Days Of Smokes And Scotch And Cokes

His name was Julian.

I dreamed about him, for the first time ever, this morning, in the darkened chill of an island dawn. Julian was a man from another time, or, almost, another life: the long, languid days of a Chicago summer, before my last year at prep school in New Hampshire.

Funny how a single man, a single gesture, and a single expression can make such lasting impressions.

It was my first of two summers working in downtown Chicago, at my very first job, as a sales associate at Water Tower Place’s Godiva Chocolatier. I loved it. I was able to leave the tame hamlet of Winnetka for most of the day, work and play downtown and flee the by-then-epic fighting of my parents, and earn what was a paltry amount per week but at the time seemed fantastically expansive because it paid for my Volkswagen’s gas, Marlboro Reds (King Size), lunches and dinners, and coffees and (um…illegal) cocktails. Also, my boss / manager was awesome, as she was a rock star. (No, seriously, she really kind of was, if only on the indie Chicago club scene.)

I made fast friends with the two most obvious candidates to be my co-worker friends: Katerina, a Russian artist with the palest skin and the blackest hair, a few years older than me and still living with her mother in Lincoln Park while she worked her way through a degree at The School Of The Art Institute; and Liese, a blonde little pixie of a girl, still in prep school herself at The Latin School and working during the summer for largely the same reasons as was I. We were all artists and wanna-be academics, with broad vocabularies, searing wits, caustic observations, the ability to hide all of that in order to exceed our daily sales goals, and scorching addictions to nicotine.

Katerina warmed to me immediately, but always treated Liese with what to me was a shocking degree of cool aloofness. However, as I quickly learned that both friends represented different circles of the Chicago art world (the former, the chic and often-exhibiting traditional artists; and the former, the chic and avant-garde multi-media artists), I treated both equally and learned to divide my time as such between them. Lunch breaks spent with half California Pizza Chicken Caesar salads (no chicken) and bread, cigarette breaks of bitter espresso and complementary dark chocolate truffles and Marlboro Reds, and after-closing rituals of chain smoking and scotch and Cokes at what would become our established hang-out, The Third Coast Cafe, were all divided equally between the two fantastic and fascinating young women.

One stiflingly sweltering afternoon, Katerina and I returned to the boutique, laughing, from a cigarette break in the back service hallway (ah, how the days of smoking indoors make me heave great sighs of nostalgia), and were greeted by Liese’s sing-song voice across the cafe, “Oh, AAAA-THER-TONN! We have a client here who would prefer it if you made his cappuccino. He claims our froth isn’t stiff enough for him.” Liese chirped a laugh as a handsome but obviously shy and flustered young man at the cafe counter shuffled from one foot to another. “Yours really is the best, you know,” he said to me, looking awkwardly from his feet to my reddening face.

Katerina rolled her eyes at Liese’s antics and whispered in my ear, “He was in here twice today before your shift started, and each time he asked for you. He’s cute. Go flirt with him!” she finished, hissing and tugging sharply on my tuxedo shirt’s French cuff.

Now, since by this time in my relationship development my only experience with “flirtation” was losing my virginity rather early, frequent anonymous sex with fellow prep school students, and a high school romance that was dysfunctional at best and involved quite a lot of cocaine use and yelling, I was not quite as familiar with the concept of “flirting” as Katerina obviously expected. Therefore, my “flirtation” consisted of asking the man’s name (Julian), inquiring where he worked (coincidentally enough, California Pizza Kitchen, where we ordered lunch from every day), shuffling my feet behind the cafe counter as awkwardly as he was shuffling his own in front of it, and, for the final humiliation, spilling my famous froth that he coveted so much all over the sides of the cappuccino cup, so that I had to make him yet another one. (I gave him three mocha truffles to make up for my idiocy.)

As poor, by now utterly embarrassed Julian From CPK exited the boutique with his cappuccino and guilt truffles, Liese erupted in impossibly high laughter, while Katerina pursed her lips, slapped Liese on a forearm, and grabbed two dark chocolate raspberry bars and my arm for another cigarette break.

As the summer days wore on, growing longer and hotter, Julian From CPK began spending more time on the third floor than he spent on the seventh. (Amazing, after all of this time, I still remember the locations of our two establishments.) He would be there when my shift began, making small talk until he had to start his own; he would stop in for cigarette breaks once he learned my break schedule; and he would be there every evening to say “good night” as Katerina and I prepared to drop off the daily deposit before heading down the street to The Third Coast. It was flattering…cute…comfortable…nice.

For some unexplained reason not long after this initial, what, “courtship?” the rock star boss / manager decided to sell these tacky painted long-stemmed ceramic roses that an “artist” friend “made” in the boutique’s cafe. This was much to the chagrin and embarrassment of Katerina and myself, who each rolled our eyes and suppressed sarcastic giggles as the “artist” friend explained the meanings of the colors to the rock star boss / manager, i.e., “Red means romance, yellow means friendship,” etc. Katerina nearly choked on a laugh as she inquired as seriously as possible, “Well, um, what’s the shiny silver one mean, then? Because I’ve never seen that color occur in roses unless, well, they’re painted with silver metallic spray paint, you know?” I forget the “artist” friend’s answer now, but I can guarantee that it resulted in Katerina and I hugging each other in laughter in the back service hallway over cigarettes.

The next day was tremendously busy on the cafe floor. Liese was attempting to handle cafe orders as Katerina dealt with a boutique full of Japanese tourists buying countless two-pound boxes of chocolates each and I handled the various tourists from unmentionable parts of the immediate Midwest like Schaumburg and northwest Indiana in between fulfilling our largest corporate real estate client’s quarterly (and exorbitant) corporate gift order. I noticed Julian enter the boutique in my peripheral vision, wondering why he was shyly shuffling his feet again and surveying new products, including the roses, that he had already seen the previous day.

I had the real estate client’s purchasing agent on hold as I helped the last of the entirety of the Loyola Academy football team purchase one truffle each for their overly-hairsprayed girlfriends, when I saw Julian From CPK walk nervously up to the counter right next to the football team, smile crookedly, hand a single ceramic red rose to me, and say, “For you, Atherton.”

I heard several sounds in a concurrent cacophony: seemingly all of the blood in my body rushing to my head; highly audible snickers and jeers from the Loyola Academy football team and their girlfriends; loud arguing in Japanese from the Japanese tourists; Katerina, who had witnessed the exchange, gasp in shock behind me and drop a two-pound box of chocolates she had been wrapping onto the floor; and my own voice, chuckling sarcastically and replying, completely ignoring the sweetness of his gesture, “Oh, right, Julian. Did you seriously want to purchase this or not?”

To say that his facial expression changed from one of joy and adoration to one of death and despair in under two seconds as he nodded affirmatively in embarrassment would be an understatement. To assert that I died a little inside when I realized, belatedly, that he actually did intend that rose for me, would not be an exaggeration. And to report that Katerina spent most of that evening with me at The Third Coast after we had searched for Julian later at CPK and not found him, plying me with cigarettes and scotch and Cokes as I cried into ashtrays and Collins glasses would be…just about right.

I never saw Julian again. When I inquired as to his whereabouts when picking up our lunches at CPK the next afternoon, I was informed he had quit early the previous evening. Eventually, summer wore on, and parties and exhibit openings were attended, and other people were met, and other people returned to colleges and prep schools, and the pain and embarrassment of the entire affair was forgotten.

Only, not really. My dream of early this morning proves that I’ve always at least subconsciously wondered, “Whatever happened to that nice, shy, awkward Julian who made me feel so adored via only a few simple words, and gestures?”

Of course, what the dream also did, rather obviously, was pull me back into those long, languid, summer Chicago days of years ago. Days when happiness was only a flirtation, a CPK half Caesar salad (no chicken) for lunch, or a dark chocolate truffle and bitter espresso on a break. Days when fulfillment only meant the first embarrassing trials of romance that only whispered of the larger romantic trials to come…and forgetting them all with good friends over too many cigarettes and too many scotch and Cokes. Days, experiences, and individuals that were flattering…cute…comfortable…nice.

Sometimes I miss those days of smokes and scotch and Cokes. And on some days, like today, like yesterday, like the day before, I would give anything to return to them, again.

Filed under: Art, Food, Relationships, Writing , a-list, chicago, dating, defining moments, dick lit, emotional landscapes, home, humor, linkage, memories, needful reminders, office love, red carpet situations, repartee, retail therapy, urban appreciation