The 727 launched itself into the skies over O'Hare precisely on time. Dorothy did not look up from the notes she was transcribing into the computer in her lap. But as the plane banked steeply over the city below, she reached to steady the briefcase on the seat beside her and was ambushed by the view through the window: an amber, late-afternoon radiance had broken through the overcast that had coated the city in a glutinous gray caul for the duration of her business conference, and now the city below glowed like a green and gold fairyland. A wave of poignancy, compounded equally of weariness and regret, flooded over Dorothy. In a mere four days, Chicago had become a habit, a habitation, a home-away-from-home, but her whirlwind schedule had left no time to investigate its character and uniqueness. The city was just another face in a crowd, fleetingly glimpsed on the way from here to there.
Now, whenever anyone asked Dorothy if she had ever been to Chicago, she would remember not the fishy, iron-tainted smell of Lake Michigan but the impersonal, air-conditioned non-smell of a classy hotel. She would remember not the clackety-clack of the "L" but the soft whoosh of elevators and the endless drone of seminars and power lunches. Not the dozens of architectural wonders — neo-classical, Wrightian, or post-modern — but featureless conference rooms. She would remember a hundred Chicagos, each one indistinguishable from an equal number of New Yorks, San Franciscos and Miamis.
The plane completed its turn and began to level out. Below Dorothy, the city sparkled, bejeweled: there the golden fingers of the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center part of her gleaming tiara; here the loops of the Chicago River a jade ribbon around her neck. To the east, the lake was a smooth green slate, awaiting a wizard's imprimatur. Possibilities unfolded on the screen of Dorothy's imagination: Down there somewhere, a best friend, patient and wise, sat undiscovered, listening to smoky jazz in a dark club where Dorothy was not dancing. Down there somewhere, a compatriot stood up staunchly against injustice, and someone who was not Dorothy took courage from his example. In a lakeshore park, a small, black dog leaped to catch a ball Dorothy had not thrown, and someone who was not Dorothy threw back her head and laughed for the sheer joy of laughing. And somewhere, lips Dorothy had not kissed, the warm curves of a body Dorothy had not caressed, a strong, beating heart that Dorothy had not cherished, went to bed aching and lonely.
Oz is real, as real as you and I and Dorothy, a forever undiscovered country full of wonders and the time to explore them. Oz is real, as real as life and death and the gravity that Dorothy's plane defies, and it is named Chicago or Austin or Poughkeepsie. Oz is real, and Dorothy suddenly wanted to hurl herself into the cockpit and order the pilot to turn around, go back, she wasn't finished yet, dammit.
She dropped the computer into the expensive Italian leather briefcase and snapped it shut. She shrugged out of her linen jacket, unfastened the top button of her oh-so-dressed-for-success raw silk blouse, and slipped off her sensible pumps. Settling back into the cushions, she lifted her gaze to the burning horizon, and thought, Next time — next time I'm traveling by ruby slipper.
— the end
© 1993, 2004, 2005, 2006 by Carrie Richerson. Comments? email: carrie@carriericherson.info