My Brother Saves Halloween – Part 1

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This story was written as part of a proposed “contest” between myself and three other writers.  Five prompt terms were randomly chosen from categories and would have to be part of each story in some fashion.  The contest wound up not happening, but I liked the idea I’d gotten and wrote it, anyway.

The prompt terms were:  incest / brother-sister / Halloween / rainy day / must include the line: “You and I in a little toy shop, buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got.” (Whether you’ve recognized this or not, all of Jason Crow’s stories begin with a song lyric – go ahead, go back and look if you don’t believe me! – so I pulled a lyric randomly from a select group when the terms were chosen.)  I don’t know if I’d have won the contest, but I hope you enjoy the story. 

The first half is a lot of character-building, very story-heavy.  These things were very important to your narrator, Katie, who needed to tell you about them for you to understand the rest of her story.  Please don’t skip it the first time reading – the “action” is always better, always means more, when you are invested in the characters.  (The next time you read it, you can skip to where you want to!)

Cheers,

Tommy L.

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My Brother Saves Halloween – Part 1
By
Tommy Linarcos

“You and I in a little toy shop, buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got,” my brother sang near my ear.  I giggled, but was more interested in his hands on my waist — not tight, just… right there… on my hips, as if he were supporting himself while he leaned down that little bit.  That made me smile, and shiver a little.  A good shiver.  I liked when we were friends, when we were close.

My brother paid for the balloons and all the other stuff we’d picked to make Halloween costumes out of, and we left the store.  He took my hand and we headed back to our hotel to get creative.

Here’s the deal.  My aunt was finally getting married to her beau on the Saturday after Halloween.  They really liked Halloween — it was when they’d met!  I don’t want to say that my mom forced me and my brother to go to the wedding, because she didn’t.  We like our aunt, and wanted to go.  My mom’s like, “Katie, I’m afraid you and Henry have to take a few days off of school because we’re going to Chicago for Aunt Marcy’s wedding!” and I pretended to be mad — all “awwww, dang!” and stuff, but laughing.  Mom knew!  The only thing against it was that we’d miss Halloween with our friends, but we’d have our cousins.  Or so we thought.

My aunt lives somewhere in Chicago, and it’s always fun to visit her a couple times a year.  We go for a week every summer, and either spring break or winter break, and do different things, or sometimes just hang out when our cousins come meet us there or we head out to their houses. 

Back in spring, right around Easter, we stayed at this Wolf Lodge place in the Chicago suburbs.  There were a ton of water slides there and it was fun playing with Henry on those.  I’ll tell you right now: my brother is hot!  At least to me and my friends.  My cousins got to stay there, too, so it was fun all-around, but I secretly liked hanging all over my nearly-naked big brother as we’d slide down a big slide together — my “needing” him for safety!  He was always careful of my boobs when he’d hold onto me, or toss me in the water, but not of my butt, and I never minded that!

We live in Nebraska, so it’s fun to go to the Big City a couple times a year, and I don’t mean Omaha!  At home, there’s a lot of land and not a lot to do.  If me and Henry didn’t have our bikes, I don’t know what we’d do.  We’re not farmers, though my dad is — he runs Mr. Tyrell’s operation.  We live in the Omaha suburbs, kind of in-between Omaha and Lincoln, near the Platte River, but that really just means there’s some distance between our house and fun stuff.  Not like you can swim in the Platte, anyway.  And yeah, I hate it when my cousins ask about what it’s like when the cows are flying around from all the tornados…  (I’ve seen one tornado.)

Life out there revolves around the corn.  For the last two summers, Henry did some detasseling and roguing work for a few weeks for good money, and this is the first year I got to go and work with him, too.  I hated it and didn’t last the season.  I should have known when the boss was like, “A twelve-year-old girl?  You won’t last.”  He was right, I didn’t last a week, honestly.  There was only one other young girl there that first day, but a few teenage girls stuck it out, I’m told.  It was odd watching my brother dress in long sleeves and such for work on hot days.  Back home in the summer, all he wears is a pair of shorts and his Cornhuskers hat, so he got himself a nice tan, anyhow, and he’s building up some muscles, so I really like it when he rides shirtless and I get to see them.  In the summer, anyway.

So, when I’m talking about a trip to the city, I mean Chicago.  A real city where the buildings just don’t stop and Lake Michigan is so big it might as well be the ocean!

Anyway…

We’d been forgotten about on Halloween.  I’ll admit, it kind of hurt.  No, it really hurt. 

We got here Thursday, taking Amtrak in with Mom (Dad would come later), and were staying at this big hotel downtown.  Aunt Marcy and her fiancée Ronald came to have dinner with us, and so did my mom’s brother Uncle Ted and his wife Aunt Frannie, and my Uncle Bill and Aunt Trisha, but none of their kids came — too fancy a restaurant for all the kids.  They all said we could come to their places for Halloween tricks-n-treats and they’d come get us.

The next day, Halloween, the adults were doing the wedding rehearsal in one of the dining room/conference room places down on the third floor, and then they were going to have a dinner and hang out and get drunk the rest of the night, so all of our cousins were at home going Trick-or-Treating or going to a friend’s Halloween party. 

And Henry and me were left here, in the hotel.  We were supposed to have gone to one of their houses and they’d help us with costumes and we’d go Trick-or-Treating with the cousins.  Hell, we’d have gone even if it was just with the littler kids, if someone had come out to pick us up.  Or if we knew the bus routes.

Just the wedding party people showed up.  Nobody showed to get us.  We waited.  We didn’t have their numbers, so we couldn’t call.  We could have gone down to hang out with the rehearsal crowd, but we would have just been in the way, waiting for it to end, looking pathetic.

So we sat in the lobby for an hour after we expected to get picked up.  There’s only so many times you can read the comics in the newspaper.  Then my brother stood up and made a decision.

“C’mon, Katie,” Henry said as he took my hand, “we’re goin’ costume shoppin’.”  There was something stuck in our brains from when we were little that Henry had to hold my hand when we went places.  I was just-turned twelve this summer, and Henry would be fourteen come January, but he still did it, and there was no way I was going to stop him.  We left the hotel lobby and walked out onto Michigan Avenue.

There’s just something about the city!  It just feels different!  There’s electricity in the air!  People moving fast, some talkin’ to themselves on the phone, men in suits, ladies with shopping bags, teenagers or college kids dressed however they want to, and some dressed like people in the movies.  All the cars… I bet there were as many cars passing us by right there than in the whole of Lincoln!  And when I looked down the street, the street just kept going, it didn’t end at a field.

“Hey!” Henry was pointing to a hole in the middle of the street that cars were driving down into.  “That’s from Batman!  When, in Batman Dark Knight, they go down into the street underneath Gotham City?  That’s it!”  He was so excited, but he never let go of my hand.  We’d seen some movies with Chicago in it before when we’d come out so we could see if we recognized anything, like Ferris Bueller and The Fugitive, but seeing Batman stuff always made Henry happy.

Down the street, there was this one giant slanty building with big giant Xs on it all the way up, and no matter how much walking we did, we never got closer to it!

“Henry, why ain’t we getting any closer to that building?  It’s just always… down there… and we keep walking, and it’s still down there!” I asked my brother.  I’m not dumb, but what the heck?

“That’s the John Hancock building,” Henry told me, as if that explained it all.

I had to giggle.  “Hand cock!”

“Yeah, I’ll give you hand cock!” Henry laughed right back.  He put his free hand in his pocket and thumped it out a few times, guaranteeing I kept laughing.  I had to look around quickly to see who saw us.  No one, really.  Just my brother, smiling at me with a big grin, his blonde hair falling over his eye.  He had it long in front on one side, and when he popped up out of the water in the pool, he could swing his head and shoot water at you with that hair, and he was pretty darn accurate!

“So, where’s the Serious Tower?” I asked him when I stopped giggling.

“In-land a bit, away from the lake so it don’t fall in the water if the beach erodes.”  He pointed to our left.  Used to be the tallest building in the world, but I still couldn’t see it because of all the other tall buildings.

It was actually kind of cold, so I was glad we were dressed for travel.  My mom says when she was young here, it actually snowed one Halloween, and she had to wear her winter coat over her Little Mermaid dress!  I hoped it wasn’t going to snow, though it did feel a little like rain, but Henry said that it might just be because we were right next to the lake.

Not that I didn’t like walking and looking at the people and the buildings, but…  “Henry, where are we going?”  We had to pull over out of the flow of people, standing next to a street lamp that people would walk around us naturally.  It was cool that some of the people were dressed for Halloween — the girls, mostly, in black and with color-sprayed hair, though we did see some boys who looked kinda like zombies.

Henry turned around in a circle, nice and slow, looking at the names of the stores.  “I thought there might be a good store around here, like a Target or something we could get costumes in.”

“What do we need costumes for?  Ain’t nobody come to get us for tricks-n-treats,” I reminded him.

“Katie, we may be stuck here in Chicago, but this is where they make candy!  And there’s all these people in black and orange, and everybody knows it’s Halloween, and all we need is some good costume and we can go Trick-or-Treating in these places right here.  And there’s got to be some homes and apartments somewhere off this main street, you know?”  My brother looked determined.  I admired that about him.  No forgettin’ uncle was going to ruin our Halloween!

Then me and Henry spotted it at the same time.  A Walgreens!  That was something we knew!

So we were at the Walgreens buying supplies to make Halloween costumes out of.  There was a big Chicago souvenirs section, but there wasn’t much in the Halloween section except candy because this was a “downtown” store, so no Spider-Man or Pikachu costumes, and no Batman costume, which disappointed Henry.  So we had to be creative.

“What if…” Henry began as we wandered down the aisles.  He picked up a little stuffed dog next to the birthday cards.  “I wear my wedding suit and tape this dog to me and some makeup for bruises and a beard?  I could be John Wick!”

I caught on to what he was talking about being creative.  I picked up three stuffed little kittens.  “I can pin these to one of the hotel robes, wear the complimentary slippers, and be a crazy cat lady!”  I could curl my hair weird with mom’s curling iron.

Next, I found a bag of purple balloons.  “Could blow these up, pin ‘em on me, I’m a bunch of grapes!”  That was a good ‘maybe.’  We took the balloons, too.

We saw some toys from Jurassic World.  “If you wore your shorts, and my button-down shirt,” Henry was thinking, “you could be that woman from Jurassic Park 1.  We just need to make a badge or something, maybe with a stuffed dinosaur?”

We picked up a box of markers.  There was stationery in the hotel room to draw on.

We passed into the clothing aisle.  There were some red leggings.  “I wear these, and your red Cornhuskers shirt inside-out, and a green wool hat, and I’m a bottle of sriracha!”  We both went, “M’eh…” but I put ‘em in the basket.  A red wool hat could make us into a horrid, horrid lawn gnome, if we could find something for a beard?  No.  There was a leotard, and if I paired it up with something, I could be Barbie, maybe tape paper wheels to my shoes and she could be rollerblading…  Complicated, but I could do anything as a Barbie if I stick out my chest and smile a lot.  I got some boobs, now — not big, but they’re there.  I told that to Henry, and that we could make him into a Ken, so we went to the beauty aisle and found Aqua Net hairspray, as an option.

“Blue hairspray?” Henry found a colored spray can nearby.  “Hey, you could be that sad blue girl from Inside Out?”

“I don’t know if that would work,” I said.  “I think I saw that girl outside, like in real life.  So, not a costume.”

On our way back to clothing, we passed the automotive section and I picked up a chamois.  I held it at Henry’s waist.  “Tarzan?” I kidded.  Yeah, I was kidding, but part of me imagined Henry nearly-naked wearing it.  I mean, I’ve seen him swimming and how he runs around, but having him wear it on purpose would be fun!

Henry picked up a second chamois.  “Only if you be Jane!”  He held the chamois across my boobs. 

Now my imagination went nuts, but I held it together.  “Sorry, that’ll never hold these puppies…” I said, holding my right boob with my free hand.  Henry laughed, but looked at me a little longer, then put the two chamois away.

Back in clothing: “Some big mittens, and be that Bernie guy from Congress?”  M’eh…  “An umbrella and be some kind of Mary Poppins?”  M’eh…  “This wife-beater t-shirt, my jeans, paint on a mustache, and be Freddy Mercury?” 

“That’s a maybe,” I said, picturing my brother’s bare arms.

“A blue t-shirt…  Look around, maybe there’s at least a Superman shirt, or I can get this plain one and color an S on paper.  There’s glasses over by the pharmacist.  With my suit coat, I could be Clark Kent?”  Henry seemed to like that, so we took the blue tee.

Food was down the next aisle forward.  We put a bag of Doritos and some Ruffles in our handbasket, and some little donuts, then chose two Cokes apiece — I got Vanilla, Henry got Cherry.  You need stuff like that for TV watching in the room, you know?  There was those little boxes of cereal…  “Could tape these to you and be a cereal killer?  Find or make a knife?  Tape them to your shirt, do crazy eyes?”  That was a maybe, but it reminded us to get some tape, too, since we kept thinking we could tape things to ourselves.

I put a plant on my head.  “Get a yellow tablecloth for a poncho and I’m a pineapple?”  M’eh…

“Here’s some silk roses.  Wear your dress and you could be The Bachelorette!” Henry suggested.

That was a maybe.  “I’d have to be pretty for anyone to get it…”

“You are pretty,” Henry told me.

I had to stop.  That floored me!  “You… you think I’m pretty, Henry?”

My brother blushed a bit.  Here we were in the middle of Walgreens and I kind of put him on the spot.  But what else could I say?  It was a thrill and a mystery at the same time!

“Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, like weird, or anything,” he started, kind of shifting.  “You’re my sister, and everything, but even I can see you’re a hot little number and I’m gonna have to keep my friends away from you, one day soon.”

I didn’t know what to say.  This was… I couldn’t believe it!  The words were spinning in my head and I had to…  I threw my arms around Henry, bashing his ribs with the handbasket, my ear pressed to his chest.  “Do you really mean that, Henry?”

I heard his “Of course, I do” through his body, the air in his lungs just reverberating into my ear.  His hands were around me, his one hand stroking my long gold hair, but then I felt him pulling away.

Oh… yeah… we were still in the middle of Walgreens.

“C’mon, let’s go buy this stuff and get back to figure out what we’re gonna do,” he told me.  And that’s when he sang in my ear, at the counter when I was taking the stuff out of the basket, and he saw the balloons, again.

I love my brother.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at this guy’s stand in the big Millennium Park with the mirror bean thing in it and bought some overpriced hotdogs.  They were good hotdogs, but apparently, ketchup is not allowed on hotdogs in Chicago.

Up in our room, we ate the dogs and fries and felt less angry with food in our stomach.  I guess we got a pretty good room for this special occasion, a suite.  There was this fancy sitting room with a couch and chairs and a table and windows and everything; our mom’s bedroom had one big bed in it she’d be sharing with Dad when he made it into town; and Henry and I had our own bedroom with two single beds in it.  They probably thought they were doing us a favor.  Most times when we travelled, we all got one room with two big beds, and I had to share with Henry — which I didn’t mind, at all.  But with actual bedrooms, we knew Mom and Dad wanted to snuggle this weekend.  With two single beds, though, I couldn’t slide over in my sleep and spoon with Henry.  But at least we had privacy.  And our own washroom, which was nice.

We dumped out our supplies on the desk by the TV.  We got the puppy, three kitties, balloons, a blue shirt, an eight-pack of little cereals, six fake roses, a pair of cheap kiddie sunglasses, a sleeveless undershirt, a leotard, red leggings, green wool hat, Aqua Net hairspray, some tape, scissors, Doritos, Ruffles, little gem donuts, and two Cokes.  (The Cokes went into the fridge because we bought two root beers from the hotdog guy.)  The whole thing cost a lot more than Henry wanted to spend, but he had his money from our summer job, and we wanted to give ourselves the options.

We had to get going on these costumes if we wanted to get out there and find tricks-n-treats.  Henry took off his Nike shirt and then his jeans, figuring he’d try ‘Clark Kent,’ first.  Stripping down to our underwear was no big deal — we saw each other like that every day.  But when Henry stood there in just his blue briefs and his socks…  “Hey, if we went back and got you blue leggings, you could be Superman!” I said.

There he was, almost naked.  It was different looking at him in his underwear.  When he was in his shorts, his butt was the same shape, sure, but it looked different in his briefs, like he showed the actual curve.  His front was very different, too — in his shorts, his dick was just a bulge, but here it had shape, you could tell where each of the parts were and what they were doing!

But he stood there, his getting-muscular chest, his arms with summer-work biceps, his strong legs, and that underwear, socks for boots, and he looked like a superhero.  He seemed to consider it.

“I know what you mean,” he said to the floor, looking at his legs and undies, “but we’re not going back.  We should’ve thought of that before.  I’ll bet you there was a Dracula cape there, somewhere.  If we got all black stuff, I could be Bruce Wayne, like after fighting the Joker, like when he got home and he took off his mask.”  Then he looked at our stuff on the table.  He picked up my red leggings.  “But, with these, and my Cornhuskers shirt inside-out, maybe I could be The Flash…”

He tried to step into them, realizing he needed his socks off, then got the leggings up to his thighs, finally realizing his briefs needed to be on the outside of the leggings.

My brother took off his underwear.  I saw his butt.  His real butt.  He was turned away from me, but I couldn’t look away.  My brother was naked.  He put on the leggings, then his briefs, and then his red shirt, and turned to me.  “Yes?  No?”

I was still a little dazed.  “The leggings actually make your legs look skinnier,” I was able to say when I came to my senses.  The combination really didn’t look good, even for a cheap costume.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured…” Henry said, then sat down and took everything off, again.  I couldn’t, like, stand up and run in front of him to look, but just knowing he was briefly naked in my presence, again, was unbelievable.  I didn’t say a thing.  Just enjoyed it.

He found and dressed in his khakis, the new blue tee, and with his button-down shirt open.  Then he got about coloring a Superman S shield on hotel stationery.  I, meanwhile, taped the three kittens to the hotel robe and tried that on.  “Crazy Cat Lady?” I modeled for Henry.

“What are you going to wear under it?  Your jeans, like that?” he asked.  He popped the lenses out of the cheap sunglasses and had his Clark Kent glasses.

I wasn’t sure.  It wasn’t a sexy costume, just funny.  I’d have to mess up my hair.  “Maybe my pajama pants?”

“How about the grapes or the sriracha?”

I ditched the robe and then I had to face the same choice Henry had.  Do I change into the red leggings in the bedroom, or just do it out here, like he had?  I went for broke and decided to tease him back, just to see his reaction.  I stripped down to my bra and panties in front of my brother.  Nothing he hasn’t seen before, but we were here.  “Hand me your red shirt,” I asked as I put the leggings on.

My brother watched me.  He didn’t give me the shirt until the leggings were on.

“With them over your underwear, they’re all bunched up,” he said, clearly looking at my ass. 

I went to the mirror and turned around.  “Yeah, but with the shirt, you can’t see them.”  Henry shrugged, and then helped me out by coloring a “Sriracha” label.

I put on the green wool cap; I thought I looked funny, in a good way.  Henry topped himself off with his suit coat, we took a couple pictures of ourselves (I wish I’d had my camera out when Henry flashed me his butt!), we made sure we had a room key and a couple Walgreens loot bags, and went out into the halls as Clark Kent and Sriracha!

We tried knocking on a room door down our hall.  No answer.  We tried another.  No answer.  The third door said, “What do you want?” 

We sang “Trick or treat!” 

The door said, “Go away.”

We had to figure that would happen.  We had better luck at the next door.  We knocked and it opened.  A man with no shirt stood there.  He had pants and shoes, but no shirt.  He was very hairy, like chest, shoulders, and his back!  I didn’t know men could grow hair on their backs!  He also had some shave cream on his neck, so I guess I knew what we’d caught him at.

“Trick or treat!” we sang.

“Hey-ey… Look at youse!  Yeah, it’s Halloween, I get it.  I didn’t even think kids could…”  He looked down the hall both ways, maybe to see if there were more kids, or any adults nearby.  “Hey, I ain’t got no candy, but youse kids got some nerve, I’ll tell you.  Here.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.  He flicked a couple one dollar bills at our Walgreens bags.

“What are you, a CPA?” he asked Henry.  Henry’s shirt had fallen closed and he opened it to show the S.  “Well, that’s a pretty cheap Superman, guy.  Where’s the effort?  And you, doll-face, I tell you… You wear something sexier, show a little skin instead of dressing up as a Keebler Elf, and I’d give you a few more bucks, you know what I mean?”

I didn’t know what to say to that.  Henry picked up the dollars.

“Hey, Merry Christmas!” the guy said and closed the door.

We went right back to our room.

Once I was in, I pulled off the stupid hat and threw it against the wall, then I ripped off the red shirt and collapsed on my bed.  “This is stupid!  We’re stupid for even trying!”  I felt like crying, and maybe I was, a little.  My eyes were wet.

Henry came over behind me and put his arms around me.  I raised up a bit to let him.  “Don’t pay attention to that gorilla-guy, he’s just an asshole.”

“Gorilla-guy!” I sniff-laughed.  From then on, Henry and I would refer to the ‘gorilla-guy’ in many private jokes.

“But you are a doll-face.  I told you…” he whispered in my ear, “…you are really pretty.”

That did make me smile.  “You know my friends and me all think you’re hot…”

“Your friends… and you?” he repeated.  Oops, I did say that, didn’t I?

I sat up.  “Mm-hm.  I’m your sister, I can judge you.  You look good after all that work this summer.”  And I left it at that.

We went back out by our costume supplies.  What else could I be instead of stupid sriracha?  With my back to Henry, I took off my bra, then stepped into the yellow leotard.  “Maybe gorilla-guy was right, though.  What if I showed more skin and did the Barbie costume?”

“You don’t have to do that…” Henry said, looking right at my chest.  I knew my nipples were pointy right then, but I was feeling a little daring.  Henry did call me pretty, after all.

“Yeah, my underwear is all bunchy, still.  I could take that off,” I teased, “and do a pony tail.  Do you think that would be Barbie enough?”

“You… you could try…” Henry coughed.

I really didn’t like the Barbie combination.  I had no idea what to do with it.  “Yeah, no…  I’m gonna go with the Cat Lady, but I’ll wear my shorts underneath, show some leg.”

And that’s what I went with.  Henry decided to try one a little more Halloweeny, too, like he’d made some effort, and taped four cereal boxes to the sleeveless undershirt, punctured the boxes with the four plastic knives we got from the hotdog guy (why, I don’t know — what do you need knives for with hotdogs?), put his jeans back on, and gave himself some stubble with my mom’s mascara.  We snapped some photos and we were back out the door.

We decided not to go door-to-door to the guest rooms, this time, but went downstairs and hit the front desk and the Concierge.  Both of them, I am happy to report, had a big bag of candy at their desks!  We got full-size Three Musketeers and Kit Kats from the front desk lady, and full-size Reese’s Cups and MilkyWays from the Concierge.  We were going to try the bell captain, but the Concierge quietly shook his head at us.  The front desk lady waved us back over.

“You kids should hit the stores while they’re still open,” she told us.  “Usually, whoever is at the closest-in counter has something, even if it’s just Smarties or Tootsie Pops.  The college kids like to trick-or-treat, thinking it’s funny, but the stores like the good will and surprise them.”

That was exactly what we were hoping to find out!  We started out for the street when the Concierge stopped us.  “Kids, I hate to tell you, but it’s gotten colder out there, now.”  We should have remembered.  It was cold before, too.  “Bring a coat or… change your costume a little?  Like padding or… pants?”

This was going to be the third costume change!  But with four candy bars and two dollars in our bags, this was what we wanted, dang it!

In the elevator, Henry knew he couldn’t put his coat over the cereal boxes — the whole look would be ruined.  Would he go back to Clark Kent?  He decided to try the John Wick look.  I could pad my robe and wear pants, I knew, but I suddenly wondered if people would think I was a homeless person?  When Henry decided on John Wick, I had the idea of matching him, like we might’ve done with Barbie and Ken.

In our room, Henry changed pretty quickly into his good suit he brought for the wedding, taping the little stuffed dog to his shoulder.  He was painting John Wick’s beard on his face with Mom’s mascara brush when I came back from Mom’s room.

I was in my nice dress for the wedding, a red, street-length gown with open shoulders, but I wore the leggings underneath, and borrowed my mom’s black jacket to keep out the chill.  I’d put on a little makeup — not much — and used the curling iron on my long, golden hair, making it flip just below my shoulders, and applied lots of Aqua Net for the wind.  And I carried the six fake roses.

“What do you think?”

Henry was stunned, making me very happy.  “Doll-face, you are not pretty.  You are beautiful!”

I couldn’t hide my smile, and I gave Henry one of my roses.  “Will you accept this rose?”

When he took the flower from me, he leaned in and kissed me.  He kissed me!  A real kiss!  On the lips!  And not a quick birthday peck, a real kiss!  I felt that one right down to my toes.  At first, he just kissed my lips, but when he didn’t pull away, I kissed him back.  When we broke the kiss, I had to shake the stars out of my eyes, but a smile, I’m afraid, was glued to my face, now.

We took a couple photos, grabbed our Walgreens bags, and took the elevator down.  We got a very approving smile from the Concierge as we went outside.  Henry took my hand, like he always did.

When we walked down Michigan Avenue, now we looked like we belonged.  Well, we were certainly dressed right, although Henry’s fake beard — and the doggie — kind of gave us away as kids out for tricks-n-treats.

Not every store had candy for us.  We got a few “Oh, I’m sorry, but aren’t you cute!” responses, but Carrie the desk lady was right and we did get candy at other places.  No more full-size ones, but we did get a lot of M&Ms, Snickers, MilkyWays, and suckers I don’t know the brand of.  One department store had candy, but since the closest desk was cosmetics, the girl there let me try on a nice lipstick to go with my dress and gave me some perfume samples — which was really cool!

Our favorite place was this soul food restaurant.  The lady not only gave us some M&Ms, but felt so bad we hadn’t had dinner, yet, sat us down and gave us plates with samples of short rib street tacos, fried green tomatoes with lump crab, collard green dip and chips, and some parmesan truffle fries.  This was, hands-down, the best stuff we’d ever tasted!  And it was just appetizers, she told us, because the entrée stuff was portioned.  Henry tried to pay, but the lady wouldn’t hear of it, and her husband, who had been cooking in back, came out and recognized Henry’s costume right away.

“Money’s no good — Not if you can’t spend it,” he told Henry, which Henry loved, because it was a line from John Wick, I guess.  The lady wanted to know who John Wick was, and then the man and Henry both said, “John wasn’t exactly the boogeyman.  He was the one you sent to kill the fuckin’ boogeyman!”

Henry said he should have a fake gun, but both the man and lady reacted immediately and said a fake gun is the worst thing you can have in Chicago!  I’m like, Okayyyy…

We asked about any homes in the area to go to, and she said there were some west of the Loop, but things get kind of ‘empty’ in the south Loop at night, and now that it was dark out already, we should either stick to well-lit places or head back.

We took a couple selfies with the couple, and I gave them each a flower, and we were on our way.  (Before the wedding on Saturday, we brought our dad back here for lunch!)

We went as far north as the Chicago River — which isn’t as big as the Missouri, but it was definitely deeper than the Platte, and this lady told us the Chicago River runs backwards for some weird reason — and we still hadn’t reached that John Hand Cock building!  We decided to head back to the hotel.

On the way there, it started raining.  Yep, it started light, and we hoped that would be it, but it got heavy real fast.  There was no avoiding it.  We tried running, but I was in my strappy flats and skidding, luckily still holding Henry’s hand so I didn’t fall.  We tried waiting it out in a doorway, but we were soaked and kept having to move for people.  We just got on with it and made it back to the hotel lobby as soon as we could.

When we got inside, we realized not only was my dress ruined, but Mom’s jacket, and Henry’s whole suit was, too.  I was starting to cry when our friends, Mr. Thomas the Concierge and Carrie, the front desk lady, came to our rescue.  Carrie assured me the things weren’t ruined — just incredibly wet!

We were to undress in our room and call down.  They would have a valet pick up our clothes and have them cleaned and pressed.  They wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow, but we didn’t need them until before the wedding, and our mother didn’t need to know — until the bill came at check-out!

I gave them each one of my wet roses, keeping the last one for myself.

When we were changing, Henry came sliding in front of the windows only in his white button-down shirt and socks, singing into the root beer cup.  “Just take those old-time rock and roll songs and put ‘em on the shelf…”  He was trying to do the Tom Cruise thing from that old movie where he sings in his underwear.  Definitely cheered me up!

But Henry’s shirt and underwear were wet like mine, and they had to go, too.  Our undies and socks were drying over the shower rod, but the nice clothes all went downstairs, somewhere, with the valet.  We were cold, but didn’t bother taking hot showers, just dried off with towels, combed out our hair, and wrapped up.

So that’s how we wound up naked under our plush hotel robes, alone in our room, staring out at the rain on Halloween night.

“You want some tea?” Henry asked me.  “I could use something hot to warm up with, you know?”  There was both a coffee maker and a hot water thingy in the little kitchen area.

I checked out the selection and chose chamomile because I remembered that’s the kind that Peter Rabbit drank in the story.  Henry put a little honey in it and made it very nice for me.

We turned the TV on, but wound up leaving it on the TV guide channel because it was playing a radio station as its soundtrack and the music was kind of Halloweeny — not “Monster Mash” but, like, “The Killing Moon” and Lana Del Rey singing “Season of the Witch.”  We didn’t want to watch anything, we just wanted to relax.  The channel also had the weather forecast — rain this evening.  Who’d a-thunk it?  If only we’d put that on when we were building costumes.

Now that we were settled, we dumped out our bags of loot.  There was a little water, but at least the non-recyclable wrappers kept our chocolate dry!  “Dang!” Henry exclaimed, “we actually got us a pretty good haul.  It’s probably not what we’d have got if we went with Little Ronnie and the others in their neighborhood, but we did pretty good for a couple of left-behind kids.”  We traded a look that showed we still felt a little betrayed.  “Trade you a Kit Kat for your Payday?”  He knew I liked Kit Kats.

We couldn’t help but dig into our haul.  We’d had a good supper at the soul food place, so this was dessert!  So, three candy bars in our bellies, we sat back on the little couch with our bare feet up on the table, looking out at the rain, mugs of hot tea in our hands.

Henry shut off the lamp so we could see the storm over the lake, better.  It was night out, and the city had lot of lights so the clouds were well-lit from below.  And with the big park between our hotel and the lake, we had a pretty good view.  Lots of lightning flashes!  We were just sittin’ there, us all lit up by the blue light of the TV, and I let my head roll over onto Henry’s shoulder.

Henry put his arm around me.  “Well, doll-face, we had us an adventure.”

End of Part one

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