“These fellas down here can get you some leaf for ten,” she said. Leaf? I looked at her face and then at my companion’s. He didn’t seem to know what it was either. We were two ignorant white guys sitting in a parked car somewhere off Chicago Avenue in the deep dark black of west-side Chicago.
Our contact was a black-woman-who-could-be-trusted-and-knew-her-way-around. We followed her car off the Stevenson onto Central and traveled north to Chicago Avenue, through neighborhoods of burnt-out buildings freshly boarded up with a sloppy finality that let you know nothing was going to be built there for a long time to come. If there was hope in those streets, I didn’t see it. She wound us through a maze of small one-way streets and finally pulled over just before a brightly lit intersection. We parked directly behind her. She came back to us and my friend handed her a rolled-up bill, I didn’t see how much. “Just be a minute,” she said.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“Two white guys sitting in a parked car in this neighborhood?” I said. “Not suspicious at all.”
I began to wonder why this intersection was so brightly lit. None of the others nearby were, but this one was so bright that the front of the building where the young men were sitting was as white as a marquee, and search as I might I couldn’t find a source of light. Nor could I see any life other than the guys on the stoop and the people who passed by. There were no businesses; the apartments all seemed lived in, but this was a section of the city without flora–no trees and no grass, not even on the berm between the street and sidewalk.
“There she is.” Our friend had stopped to talk to the young men in front of the building. Not for long. She came up to the driver’s door and motioned for us to roll the window down. She leaned in and started talking like she was visiting with a neighbor.
“Marijuana, but it tastes like mint. Good stuff, but I want to go out. Like I say, if you staying at home it get you high.”
