Hardball

“It happened so fast, I didn’t even know I was coming myself until a week ago. See, I graduated from college in May. And then me and my roomie went to Africa for four weeks. We bought a used Land Rover, we drove all over, then we sold the Rover in Cape Town and flew to Australia. Anyway, when I got off the plane in Kansas City, Daddy was, like, do you have a job? And I’m, like, no, of course not. And he says how Harvey Krumas’s son is ru

“Harvey Krumas, huh? I didn’t know he and your dad were friends.”

“Do you know him?” Petra’s cellphone rang. She looked at the screen and put it back in her pocket.

“No, sweetie, I don’t swim in those rarefied waters.”

Krumas. The name in Chicago meant everything from pork bellies to pension funds. When a new high-rise broke ground here, or in any of a dozen other great cities around the world, you could count on seeing Krumas Capital Management listed among the financial backers.

“I thought maybe since Daddy and Uncle Harvey are such good buds, your dad must’ve known him, too.”

“My dad was twenty when your father was born,” I explained. “I don’t know if Peter even remembers the row house in Back of the Yards. By the time he started school, Grandma Warshawski had bought a bungalow in Gage Park. Then she moved to Norwood, up on the Northwest Side. That’s where she lived when I was a teenager. Your dad took indoor plumbing for granted when he was growing up, but my father and your uncle Bernie-they were the two oldest-they had to empty the slop buckets every morning when they were boys. Between them, Grandma and Grandpa Warshawski didn’t make fifteen dollars a week during the Great Depression.”

“It’s not Daddy’s fault his parents had a hard life,” Petra protested.

“Oh, honey, I wasn’t trying to imply that, just explaining what different worlds our two fathers inhabited even though they were brothers. My dad joined the police because it offered a steady paycheck.”

“But Daddy worked hard!” Petra cried. “He earned every nickel he ever made, down in the yards!”

“I know he did. Our grandmother could never understand why Peter went to work in the stockyards when there were so many better jobs around, but Harvey Krumas’s dad offered Peter a job because he and Harvey were friends, and Peter made the most of it.”

If my uncle hadn’t become wealthy on a grand scale, he had done well-way better than anyone else remotely co

It seemed unbelievable to look at this twenty-something kid and realize she and I shared a grandmother. “I didn’t know Krumas’s son wanted to run for office. What are you doing for him with the primary still ten months away?”

Her phone rang again. This time, she answered with a quick, “I’m busy, I’m with my cousin, I’ll call you later!”

She turned back to me. “Sorry, my roomie wants to know how I am. Kelsey, my college roommate, I mean. In my new place here I’m on my own, which feels really weird after sharing a sorority house and a tent and everything with Kelsey for four years. She’s back in Raleigh, and she’s bored to death after going all over Africa and Australia.

“What were you saying? Oh, what am I doing for the campaign? I don’t know. They don’t even know! I showed up to work yesterday for the first time, and they asked me what I was good at. And I said, being energetic, which I am, totally. And I majored in communications and Spanish, so they thought maybe I’d do something in the pressroom. But, right now, it’s pretty much just wandering around, seeing who’s where, and ru

“What kind of platform is Krumas ru

“I don’t know.” Petra widened her eyes in mock embarrassment. “I think he’s green-at least, I hope he is-and I guess he’s against the war in Iraq… And he’s good for Illinois!”

“Sounds like a wi

“He is, he is, especially in his te

I’d seen plenty of photos on television and in the papers. Brian Krumas was as photogenic as John-John or Barack. Still a bachelor at forty-one, he generated plenty of copy in the gossip rags. Which way did he swing? and Who did he swing with? were pere

The dogs were starting to whine and paw at me: they needed exercise. I asked my cousin if she wanted to run with us and have di

Her phone rang again when I went into my bedroom to change. In the five minutes it took me to get into my shorts and ru

She ran downstairs with the dogs as I locked my apartment. When I got to the door, she was kissing Mr. Contreras good-bye, thanking him for tea, it was totally fab meeting him.

“Come over on Sunday,” Contreras suggested. “I’ll barbecue ribs out back. Or are you one of those vegetarians?”

Petra laughed again. “My dad’s in the meat business. He’d disown me and my sisters if any of us stopped eating meat.”

She flew down the walk. Hers was the shiny Nissan Pathfinder I’d squeezed in front of. She bumped my rear fender twice clearing the curb.

When I winced, my neighbor said, “It’s just paint, after all, cookie. And family’s family, and she’s a well-behaved kid. Pretty, too.”

“Drop-dead gorgeous, don’t you mean?”

“She’ll be brushing ’em off with a flyswatter, and I’ll be there to help.” He laughed so hard he started to wheeze.

The dogs and I left him coughing in the middle of the sidewalk. Something about all that young energy made me lighthearted, too.

6

I WOKE NEXT MORNING AT FIVE. I WAS OVER MY JET LAG, but, since getting back, I couldn’t seem to sleep normally. I made an espresso and went out on the little back porch with Peppy, who’d spent the night with me. The sky was bright with the midsummer sunrise. Ten days ago, I’d been watching the sun rise over the Umbrian hills with Morrell, yet both he and Italy felt so remote that they didn’t seem to have been part of my life at all.

The back door on the apartment next to mine opened, and my new neighbor emerged. The unit had stood empty for several months. Mr. Contreras told me a man who played in a band had bought it while I was away, and that the medical resident on the ground floor had worried about whether he would keep everyone up all night with loud music.

He was dressed in the quintessential artist’s costume: faded black T-shirt and jeans. He went to the railing to look at the little gardens. The Korean family on the second floor and Mr. Contreras both grew a few vegetables; the rest of us didn’t have the time or patience for yard work.