That Monday has been captured in my memory as the expenditure of light as it bounced and dappled across the platform at Waukegan station. It was Memorial Day weekend, and we had a five-dollar pass that Julian gave to a vetran as we left the station. I kept mine, and it comes up occasionally, worn and superfluous; forever linty and stuck between punch cards and metro stubs.
From the northern terminal, we left the train and rode our bicycles across the Kenosha county line into Wisconsin-the real province of milk and honey bees, Holstein, hops, corn on the cob, and men on lawn mowers; some of whom scoffed as we rode through their back yards, on a trail aft of Wal-Marts and strip malls. Between wheat fields and suburban annexs came Milkwaukee, in undulating rolls and dips and chain link fences.
Here, we tripped on the outskirts just before nightfall and laid down in a dark park, forested and capped with a skyline of high-rises. I took turns with Julian keeping an ear for the confusion of wilderness or the footing of nightwatchmen who are hungry to evict.
In the still hours of the morning we abdicated, and sat atop the Calvary above Lake Michigan and witnessed the pure linen cast of light creep up the embankment and over the city.
That afternoon we caught up with sleep in down and dandelion dander and wrestled weariness under a coven of sycamore boughs and sweet gums. I was lulled to sleep by the murmur of sailboats strung up in the harbor. And in that field near a school already vacant and a track gone weedy for vacation, we surveyed the verge of  summer. I watched the fractal drift of dust. The day was blaring. It was too bright, almost, to breathe.