Awake Page 8

  Needing something to occupy them for the long drive to Chicago, he dug around in his bags, fished out The Stand mini-series on DVD, and put it on for him and Ivy to watch, Stella having moved up to the passenger’s seat after their stop at the gas station. The Stand was probably his favorite adaptation of a Stephen King work, and was more than long enough for the drive.

  “I’m so excited. We’re going to spend some time in Chicago, right? I want to check out a lot of stuff,” Stella said as they watched the movie, spinning her seat around so that she was facing the living room.

  “We sure are. I’m nearly as excited to see it as I am for New York,” Lee said.

  “Cool,” Stella said.

  “We definitely have to see the Sears tower. I’ve always wanted to go to the top floor,” Ivy said.”

  “Are you serious?” Lee said. “I was obsessed with it back when I was a little kid and it was still the tallest building in the world. I thought that it went all the way up to the clouds.”

  “Ha, I did too. I grew up in a small town before we moved to Portland and when people said skyscraper I thought they meant that it actually touched the sky, like the sky was a solid blue ceiling or something,” Ivy said, giggling.

  After five hours of driving, Ben stopped the RV in Madison, Wisconsin so they could take a break. No one felt much like cooking anything for lunch, so they pulled into a takeaway burger joint.

  “Holy shit, this is the best cheeseburger I’ve ever eaten!” Ben exclaimed as they ate their food back at the RV. They were sitting outside at the fold-out table and TV on the side of the RV that Ben had found. The girls had been just as impressed by the RV’s outdoor setup as Lee had been.

  “I agree, this is really damn good, I’m glad I got the double,” Lee said.

  “It’s probably the cheese that makes it so good, we’re in dairy country after all,” Ivy said.

  “That’s probably it,” Ben said.

  Lee still didn’t feel safe to drive, and Ben was getting tired, so when they finished eating Ivy drove the RV out of Madison, with Lee accompanying him up front. Ivy had gotten used to driving the rig amazingly quickly; Lee would have put his money on her being the best at driving the thing.

  He popped some of the new sleeping pills Dr. Strauss had prescribed, hoping that he’d be able to get some sleep before they got to Chicago. He wanted to see the famous Chicago night life, and if he didn’t get a bit of rest he’d be a zombie by then.

  After an hour the pills started to work. He reclined the chair, and fell into a dreamless sleep shortly afterwards.

  He slept the rest of the leg and almost felt refreshed when he woke up four hours later, when Ivy slowed the RV as she exited into Chicago.

  “We’re there already? Sorry, I didn’t mean to sleep that long, you must have been bored,” Lee said to Ivy, rubbing his eyes and sitting up.

  “Quit apologizing for sleeping, you need it. We’re pulling off into the suburbs of Chicago. I realized that there’s probably not going to be any way we’ll find a spot in the city big enough to park an RV so I’m taking us to the closest Omnimart to the city center. We can take a cab or something from there, if you don’t mind?”

  “That sounds like a good plan. Damn, I hadn’t even thought about where we were going to put the RV. I’m going to have to park it in Jersey or something while we’re in New York.”

  “Ha, yeah that’s probably going to be a problem. RVs probably aren’t even legal there, you’ve seen the traffic there on movies and shows, can you imagine driving through it in this giant thing?”

  “No,” Lee answered truthfully.

  The traffic in Chicago turned out to be no joke either, even in the suburbs. The roads seemed to be far too small for the amount of traffic they had on them. When cars pulled alongside the RV, it felt like they were going to scrape sides. Luckily, the Omnimart wasn’t far from the exit and within twenty minutes, Ivy was pulling into the lot and parking in the back the way they’d done at the last one.

  “We’re here!” Lee shouted back to Ben and Stella as they parked. “We just have to wait for a cab to take us into the city, Ivy’s going to call one now.”

  “We know,” Ben said. “Ivy told us the plan while you were passed out.” Lee looked over to Ivy and she grinned at him, killed the engine and pulled out her phone to call the cab, finding the number for a service from the GPS.

  “So I was thinking we’d go downtown and check out the bar scene. Have an awesome first night in Chicago, on me,” Lee told them as they waited for the cab to show up.

  “I’m down,” Stella said instantly.

  “That’s really nice of you, that sounds great,” Ivy said.

  “Yeah buddy, I’m not going to turn down free drinks,” Ben agreed.

  “Awesome,” Lee said, “I’m really excited—it had better be as cool as Kanye West makes out in his songs.”

  The cab must have been close by, because within minutes it had pulled up next to the RV. They transferred into the cab, Lee taking the passenger’s seat so that he could get a better view of the city.

  The cabbie was a stout, pudgy man of indeterminable middle-eastern descent. His cab smelled like strange food, probably whatever the he’d had had for dinner, but it was clean enough. Lee made sure the meter was running; he’d had cabbies try and rip him off before back in Seattle when they mistook him for a tourist.

  “Where you want to go?” the cabbie asked in a heavy accent.

  “We’re new to town and we wanted to find some good bars to hang out at downtown, do you know of anything like that?”

  “There big bar area downtown, I take you there?”

  “Sure, that sounds fine.”

  The driver nodded and pulled the car out of the Omnimart parking lot. Lee trusted him to take them to a good spot, something about the man made him seem like the trustworthy sort.

  The driver took the freeway towards the city and Chicago rapidly came into view. Lee couldn’t help but feel amazed at the sheer size of the city. It just seemed to stretch on and on forever. Seattle was a big town, but it seemed tiny in comparison. Seattle was squished between the mountains and the sea, whereas Chicago had the space to sprawl out seemingly endlessly in all directions. It simply never seemed to end.

  The traffic was worse as they neared the city center. Though it was past seven, the freeway was like a parking lot. Lee would have been surprised if they were averaging more than fifteen miles an hour between all the stops and starts. Bored, he looked out the window, and gasped.

  The demon was in a car, stopped in the next lane over in a ridiculously small, blood-red Kia, wearing a bowler’s cap. It was looking back at him.

  Lee snapped his gaze away and stared at the floor until their lane started moving again and they left the demon behind. His heart was pumping hard and he could feel panic rising up, threatening to overwhelm him, but he fought it down, telling himself over and over it’s not really there.

  “So are you guys really excited?” he asked the others, trying to take his mind off of the demon, but still glancing in the side mirror every once in a while to assure himself that the red Kia wasn’t coming back up on them.

  “Yeah we are,” Ivy answered for the others. “This is really cool, I’ve never seen a city this huge.”

  “Uh huh, it makes Seattle look like it’s the size of Spokane,” Ben said.

  The cabbie took an exit off the freeway. A few minutes later he announced “Willis Tower over there, biggest building in city,” pointing at a building ahead of them. Lee was confused for a moment, and then he realized that Willis Tower was the new name for the Sears Tower. He called back the information to the others, who couldn’t hear the cabbie well between the rumble of traffic and the driver’s heavy accent.

  They all craned their heads up to look at the building, but it was so tall that they couldn’t see to the top of it from the car. It was bigger than any building Seattle had ever dreamed of.

  The driver pulled up to a bar that ha
d a large sign out front identifying itself as Howl at the Moon. “We here now,” the cabbie said.

  “You’re sure this place is good?” Lee asked.

  “Yeah, it’s fun.” The bar looked decent enough from the outside, so Lee paid the fare, plus a generous tip, and they all went in.

  The place was dimly lit, with two different stages in the middle of the bar with musicians playing. It was packed. Miraculously, they were able to find a table, as a group went to leave just as they were walking by their table. The girls, thinking faster than Lee and Ben, snagged it instantly.

  While the service wasn’t great, the music was amazing, and soon they were all having fun. Lee had been a bit worried that they’d be treated as outsiders, but if any of the natives knew Lee and the others were from out of town, they didn’t care. They weren’t exactly friendly, but they were about as accepting as Seattleites.

  Two hours of drinking and banter later and they were all amazingly trashed. Lee had reminded them to get whatever they wanted the first time the waitress had come by, and they had all taken him up on the offer enthusiastically.

  Stella went to the bathroom stopping and flirting with a couple of guys by the stage on the way back, clearly pissing Ben off. He gave her a dose of her own medicine and flirted with another girl, which somewhat amazingly got Stella’s attention like nothing else had before. She instantly stopped talking with the guys she was talking to, stormed up to the girl, and said “Back off my boyfriend, bitch!”

  The girl pointedly glanced back to where Stella had been talking to the guys, smiled and looked ready to say something, but then just shook her head and walked off. Stella sat down back next to Ben, and within seconds they were making out.

  “Cute kids,” Lee said to Ivy, straining to make himself audible over the din of the music.

  Ivy laughed, and finished off the last of her latest Long Island iced tea. “I think he’s finally starting to figure her out,” she said.

  “Do you want me to get you another?” he asked, nearly yelling the question and pointing at her empty glass. “I’m going back to the bar for one myself. I think the waitress is on a smoke break.” She said something that he couldn’t make out but took as an affirmative, so he hopped up and worked his way to the bar through the tight crowd.

  It was the usual hassle of getting the bartender’s attention in a busy crowd. He was there for nearly ten minutes before he got the booze. When he got back to the booth with the drinks, he found a smarmy-looking guy had stolen his spot. Hair greased back and wearing a dirty leather jacket, he was trying to talk to Ivy, who was leaning away from him as much as she could without hitting Stella, who was still obliviously making out with an equally oblivious Ben. She noticed Lee, and shot him a pleading look.

  “Thanks for keeping my seat warm buddy, I’ll take it back now,” Lee said to the guy, setting the drinks down on the table.

  “Nah, I’m cool,” the guy said in a thick Chicago accent.

  “Seriously, get the fuck away from her or we’re going to have a problem.”

  “Yeah, whatever guy,” the guy said with a sneer. “Thanks for the drink, why don’t you go grab me another?” He grabbed the Long Island tea and then took a sip off of it.

  Before Lee even had time to register what he was doing, he slapped the drink out of the man’s hand and it went flying over the table, barely missing the Ben, who didn’t even notice. The man started to stand up to push Lee, but Lee dove into him, pummeling his face.

  The man didn’t have a chance, falling back and getting pinned between Ivy and the table so that he had no way to get up without crawling over the table or going through Lee. By the time the bouncers came over and pulled Lee off the man a couple of minutes later, the guy was bleeding profusely from his nose and a gash on his head.

  “Get out of here, all of you!” the bouncer said to the table, probably doing Lee a favor by not holding him and calling the police, but Lee only thought of that later.

  “Fuck you guys, that guy deserved it! He was grabbing my leg and shit!” Ivy shouted back in a drunken slur.

  “I don’t give a fuck, get out now!”

  Ben and Stella had finally registered that something was going on, but looked confused as to what. “Come on guys, we’re going,” Lee said to them, then grabbed Ivy’s hand and made his way to the exit, Stella and Ben following, not really understanding why.

  “What was that about?” Ben asked when they were out on the street and walking twenty feet to one of the many cabs outside the bar.

  “Just some fucking asshole got what was coming to him, don’t worry about it. We’ll talk back at the RV,” Lee said. “And you take the front in the cab ride this time.”

  8

  Once in the cab, none of them could work out how to get back to the RV. Finally, between the four of them, they managed to come up with the suburb it was in, and the driver seemed to know where they were talking about.

  On the ride back, Ivy and Lee turned the tables on Stella by making out for the entire ride as Lee’s knight in shining armor routine at the bar seemed to have excited Ivy quite a bit. Stella didn’t say anything, but Lee could practically hear her rolling her eyes.

  The driver knew his stuff, and they were quickly at their destination, the lighter night traffic cutting down their trip time substantially. Lee wasn’t sure if he paid the driver, but someone must have because the cabbie thanked them and drove off as soon as they were all out of the car.

  Ben and Stella wanted to keep partying, so they went into the Omnimart to get some more drinks before the cutoff. Done with drinking for the night, Ivy and Lee immediately retired to the master bedroom. They lay down on the bed and continued the kissing they’d started in the cab.

  “Sorry if I went overboard with that guy, he just really pissed me off,” Lee managed to say when there was a brief lull in their mouth action.

  “Don’t be, you should have heard the stuff that guy was saying. Right out of the gate he was trying to get me to come over to his place, saying he had a ‘huge cock’ and that it would make my night.” Hearing that took away whatever small amount of regret that Lee had about working the guy over and he went back to kissing Ivy.

  Ivy fell asleep shortly after they finished making love, the alcohol finally taking her down. Lee took one of his new prescriptions and watched TV for a few hours before falling into a fitful and broken sleep. He was almost thankful that he couldn’t fall into a deep sleep, that was when the dreams came and he was terrified of what he might see in them next.

  He managed to dress, shave, and brush his teeth without rousing Ivy, who was sleeping so deeply she produced a cute little snore every so often. He felt amazingly hung over. When he’d had hangovers in the past, he’d slept through it until he felt better, but that wasn’t an option any more.

  Knowing that the sound of the TV would only irritate him, he got out one of his books and read as he lay next to Ivy on the bed. It was an intriguing tale about a man lost in the woods, with ghost-like creatures chasing him. The book was by an author that Lee wasn’t familiar with, H.L. Dean. It was pretty good; he’d picked it up on a whim back in Seattle, and was glad he had.

  It was nearly four hours before Ivy started to rouse. He had managed to work his way through more than a quarter of the book when she rolled over towards him and looked up at him with a sleepy smile.

  “Hey sweetie, how long have you been up for?” she asked.

  “Not too long.”

  “Well sorry for sleeping so long. I drank too much last night, I feel so shitty.”

  “It’s no problem, I got some reading done. I’m pretty hung over myself.”

  “Let’s make some breakfast,” she said, sitting up. “That will help. Do you think Ben and Stella are up yet?”

  “I heard someone clattering around out there,” he answered as Ivy got dressed. Decent, she went out to the kitchen, with Lee right behind her.

  Ben was up and watching the living room TV from the recliner, wh
ile Stella was still sleeping on the bed. “Hey guys, fun night last night huh?” he said cheerfully, looking up at Lee and Ivy.

  “Yeah it was,” Lee said, “Ivy and I were going to make some breakfast, have you eaten yet?”

  “No, I’ll take some if you guys don’t mind.”

  “All good, it’s why I asked,” Lee said.

  Neither of them wanted to do a ton of work, so Lee and Ivy made a simple mix of chopped up ham and scrambled eggs, topped with shredded cheddar. Stella woke up when they were finishing, and the foursome ate the quick but delicious breakfast together.

  “So what are we going to do today?” Ivy said as they ate.

  “Not sure, let me look on the computer,” Lee said. “I really want to go to an art gallery, and of course go in the Sears Tower, or Willis Tower or whatever it’s called now.” He booted up the computer and typed into the search engine ‘sites to see Chicago’.

  A lot of interesting results came up, but one stuck out to Lee in particular. “Oh my god, we have to go to The Art Institute of Chicago,” he said, reading about it on the computer. “It’s got that really famous painting of that old man and woman standing outside of a farmhouse, American Gothic. There’s a picture of it on their home page.”

  “Ugh, an art museum?” Stella complained.

  “I think it sounds really awesome, I can’t wait!” Ivy said.

  “I think it could be cool too,” Ben said. Stella shot him a glare.

  “Oh shit, there’s a science museum too, I wonder if it’s better than the one in Seattle?” Lee said, getting more and more excited as he looked up the tourist hotspots. “We’ve got to do this, let’s call a taxi already. Does anybody need anything from Omnimart before we head out?”