THE SEARCH FOR MR. ADEQUATE
Part XVI
By SUSAN SILVER

So it is now Saturday afternoon in Chicago and I am eagerly awaiting my destiny at every corner. I am meeting my lawyer girlfriend, with whom I am staying, and we are planning to spend a few hours at the Contemporary Museum. I walk over and find out that it is free today ... the good news. Because most of the exhibits are closed due to a new installation taking place ... the bad news.

But since I am on my good behavior and taking a cue from my friend who is always smiling and happy, though not cloyingly so, I stay cool.

Everything on the trip so far has been great, and though I have not met, nor even spied a potential mate, I know that I am destined to be here (having found two — count ‘em two — lucky pennies and a sign with my name on it pointing to a real estate office.) And the weekend was only half over.

The only fly in the ointment so far is while I am waiting for her I hear a really annoying clicking of heels on the stairs above where I sit. I can’t imagine anyone walking so “heavy” and thankfully it stops. Then a moment later, it begins again. I jump up to confront or at least glare at the lard ass, sorry ... I mean weight challenged person, but they have disappeared. This happens again. And the minute I jump up to look, they are gone. Fat but fast! By the time my friend arrives, I am starting to think that this is happening just to drive me crazy, but even I know that is going way too paranoid. I tell her about how my contemplative reverie was interrupted by noisy high heeled lady art patrons when she points out to me that was no lady! It was the ‘art!’ The Theme was “aural installation” and the clopping heels were the art ... experience. Uh huh.

Actually by now I am finding this stuff interesting. But there is not much more to see. Yet I have the ‘feeling’ I am supposed to get something more from this experience so we head for the gift shop. There is a large bowl which contains stones with a word on each and I pick one figuring it is the fortune in the cookie, so to speak. Drum roll ... and the stone said — “friends”. Aw. Sweet and appropriate for the weekend and I was only a tad disappointed. (“Your love waits next door” would have been better but that’s more than one word, isn’t it?)

We walk back to her place and I start to get ready to leave. She has graciously offered to drive me to the party. I would have asked to have her invited but it is only six people. She says she is out every night (the little social butterfly) and is happy to have a night off. Dinner is at 6:30 and it’s a half-hour away so we leave at 5:45 ... just in case.

“The long and winding road”

Beth the Brain Surgeon’s secretary had emailed me several times to give her the address I was leaving from in the city and she would “mapquest” how to get to the party and the address. I, who am “computer challenged” and can barely get my emails, was impressed such a thing existed. But since I can’t read a map either, I just asked for directions and the address.

So we embark on our journey. We are on the highway and finally get off as directions tell us and simultaneously we are guiding ourselves on her thingee in the car which is like an airplane tracking device. This is fun! We almost sing. But we don’t. We make the right turn off at the proper exit and easily find the street. We turn right as told and will be early.

However, we are now driving down a street that is getting progressively well, to put it kindly, scary. Boarded up houses, trash littered, scary looking guys loitering on corners ... no doubt carrying guns. Well, maybe not the gun part, but did I mention it was scaaaary? I doubt that my friend who is a worldclass doctor lives here, but the address was sent both times by her secretary. We are now on the worst block. Think, the Bowery in the bad days.

Maybe she is a do-gooder and lives in an underprivileged neighborhood to donate her medical services. Naw. Maybe this is her “neighborhood clinic” where she gives out what ... free lobotomies? Maybe we will be car-jacked, murdered and never heard from again. The guys on the corner (who are not singing) are eyeing us as we circle the block twice. No such address seems to exist at all. It is instead ... an empty lot. Oh oh.

No problem. We have our cell phones with us and my friend calls Beth’s house. But there is an answer machine and my friend who is preternaturally calm leaves a cheery message saying we must have the wrong address and could my hostess call back. I call information to see if there is another listing. No.

Now, I, who am not calm or cheery, start to get a VERY BAD FEELING.
We quickly drive away from the gang (who may have actually waved goodbye, not sure) and head towards what she thinks is the better side of the neighborhood. Maybe the address saying West really meant East. So we drive East on the street but now the numbers do not correspond in any way. The email says 53-322 to 53-390. (Which had seemed a little strange unless she lived in an apartment complex and owned three. Or maybe a compound of homes the size of a shopping mall.) Suddenly the numbers become 100, 200, etc.

I say maybe we should just stop the car and wait for the call. She thinks we better not stop yet in this area ... if we want to live. I say keep driving. We do. For about ten minutes which felt like thirty.

She calls again, this time a little less cheery and again it is a machine. “Why wouldn’t someone having a dinner party pick up her home phone?” she asks me. I have no answer. I then realize I have Beth’s cell phone number in my phone book which is in my suitcase. We are afraid to park the car long enough for me to get it out of the backseat so I climb over and dump the suitcase and get the number. I, too, get a message. I leave a fairly agitated one in return saying we are driving around and it is now 6:45 and we don’t know where the hell we are going! I said fairly agitated, didn’t I?

Now I am getting sweaty and frustrated and see my ‘life-changing’ evening going down the tubes. My friend, more optimistic, wants to keep going. The neighborhood gets much better but we still have no address.

In between swearing, I call the house one more time, sounding a tad deranged as I disgorge to the answering machine. I stop myself and hang up before I totally lose it and the friendship of Beth whom you remember, I don’t know all that well anyway.

Finally I can’t take it and demand that my friend stop the car right by the only lighted building we see ... an embassy or library kind of columned structure with the American flag flying. I feel it is a safe and welcoming place and we will wait here five minutes, until seven, and if no one calls back, we will go back to her place in the city and have dinner. But I am dying inside. Remember I have a lot riding on this trip and this evening is the last shot.

She stops. We sit looking at a party going on in the “Embassy.” People are going up the long walk and being greeted by a butler in a white coat. Children are running around and warm happy people are drinking what I know is champagne or at least hot mulled cider. We feel like orphans with our noses pressed against the glass. People are having fun and we are fucked!

My friend muses she could go up to the door and ask if they know of my hostess who might be a neighbor after all. I’d rather go up and ask them if we can go to their party. Maybe that was meant to be! Or wouldn’t it be funny if this were the party. Except it is an intimate dinner for six and they wouldn’t have a butler. But other than that Mrs. Lincoln ...

So we just sit and wait as the clock ticks off to seven and she starts the car. But dreams die hard and I have a “feeling.” I am going to “will” them to answer. “Woo woo” is my world, remember. I have to make one more call. I dial the cell phone and lo and behold ... someone has answered! But they don’t say anything and have left the phone off the hook or are getting ready to dial out and disconnect me! I hear laughter and partying and no one is listening on the phone. What the hell is going on?

Suddenly I hear Beth say “hello?” I am hysterical with joy. Her daughter had heard the cell phone and brought it downstairs to her. She wondered what had happened to us. I tell her our sad tale of woe and she asks me where we are. We do not know!!

We can’t see an address but I had seen one close by that was 700 and she says we are near. How near? We are in front of the brick structure with the flag ... whatever that is. The American flag? Yes. Well, come on in That’s the house.

Now what are the odds of this, my friends? It is as if I had given you an address on lower Fifth and it’s really across from the Metropolitan Museum and you just drive up the Avenue and windup in front of it, right? Whatever mystical magic wanted me to be at that party, got me there! Gave me a little hard time of it, but I was going to the ball folks!

She invited my friend to join us. The “butler” was just a friend who owns a restaurant and was cooking in his white apron. The group of kids were her kids and her guests’ kids who had their own little dinner. There were three couples, very interesting, articulate, fun people. One of the men was a Nobel Prize winning physicist and by luck I had attended a seminar in Aspen on Einstein this past summer so could actually have a conversation with him. I didn’t say I understood anything, but I carried on a conversation.

Once I got over the shock of the magic that got me there it was a lovely evening. The house was an historic Georgian home built in 1925 and we did the tour to an underground tunnel, a tack room, a wine cellar to die for. I had my own guest house to sleep in. The next morning I played games with the kids who are very special and bright and fluent in French yet! I felt very welcomed by the whole family and it was a treat and very sweet of them to invite me. Beth drove me to the airport and I was on my way back home.

On the plane, as I reflected, I realized that I’d had a really terrific weekend yet I was so busy anticipating Mr. Adequate, that I almost missed the whole damn experience! Yes, life is what happens while we are making plans.

What else did we learn, boys and girls? Spontaneous trips are great pickeruppers. You don’t always have to go to exotic or trendy vacation spots to have a ball. Keeping up friendships is important (just as the little stone told me.) You should hang out sometimes with younger people ... it’s energizing.

And there is definitely some good fairy looking out for me. And I thank him/her. But next time he/she must hire a better secretary.

Happy Valentine's Day. Now you have at least one Valentine! Luv, Susan (I'm sure mine is in the mail, right Dear Readers?)

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