Friday I flew to Chicago for the Printers Row Lit Fest. It was my first outing since my bronchitis and I had a number of concerns, not least of which was my cough, which is dormant much of the time but still active and, occasionally, disruptive.
The weather in Chicago was unseasonably cool, as it is wherever I travel (I am a one-man defense against global warming) so Friday evening I went to a restaurant near my hotel. It was Japanese and the two couples at the neighboring table were speaking Polish. Ah, Chicago.
I said something to them in Polish and they asked, kindly, if I were Polish. I said I was American, but had lived in Poland for two and a half years. I mentioned that I had just written a book about Poland, and that I was presenting it tomorrow at the book festival. The one couple, Maria and Tomek, said they would come hear me.
They not only came – they each bought a book. Theirs may now be the only household in America with two copies of Falling into Place.
