Page 25 of The Guy in the Alley

He paused, about to take a swig of his drink. “With my mother.”

Oh.

Let me guess, out in Elmwood Park.

“And you can’t stay with them,” I said. I didn’t wanna ask or assume. People’s living situations… They all had their reasons for why they could or couldn’t take someone in.

Ben shook his head and drank from his pop. “If you don’t mind, I’ll save that story for another day.”

Oh, but I did fucking mind, and it was starting to frustrate the shit out of me. Why did I care so much about this dude?

“Another day sounds good.” Technically not a lie, because I was holding on to the another-day part.

Chances were, he wanted to create better living arrangements for himself and his son, maybe his mother too, and he needed a job for that. So maybe he’d be interested in staying here. He could look for jobs, knowing he had a bed to come back to at the end of the day, and when we were ready to hire, he could work here.

“What about you?” he asked. “What’s your life story?”

Yeah, we weren’t going there.

“I don’t have one.”

“Everyone has a story, Trace.”

Mine was classified.

Perhaps that was a stretch. I didn’t have much of a story, but I had two years of my life that still haunted me. That was enough.

I could easily gloss over that time in my life, though.

“Your whole family must have an interesting story,” Ben noted. “According to your sign outside, you opened in the late 1800s.”

I inclined my head and grabbed two bowls to pour the soup. “We managed to document that story pretty well,” I conceded. “My ancestor’s family scraped together enough money that he could leave Ireland during the famine. He got settled in Chicago and worked at a lumberyard to send money home. Some of them eventually followed, but I’m sure a smart cookie like you can guess what happened next.”

He scratched his forehead. “The famine was what, mid-1800s? So I’m assuming the fire.”

Bingo.

“Everything he’d worked for was destroyed,” I said, plating the cheesy bread. I cranked up the heat next, to get the wings back in shape. “He had no home, no job, no money. Then one day—and I don’t know if this is true or just legendary bullshit, but…whatever. He was walking around this area right here, and the owner of a restaurant barged out, grabbed hold of John—that was his name—and spat out, ‘You take it. Take my wife too! I’m done!’ And he stormed off.”

Ben laughed through his nose.

I shrugged. “So John had himself a gander, ya know. Fuck details, I guess,” I chuckled. “I don’t know how it played out, but he opened The Clover in 1896.” I lifted the pan and dumped the wings on our plates too. “Some years later, they started building the Dearborn Station, and John had to move the establishment a few blocks. He found this place through a friend who owned the building—same family that owns it today, actually—though, it was split in two back then. There was a small publishing house next door.” I reached for the wing sauce. “John added Dearborn to the name, and nothing new happened until my grandmother took over. The publishing house was shutting down, so she and her sisters decided to expand.” Holding up our plates and the wing sauce, I finished with a good, “The end. Take our soup and drinks.”

I’d amused him, at least.

“Riveting story that left you out completely.”

I mean…not really. “Their story is mine. When my folks retired last fall, it was my turn.”

“You may still be wet behind the ears, kid, but you didn’t start living last year. There’s more to you than the family sports bar.”

The fuck? Wet behind the…? Get the fuck out.

But fine. I could give him the same CliffsNotes he’d given me earlier. “All right. Up until I started kindergarten, we lived in a one-bedroom in Irving Park. According to Ma, they were the worst years of her life because we had virtually no space, and my sister and I were at each other’s throats all day long. She’s a year younger.” I set the food on the bar where we hadn’t put up the stools yet, and I grabbed us spoons and napkins before I took a seat. “Then we moved to a Sox stronghold, Bridgeport, and Sarah and I showed Ma that space wasn’t the issue. It was us.”

Ben chuckled and sat down next to me.

“It was just a regular upbringing,” I said and shrugged. “Money was tight because Dad invested most of it in this place, but it kept us afloat. And you know…teenage years came, teenage years went. I had my usual rebellious years, when the last thing I wanted to do was follow in my old man’s footsteps.” I broke off a piece of buttery cheesy bread and crammed it into my mouth. “For a minute, I thought I was gonna join the Army, but I managed to piss off two recruiters, and I was advised to pick something else. So I decided to become a cop, which, in retrospect, I chose partly to rebel against myself too. I’m not what one might call a stickler for rules.”

---