Aside from a few customers at the counter, I spot two cops in one booth, three nurses just off-shift in another, and an old man in a black suit staring with a kind of bored intensity into his cup of coffee.
I sit at the counter just to be near the heat radiating off the open grill.
An ancient waitress comes over.
I know I must look homeless and strung-out, but she doesn’t let on, doesn’t judge, just takes my order with a worn-out midwestern courtesy.
It feels good to be indoors.
The windows are fogging up.
The cold is leaving my bones.
This all-night diner is only eight blocks from my house, but I’ve never eaten here.
When the coffee arrives, I wrap my dirty fingers around the ceramic mug and soak in the warmth.
I had to do the math in advance.
All I can afford is this cup of coffee, two eggs, and some toast.
I try to eat slowly, to make it last, but I’m famished.
The waitress takes pity on me and brings more toast at no extra charge.
She’s kind.
It makes me feel even lousier about what’s going to happen.
I check the time on my drug-dealer flip phone, the one I bought to call Daniela in another Chicago. It won’t make calls in this world—I guess minutes aren’t transferable across the multiverse.
8:15 a.m.
Jason2 probably left for work twenty minutes ago in order to catch the train to his 9:30 lecture.
Or maybe he hasn’t left at all. Maybe he’s sick, or staying home today for some reason I’ve not anticipated. That would be a disaster, but it’s too risky for me to go anywhere near my house to confirm that he’s not there.
I pull the $8.21 out of my pocket and set it on the counter.
It just barely covers my breakfast plus a cheap-ass tip.
I take one last sip of coffee.
Then I reach into the patch pocket of my flannel button-down and pull out the cigar and the lighter.
I glance around.
The diner is now packed.
The two cops who were here when I first arrived are gone, but there’s another one sitting in the corner booth at the far end.
My hands shake imperceptibly as I tear open the packaging.
True to its name, the end of the cigar tastes faintly sweet.
It takes me three tries to strike a flame.
I fire the tobacco at the end of the cigar, draw in a mouthful of smoke, and blow a stream toward the back of the short-order cook who’s flipping hotcakes on the griddle.
For ten seconds, no one notices.
Then the older woman sitting next to me in a cat-hair-covered jacket turns and says, “You can’t do that in here.”
And I respond with something I would never in a million years even dream of saying: “But there’s nothing like a cigar after a meal.”
She looks at me through her plate-glass lenses like I’ve lost my mind.
The waitress walks over holding a carafe of steaming coffee and looking massively disappointed.
Shaking her head, she says with the voice of a scolding mother, “You know you can’t smoke that in here.”
“But it’s delicious.”
“Do I need to call the manager over?”
I take another puff.
Exhale.
The short-order cook—a wide, muscled guy with ink-covered arms—turns around and glares at me.
I say to the waitress, “That’s a great idea. You should go get the manager right now, because I am not putting this out.”
As the waitress leaves, the old woman sitting beside me, whose meal I’ve ruined, mutters, “What a rude young man.”
And she throws down her fork, climbs off the stool, and heads for the door.
Some of the other customers in my vicinity have begun to take notice.
But I keep smoking, until a rail of a man emerges from the back of the restaurant with the waitress in tow. He wears black jeans and a white oxford with sweat stains down the sides and a solid-color tie whose knot is unraveling.
By the general dishevelment of his appearance, I’m guessing he’s worked all night.
Stopping behind me, he says, “I’m Nick, the manager on duty. You can’t smoke that inside. You’re disturbing the customers.”
I turn slightly in my stool and meet his eyes. He looks tired and annoyed, and I feel like such a jerk putting him through this, but I can’t stop now.
I glance around, all eyes on me now, a hotcake burning on the griddle.
I ask, “Are you all disturbed by my fine cigar?”
Yesses abound.
Someone calls me an asshole.
Movement at the far end of the diner catches my eye.
Finally.
The police officer slides out of the corner booth, and as he heads my way down the length of the aisle, I hear his radio crackle.
He’s young.
Late twenties if I had to guess.
Short and stocky.
A Marine-like hardness in his eyes and an intelligence too.
The manager takes a step back, relieved.
Now the officer stands beside me, says, “We have a clean indoor air ordinance in the city, which you’re violating right now.”
I take another puff from the cigar.
The cop says, “Look, I’ve been up most of the night. A lot of these other customers have as well. Why do you want to ruin everyone’s breakfast?”
“Why do you want to ruin my cigar?”
A flicker of anger passes over the cop’s face.
His pupils dilate.
“Put that cigar out right now. Last warning.”
“Or what?”
He sighs.
“That was not the response I was hoping for. Get up.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to jail. If that cigar isn’t out in five seconds, I’m going to assume you’re resisting arrest, which means I get to be a lot less gentle.”
I drop my cigar in my coffee cup, and as I step down off the stool, the officer deftly whips the handcuffs off his belt and locks the bracelets around my wrists.
“Carrying any weapons or needles? Anything that could hurt me or that I should know about?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you on any drugs or medication right now?”
“No, sir.”
He pats me down, then takes me by the arm.
As we walk toward the entrance, the other customers applaud.
His cruiser is parked right out front.
He opens the rear door and tells me to watch my head.
It’s almost impossible to gracefully duck into the back of a police car with your hands cuffed behind you. The officer climbs in behind the wheel.
Buckling his seat belt, he cranks the engine and pulls out into the snowy street.
The backseat seems to have been constructed especially for discomfort. There’s no legroom whatsoever, my knees are crushed into the cage, and the seats themselves are made of a hard plastic composite that feels like I’m sitting on concrete.
As I stare through the bars that protect the window, I watch the familiar buildings of my neighborhood scroll past, wondering if this has any hope in hell of working.
—
We pull into the parking garage of the 14th District Police Station.
Officer Hammond hauls me out of the backseat and escorts me through a pair of steel doors into a booking room.
There’s a row of desks, with chairs for prisoners on one side and a Plexiglas partition that separates them from a workstation on the other.