Dobranoc

Usually, it takes till Sunday night for the dread of returning to work on Monday to lean its weight on me. But as I walked out of the office Friday at five, that dread lay across my shoulders like a 20-pound cat, claws dug in, strain registering from the base of the skull to the small of the back. I could've used a backrub. I could've used a drink. I couldn't have the former, and I didn't want the latter. So I went out in search of a book instead.

I've been reading a lot lately. Partly because of a wealth of free time, partly because of the need for distraction--from work, from dental woes, from the world in general. I've stopped reading the daily papers--more to save money than to avoid the bad writing and 50-point-type headlines and disquieting news within--and started reading books instead. Good books. Books like The Devil in the White City, which, oddly enough, is not the story of a friend's move to Minneapolis, but the parallel stories of two men from the mists of Chicago history: Daniel Burnham, architect and driving force behind the Columbian Exposition of 1893; and H.H. Holmes, druggist, swindler and serial killer responsible for the murders of numerous young women who came to the city for the excitement of the World's Fair. An excellent read, a compelling narrative, a vivid picture of a past time both wonderful and horrible.

From there, I detoured into classic crime fiction--Raymond Chandler, to be specific. Born in Chicago, raised in England. Didn't publish his first story until he was 45; didn't publish his first novel, The Big Sleep, until he was 51. Gives me hope for myself, even if I can never hope to string together darkly beautiful, richly lyrical, witty and menacing, rough and tender words the way Chandler did. I'd spent the past couple weeks slowly enjoying The High Window, and now I wanted more. So I walked to an outlet of a local chain of bookstores, only to find not a single copy of a single one of Chandler's relatively small career output. Now the cat of my shoulders weighed thirty-five pounds and was becoming extremely tiresome, even as a metaphor.

So I walked back, one slow foot before the other, to Michigan Avenue, the Magnificent Mile of song and story, to Virgin Megamondoreallyreallybigstore, which, in addition to a vast selection of vastly overpriced CDs and DVDs, has a respectable selection of books of all flavors. And this night, as it happens, they had a complete run of Chandler novels and short story collections. So I scooped up the novels I didn't already have, paid for them in cash so as not to dig my credit hole any deeper than my dental work has already dug it, and left the store a wallet more light, but also with shoulders ever so slightly less tight.

From there, I headed south on Michigan Avenue in a familiar ritual toward the Loop, where I'd catch the Brown Line at a point where seats were still a possibility, and snake my way north toward home. But as I crossed the bridge over the river, it was obvious that this wasn't a normal night. Not in the least.

There were cops on the other end of the Michigan Avenue bridge. A lot of cops. Maybe a couple dozen, all clustered on the northwest corner of Michigan and Wacker. More cops than I'd seen outside of the confines of a police station or a convenience store. Even in those familiar ernvironments, though, you don't usually see them armored for possible combat the way they were Friday night. Shatterproof visors. Flack jackets. Nightsticks the size of Louisville Sluggers. The works.

They didn't look worked up or tense or aggitated in the least. But I knew what their presence meant: there were war protesters somewhere nearby. The night before, there had been many, many war protesters downtown, and things had gotten out of hand. No violence or damage to property or any such thing, but the throng had flowed forth from the Loop through to Lakeshore Drive, where traffic was halted in both directions. For a couple of hours. At the height of rush hour. Hardly business as usual. Hardly what the expensive suits that run this city like to see. Bad for business. Embarrassing. Unacceptable.

So Friday night, downtown was lousy with cops in riot gear. I danced around the congregation at Michigan and Wacker and went on my way. I can't call my way "merry." My shoulders were tightening right back up. The cat was back.

It wasn't until I was on the train that I noticed fellow passengers craning their necks to look up streets and between buildings, back toward Wacker Drive. There, under the bright yellow street lights, was a solid wall of humanity, surrounded by what appeared to be a thick tangle of lights. When the train made the turn north and passed over Wacker, we all saw up close what we'd known from a distance: there was a long line of war protesters moving west in the eastbound lanes of the drive, the tangle of lights beside them the reflections of the street lights off the helmets of the tight line of police holding the protesters in check.

Some of the protesters no doubt opposed any war, anytime, anywhere. Others no doubt opposed this particular war, lamenting that our current President Bush hadn't "made the case" for starting a new war when the previous "war on terrorism" hadn't been finished yet (or was this war part of that war?). Still others directed their voices at the president himself, accusing him of attempting to settle an old score left over from his father's administration. One man--a tall, beefy guy with a thick brown mustache and a broad, if tight-lipped, smile--flashed a peace sign at the passing train. A few passengers flashed the same sign back

As the train passed over the river and made the turn past the Merchandise Mart, I tried to turn my attention away from the scene now behind me and back to the book in my lap. But The High Window wasn't much of a distraction that night, through no fault of anyone's, least of all Raymond Chandler.

I got off at my stop, walked home quickly, scratched my cap at my lack of mail (had the post office stopped delivering to my building again?) and took the stairs two at a time (that's normal for me--a side effect of having legs half a mile long). Lottie and Ms. Christopher greeted me at the back door.

I'd love to flatter myself with the conceit that they did this out of affection or devotion or lack of human contact, but that's just not the case: the MaxCat Lite in the bowl had gotten old (and had, in truth, hardly been touched), and the Girlish Girls sought fresh kibble. I accomodated them with a couple scoops of Iams dry, threw my mock bomber jacket on the couch and flipped on the TV, just in time to catch the tail end of an NBC report on the war, complete with the images of uprising clouds of fire arising from Baghdad, surrounding that curiously phallic-looking building all the networks showed the first night of the war with a sudden, volitile grove of mushroom clouds, Tom Brokaw's attempts to be smooth and soothing making me miss Walter Cronkite that much more.

The Peacock Network decided, for whatever reason, that it would be inappropriate to run a "reality" show dedicated to finding America's most talented kid and a fresh episode of Ed, so they plugged in a rerun of one of their many "Law & Order" shows instead. Rather than sit there and watch Vincent D'Onorfrio casually munch the scenary, I channel-flipped for something more innocent. I landed on a low-power UHF station that shows a mix of vintage sitcoms and dramas during the day, music videos overnight and ethnic-oriented viewing in between. Friday at eight, they were running a Polish children's program called Dobranocka, on which a fortyish woman in a peasant dress on a set decorated with characters from Winnie the Poo--pictures and stickers and stuffed animals--read a few pages from a Poo story.

The program was short--just under ten minutes--and I understood very little of what she said; Mom speaks Polish more or less fluently, but has shared only a few words of the language with me and has flatly refused to teach me any of the really good curse words. But at the end of the program, the nice lady smiled, slid her right hand into a teddy bear puppet in her lap, and waved at the camera with both the puppet's hands and with her free left hand.

"Dooooobraaaaanoooooc!" said the smiling Polish lady in the peasant dress, waving at the children presumably turning in after hearing their story for the night. Dobranoc (pronounced "do-BRA-notz") is the Polish word for "Good night." That much Polish I know.

But it wasn't a "good night," through no fault at all of the smiling Polish storyteller lady on Dobranocka. Nor was the night before a "good night." Nor was the night after. Nor was tonight. Nor will any night be a "good night" until the fighting and the dying and the "special reports" are over.

I can only hope that's very soon.