Creatures of a Day

Abstract

3 BARRY PEARCE CREATURES OF A DAY T he noise cuts through the night, steady as a heartbeat, shrill as an accusation. Paul Previdenza feels a stab of pain in his stomach and pictures a bird of prey diving to pierce his gut, rooting around for just the right organ. The image is linked in some way to his dream, which he can’t remember, though it ended seconds ago. He reaches over Iona Morrow to find the thing on the nightstand, but already she has it in hand. A moment later, she turns it off, the abrupt silence a second, lesser jolt. He can sleep through fifteen minutes of his alarm, but the beeper instantly shocks him into consciousness. Every time he hears its penetrating tone will be the first. She is calm, efficient, alert, no sign of the panic building in him. She pulls on clothes in the dark—somehow able to find everything she needs—and gently closes the bedroom door behind her, giving him the option of remaining asleep. “This is Iona Morrow. I was paged.” Her voice fades to a murmur as she carries the phone into the kitchen to jot notes. The bedroom is dark, its hardwood floor cold and creaky as new ice. Searching it on hands and knees for clothes cast off randomly, Paul backs into a corner of the nightstand. The curse he tries to suppress escapes muffled and stretched, a prolonged, almost girlish whimper. He attempts to stand, but his body locks, pain shooting from his tailbone to the tips of his fingers and toes. Three floors below, the waves of Lake Michigan growl against the rocks that keep the ancient apartment building from crumbling into the water, and he feels as if they are battering him. He would like nothing better than to drag a blanket into the warmer living room and settle on the couch, but after a long pause he resumes groping in the dark, half naked and shivering, until he locates something he dimly recognizes as his. They had been astonished to discover this place, a lakefront condo renting at a price they could almost afford. Its owner would be traveling and, given the neighborhood, was happy to colorado review 4 lower the rent for a couple of responsible Northwestern grads— if they signed a two-year lease. Paul and Iona jumped at the tradeoff. Rogers Park came roughly at the price he wanted to pay, and she was intrigued by the neighborhood’s secret side, the anonymous streets under the El, the tattoos and piercings, faces so foreign you couldn’t guess their origins. An edgy undercurrent absent from the safer places where they had lived separately during the four years since college. The vintage condo oozed history. They fell in love with concealed hutches, rumors of light leaking through stained-glass transoms, a claw-foot tub Iona joked was big enough for three. On the edge of the city, their first place as a couple would be close to campus and other Evanston haunts, memories that were distinct (they had not known each other in school) but linked in palpable ways. Best of all, the building had a tiny beach of its own and lake views that stretched to eternity. The building also has old casement windows, no match for storms that roar off the water without warning, pounding Paul and Iona’s east-facing bedroom as if all heaven’s fury has been directed at them. On the worst nights, they feel like they are camping on a cliff top. A layer of dampness covers their frozen bedroom furniture in the morning, as if the lake has worked its way through the brick while they slept. Only months after moving in did they realize that the vintage building’s biggest attraction —a lakefront location—makes it practically unlivable. They crank the heat, but the furnace, like the lighting and electrical outlets and water pressure, is wholly inadequate. The neighborhood is no less disappointing. The safest bar, a dive near Loyola, is an unlikely confluence of homeless men wallowing in past mistakes and thirsty undergrads forging new ones. Paul and Iona step over used...