I hadn't decided to spend the day exploring the Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Oak Park until I saw Heidi Hines getting "the stare" from my wife while Heidi had her toes half way up my calf under the table at Riva's. It seemed a brilliant fix at the time.
My wife is a fascinating and powerful woman—all sliver blondeness, razor thinness and sharpness, and glittery silver nails flashing and fingers snapping and minions scattering to the winds. She runs the internationally acclaimed lifestyle magazine, Peak Today magazine, like a general determined and capable of taking and holding Moscow and of laughing in the faces of all those who never were able to do so. I love that name, Peak Today, with its in-your-face double entendre references. Not only does each issue define the new peak of fashion, vacation destination, trend, and latest celebrity, but it is also a play on her daddy's name—a reminder that the media mogul Clifford Peak will always be there to back up his daughter's decisions and to keep her magazine solvent and in distribution.
Not that Clifford will always be there in reality, of course; he is old as dirt and propped up by a bevy of specialists. But his daughter, Claudia, is loaded and primed and primped and ever ready to slide into his Manhattan corner office. She is ever timeless too. Few know just how well preserved she herself was—even I, who saw the marriage license, assumed her dates were lies. But I do know that somehow money and modern science have kept her supple and in fine shape indeed . . . for her age, whatever that is.
I was modeling for Peak Today when she "found" me. And I was well bought. But I don't mind. She treats me like I have a mind to pay attention to in the midst of all that is thrown at her, and she is fun and . . . of course, very generous.
The Heidi pass, served up at Riva's on Chicago's Navy Pier while we were at a Chicago office strategy session, was something I was used to, and I didn't, for a minute, believe that Claudia felt the least bit threatened. It was more Heidi I was worried for. For all I knew, Peak Today would have a branch office in Botswanna as well. And, glancing to my left and catching the come-on stare of the statuesque, highly photogenic Sandra—no last name; just known by every fashion photographer alive as Sandra—I could see that I needed to beg out of further business "meetings" with the magazine's Chicago staff, or Claudia would be shopping for a whole new crew there.
And Heidi was barking up the wrong tree altogether. While she was playing footsie and, probably mellowed by entirely too much good wine, starting to move into groping under the table cloth, I was stealthily eyeing the butts and baskets of the waiters gliding between the tables. God, Chicago had some hot men. I'd been very good about that in New York. But I'd probably had entirely too much wine at Riva's too—and there was something freeing about the whole Chicago magic mile "thing." Brisk breeze coming off the lake and wafting through the avenue tunnels lined with skyscrapers of such breathtaking beauty and ingenuity and style that they made Manhattan seem drab. Such a "high" for me that I almost wasn't aware it had happened when Heidi's hand gently fell on my inner thigh. Almost.
She was intoning in a throaty voice that perhaps she wasn't needed at the office tomorrow and could show me the view from the top of the John Hancock tower, completely ignoring the intensity of Claudia's stare, when I came to her rescue, although she'd never know how close she'd come to seeing a Botswanna chief's hut and mighty member up close and personal.
"Great idea," I said smoothly, as I reached under the table and brushed Heidi's hand off my thigh. "But I wouldn't think of taking anyone away from the strategy session tomorrow. I'm not needed there. But an architectural exploration is a great idea. I think I'll take the El out to Oak Park and check out all of the early Frank Lloyd Wright houses out there."
I could sense Claudia uncoiling from the end of the table. The perfect parry. I'd recently let Claudia know that what I'd really like to do was study architecture. I could model forever, I suppose, especially as long as Claudia and her magazine was there. But it was such work keeping in camera trim, and I wasn't dumb enough to think Claudia would always be there for me. I'd gone cold turkey on temptation the moment I realized that she had designs on me. Another man in my bed was certainly something her carefully maintained preservation would never tolerate. In fact, I had deftly managed for her to take me out of the bed of one of her best, much younger girlfriends, which covered all sorts of bases in that particular mating game.
"Brilliant idea, Travis," Claudia twittered from the other end of the dinner table. "I will indeed require Heidi's full attendance tomorrow. In fact, I think I would like to go over the boards for the 'Chicago Scene' column for the rest of the year. Unless you aren't prepared—"
"But of course, they are all ready for you," Heidi said sweetly. Claudia was too far away to see it, but I could see the light beads of perspiration forming on Heidi's expertly powdered upper lip. I had no doubt she'd be working all night. Better than Botswanna, though.
I had already lost interest in this particular game, one I'd played so many times before. A luscious tush in tight white trousers was wiggling its way through the narrow gap between our table and the next. I felt myself going hard. I could only have been happier if he'd been turned toward our table for his passage. I was much more interested in the working end of a man's anatomy. Ah, the temptation. But then a bit of panic, and I looked back at Claudia. Good, she was all business talk; she hadn't seen me take that look. It was so much easier in New York, where I was left pretty much alone except when she needed some arm candy or those nights she summoned me to her bedroom—after having adjusted the lighting down low and just so.
* * *
The trip out to Oak Park from the loop on the El Green Line was a real lesson in urban design—a negative lesson. Within just a few blocks off the lake, the fabulous skyscraper architecture turned abruptly into a thick band of scudsy urban blight. Ash-covered tenements and abandoned mid-rise buildings screaming of poverty and decay. But it wasn't long until we were entering into suburbia, and when I got off at the Oak Park station and started following my guidebook to Chicago Avenue and the early home and studio of the architectural great, Frank Lloyd Wright, the developer of the Prairie Style, I was exhilarated. I loved his suggestively oriental motifs and his use of wood and shingles and sharp angles here in Oak Park. Within a few square blocks, a large collection of houses were built on designs he'd developed through exploration and adaptation. Many of the houses were moonlight designs, sold under the table when his work was fully employed by an architectural firm. I saw so many examples of his work as I made my way to Chicago Avenue that I marveled that his employers didn't find him out. But then, of course, they did in the end and canned him for his dishonesty.
The young man looked familiar. When I had turned to admire the Egyptian-like columns high up on Wright's Unitarian church design, Unity Temple, I caught sight of a young man who had followed along behind me from the El station. I wondered why he'd come from the El station too, but then it dawned on me that I'd seen him on the station platform at the Loop in downtown Chicago and then fancied I'd glimpsed him on the train as well. And even at the Loop platform, I had the impression of familiarity, although I hadn't thought about it at the time.
Ah, well, I thought. Probably just my mind playing tricks on me. But he wasn't exactly forgettable. Rather the Marlin Brando-in-his-wild-boy-days look. Or James Dean. Dark and glowering in a pouty, pretty boy-covered-in-black leather fashion. Sort of rough. A vision of Jimbo floated across my mind. God, that had been a good run. My danger period. Motorcycles and black leather. About as far away from modeling Calvin Klein for Peak Today as you could get. In the past now, though.
I turned and, finding Chicago Avenue, had no trouble in the least deciding which of the buildings was the Wright house and studio. I spent a fascinating hour touring the house and steeping in the brilliant—but sometimes unfunctional—design world of a major architect who spun his magic in one unified concept from the outer shell of the space down to the furniture and the dishes in the cabinets.
I was almost so overwhelmed and preoccupied by what I'd seen when I walked back out onto the raised terrace at the entry into the house that I didn't see him. He was lounging languidly on top of the wide stone wall, one leg raised challenging with black jack boot grinding into the aging cement of the wall ledge as if dismissing the scene and era that Wright had so painstakingly painted.
"You must have liked that. You spent more time in there than anyone else, I think."
"Excuse me?" I asked. He'd addressed me like we knew each other well and had just suspended a conversation we were having before I'd entered the museum. "Have we—?"
