Chapter Text
The first thing Kim eats when she arrives in Chicago is a hot dog. The biggest hot dog she could get from the stand outside of the bus station, and she stands while she eats it, bits of relish sliding off the bun and landing on her sneakers below. After 11 hours on a bus crammed between a window and her mother’s ancient, tattered blue suitcase, she is ravenously hungry. When the hot dog is finished, she licks her fingers quickly and efficiently and takes a deep breath, looking up at the buildings around her. Nothing about her surroundings reminds her of Nebraska– Kim automatically loves it.
The tallest building in Red Cloud was a low-income rat trap of an apartment complex, with six shaky levels that looked like they’d blow over whenever the wind gushed particularly hard. Kim and her mother had lived in that building for a little over two years when she was in elementary school, until an incident between her mother and the landlord that she’d rather forget about. But whenever a tornado warning blew through, they’d huddle in the bathtub and feel the windows creak, and Kim would swear the walls were bending, that the floor would give out beneath them, and they’d crash down six stories and let the storm sweep them away. It never happened that way, but she’s never been able to shake the feeling that nothing in her life is strong enough to last.
Now in Chicago, she cranes her neck upwards, using her hand as a visor to shield her eyes from the sun, and she can’t even tell how many stories there are. She tries counting the rows of windows, but as the building climbs higher, the shape of the windows grows smaller until she loses count. She keeps staring as a gust of wind comes through, providing a reprieve from the sweltering August heat, and watches for any signs that the skyscraper is going to crumble to the ground. The skyscraper stares back, immutable, and so do the buildings to the left and the right. She turns around and peers at more high rises in the distance, standing tall and proud.
Maybe Chicago will be different. Scratch that, no maybe– it will be different. Kim wants more, and this new city is going to give it to her. She pulls the handle of the suitcase stationed between her legs and pulls a map from the side pocket of her backpack, opening it and staring intently, before walking confidently in the direction of the train station. She has a standing appointment with the landlord of an apartment in a neighborhood north of the bus station in which she was dropped off, and she can’t be late.
///
The landlord has finally left, taking with him $1,000 of Kim’s money for a security deposit. Before, when she first got off the bus from Lincoln to Chicago, all she wanted was to stand, to stretch her legs, shaking off almost half a day’s worth of immobility. Now, after walking to catch the train and lugging her heavy suitcase up six flights of stairs, all Kim wants to do is lay down and close her eyes. Too bad there’s no bed. It’s not like she could travel on a train with a mattress, and it’s not like she could afford one. Luckily, the apartment came furnished with a meager kitchen table and two chairs and a loveseat that looks like it’s seen better days. She’s slept in worse places, though, and even the foreign stain on the arm of the couch doesn’t take away from the allure of it being her couch, in her apartment, hundreds of miles away from Red Cloud. A place that isn’t quite her own, but a place that will stay hers as long as she pays rent, and she won’t be missing a payment if she can help it. With a deep sigh, Kim drapes her body face down on the couch, pillowing her arms under her head and shutting her eyes.
It’s not just physical exhaustion– now that Kim’s actually done it, the weight of what she’s done is really sinking in. She’s not in Nebraska anymore. She left, she escaped a despondent fate and a treacherous cycle, of working for nothing and going home to nothing, of codependency and unfulfilled needs and a sick feeling in her throat when she goes to bed at night. She got out, and all on her own too, with only a little help when she desperately needed it: the counselor at Central Community College who helped connect her to the University of Illinois, her manager at the grocery who gave her extra shifts so she could save up for college tuition and Chicago rent, the waitress at the 24 hour diner in town who would serve her warm dinners and refuse to accept payment. No one helped her pry herself away from her mother, though– that one was all Kim.
She didn’t tell her mother that she was leaving until the night before, which sounds harsh except to girls with alcoholic, neglectful, lonely mothers. To those girls, it makes perfect sense. Kim’s mother depended on Kim for most things: reminders to pay rent, cleaning the house to keep rodents away, picking her up from the bar so she doesn’t drive herself home and rolling her onto her side when she sleeps in case she throws up. The part of Kim that is still five years old, the age when she would let her mother braid her hair into two even plaits and watch movies tucked into her side, has a deep well of love for her stuck inside her chest that even future years of mistreatment could never dislodge. That deep well of love for your mother that only exists inside of daughters exists inside of Kim, of course, and that part of Kim knows what will become of her mother if she escapes Red Cloud. If she takes away the only constant, supportive presence that woman has, since Kim’s father left when she was seven years old and took the last bit of her mother’s sanity with him. Her mother needs her, won’t make it very long without her.
But the rational part of Kim, the part that heard “It’ll never happen again” over and over, the part that’s smart, that allowed her to graduate top of her class in high school and allowed her to excel in community college, the part that wanted more … That part of Kim knew that no matter what happened to her mother, she needed to put herself first. And if that meant her mother screaming and swearing and crying, throwing empty wine bottles and begging Kim to stay, telling her that if she leaves, she can never, ever come home, then so be it.
Kim stayed at the small motel in Red Cloud that night and sold her car at the bus station in Lincoln the next morning before boarding the Greyhound that would take her to her new life, to her more . Now, she’s in Chicago, because even though the part of her that wanted to go go go is louder, her inner child still has a voice, and Chicago is still close enough to Nebraska, just in case. Not that she’ll ever go back. But just in case.
///
It takes a couple of months, but Kim begins to find her groove in Chicago. She learns the perfect amount of detergent to use in the washing machines at the laundromat down the street from her apartment. She can ride the L without holding on, letting the motion of the train move her body while keeping her feet stuck firm to the floor. She finds a cozy corner of the U of I library that becomes her favorite spot to study every afternoon and weekend. She knows that the Chinese restaurant closest to her apartment has the best crab rangoon, but the one closer to campus, the one with red lights in the windows, not the one with the neon sign, has the best pork fried rice. She masters her note taking style and aces every exam in her political science and law classes. She barters with a man at a yard sale for a decently priced TV and VHS player. She still doesn’t have a bed, but the couch has a new cover and very soft throw pillows.
She gets a job at the corner store a few blocks from her apartment, and her manager doesn’t mind that she reads textbooks behind the cash register. When she’s more settled in the city and has university connections, she’ll apply for a low level position at a law firm, like in the mailroom. Any way to get her foot in the door, any way to get even a little bit closer to what she really wants, which is to be a lawyer. For now, class will have to be enough legal exposure.
To other people, Kim’s new Chicago life might feel a little lonely, but to her, there’s something freeing about it. No mother to depend on her. Finally, she can worry about herself and only herself. She can buy whatever food she wants at the grocery, not having to set aside a certain amount of the budget for a trip to her mother’s preferred liquor store. She can keep her apartment clean and tidy, with her VHS collection alphabetized on her bookshelf and rat traps blissfully empty. She can watch whatever she wants on TV, volume be damned. All of the little things that Kim did that bothered her mother– she’s free to do as she pleases now. So she chews loudly and triple checks that she’s unplugged her flat iron and leaves the bathroom light on while she sleeps, because there’s no one to answer to anymore.
She’s independent, and she’s building something for herself that is going to last. No distractions. Nothing will stand in her way. She tells herself this when her study group partners invite her out for drinks, when the sweet looking guy in her seminar class asks her to go for dinner: no distractions. No deviations from the end goal: More. Once she’s gotten there, then she’ll have time for best friends and dates and casual fun. She’s been through too much to get herself to Chicago. She won’t be throwing it away for anything, or anyone.
///
Kim is an expert in compartmentalization: everything dated “Pre-Chicago” is packed away into a nice little box in the recesses of her mind. This includes her father leaving, a childhood spent in poverty, mean girls and disgusting ex-boyfriends, and every single feeling or memory related to her mother. Kim does not touch this box. This box means nothing. She is in Chicago now, starting her new life. Nothing from Red Cloud matters anymore. Not that it even mattered in the first place.
Yet the week of Thanksgiving comes, and as Kim listens to her peers talk about their holiday plans and spies the boxes of stuffing and bottles of Gravy Master in the aisles of the corner store, she can’t help but think about Thanksgivings of the past, even though those memories are supposed to be locked away. Big family meals at her grandmother’s, at least until she died. Hand turkeys made in elementary school art class that just got thrown away instead of hung on the fridge. Waiting by the phone in case her father decided to call with a holiday greeting. Watching her mother start drinking before the end of the Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Grounding herself in her current life is key for moments like this, where Kim catches her thoughts slipping away into the past when she needs to be focused on the present moment, or better yet, the future. So on the day before Thanksgiving, instead of turning left when she leaves the corner store after her shift, she turns right and heads towards the train stop. Kim had asked her American Government professor if he could recommend any supplementary reading she could do over break in addition to the required readings due next week, and he had given her a list of titles and recommended a little used bookstore twenty minutes west of downtown. It never hurts to be extra prepared. And Kim likes to read too, enjoys the way that each academic text she devours makes her love the law a little more every time.
When Kim leaves the bookstore later that afternoon, the sun is already beginning to set, casting a golden hue over the stone buildings and half-melted snow that covers the ground. There’s black ice too, sneaky patches that could cause an unsuspecting patron to slip easily. Kim watches the sidewalk as she walks and steps carefully around any suspicious shiny patches. She doesn’t have health insurance; the last thing she needs is to pay hospital bills for a broken arm.
Kim stops at a crosswalk, waiting for the walk sign to turn on, and she stares at the department store across the street, watching people hustle in and out of the large glass doors, juggling shopping bags and children’s hands. One man yells loudly into a cellphone by the entrance, waving his hands back and forth; a mother bundles her baby tighter in his blanket before placing him back in his stroller. Another man turns the corner by the other end of the store and walks briskly down the sidewalk, before promptly slipping on a patch of black ice and falling straight onto his back with a loud yelp of surprise.
Kim’s eyebrows dart up– this is why she watches where she’s going. From across the street, she hears the groans of the fallen man, but she can no longer see him because of the crowd of bystanders that has now surrounded him in a circle.
The crosswalk light changes. Kim crosses the street and heads straight for the crowd of people. Like most, she is not immune to spectacle, and she’s wondering if he’s really hurt. From the view she gets when she peeks her head over a man’s shoulder, it looks like he really is. The man hasn’t moved from off the ground yet, and when an elderly woman asks him if he can stand up, he insists he can, but then shifts on the ground uncomfortably and lets out another agonizing groan.
“Oh, oh no, I think it’s my back!”
The bystanders groan in sympathy, and two older men step forward and reach out their hands to help the younger man up to his feet. Once he’s on his feet, Kim gets a better look at him.
He’s got on a pair of brick red Chuck Taylors and worn jeans with frayed hems, with a hooded sweatshirt and a thick corduroy jacket on top. As he stumbles and stands hunched over, one large hand comes to rest on his lower back while another brushes his brown bangs frantically away from his forehead.
One woman in the crowd asks him if he needs the hospital, and his head shakes instantly: “No, no, I don’t have health insurance.” He tries to take a step and moans in pain again, “Oh I am so screwed, I am so screwed.”
Almost instantly, half of the crowd members open their handbags or reach into their pockets and grab their wallets, pulling out bills. They reassure him, Please, let me help you, take this money and go to the doctor, call a cab and go to the ER, you poor thing. They rub his shoulder with a gentle hand and squeeze his elbow compassionately.
Watching this scene unfold, part of Kim feels jealous (why isn’t she stumbling her way into hundreds of dollars cash?) while another part of her feels empathy for this guy, clearly near her own personal levels of wealth, unable to afford to even take himself to the doctor. At least, that’s until she looks at him closer, appraising him with a raised eyebrow.
To an ignorant passerby or to the naively generous, the man looks deeply grateful, squeezing the hands of old ladies, repeatedly thanking everyone who slips cash into his hand, remarking that he’s never met such kind people before in his life. But Kim notices how the hand that was once supporting his bruised and battered back is now gripping an ever-increasing wad of cash instead.
There’s that look in his blue eyes, too, and the set of his strong jaw, the way he keeps his head tucked low, so that his slight smile just looks like one of gratitude, instead of the smile of someone who just got away with it. Hook, line, and sinker.
Kim turns away abruptly and walks in the direction of the train station that will take her home, rolling her eyes and huffing incredulously. Jesus. The nerve of that guy, she thinks, to play on those people’s sympathies like that. And to do it so seamlessly, so flawlessly, that even Kim herself fell for it.
She should have known better– it takes one to know one.
///
Much to Kim’s dismay, North Linden Corner Store is closed on Thanksgiving, so she can’t even offer to work a double and at least make some money off of the holiday. She decides instead to waste the day away, act like it’s any other Thursday off (not that she ever really gives herself days off). She sleeps until 11, until her body simply cannot sleep anymore, and then after lunch she falls asleep again. She watches her favorite films from her meager VHS collection; reads one of her new books, a collection of essays about the Fourth Amendment; eats leftover Chinese food out of the carton for dinner. She doesn’t even change out of her pajamas or brush her hair. By 9 pm, though, she’s bored shitless. Even watching To Kill a Mockingbird twice isn’t enough to satisfy her, to quell the restless energy simmering low in her bones. There’s a reason why she never stops moving, never stops thinking. Laziness doesn’t fit her.
Kim tries a different approach and opens her Crim Law textbook up to the next required chapter, but after three pages of carefully handwritten notes, she realizes that if she keeps going like this, she’ll finish all of her assignments tonight, and then she’ll really be bored for the next 3 days of break. It’s the prospect of having no other options that leads Kim to her dresser, pulling out a pair of jeans and a thick sweater, warm enough to keep the Chicago chill out. After changing her clothes and brushing her hair back into a tight ponytail, Kim slips on her shoes and coat and heads for the door. Maybe a walk will do her good.
It’s cold at night in Chicago, colder than Nebraska even, and the wind bites in a way that hurts her face, stinging her cheeks with razor-sharp cuts. After walking about a mile with just the light of street lamps and passing cars illuminating her path, Kim realizes that maybe it’s not the best idea to be walking around alone at night in a city that she truly doesn’t know much about. She stops at an intersection and looks around at her surroundings, surveying the area and planning her next move, when the neon light of a bar sign beams out at her.
A bar open on Thanksgiving night? It’s sure to be an interesting crowd, but she truly has nothing better to do, and she’s hungry anyways. A warm cheeseburger, with grease dripping down her wrist when she holds it and french fries so hot they burn her tongue when she bites into them… suddenly nothing has sounded better.
Kim walks into Floyd’s Pub and makes a beeline for the bar, slipping her coat on top of an empty chair and then sitting atop of it. She reads the names of the beers they have on tap, mouthing the list to herself: Dovetail, Tome, Marz, Forbidden Root. Even the names sound like something special. Then she remembers that she only has 20 dollars in her wallet, and she shifts her eyes to the list of bottled beers instead.
She senses him before she sees him. The bell rings out loud and clear, signaling that the door has been flung open. There’s the sound of a heavy gait creaking the old, beer-stained wooden floors, growing louder as he approaches. As the bartender makes his way down to her end, Kim hears the scratch of the feet of a nearby bar chair, a deep intake of breath, the shifting of someone shedding a winter coat. Without glancing to her right, she knows that this guy is definitely looking at her, and now she’s really wishing she had brought one of her new books to read, to use as some sort of signal: Do not talk to me, do not bother me . She rubs her fingers against the grains in the wooden bar, pointedly staring down and avoiding any accidental eye contact.
“Hey, happy Thanksgiving!” The bartender is now in front of her, with a slight smile and a name tag reading Steven . Kim darts her eyes up and gives a half-hearted smile back.
“Hey. Could I get a Shiner Bock and a cheeseburger, medium? With everything on it?”
“It’s on me.”
The voice comes from her right, and Kim is arming herself with a forced smile and polite rejection until she realizes that she recognizes this voice. She heard this same voice just yesterday, except instead of offering to buy her food, it was moaning in pain and accepting cash from strangers on the sidewalk.
Before she can think too hard about it, she glances briefly at the souce of the voice before looking back at the bartender and saying, “Well, if it’s on him, I’ll add bacon to the cheeseburger and instead of the Shiner, I’ll do one of the craft beers on tap– dealer’s choice.” The bartender nods, and with a brief, knowing look at the man a few seats down, takes his leave.
Kim shifts her body fully to the right and props her head on her left hand, as the man gets up and moves to the seat directly next to her. She can get a closer look at him now than she could yesterday, noticing the reddish tint of his chestnut hair, the deep green of his flannel shirt, and the way he rolls his shoulders back confidently before extending a hand towards her. He’s got a shit-eating grin on his face similar in style to the one he wore yesterday, like he’s won, like he’s managed to bag a cute girl in a bar in just three words. Kim smiles back genuinely and takes his hand to shake, thinking to herself, Oh, he doesn’t even know what’s coming.
“The name’s Jimmy,” he introduces himself proudly, “Haven’t seen you around here before. Pretty sure I’d have remembered ya if I did.” His Chicago accent peeks out on certain syllables, adding a sort of local, humble charm that must work on certain girls, especially out-of-towners. Kim tells herself that it’s not working on her, and she bites her lip before responding, acting demure even though she’s had her first words to him lined up in her brain since she recognized his voice.
“I’m Kim, and I actually think I’ve seen you around before.”
His eyebrows raise in surprise, mouth dropping open slightly, and an innocent, open expression of delight flashes across his face.
“I think you’re the guy I saw who fell on his ass on a patch of ice outside of Denison’s Department Store yesterday afternoon.”
Kim delivers the line with a small, pleased smile, and she has to shift the hand that’s holding her head up so it can cover her mouth, because his expression of delight has turned into one of surprise and slight mortification, and she finds it so funny that if she doesn’t shield her mouth from view, she’ll laugh loudly, and she doesn’t want to draw that much attention to herself.
Jimmy huffs quietly, shaking his head and looking downward at the bar, staring at the grains in the wood. Kim sees a familiar look in his eyes, a look that signals I’m thinking , that gears are turning in his head. She gets the same way when she’s caught off guard and scrambling to find something to say.
When he looks up at her again, his expression has morphed into something different than before. Gone is his cheeky smile and genuine surprise, and in its place is a cocky grin that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Did you really?” He asks, his tone of voice dripping with a disdainful, false charm. She liked the charm of his deep accent better. “Accidents happen, honey. And some person you are, didn’t even stop to help me!”
He’s putting on a mask, and Kim takes notice of it immediately, so instead of responding to him right away, she sinks back into her chair, appraising him with her best impassive look. Normally, she wouldn’t stand for anyone speaking to her in such a rude way; she would have already cut them with curt words and a stiff look, until they slunk away and out of her sight. You don’t grow up like Kim did and not develop a strong backbone. But something about Jimmy is different, something about him feels familiar, like she’s known him for years instead of minutes.
Like she sees a piece of herself in him. She knows what it’s like to put on a mask like a second skin. She spent her whole childhood acting like nothing was wrong, like it was ordinary to have to pick her mother up at bars when it got too late and she had had a few too many. She had to wear a mask of false confidence to school every day, like she wasn’t ashamed of her crummy hand-me-down jeans and thrift store sweater. A lifted chin, an unwavering gaze, an even tone of voice. Real feelings were kept for the polka dot journal she kept stashed at the bottom of her sock drawer.
Even after leaving Red Cloud, she still has to be someone else in front of different people. She knows how to act like the perfect, overachieving student, pretending like it doesn’t rub her the wrong way when her classmates boast about their parents fronting their entire tuition, masking her real feelings under a mask of cool indifference. She’s the moderately upbeat cashier at the corner store, playing at small talk about the weather and last Sunday’s game. When she thinks about it, the only people who see Kim at her most real are herself and the various delivery guys who have brought pizza and mozzarella sticks to her apartment. No one sees the real her, and if she thinks about it too hard, keeping a mask on for the rest of the world is actually exhausting. It’s like having a breath stuck in the top of your chest with no way out.
Looking at Jimmy, she feels like they’re similar, her and him. And she kind of thinks that no one sees the real Jimmy, either.
Jimmy must see something in Kim’s face as she looks at him, because the fake-cockiness slowly drains out of him and he just looks… confused? Enamored? Intrigued?
“What?” he asks, almost exasperated, lifting his left hand up and down quickly like he’s given up. “You’ve got me. You saw me pulling my patented slip and fall yesterday. Listen, it’s still the early season. The ice isn’t well formed yet. Consider it a trial run, just testing out technique. It’s been a while since it’s been icy enough, maybe I’m out of practice. Okay, maybe not out of practice– they call me Slippin’ Jimmy for a reason. But, clearly I did something wrong that you were able to figure out that I was playing everyone. Or maybe, you didn’t figure it out and just thought I ate shit out there like a dumbass, and now I really just showed my ass to you.”
Jesus, he’s got a mouth on him. Kim tilts her head slightly to the left, feeling a little bit of affection for this guy who clearly, for some reason, cares what Kim thinks of him. Because he could have gotten up and left as soon as she called him out, or as soon as she didn’t respond to his cocky comeback. He could have cursed her out, made it clear that he wasn’t paying for her food ( Is he still going to pay for my beer? Kim thinks briefly), made a big scene. Instead, he’s still sitting here, kind of talking out of his ass. And–
“Slippin’ Jimmy? Really?”
Jimmy laughs softly. “That’s what you got from everything I just said?”
“Yeah, I mean. It makes sense. You kind of hit that ice like a pro, very dramatic. No wonder it caught everyone’s attention. Painted a perfect picture, with the quick fall and convincing cries of pain.”
“You talk like someone with slip and fall experience.”
Kim’s response gets cut off by the arrival of her (free) craft beer, warm golden liquid sloshing over the top of the glass, and the accompanying (free) cheeseburger. Stuffed between the bun are lettuce, tomato, and thick, crunchy slices of bacon on top of two patties smothered with cheese. Next to the burger on the glass plate are thin, shoestring french fries and a little plastic container filled with ketchup. Nothing has ever looked more delicious. Kim dives in immediately, taking a large bite of her burger and washing it down with a long gulp of the beer. The bacon is crisp when she chews it, and the beer has a rich, almost grainy quality to it. Delicious. So much better than cold leftovers from the back of her fridge.
She’s honestly forgotten that Jimmy is there until half the burger is gone and she’s licking her fingers clean. She glances to her right and sees him looking at her again, with that same indiscernable look he had on before.
Or maybe it’s not indiscernable, and she’s just ignoring what she thinks she sees in his eyes.
“Good burger?” Jimmy asks casually. “It better be, I splurged for the bacon add-on.”
“And thank God you did,” Kim volleys back. “It adds a desirable bit of texture. And the craft beer? Amazing.”
“I might have to get one for myself.”
Jimmy looks at her again, and Kim can see clearly that she’s being asked a question, not with words, but with raised eyebrows and the nervous rubbing of his bottom lip with his forefingers. Can I have a drink with you? Can we keep talking? Can I keep taking up your space and taking up your time?
Suddenly, the voice in Kim’s head that reiterates NO DISTRACTIONS is dead silent. She flashes Jimmy a small, but genuine, closed mouth smile and waves the bartender over.
“Hey, Steven– he’ll have one of what I’m having. And keep ‘em coming.”
Jimmy smiles big and childish, showing off his strong jaw and slightly crooked teeth. Kim can’t look away.
“It’s on me.”