When night falls on the streets of Chicago, the vagabond ghosts whistle past Graceland Cemetery and blow from the sewers and
subway tunnels like steam. When night falls on the streets of Chicago, the rats go scuttling through the condemned buildings
and a man in Chinatown hawks bent baseball cards from the pockets of his mud-spattered trench coat. When night falls on the
streets of Chicago, a strobe light blinks blue-white in an empty storefront, and the vagabond ghosts dance in that intermittent
flash; if you have sharp eyes you might catch glimpses of their shaking shadows, blown up monstrously against the back wall.
When night falls on the streets of Chicago, sparks flash from the mouths of the el trains, those dragons that cssshhh-reeeeee-k-
thunk through the near-winter darkness, those dragons with commuters encased in the sick yellow glow of their enormous
bellies. When night falls on the streets of Chicago, a tough cord of a girl with diamonds in her smoke-glazed eyes sits on a stone
bench near the old water tower, gently squeezes the bellows of a battered accordion, plays for the ghosts and passerby. When
night falls on the streets of Chicago, the passerby sometimes stop to listen; they are college students or elderly, stooped Polish
men, they are wearing three-piece three-thousand-dollar suits or torn tweed jackets, they are muscular gayboys with gold hoops
in their ears or women white-knuckled clutching their pocketbooks close to their ribs and the music finds their ears and stops
their feet for a moment, the accordion speaks in the tongues of all their wishes, all their losses, it howls like a feral animal and
wails like a wraith. When night falls on the streets of Chicago, they stop and listen, collars raised against the cold, hands shoved
in pockets or holding cigarettes, holding coffee cups, holding bottles. The girl, the passerby, they become the same, they become
the same as all the lonely lonely in that vicious prairie city, searching with their big empty hearts, hearts big and empty and
bruisedark as Lake Michigan, straining to hear that melody they once heard in that fairytale place they glimpsed so long ago.
When night falls on the streets of Chicago, the passerby think of leaving that city, that Hog Butcher of their Dreams, think of
riding the Greydog into the heart of the Midwestern evening, imagine getting into their cars and driving until the gas runs out,
think of hopping on board a riverboat that will take them down to St. Louis or a freight train that will drop them off in the desert.
They are longing for a place that will feel like home again, a place not so hard and mean, but they stay on the night streets of
Chicago, they stay, because they don't know where else to go.
When night falls on the near-winter streets of Chicago, the rough-edged diamond girl slides the leather straps off her shoulder
and tucks her accordion back in its case. The straggling strangers disperse, the girl is alone in the gathering gloom. She counts
the coins and few ragged dollars she made, takes a sip of whisky from a pocket flask, rolls a cigarette and struggles to light it,
cupping her thin hands around the flame to protect it from the wind. She takes a deep drag and she, too, is longing for a
belonging-place, is belonging to her longing on those chill nightdark streets, dreaming of a place far-off full of romance and big
things, but she has returned here from many of those far-off places, she has returned here from the north, south, east, west, and
she knows – all roads lead back, eventually. The world is full of Chicagos.