Page 12 of Spades

I usually go there tomeetwomen. Occasionally I’ll bring my best friend, Harrison, as my wingman. He’s an attending physician at a hospital downtown.

Wait a minute. He might work at the same hospital as Alissa, come to think of it. I don’t know the name of his hospital, but I know it’s downtown, near the Loop. Alissa said she works at St. Charles.

But before she got into nursing, she got two degrees in flute performance from Northwestern.

Not a bad school at all.

I go up there every few months or so. Sometimes I’ll go to the university library to find a book not available at Harold Washington downtown. The music school is built right on Lake Michigan, and it looks like a giant glass cruise ship pulled up to the shore. I’ve never been inside, but it’s hard not to notice it when walking through the university’s campus.

Every so often when I’ve been up there, I’ve managed to attract a co-ed. The Rolls-Royce is good for that. I’ll invite her to my place, fuck her brains out, and then call her an Uber back up to Evanston.

But not once have I taken any of them to the club.

I’m always allowed to bring a single guest. All members are. But Harrison is the only person I’ve ever brought, and that’s always to serve as my wingman.

I pay for his drinks, so I think it’s a fair trade-off. And Harrison occasionally will take a woman home himself. He’s a good-looking dude. People often ask if we’re brothers.

Maybe if this thing with Alissa pans out, she can come up with me to visit her alma mater. We can walk along the lake, take in the sights. She can tell me stories about her six years there. Maybe we could catch a performance of the music school’s symphony orchestra.

Classical music has always interested me, but I know next to nothing about it. My understanding of it begins and ends with old Bugs Bunny cartoons.

And yet she abandoned her chosen field, switched to nursing. Turned right back around and got a third degree in a completely unrelated profession.

What is her story?

One thing is for sure. There is more to Alissa Maravilla than meets the eye. I can’t wait to get to know her better.

I can’t wait to get inside her tight little body, either.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We have our first real date tonight. Last night was a chance meeting. Doesn’t count.

She perked her ears up at my name. But she wasn’t quite able to figure out where she had heard it before.

She’s either a fantastic actress or she actually has no idea who I am. Who my family is.

A lot of the women I’ve dated over the years have come to me solely because of my last name. They know that the Hathaways are a local political dynasty, and one of the first things they ask me is if my father was Henry Hathaway, the former mayor.

I usually sigh and say yes.

It’s the truth. The truth I can’t escape.

Once they learn, however, that I have no political ambition, they usually run for the hills. If that doesn’t get them, once they find out that I’ve been cut off from my family’s riches, they’re history.

But Alissa seems to be interested in me despite not having any of that information. She’s from England, after all—God, that accent of hers makes me insane—and would have no reason to know much about my family’s political connections. Only people who grew up in and around Chicago would know anything about us.

Those whodoknow are aware that my father’s final term ended fifteen years ago, right before I turned twenty. He was dead within a year.

Some say the stress killed him. While his twelve years in office were mostly successful, his approval ratings plummeted in his final year, and he left the mayorship in disgrace.

I was his one shot at continuing his legacy, and later, redeeming it.

And I refused.

* * *

Dad has really pulledout all the stops for my eighteenth birthday. We’re in the Wrigley Mansion ballroom downtown, and he hired a decorator to outfit the entire place in my favorite colors, cobalt blue and mint green. A giant birthday cake stands on a small table at the room’s center directly under the grand chandelier, and everybody who’s anybody in the Chicago political scene is here. City councilmembers, party donors, and even several Illinois state senators are present.

We are the Hathaways, after all.

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