sitting at the slick wooden bar he installed years ago, smoking a cigarette and reading a book. 
    In loose flip-flops, I struggle up wooden steps which swell with recent rainfall.  I get to the top of the deck and hear my neighbor's voice.  I miss what he says and I can't see him.  There is a bright light on the corner of his roof, making him a Stygian cut-out of night.

    "I said, 'What happened to your woman?'" 
    "Oh," I pause.  I miss her, but, "I broke up with her."  I explain how I wanted to get back together with her, but not before sleeping with someone else.  He totally understands when I say, "But there are more out there."
    "So many more, man.  So many."
    I echo, "So many,"  though I am enlightened to think of all of the women beyond my reach.  And how, being someone who has lived here much longer than I, my neighbor can tap into any crowd or part of town.  Not just the college scene.  Especially being someone who opens/operates restaurants.
    "Yeah, man, I hate being tied down."  This is odd, I see him with a wide-eyed, dark, sinister looking bad girl often. She is, for once, absent. 
    "Aren't you?  Uh," I make a hitch-hiker's thumb and jerk-off in the direction of the indoors. 
    "Oh, yeah, she's out of town right now.  Even with her. . ."
    I give him the thumbs up and say, "But good job getting tied down with her."
    "She's smokin'," is his understated response. 
    We talk about her more and he reveals she is 19 years younger than him.  Odd, she looks pretty old.  No, he assures me, when you get up close, you know, when she isn't wearing make-up, she looks seventeen.  I tell him to be careful and he laughs.  She's 26, for real. But she's crazy, and he likes being the crazy person in a relationship.  But, he says, she wins.  I tell him I get that reserved, calm-crazy vibe from her.  Like, she smiles at me, but I know she's got a lot more going on that that smile in her head.  She's devious. 

    I tell him about my summer love.  He says it's perfect.  He says long-distance relationships are stupid and amount to two people being in love because they're committed, not because they're actually in love.  Love takes you places.  Love doesn't keep you from that person.  Love them while they're here, don't when they're not.  Or something.
   
    I never would have guessed he was forty-five.
    I am inappropriate about it.
    "At forty-five, have you ever considered marriage?"
    "Oh, I've been married before.  No fun."
     And I get shut down. 

    We move on to a few other subjects and he ends up talking about writing.  And getting published.  This excites me for two reasons:
1) I want to get published. 
2) If I get a hold of something he has published, I will learn his name without grief. 
    You see, my neighbor knows my name-- says it every time he greets me.  Hey, Hunter.  What's up, Hunter?  Hunter!!!! Where have you beeeeen?!  Let's go get drunk at a sex party!!!!!  Even that last one, where he was really trashed, he knows my name.  It has been a year since I met him, and I still don't know his name.  He introduced himself, sure, but do I remember beyond what's immediately in front of me, or what is constantly recurring in my life?  Of course not, I'm too much of a disaster right now.
     Every day that passes is another day further away from being able to politely ask for his name.  I'm like a fat person who won't go to the gym because of appearances.  I think his name is Steve, but if you knew someone for a year and they randomly called you Steve.  Might be a problem. 
    I wait.  Every day that passes, I wait for someone to say his name.  Or I avoid him with shame.  But then, tonight, when I talk to him, he gives me my solution.  A book.  He wrote a book, he tells me, and the title is Under a Hot Chicago Sun, by My Neighbor.  Steve. 

    I tell my neighbor I am going to check out his book and that he should expect a full criticism.  He says, I'm all for it, and I go inside to look it up online.  My dreams shatter, splinter.  Dream shards eviscerate my heart through my eyes, from the monitor.
On the screen:
    Abebooks: 0 Results
    Alibiris: 0 Results
    Amazon: 0 Results
    Barnes&Noble: 0 Results
    Google Product Search: 0 Results
    This is all google could tell me about the book.  "By Lew."  What the fuck is that?  I click the "Find this in a library" link, and it gives me William and Mary.  Some forty minutes away.  And I ride a bike.  Yeah, great, now how am I supposed to cheat in the name game?  Ask to borrow a copy?  If he has a few laying around, does that make him pompous?  Should I call him Lew?  I can see him as a Lew.  The hip 45 year old who reads, opens 11 restaurants, fucks women almost half his age, installs bars on decks, has a dog, might have kids.  Lew, if that is your name, you're a bad ass. 

   

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