Look down there. Sunlight glitters on the green water and makes it look like liquid emeralds. Even though I see it every day, I’ve never seen the river look as lucid as it does now.

I play the drums for a living, even though I don’t know how. I also don’t have any drums, just these upside down plastic buckets. My drumsticks, though, these are real.

I perform in Chicago, The Loopy Second City of Windy Big Shoulders. I sit here on my sidewalk on my bridge over my river and play my drums. I give myself a morning shift (when people are walking to work) and an evening shift (when people are walking away from work). People look at me and I do my best not to get worried. Some of them give me money. I make anywhere from fifty to three hundred bucks a day. It’s winter now. In the winter people give me more.

It’s a living. But, sitting here, smelling garbage and bus exhaust…well, I’m glad this is my last day.

Right over there is the Jewelers Building. It’s the brownish-cream colored one, with the turrets at each corner of the roof and the tower in the center. Beautiful, isn’t it? At one time, most of the jewelers in Chicago had their offices in that building, hence the name. It looks like an old monastery.

There’s a lot of traffic on the street. In the summer, there’s a lot of traffic on the river, too. Boats pass by down there all day long, different colors, shapes and sizes. I take a few moments after each shift to watch them. No boats today; it’s too cold. When the wind blows off of Lake Michigan like a knife that nobody’s cared about for a long time, no one wants to go near the water.

I used to have a life. Another town, another place. I saw something I shouldn’t have. I was walking. I glanced down an alley and saw a bad thing. The person doing it was someone I recognized from the news. He held a metal blade that glittered in the neon light. A body fell to the pavement. I kept walking, but I guess the man I recognized saw me, too. That’s why they killed Jade. They wanted to prove a point and they used her. Then I ran. They might still be after me. I ended up here, playing the drums to the distant sounds of jackhammer construction. I play and stare at the tall buildings. Some days they make me feel small.

They say Al Capone had a speakeasy on the top floor of the Jewelers Building. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s what people want to hear. There are so many myths about gangsters that they become caricatures, overblown characters riddled with clichés. It’s easy to forget that they’re real. They exist. They’re out there in the world, doing bad things.

Jade and I met at the Moonstone, a blues bar in my old town that nobody seemed to know about. The darkness inside was almost always empty. I started seeing Jade there every now and then. We met listening to cover versions of Barkin’ Bill, Robert Johnson and Little Walter. Our romance was scored by the musical poetry of heartache.

That’s why I ran to Chicago. Because I like the blues.

When I found her, in our apartment, in our bed, her nightgown had turned as red as rubies. A break-in, while I was out. It could have been just a random robbery, but I knew it wasn’t. Only one thing was missing. I don’t know why they didn’t wait, they could’ve taken me when I got home, but they didn’t. They let me live. With my memories.

I came to Chicago. They might still be out there, looking. I picked up a few different jobs: coffee house, office temp, waiter. I’d be at work and I’d see someone looking at me and I’d think I’d been found. Because of that, jobs came and went. So I went into self-employment: I started playing the drums. Rather than hide with my fear, I decided to put myself in plain sight.  

Did you know that in the Jewelers Building there used to be an elevator big enough to carry a car? Jewelers would load up their automobiles with diamonds and garnets and pearls, drive onto the elevator, go up to their floor and then drive off directly into their vaults. It was supposed to be the safest building in the city. This was before they knew about Al Capone’s tavern. All of that safety was just an illusion.

It was a nice experiment, but hiding out in the open doesn’t work. I still spend everyday afraid. And remorseful. And alone. They might still be after me, they might not. There’s no real way I can know. I’m tired of wondering. Either way, today is my last day.

A lot of people think all sapphires are blue, but actually they can come in several colors. I opened a checking account once upon a time and the bank gave me a sapphire for opening the account. It was a purple, flawed thing, probably worth nothing. I had it put in a setting and bought a chain to hang it from. It was the first gift I ever gave her. They didn’t steal anything from our apartment, except Jade’s flawed necklace. It’s gone forever.

It’s time. Time to put down my sticks. Time to stop playing. Time for forever.

Look down there. Cold. Green. Final. I can’t swim, not that the frigid water would give me much of a chance. It’ll be over before I know it.

Time to drown in emeralds.

The End