Marie:

She’s sitting at the dining room table of a loft apartment. The floor-to-ceiling window that faces Milwaukee Avenue bathes the table in hot light. Marie has been making bikinis from scratch for days and swaths of colorful elastic and white string are spread out before her. The sewing machine whirrs then stops short as she looks up, squinting against the sun, to tell me the story.

A One-Minute Interview:

“My parents were both crazy suburban runaways and they met at The Exit, so you already know where this story’s going.” She can’t even say The Exit without laughing. “Obviously they were a perfect match because anyone who would ever call The Exit their favorite bar was a perfect match back then.” When was this? “It was, like… the seventies?” That’s impossible. “No, you’re right, it would have been the eighties. The end of the eighties. My mom was a cocktail waitress and my dad was a regular. Then they both started talking and combining and collabing their bizarre ideas and came up with a vegetarian restaurant idea called Earwax. They came up with Earwax, which actually was named after music because they both loved music.” Music? “Y’know like ears because ears listen and wax cuz that’s slang for like records, like Hey man, you listen to this wax? So then they combined their record collections and got an espresso machine and rented out the space right below the blue line train over there—” She motions out the window toward the Damen stop, to a Stan’s Donuts, its pastel pink sign blinking from down the road. “And from there they started having poetry readings and little shows until it just became like an artist hangout,” she trails off. “I wish you could just ask my mom. Also, there was some weird scone battle going on at the time against this other coffee shop. The other coffee shop was famous for their scones and got pissed when Earwax started selling scones and like, well I don’t really know what they were trying to do exactly but it was a rivalry. Oh, Busybee! The place was called Busybee! I forgot that Earwax didn’t start as a restaurant, it started as a little coffee shop across the street from Busybee. Right. So then they eventually moved because my mom came to an agreement with Busybee that as long as they weren’t on the same corner it would be okay. Then my mom started co-renting the space where Myopic Books is—” Marie motions outside again where dusty-shelved, jam-packed Myopic still stands, directly across the street. “Then it became the restaurant on the ground-floor with all the books upstairs, and then my parents started renting out movies instead of focusing on record-playing.” Movies? “Like artsy films, bizarre stuff. So then, what had happened was, it just started growing and growing because of the whole art thing—wait sorry, I forgot to tell you the restaurant was Coney Island-themed, like circus themed, and so it attracted a lot of weirdos. So then they decided to expand again because they wanted their own space and for, like, revenue, right? So then when the building across the street went up for sale they finally saw an opportunity to buy on Milwaukee avenue. Here. So then the restaurant moved to where the Doc Store is and my parents built their house above. So Earwax kept attracting people and the neighborhood ended up becoming, you know, like little hipster heaven. Obviously, as you know. But it was cool. It was cool before everything was cool all the time.” What was good there? “The black bean burger was the most popular, and also our hummus. There’s still a guy down the street who brings up the hummus to my mom whenever he sees her. The sad thing is that I don’t remember much of the food because I had such a, what do you say, a non-acquired palette, I was a little kid. And so I don’t really remember anything except having the french toast with the marzipan and the grilled cheese. And the booths I remember. When you walked in, there was this high metal gate and the booths all lined up to it. Like circus cages. And there was a giant monkey sculpture with a giant penis. Giant! Like that’s the reason the monkey would have been in the circus, its giant penis,” she’s laughing now. “So then when the restaurant closed down my mom had to take it in, you know she had to keep whatever was still a little valuable, and the statue sat in our living room throughout high school and I would put hats on the penis. Yep. Pretty embarrassing.”

A little context:

After a series of traveling mishaps, I spent the bulk of quarantine living with Marie in her mom’s building, the ground floor of which was, once, Earwax Cafe. It was the Doc Marten store for a long time at that point, it still is. In high school, I used to be so jealous that Marie got to live above the Doc Marten store. Not for the shoes, I was over Docs at that point, but for the apartment upstairs which had such a high, enchanting ceiling. Marie’s mom used to let her throw parties there, she was cool. I went even though, technically, we weren’t really friends. Not yet—she was hooking up with my ex-boyfriend back then. The first time I ever saw Marie was on the steps of the field house at Wicker Park and his hand was on her knee. She’d just gotten off a shift hosting at Umami Burger. She was double-fisting bottles of pink wine.

But, you know, things happen. We got to know each other. In New York, actually. We both went to college there and ran into each other at a Trader Joe’s. Marie only lasted a year at college, she moved back to Chicago, but we stayed close. And when the pandemic hit, I ended up staying with her on the third floor of the big building on Milwaukee. Her mom lived on the second floor. She rented the top out as an AirBnb but all the trips were canceled, naturally. I finished my classes there, in the loft, online. I graduated there too.

One of my last assignments was to let someone talk for a minute straight and write down everything they said.

A little conclusion:

After Earwax closed, long before I met Marie, her mom rented out every floor of the building on Milwaukee until they could afford to move back in. Owning a building like that is a special thing, and a cash cow if you play your cards right. She was really proud to own it. I assume she still does. I wouldn’t know though, I don’t talk to Marie anymore. Things happen. Still, I often think about the months I spent living with her, when the world was on pause. When even Milwaukee Avenue was silent.

I would dutifully try on Marie’s ill-fitting bikinis. I would look out the giant window to the empty street. Every morning, I’d wake up thinking maybe today. Maybe today, people will appear again, eating donuts and day-drinking and browsing expensive vintage shops. I kept expecting one of the dumb boys we knew to bound up the steps, any second, a thirty-rack smuggled under their jean jacket. I never went to Earwax. I only knew the Wicker I knew. Isn’t that always how it goes? I only ever knew the building on Milwaukee Avenue as two things: the Doc Marten store and someone’s home.