The Chicago Rat Shifter

Chapter 7

The alley behind Becca"s apartment building was narrow, long enough for Cyrus to get a good run on his electric skateboard before rocketing out into the streets. He leaned forward and down, with the chicken wing-shaped remote control strapped to his wrist. He adjusted his black helmet, stickered all over with his favorite band logos and random stickers he collected over the years.

He caught a straight stretch and the board’s motor hit full whine as he wove between cars whose drivers honked at him. He blew through a stop sign and hit his max speed as a sense of calm washed over him.

He"d had this board for several years, and it saved him an ungodly amount of money on public transit. Why take the train or bus when he could ride? It was a warm spring day in Chicago, the kind of day where people drove with their windows down, everyone wore sunglasses, and the sunlight reflected off every surface, even the sidewalks. Plus, Chicago was about as flat as a city could get, perfect for maintaining top speed on the board for a long time.

He adjusted his helmet and adjusted his sunglasses, stealing a glance at his red high-top Converse sneakers just before he slowed to a stop at a red light at a busy intersection.

A black Tesla stopped next to him. He bet his board could beat it across the intersection.

With a quick press on the back of the board, he flipped it up into his hands and waited for the stoplight to change, hunched over a little. When the light changed, he threw his board down with a sly roll and jumped on.

The Tesla didn"t stand a chance. He cheered, cut off two pedestrians with a sharp right turn, and swerved into a bike lane, accelerating to top speed again. As the coffee shops and office buildings and jewelry shops and banks and pizzerias and insurance agents and pharmacies blurred by, he started thinking again.

He passed by an old white bicycle locked to a street lamp, with someone’s name stenciled on a sign attached to the bike’s body. These ghost bikes were all over Chicago, reminding him of how dangerous it was to share the road with cars.

Yet he did his best thinking on the board. There was something about being a blind spot away from death or critical injury that made him think about his own life. About Jules.

She had drifted into his life like most people—by chance. A Latino heritage celebration on the northwest side in a lush, emerald-green park. He and his friends were waiting in line for a food truck that sold the tastiest tortas in town. He’d never had a torta before. He walked up to the ordering window and asked what it was. The cashier, a middle-aged Latino man, barely spoke English.

A voice next to him said, “It"s a Mexican sandwich. Do you like chicken or beef?”

A petite, fair-skinned woman stood next to him. She wore a green blouse and maroon shorts. Eighties style. Curly brown hair in a bushy afro.

He was immediately smitten with her, but there was no way he was in her league, let alone the same planet.

She ordered for him in Spanish, and when the cashier handed him a steaming beef sandwich with a side of brown salsa and radishes, the woman smiled, winked, and said, “I"ll take a commission, please.”

He blushed and cracked a ridiculously corny joke. She laughed and walked away, leaving him staring after her for a while before the person in line behind him coughed politely to tell him to get out of the way.

Cyrus wasn"t very good with the dating thing. Of course she was probably interested in him. He was too stupid to tell in real-time.

Of course“You didn"t talk to her?” his buddy had asked.

“She was just being friendly,” Cyrus said, biting into the torta. “I was lost trying to read the Spanish on the menu.”

“Bro, you are the most sheltered dude I have ever met in my entire life.”

“Just because I went to private school doesn"t mean I—”

Somehow his brain caught up, and he realized the missed opportunity. His buddy encouraged him, told him that he needed some love in his life. Even more appealing, his buddy told him that if any attempts at a date failed, he’d buy groceries for the next week. Being broke and desperate for a relationship, Cyrus worked up the courage to approach her.

What did he say? He didn"t remember the exact words, but he asked her if she’d like to get ice cream sometime. It was the only thing he could think of as she looked into his eyes. But that was not how it came out, because she thought he was asking her to go for ice cream right then, in the middle of a festival that she was attending with her friends. Her face corkscrewed with confusion, and his awkward utterances didn’t help. After another odd exchange, she said, “I’m not one hundred percent sure what you’re trying to say, but if you"re asking me on a date, okay.”

And then it began. At Becca’s advisement, he brought her flowers on the first date, which worked, but then he embarrassed himself royally by accidentally getting stuck in a revolving door with her at the restaurant he took her to. The door seemed big enough for two people, and he let her go first, slipping in after her. The next thing he knew, he was inadvertently grinding her, and her face was forced against the glass, making her look like a fish as she told him to get off her. The building security guard had to hit the emergency shutoff for the revolving door to bail them out…

Hell of a way to start a relationship, but she must’ve liked him enough to keep him around.

Four dates later, she kissed him. Four dates...He was too shy to make the first move.

himHe could still remember Becca slapping her forehead at his dopishness. “It took you that long to get kissed? I’m so embarrassed for you.”

getNo initiative, she had said. He had many personal qualities; initiative wasn"t one of them.

Yet he fell for Jules hard. Every day solidified his feelings: walking through Logan Square Park with her, talking about nothing at all; learning random Spanish words from her everywhere they went; riding on the L late at night after a movie with his arm around her, deep in conversation about philosophy and the weird and wacky ways of Chicago people. He loved how she’d smile with her eyes closed every time he told a terrible joke, and tap him on the nose with her finger just before she kissed him with all of her body.

Then he’d really fallen for her. One morning, after she’d slept over at his apartment, in silvery sunlight, in the afterglow of a long night of s*x, he woke up alone. Jules had overslept and had to rush to work, but he didn’t know it at the time. He called her ten times in a row and was a nervous wreck all day. He felt like an i***t when she told him the real reason she’d left. And yes, she’d been thinking about him all day. Nonstop.

From that moment, he could see his entire life with her; he had it all planned out. She was going to school to be a paralegal, and he would figure out what he wanted to do with his life at some point. They’d live in Evanston or Skokie, away from the city, in a nice little house with a postage stamp front yard. Maybe have a family. And they’d be happy.

Hadn"t she wanted that?

A car horn tore him from his daydream as he blew through a red light. He flipped off the driver. Nobody ever paid attention to boarders.

He hung another left past an auto body shop and hopped onto the sidewalk, where he slowed to a stop.

Jules lived in a red brick apartment building. He remembered the pastel-colored walls that Jules loved—every room was a different color, straight out of the 80s. And the creaky futon they slept on. And the kitchen barely big enough for one person in which they constantly bumped each other while making dinner.

“Cyrus, you’re a great guy,” she had said on the day she ended it, on her front steps. “But I don’t see a future with you.”

“But I thought we were on the same page,” he said, caught off-guard.

“I’m sorry, Cyrus. It’s just that…we’re moving too fast. I just need some space.”

“Space? But we talked about moving in together—”

“I guess…I thought it would feel different, you know?” she had said, leaning against the wall on her porch.

“No, I don’t know!” he had yelled.

She had tried to let him off gently. She spoke quietly, kept apologizing, and was overly polite. At one point, he started crying. Then he started yelling. Then she started crying, and the conversation turned into a shouting match. They both said things they didn’t mean. His internal voice kept telling him that he was being an i***t, yet he couldn’t stop the words from coming out of his mouth. He couldn’t stop the pain in his heart, the pounding fear that no one would ever love him again. Like the whole world was expelling him from even the remotest possibility of love. Through his words, he had lashed out like a hurt animal. The breakup ended with Jules cursing him out and slamming her front door in his face.

He fell into a depression and got fired from his job at the anime shop for calling in sick too many times. His buddy who roomed with him took a job out of state and Cyrus couldn’t afford to live in the apartment alone. Next thing he knew, he was on Becca’s couch.

Jules never even gave him a reason. At least not one that made any sense. A six-month relationship, over in five minutes.

Their time together had been so tender and special…and yet he’d never met her parents. She never told him she loved him, even after he’d said it multiple times. He just told himself it would come, that her reply would come in due time. He told himself that one day she’d love him the same way he loved her. She’d catch up. And yet, deep in the bottom of his heart, he knew that she was drifting away from him, but he couldn’t bring himself to accept that it could possibly be true.

A car playing loud banda music flew by, pulling Cyrus from that night and back into the present. He glanced wistfully at the apartment again—if things had gone better, maybe he’d’ve been living there with Jules right now.

banda He sighed. If Becca knew he was here, she’d probably kick his ass.

Yeah, he should’ve left. It was stupid to come here, but he had to. It was best if he left now that he had gotten the nostalgia out of his system.

He started to push off, when someone called him.

“Cyrus?”

Jules was behind him. She carried her trademark golden purse and wore a green sundress, the one he always liked. The afternoon light cast a halo-like glow in her afro. Big, black sunglasses covered her face. The very sight of her made his stomach lovesick.

“Uh, hey,” he said hesitantly.

Now was his chance. He searched for the right arrangement of words, the right phrases to say to apologize and convince her to take him back. But all that came out was an unintelligible stutter.

Jules’s face changed from confusion to anger. Her eyebrows slanted and she pursed her lips. “You need to leave.”

“I was just passing by,” he said, swallowing.

“I know that’s not true,” she said. “I told you: we’re through. What part of that don’t you understand?”

He wasn’t going to give a snarky reply this time. He didn’t know what he was going to say because before he could say it, a car door slammed and a tall Latino man jogged to catch up to Jules on the street. He wore an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt with a white tank top underneath and looked like he bench-pressed cars for his workout routine. He even had a thin mustache. Cyrus hated him on sight.

“You Cyrus?” he asked.

“Let me guess,” Cyrus said flatly. “New boyfriend.”

“Your worst nightmare,” the guy said. Jules held him back and said something in Spanish.

“Get out of here,” he said.

Someone called across the street.

“Hey, Steve-O, you got trouble?”

Two brown guys in tank tops and jeans shorts climbed from a beater car.

Cyrus backed away.

“What’s up, white boy?” one of the men asked.

“This is the guy running around here for the last few days bothering Jules,” Steve-O said. “Now we finally get to talk to him.”

The two men approached.

“Back the f**k off,” Cyrus said.

“Or what?” one of them said.

“Everyone, stop,” Jules said. “Cyrus, I’m so sorry this didn’t work out, but it’s over, okay? Please go away and leave me alone. Nothing’s going to change.”

“He can’t take a hint, baby,” Steve-O said.

Cyrus put up his fists and circled them around his face like he’d seen people do in movies. The two guys laughed. Then they dashed at him.

Cursing, he panicked and turned to run away. He didn’t see another man who had snuck up behind him, fist already mid-arc toward his face.