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“He’s supposed to be,” Janice said. She turned her phone off airplane mode, donned some reading glasses, and blinked at the screen. “Ah. Yep. He says he’s waiting.” When she turned her eyes back up, she said, “Would you like a ride somewhere?”
“I still don’t know where I’m staying,” Elise said. “I’m not going to make the drive until tomorrow.”
“My son will have a recommendation,” Janice said. “Let him drop you off somewhere. Have you been to Chicago before? Maybe you can even check out some of the sights before you go.”
Elise had never been to Chicago. Heck, she had hardly been anywhere. Taking Janice up on her offer, she sat in the back of Janice’s son’s Mercedes, listening to her and her son start to catch-up. She blinked out the window at the changing scenery, a world that seemed so foreign to Los Angeles that it might as well have been a different country.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been to Chicago, Elise,” Janice’s son, Bob, started from the front seat.
“I was a bit busy my whole life, I guess,” Elise said with an ironic laugh. “College, then a husband, then babies, with a ton of career mixed in there.”
“As a woman, everything kind of happens at once,” Janice affirmed. “But now, you can take this time for yourself. Based on everything you told me on the plane, you’re due for an adventure.”
Bob dropped Elise off at one of the bigger hotels in downtown Chicago, just a block away from Millennium Park and the famous Art Institute. He pointed every which way, describing the general landscape of the place, as Janice hugged her a final time and slipped a piece of paper in her hand. “Call us if you need anything at all,” she said.
“Thank you,” Elise whispered. Her voice caught with emotion. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
Elise took the early evening to wander through downtown Chicago, browse stores, sip a glass of wine on a rooftop bar, and jot various ideas down in her journal. It surprised her to feel something quivering around back there: writing ideas that actually seemed to have legs. She had worked on the same screenplay for years, the one that had ultimately failed. Now, with an adventure and a ton of free time before her, the words seemed to flow freely.
Chicago.
It was a brief stop-over, a quick sight-seeing expedition before she sought out that mystery island her mother had worked on so long ago. By the time she fell into her crisp, clean sheets that night, she heaved a sigh of recognition. She knew, now, what all the fuss was about. Chicago was really something special.
