Thomas. That’s my middle name. Strange that I’m thinking of this before I open my eyes and get out of bed. I have no idea where it came from. I feel like I’m someone who is suffering from both amnesia and dementia. My mind is slipping away like the Fox River that flows through Appleton. 

            A little synth hiccup alerts me to a new text, prompting me to get moving. It’s 7ish and brightish and I’m sluggish. I see the name but it doesn’t register since lately I’ve also but out-of-it-ish. 

            Great meeting you the other night and bringing you good luck! See—I told you that you wouldn’t call yesterday. I still don’t think you remember me. So want to keep the good fortune going and meet me downtown at the Cubs rally? 

            The name on the number is Lexi. 

            I have absolutely no recollection of meeting a “Lexi.” 

            You just sounded like a politician there. 

            True. 

            I just stare at the text. The questions filling me might as well be bubbles above my head. 

            Was I that drunk? 

            Is this a prank from a buddy? 

            The Cubs parade is probably going to be the biggest gathering of humans in modern day history. 

            But I also can’t help but asking the most pressing question: 

            Wonder if Lexi is hot? 

            Forty-five does sort of rhyme with fourteen. They almost sound the same if you say them in the same quick way. 

            “So there’s your unrelated thing coming out of nowhere,” I tell myself. 

            Sometimes I get so tired of internal monologue I have to utter my stream of consciousness out loud. It sounds less ridiculous that way. 

            I start to type a reply. 

            Here we go. 

            You’re a brave person to go downtown with the millions today I text. 

            I can see the reply being typed immediately .

            And you’re a brave man responding to someone you don’t remember. 

            I want to text back and tell her of course I remember, but I don’t. Because, first off, I don’t remember, and second, I think she truly knows that. 

            Was I that drunk? 

            Of course I don’t remember that, and that means that of course I was. 

            I just couldn’t believe the Cubs won the series I type. 

            Really?

            Yeah. Of course. 

            Well, you told me you couldn’t believe you were talking to someone like me.     

            I still have no idea who I’m texting. It could be my next-door neighbor. 

            Who’s that again? 

            I can’t believe I don’t remember any of this I tell her. 

            Maybe a photo will spur your memory. 

            Spur? 

            I wonder if she means to say jog. 

            Then I see the snapshot come through. It’s a photo that somebody else is taking in a bar. A crowded bar. I’m there and smiling and definitely drunk but also definitely animated and alive. I have my arm around the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen myself with. Or that I’ve ever had a photo of texted to me. 

            She’s slim and sexy in a black top with spaghetti straps and dark brown hair tossed over one bare shoulder and brown eyes looking like a model used to posing. High cheekbones and glowing olive skin and . . .

            And yeah, she’s been cropped into a photo with me. Though I study it for a few moments and can’t tell how they did it so well. 

            I close my eyes and beg and plead my memory to conjure up something or anything. I can see myself floating and starting to fall and leaning into her and steadying myself and feeling her cheek move against mine and then hearing her whisper into my ear something that makes me warm and woozy and laugh in utter disbelief. 

            What’d she say what did she say? 

            Mouse got your tongue? she asks. 

            I can’t tell if she’s trying to be funny by messing up these idioms. 

            I’ve suddenly had a few recollections of the night. 

            She types back a .

            I was real she says. 

            If I had to bet on meeting you or the Cubs winning the series, I would have bet on the Cubs. 

            You have a chance to meet me. AGAIN. 

            Again, the slow time to respond, the hesitancy in thinking I’m being punked, the whole—

            Catch me while you can she texts right before sending me an address to somewhere downtown. That’s all she says. I text her a few more times but get nothing. Maybe it’s a prank and maybe it’s a dream and maybe it’s actually real. 

            The photo she sent me sure looks real. 

            I’ve never been a bigger Cubs fan than I am at this moment. 

**

            The rumbling in and outside. Packed and loud and frenetic. So much blue with splashes of red and white. America’s team right here. The glorious Cubs and the minions who follow them. Good think I have a jersey. #34 for Kerry Woods. 

            I read an article about Kerry watching the Cubs win and not only celebrating but also having this sense of great relief. I love the following quote: 

            “It gets rid of everything. Now, we’re just part of the story of the Cubs. We’re done with the curses and all that other shit we had to listen to for years. It’s over. Done. So glad about that.”

            Some of these youngsters. 20-something. Teens. Even the children with their parents. They have no idea. No clue. And honestly, neither do I. I moved up here when I was a junior in high school. My father said he once played baseball but admitted to finding it boring and I swear on my life I never remember throwing the proverbial ole baseball with good ole dad. No. Baseball still remains a bit boring to me even though the World Series ended being anything but. 

            The parts I remember, that is. 

            We’re masses, herded into the station and then out again, slowly and steadily, standing in line, separated from the streets by barricades. I’m just walking with everybody else, knowing I need to get down past Michigan Avenue before I can try to meet up with Lexi. 

            If that’s even her name and if she looks anything remotely like the supermodel I’m pictured with. 

            This is not the sort of woman who should be texting me to meet up. This is the sort of woman who should be sitting next to one of those Cubs players on the bus looking perfect and living the perfect life and wearing the most perfect rock on their finger. 

            Whoever she might be, Lexi told me to meet her near the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago, right next to the lion. I’m certain I’ll be able to find her. Somewhere at least. 

            But when I finally get there, the sidewalks so packed and cops everywhere and a moving sea of blue starting to try and get into place, I try for at least thirty minutes to find her. To see her. I text her a half dozen times. But nothing. 

            I stand on the steps. Then the sidewalk. Then on one side of the lion, then the other, then behind it. Text again asking the obvious questions. But nothing. Nothing. 

            At least I’m there for when the two hundred buses (at least that’s what it seems) go passing by. 

            I’m a Cubs fan, but not as passionate as I was heading down here.          

            I still feel duped. Tricked. 

            What are some more words for this? Cheated and conned and bamboozled and defrauded and victimized and faked out and mislead and hoodwinked and outwitted and screwed and

            WE GET IT ALREADY. 

            I wait until the last bus has passed, then decide to take off before the rest of the masses do the same thing. All the congrats and thanks and the chants of “Go, Cubs, Go!” can be imagined in my head. I will see them later on ESPN and the news and then tomorrow on ESPN and the news and everybody else I see. I won’t, however, see Lexi. At least I don’t think and expect to. Hope? Well, yeah, of course. 

**

            The world is still bright enough to watch pass me by. These suburbs all starting to look the same. I sit in my seat on a half-empty car, seeing glances from others as if to say why aren’t you downtown? I can’t tell them the truth, and part of me doesn’t even know it. 

            Shouldn’t I be with friends, I ask. Where are my friends, my buds, my bros? 

            I’m not married, so hello? 

            Surely I have a few friends. I can’t think of any. The bar the other night—they were there. Did I make such an ass of myself that they didn’t want me to join them celebrating? But then again, I got a few calls and a few texts. But all those are hard to compare to Lexi in any sort of way. 

            I try to come up with names of my buddies but nope. 

            What’s wrong with me? 

             Surely there are friends. Some tight and some just drinking buddies. Hell, I’m not married and don’t have kids so surely I have some friends I spend my time with.            

            Before I get off the plane, I get a text that I assume must be Lexi. Instead, it’s Hensley. 

            Yo where you at? 

            Hensley is surely downtown. I suddenly see half a dozen other texts from him. 

            I’ve been a bad boy with these memories. 

            Long story will tell you next time I see you I text him. 

            LAME

            Hensley’s one of my close buddies. 

            Why didn’t you think of him like forty-five seconds ago? 

            I wait until one of the last stops. Geneva. 

            I didn’t see Lexi and I didn’t see Hensley. But looking through the glass with the sun glowing and fading away, I spend a lot of time seeing myself. A sight I’m not proud of. 

**

I scan my emails and read a favorite one I have saved. It’s from a quote of the day website. 

            “It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”–Ursula K. Le Guin 

            This makes me think of the Cubs and their very long journey. I wonder when it’s going to sink in for all those Cubs fans. Yes, your team finally won and cut the throat of the goat. But let me tell you something (if I could): You’ve lost an essential part of who you happen to be. You’ve been the underdog, the outcast, the nagging little sister, the rebellious little brother. You’ve been a lost toy everybody’s looking for. You’ve been the tiny puppy too expensive to buy but too precious to not want staring at it scratching away. 

            The journey is everything and now the Cubs have reached their end. How will it go next year and the year after that? 

            Thank God I’m not a manager in any kind of way. I don’t want to second-guess and don’t want to suck up. 

            I hear that song that I’d heard through my earbuds on the Metra. Pounding away like a heartbeat. Going back and forth and back and forth like any great synthesizer track. Instrumental. Ulrich Schnauss, who I’m listening to right now. 

            The couch seems to yawn with my weary soul and then suck me into its mouth. 

            A new album that’s inspiring. A song that says “Hold me for the last time . . .”

            I’d take a last time. It’s the first ones I seem to keep missing these days.