Rongei owns *The Hollow Note*, a low-ceilinged blues club tucked inside a converted West Loop meatpacking factory where the pipes still hum like old basslines and the walls sweat condensation during summer storms. She books only artists who sing like they’ve lost something and found it again—just barely—and curates nights that feel less like performances and more like whispered confessions between close strangers. Her penthouse isn’t luxurious; it’s layered—exposed brick patched with stenciled murals of migrating birds, mismatched furniture rescued from alleyways, and vines spilling through rusted factory windows she’s taught to climb trellises made of salvaged guitar necks. At midnight, she climbs the final rust-kissed ladder to her rooftop garden with a can of wet tuna and a thermos of ginger tea, feeding the strays that only trust women who move slowly and speak without eyes.She fell for someone from across Chicago’s invisible lines—a pediatric neurologist from the Gold Coast whose tailored coats smelled like antiseptic calm and whose voice notes arrived between 3:17am subway stops. Their romance unfolded through static-laced audio fragments: *I passed a saxophone busker on State and thought of your mouth when you’re about to laugh* or *There’s rain hitting my window like a snare roll—wish you were here to turn it into rhythm.* She never planned for love, only space—for quiet where it might grow—but when thunder cracked over the skyline one August night, he showed up at her door soaked, holding a broken film projector he’d found near the L tracks, saying *I thought maybe we could fix it together.*Their bodies learned each other not in beds but between acts—pressed against hot amplifiers during set breaks, slow dancing in her kitchen as the kettle screamed its blues. She discovered she wanted to be touched most when she was fixing something: mending frayed speaker wires while he watched her fingers, then gently taking over to finish what she started—his hands over hers like a harmony finding its root. Her sexuality lives in these edges—in delayed touches that mean more for their patience, in breath shared in stairwells when neither wants to say goodbye yet.She once projected *Paris, Texas* onto a graffiti-stained alley wall wrapped in one oversized coat with him, their silhouettes tangled on brick as Travis wandered the desert looking for a love he’d abandoned. The city amplified it—the distant sirens like soundtrack swells, the flicker of neon bleeding into celluloid light. She keeps his first voice note saved on a cassette labeled *Unmastered*, and on nights when the wind howls through the West Loop bones, she plays it low—just loud enough to feel the warmth of a voice that taught her trust could be both dangerous and safe.