cocktails on 95

The room seemed auspicious enough, smelling of gumbo; a jumble of cities and continents imported on the skin and clothing of tourists happy to be illuminated in the glowing half-light of the Chicago skyline at sunset.I inwardly imagined that if one is forced to drink a cocktail before dinner, then it should most definitely be done on the top floor of the Hancock Tower. Here we were entombed in a steel monolith overlooking Lake Michigan and the teeming streets below whose dust still covered the soles of our shoes.My fear of heights -- thankfully dulled by the Sidecar which sat in front of me -- was discarded somewhere between the 75th and 82nd floors as we had been quickly propelled to this very spot by one of the fastest elevators in North America, according to the building's website. Not to take credit from the wonderful company that alternately enveloped and preoccupied me in conversation while volunteering to catch me if I faltered and needed physical support.

Politics, love life, and Lindsay Lohan were all topics du jour, as Julia, Doug and I deftly danced through the minefields of popular culture, failing to detonate anything more explosive than an equal condemnation of the Bush regime. My mind wandered to the spiders who made their webs outside the windows up here on the 95th floor, logically questioning their survival up here among the clouds. Of course, then I started thinking about the window washers, and was transported in my own mind outside the confines of our glass enclosed space, billowing against the high winds only to be blown to my death below.

My vertigo suddenly returned as quickly as it had disappeared, and the brave face that I had put forth crumbled like the pyramids of Giza.

The fastest elevator in the world indeed.