She hadn't quite finished when she got up suddenly and went outside to a pay phone. She made two longdistance phone calls and in five minutes was in a cab on the way back to her houseboat, wondering if Sam would loan her the money for a plane ticket.

Beneath the 727, the sheet of Lake Michigan — so much bluer than New York Harbor — met the North Shore somewhere near Wilmette. The fragile lattice dome of the Baha'i temple rose just above the dark green sponge of late-summer trees.

Rune, looking through the viewfmder of the little JVC video camera, lost sight of the temple as the plane eased out of its bank. She released the shutter. The wheels lowered with a quivering rush of protest against the slipstream, bells sounded and lights came on and in five minutes they were on the ground at O'Hare. With the roar of the reverse thrusters, the final-approach thoughts of mortality vanished.

“Welcome to Chicago,” the steward said.

I don't know about that, Rune thought, and unbuckled her seat belt.

“This city is flat... It's not like New York, where all the energy is crowded onto a rocky island. It's a sprawl, it stretches out, it's weak, it's...” Rune's voice faded; the miniature tape recorder sagged.

“Dissipated?” The cabdriver offered.

“Dissipated?” Click. She shut off the recorder.

Rune glanced at his head, balding on top but hair pulled back from the sides and tied into a long ponytail. In the rearview mirror she noticed he had a demonic goatee.

“Diffused?” he tried.

Click.

“... It's weak and diffused... Great expanses of land stretch between the pockets of...”

“How about extend?” the driver said. “You used stretch earlier.”

“I did?” The train of her poetic thought vanished. Rune dropped the tape recorder in her bag.

“What are you, a writer?” he asked.

“I'm a film maker,” she said. Which she wasn't exactly, she figured, if being something had to do with making regular money while you did it. On the other hand, filmmaker had a lot more class than occasional waitress at a bagel restaurant on Sixth Avenue, a job she'd just accepted.

Anyway, who was going to check?

The driver — actually part-time student, part-time driver — loved movies and concluded by the time the cab cruised past Lawrence Avenue that Rune should do a film on Chicago.

He shut off the meter and for the next half hour took her on a tour of the city.

“Chicago means 'Wild Onion,' ” he said. “That'd be a good way to open the film.”

He told her about Captain Streeter, the Haymarket Riots, Colonel McCormick, William Wrigley, Carl Sandburg, Sullivan and Adler, the Sox and the Cubs, the Eastland boat disaster, the Water Tower, Steve Goodman, Big Bill Thompson, Mayor Daley, the ugly Picasso monkey woman, snow and wind and humidity, Saul Bellow and Polish, German and Swedish food.

“Kielbasa,” he said with admiration in his voice.