[FICTION][04/01/26]Up Up Up
by Sierra Kruse
Today I am leaving work behind on my commute home. The campaign, for Chicago Alderman, could be going better and it could be going worse. But I’m leaving it behind. Right now, in this moment, I’m shedding my attention to systemic injustice. By the time I step off this train and into my home I will be thinking about things like laundry detergent and who I would most like to sleep with and what personal failings are preventing me from achieving these sexual aspirations.
The air smells vaguely like piss and gum rotted from collecting dirt. But the seat next to me is open and I remember, for that, to be grateful. On the redline home I'm avoiding the eyes of those around me with the bulk of my brown headphones. I can tell there is a commotion on my left but do not look. I’ve got my phone out and up to my face.
I watch a TikTok of a dog learning to speak to its owners through a series of buttons it hits with its paw. He or She hits. Certain buttons are affirmative and others are negative. They ask the dog what it thinks about things like ball and walk and park and mailman. It shakes its body while pouncing on the buttons. Curls the same color as the carpet fall into its eyes. I am not a linguist but I am a dog lover. I have healthy skepticism about the methods being employed.
The next video fed through the algorithm is someone I recognize. He starts the video almost naked, in tighty-whities which I can tell are designer. On the screen appears the words, Get Ready With Me For Chemo. A dark take on the common trend. The beat of a shoegaze song drops as he pulls a grey shirt over his torso and shakes his wet hair. He is familiar because we went on a date once.
Above the video’s description is glowing text, From Your Contacts, letting me know how the algorithm delivered this to me. Once I remember his face the whole thing feels very obvious. I watch the shirt slide on and he steps into a pair of black Zara pants. How it could have taken me so long to recognize him is beyond me. His confidence is performative, which I remember liking.
The video plays out with no added text, just the soft beat of the song and some final accessories. The last frame is the door closing as he walks out of the apartment. I think of the man I met filming this video. Closing the door, opening it back up, grabbing his phone before taking the train to his cancer treatment.
The next video I scroll to features the top five threats to the future of a democratic internet. It is ironic, and also something I spend way too much time thinking about at my job. It is exactly what I am leaving behind for the day.
***
The biggest issue separating the Candidate from her opponent is campaign financing. The two mostly agree, and vote similarly blue across the ballot. The primary draw of my Candidate is her refusal to take money from the police board, the housing developers, and from real estate more generally. Her opponent took no such stance. Now it’s all coming to a head in a rented office on Sheridan with too short of ceilings.
“They want us to sell out our communities!”
The Candidate preaches at the end of the table. She is right, and we know it. Her opponent refuses to stand by Chicago’s sanctuary status, because of the police money and federal pressure to cooperate with ICE. She is right, morally and politically and strategically. It is nice when these things align like three stars in a slot machine.
The CPD talking points are shallow, driven by images of asylum seekers, twenty or sometimes fifty people deep, camping outside police stations. Almost all are South American, coming from El Salvador or Venezuela.
My Candidate is impassioned. I am very tired. Instead of sleeping I watch videos of my old date going to chemo. I try to match my memory of him with his online profile. He is an immigrant, coming up from South America with a bit more money in his pocket than most. I was struck by the way he spoke of his private education, like a birthright, and the lopsidedness of our experience. I was struck by what it meant to grow up rich where he came from and middle class where I came from. I was struck by how it landed us here.
For our date, I laid out a picnic blanket. He showed up empty-handed, smiling. No apartment, no job, but so handsome. And I had a case of beer we shared over two hours. When he placed his entire hand across my quad, it was warm. He had skinny arms and I had thick thighs.
He told me my haircut was the most incredible thing about me and I laughed because we were not going to end up together. I took him home anyway, undressed him like that chemo video in reverse, and told him to leave just before we fell asleep. I knew I’d never text him, even though he made me promise to. And I didn’t think twice about it. He drank three-fourths of the case of beer. I’ve been on many dates that didn’t go anywhere.
The next morning I decide to text him. His number isn’t saved, but I know it from the unanswered messages. I consider what to say. I think about it so long that my brain falls asleep like static.
I go into the iPhone games and select the pool icon and send it before going to work.
***
I’ve got my mind elsewhere and my phone in my pocket, waiting for a text back. If I don’t get one there is a chance I may have acted poorly when I sent that pool invitation to a man I ignored after one date, who had recently moved to America and now has cancer. Thyroid cancer, to be exact.
We are sitting around one big table with no two chairs matching when I feel the buzz. I silence it, but I know.
The Candidate is at the head of the table, with a self-assuredness I find funny. She tells us that we lost a large donor. The neighborhood safety board got to them, and had numbers to back it up. We were prepared for this. All kinds of biased crime tracking has accompanied the city's understanding of immigration since its founding. Now it’s our problem. My problem, today. She asks what we do.
“We go to the voters,” I suggest. “Socials are cheap. And we know voters want ICE out, want a sanctuary city. We remind them of that.”
Our communications director asks, “What is the post?”
I think of Benny’s TikTok. “Probably short form videos.”
***
I scroll quickly and see an old friend, an aspiring pop star, doing a popular TikTok dance. Then a trailer for a new Jude Law movie. Then a five year old boy winning fourth place for his prized goat at the fair. He’s over the moon. Then an edit of a popular sitcom to a Chopin song.
I get a message from Benny. It’s him taking the final shot in our pool game. He wins.
How was your day? he sends.
I’m surprised you wanna talk. I quickly follow it with, I’m sorry i didn’t respond to your messages.
He replies, This isn’t Benny, this is David. I’m his brother.
Oh! My bad.
He sends me an invitation to start a new game.
I remember hearing about his younger brother on the date. He was less enthusiastic to be here than Benny. There was more tying him to home. Benny told me it was hard to be the older sibling. I almost laughed at the burden every member of every family feels, and at the true and honest corresponding reality. I think of the two of them, alone in a hospital waiting room. But there is nothing I can do. It wouldn’t lighten any load to have a strange American girl beside them.
I play David back in pool.
***
The new campaign video goes live and lands in my feed after an ad for a lipstain which is applied in a thick goop and then peeled off like sunburnt skin, and followed by images of a recent, unstoppable flood in the south.
In our video, constituents stand in front of three-flats and businesses along Devon. We filmed neighbors in front of the rocky pier, with Lake Michigan as the background. Everyone says how long they have lived here, from one to thirty years, and speaks on Chicago as a sanctuary city.
Much of what needs to be reiterated on a policy level can be found in the posters lining kindergarten classrooms.
Leave it nicer than you found it.
Sharing is caring.
Treat others how you want to be treated.
I scroll to the next video. Benny is back again, but this time he isn’t alone. The video is a similar Get Ready With Me, with a new lo-fi beat. The biggest difference is a woman appears with him, drifting in and out of frame. Eventually she is beside him, with shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes. In the final moments of the video, she falls into him, grasping at his waist.
She is tagged, and in her photos she wears hospital scrubs. She is most likely a nurse, and is most likely dating Benny. Most likely, they are dating and they met at the hospital where she works and where he is a patient. She is older than me, but only by a few years. Our names are similar but not the same. Despite everything, they look happy.
Mostly it is empty to know all of these things. I play David in pool and text him.
How was your day?
Before he responds, I worry that I did something wrong. Then he texts back.
It was pretty normal, but good! And then after a minute he adds, How are you?
Nothing exciting…just work.
What do you do for work?
I work on a political campaign.
Lol!
We continue with the game until I arrive home and then we start another one as I cook dinner in the back of my apartment with the window open. We do not say that we are both lonely. I imagine we are, though. Nighttime falls over me and my glass of wine. I close the windows. We play until I fall asleep, early in the evening.
***
We’re at the bar where the windows are doors that open onto the street when I beat David at pool and the Candidate wins the election. The bar is filled with my colleagues, dressed for a Casual Friday. Mark from Admin gets the call first and I watch him pull the Candidate to the side.
The Candidate gathers the group around the edges of the bar. For a moment I think she’ll step onto it with a pale beer in a pint glass, in victory. Instead she stays on our level. The announcement sends everyone into each others’ arms. Mark has a hand around the ball of my shoulder. His face is glistening with happy sweat. He stumbles, just a little tipsy. The Candidate's handshake is firm, a teensy bit bashful. My colleague in socials tells me she’ll see me on Monday. I am glad to have a job. The feeling is relief, if anything.
But really, when I take the train home, the feeling is closer to nothing. I am one stop away when clarity kicks in about my inability to affect change, and about the tininess of my life. Thoughts are not feelings nor are they beliefs. Still, it’s confusing to me because my worries and feelings and beliefs and thoughts come from the same voice.
I am on the girlfriend's TikTok again, scrolling through dancing videos. Then a farmer’s market haul with carrots of all colors. Then a birthday post for a college roommate.
I get an invitation for a new game of pool from David, and there is a text along with it.
It would be very helpful, he texts.
For my brother and me
if we got married.
Once again I feel nothing. Still, I consider it.
SIERRA KRUSE is a writer, artist, and waitress living in Chicago. She has previously published with Peach Mag, Hooligan Magazine, and Allium, a Journal of Poetry and Prose. Find her work at sierrakruse.com or on instagram @blushing247.