I’d already ridden past the Loop stops. I got off at Division, looked at the congestion on the roads below, decided a taxi would be useless, and jumped on the next inbound train.
It seemed as though we were going three miles an hour, waiting at each stop long enough for someone to deliver a baby, crawling into town while the driver did her nails or texted her lover. I hovered by the exit, as if that would make the trains ahead of us speed up and clear the tracks. I scrolled through the news feeds on my phone but couldn’t pick up anything about violence in the Loop.
We finally reached the University of Illinois exit. I sprinted along the platform in my dress sandals, up the stairs, pushing my way past slower commuters with a breathless “Excuse me,” taking curses from people I knocked into.
As soon as I got to the street, I could see the cop cars starting to appear. Gapers had backed up the traffic; drivers were honking madly. Someone had stalled on the bridge over the expressway with a boiled-out radiator, and cops were leaning on their own duck-call horns, trying to find a way through the backup.
Over all the traffic noise I could hear shouts from a crowd near the Malina Building. I moved as fast as I could through the stacked-up cars, ignoring a whistle and a shout from one of the cops who’d managed to get close to the building.
Some forty or fifty people were marching around the foundation’s entrance. Their posters contained such appetizing slogans as “Nazis out of Illinois!” “Wetbacks, swim home!” “Salanter Belongs in a Death Camp.”
I tried to push past them to look for my cousin. A woman with tightly permed hair blocked my path. “Do you work for the Nazis?”
“Do you work at all?” I snapped.
I ducked under her poster, but a group of protesters had linked arms near the building’s doors; I could see a cluster of people inside the lobby doors but couldn’t get close enough to tell if my cousin was among them.
More cops arrived. Whistles competed with chants, and a couple of patrol officers forced the phalanx blocking the door to start moving. The officers wouldn’t let me into the building, but I was close enough to see that the mob had thrown eggs, tomatoes, and even balls of paint at the fa?ade.
I pulled out my phone to text Petra and was told by a cop I had to keep moving.
“I’m not part of this bunch of cretins; I’m looking for someone they were attacking.”
The officer was uninterested in anything I had to say and told me either to keep moving or face arrest. When the cops are in crowd-control mode, it’s impossible to talk to them.
WGN and GEN already had camera crews on the scene. As I moved back to the street, Fox and NBC both pulled up. I saw a GEN camerawoman I know and thought about worming my way through the crowd in her wake but decided I was better off trying to find Petra by phone.
The only new message from Petra had come in while I was still on the L: Vic, where r u? girls terfied, me 2.
Me, too, little cousin. I texted Petra, hoping she hadn’t been so mobbed that she’d lost access to her phone. I circled the building, looking in the parking lot, and then started on the side streets. Before I went completely demented, my phone chirped at me. Petra, at a coffee bar two blocks from me.
By the time I got there, my nylons were as tattered as my nerves. Petra was at a table outside with Kira Dudek and Arielle Zitter. The two girls had huddled as close to Petra as the plastic chairs allowed. They had eggshells in their hair and on their T-shirts, and a blotch of red paint covered the left side of Arielle’s face.
“Vic!” My cousin sprang to her feet, tension washing out of her face. “Thank God. This was a horrible afternoon. We were coming back from a trip to a bookstore and this mob attacked us, they chased us all the way to the expressway and threw paint and crap. I thought they were going to push Kira off the bridge, but we finally got away.”
I sat down and took Kira and Arielle each by the hand. “What a dreadful afternoon for all of you. And nothing to drink?”
“They wouldn’t let us inside.” Arielle’s face was pinched with fear. “I wanted to wash off this horrible paint and they acted like we were street people or something, but we were afraid to go back to Malina for Petra’s car. I tried calling and texting my mom but I can’t get through; I’m scared she’s stuck in the building and they’ll hurt her.”
“The police are there now,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s getting into the building, but why don’t you call your grandfather, or his assistant? They probably have a way to get a message to your mom.”