Chicago Love Tapestry

About the Book

Chicago Love Tapestry is a novel based on a one act romantic comedy with strong thematic elements about the "tangled web" love weaves: new relationships seem to develop inevitably in the wake of relationships gone awry but can never quite relinquish the baggage. Two people reeling from recent divorces collide one rainy Saturday afternoon in Central Park: a travel agency owner from Chicago named Autumn, and a director/playwright from Alabama named Michael Green. Michael rushes to Autumn´s aid when she is mugged. She warms to his Southern charm, and they sardonically discuss their inescapable ties to their exes. While he escorts her back to her hotel, the Plaza, they continue to commiserate. Autumn claims she has been commissioned by her former inlaws to bail her ex hubby, Clay, out of NYC jail for a DWI, in which he hit a taxi, injuring a mobster´s son, Little Mario Gotcha. Michael claims he is in town for his brother Ryan aka Donnatella NoBuddy´s drag show ("came out of the closet in a Baptist household"). Autumn senses, however, that he is inextricably bound to his ex, an actress named Gisele, who constantly hounds him for money, and wonders if Michael still loves Gisele. She also wonders whether she is too old for Michael. Arriving at her suite, he mixes drinks while she, a muddy mess from the attempted rape, soaks in a bubble bath. She watches through a cracked door him caressing a tapestry draped across the couch. He turns on Chicago´s Greatest Hits and dances, with drinks aloft, to the bathroom door. She invites him in ("Don´t be such a gentleman; I´m under the bubbles") and answers his questions about the tapestry, which her Illinois farmer´s wife grandmother had made during her childhood. She explains that the "baby quilt" was made to comfort her during Autumn´s father´s absence in Vietnam. The bitter child had considered it a good luck charm providing sweet dreams of her father´s safe return. He did return safely, and Autumn wishes that other families during our "current (Iraqi) conflict" were so lucky. He offers to wash her hair, and she consents, always drawing the shower curtain for each rinse, providing a parody of the Psycho shower scene and introducing a film noir atmosphere to the scene and to their conversation. They trade family anecdotes. She then quizzes Michael about his plays, two of which are in pre-production: a Civil War play in Baltimore, and a Katrina evacuation play in New Haven, for which he wrote an ode with serious gay overtones about two holdout lovers deciding to face the impending storm rather than to run. Autumn and Michael read the ode aloud to each other and apply the meaning to their own budding feelings for each other. She collars him, dragging him into the tub, and they become passionate, finally consummating their feelings in bed. During the afterglow, Autumn, believing Michael to be asleep, frets in a stage whisper that he will leave her come daylight, a stream-of-consciousness recitation strung together by the titles of Chicago hits, which run compulsively through her head. Michael, too, realizes that both may have to trade their dreams for the dawn.....

Erik Powell, Washington, DC.

About the Author

Erik Powell, Sr. is a Greenville, South Carolina Kay and was a "military brat" who grew up in Albany, Georgia and in Norfolk, Virginia. An Advertising Executive at the Washington Blade in Washington, DC., he is a "not too distant" cousin of novelist/essayist Gore Vidal and of former President Jimmy Carter. He has a son, a daughter, and a granddaughter. He is now working on a sequel to Chicago Love Tapestry, furthering the adventures of Autumn and Michael and introducing the "phantom" characters from the first volume ("they show up to complicate things for Autumn and Michael, but you're gonna love the romp--and them, too!"). Meanwhile, a live Los Angeles radio broadcast of Chicago Love Tapestry is in production by Powell's close friend, screenwriter Michael Coulombe. Powell is also completing research for a lifelong project, Devour the Widow's House, a novel about General Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Campaign of 1862. He and his "international cast of characters--our church 'gang'"-- divide their time between DC and his beloved Shenandoah Valley. He invites readers to write him for a response at erik.powelldc@yahoo.com