Angels of Detroit (5 page)

Again the cop gestured for her to stop. Turn around, his fingers said. Go back.

But the girl kept coming. And when she couldn’t go any farther, she reached out over the barricade, and with a smile for all the crowd to see, she wrapped her arms around his waist. The camera zoomed in, and the screen filled with arms and badge and weapon. The cop lowered his head, as if in order to speak into the girl’s ear. They looked as though they were dancing. The speakers moaned with applause.

Myles looked around the club. Sticks in hand, the three billiard players stood in a row facing the stage. So did the bartender. He’d even put his phone away. The two guys at the bar had raised their eyes from their beers.

But there was still no sign of McGee.

Up on the screen, the cop put his free hand on the girl’s shoulder, trying to pry her off.

The girl hung on, cheek against his stomach, smile straining.

And then the moment came: desperate and out of ideas, the cop placed his gloved hand against the girl’s chest, square on the yellow disk of the daisy. Leaning into it, with all his strength, he shoved her backward onto the pavement. The instant the girl hit the ground, the barricade fell, and before they had a chance to flee, the riot cops themselves tumbled under a wave of bodies.

Just then a few of the stage lights flashed on, and the screaming voices of the crowd in the video were replaced with an even louder rush of music, as Fitch, Holmes, and April started to play.

The music came fast, Fitch and Holmes bent over their guitar and bass, grimacing. In the back corner of the stage, just below the sheet, eyes wide in terror, April hammered an unsteady beat. Fitch’s voice thundered over the speakers. The kids had moved away from the wall, watching with open mouths.

On the screen flashed a fractured collage of images: crowds and banners and dancing protesters. The images flickered as fast as Holmes’s bass, returning once every twenty seconds to the continued unfolding of the opening scene.

Some of the kids around Myles were shouting at the screen, their faces flush and alive. This was the passion Myles had been talking about. This was what he’d been trying to explain to McGee. They needed to recapture the pleasure, the joy. He looked around again. She still wasn’t here.

He had to remember this scene, every detail; he would have to describe it to her in a way she’d understand. He’d have to tell her everything she’d missed.

The kids around him were raising their fists. He saw clenched teeth, sharpened lines across their brows.

And that was when he realized he’d been wrong. This wasn’t joy at all. The kids’ mouths were twisted and angry. Myles glanced at the screen. They were delighted by the trampling of the police, thrilled.

“No,” Myles said out loud, but nobody heard him. No one could. “No,” he said again. They’d gotten it all wrong.

By now Myles had seen the video at least a hundred times. But even so, watching the events unfold on the screen was like reliving them all over again. He felt himself clutching the camera. He felt himself running.

Then the screen went black.

The video cut off so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it was as though the ground had given way beneath him. Myles thought he might fall. The room had changed, become just a room. He could see the kids around him felt it too. But then they began to move to the music. The band played on.

Myles was the only one left standing against the wall. He raised his arms and waved. He needed to tell them—Holmes, Fitch, April. Anyone. They had to do something to fix the video. But Holmes stared vacantly out at the audience. Fitch was gazing at his shoes. April’s eyes looked as though they were closed.

Still waving, Myles made his way across the floor, bumping into the scattered crowd. He was halfway to the stage when he felt someone touch him—a tap on his shoulder.

“They can’t see you.” There was a guy standing beside him with wild, curly red hair, dressed in a winter coat. The guy was older than the kids, but Myles wasn’t sure if he was supposed to know him, if he was one of those people from back in the day.

The guy pointed toward the ceiling. “The lights,” he said.

Myles kept going. He waved until he’d nearly crawled up onto the stage, and then it was Fitch, not Holmes, who saw him first. Fitch followed Myles’s finger. He saw the blue screen. He nodded. But he showed no sign of having understood. There were too many wires on the stage, too many plugs. Myles looked for the remote control, but it was too dark.

Between songs, Holmes got the video running again, but by then the pool players had returned to their game, the bartender to the bar, the others to their tables and their drinks. The narrative had been broken. Myles was afraid only he remembered how it all began, the original embrace, the innocent expression of hope. The kids had missed all the beauty—what might have been. They’d missed the whole point.

Myles reached into his pocket and took out his notes. He’d have to explain to them all the things they’d misunderstood.

The moment he opened the door, Darius heard the garbled sound. It was five
A.M.
At that hour, no one should have been awake. He stood very still, and the sound returned, muffled and distant. It was dark inside the apartment, but Darius could have walked the rooms blindfolded. He slipped his shoes off silently, holding back the handle as he shut the front door. He eased the dead bolt through, making sure it didn’t scrape. He knew the loosest floorboards, knew where the kids liked to drop their shoes and bags. He’d come to appreciate this one bit of sloppiness their mother allowed. When he went days without seeing them, he had only the kids’ clutter to remember them by.

Down at the end of the hall, a pale, bluish light flickered in the weave of the carpet under Shawn’s door. One hand on the knob for balance, Darius put his head to the hollow wood. There was laughter, a smattering of applause.

Shawn lay in basketball shorts and an undershirt, warmed by the glow of the TV. The rest of the bed was blanketed in video game
cases and plastic cups. As Darius pushed the door open further, Shawn rolled over, wrapping his arms more tightly around the pillow. He was twelve, and soon he would be bigger than his father.

Darius turned off the set, and he stood there for a moment, waiting. But Shawn didn’t awaken.

Outside his daughter’s room, Darius paused, but here there was only silence. Nina was sixteen now, her door gummy with the white papery residue of stickers, the faces peeled. She was erasing every trace she could of childish things.

In the bedroom at the other end of the hall, Sylvia lay on her stomach, one arm outstretched onto his side of the bed. He closed the door behind him, and the heavy curtains blocked out every last bit of light. Darius forgot himself for a moment as he undid his pants, allowing his buckle to swing into the side of the dresser with a clatter.

Sylvia didn’t stir.

He lifted her arm to make room for himself. She let him reposition it without protest. When he kissed her between the shoulder blades, she remained perfectly still.

When he awoke, she would be gone.

§

Darius accepted her body as he would a blanket, as another component of a dream. Not knowing what he felt, he felt her slide in next to him, hot against the cool sheets. Eyes fluttering back to sleep, he was vaguely aware of fingers folding around his shoulder and breath upon his neck. He might have slept through that too, were it not for her perfume, which smelled of gasoline and dried flowers and made him gasp for air.

“Isn’t it about time for you to get up?” a voice said. He couldn’t be sure the voice wasn’t his own. The words repeated in his head.
Isn’t it? Isn’t it? Time?
they insisted. The twitching lids of his eyes shot open. There were red lines on the clock, and at first he had no idea what they meant. As he watched the lines change, assembling themselves
in a different order, he failed to make note of the body next to him. Finally the lines settled themselves into something he knew as numbers.

It was only 12:46 in the afternoon. Not yet time to get up. Fourteen minutes. Fourteen precious minutes remained. Darius rolled onto his back with a sigh. Then he saw Violet lying next to him, perched on one elbow. She was silent and smiling. He sprang up against the headboard, dragging the blanket with him.

Violet ran her fingers over the strip of his bare chest not covered by the blanket.

“You’re not happy to see me?” She’d learned to pout even while smiling. Her nails flickered with a fresh coat of polish, her favorite ruby red.

“How’d you get in here?” He pulled the blanket up the rest of the way.

Violet removed all but her index finger from a swirl of chest hair and looked at him sideways. “What’s your problem?”

He cupped her shoulder in his palm. The softness of her skin invited touching. His fingers slid down her fleshy arm, lower, up the incline of her hip, and around the curve of her behind. She was entirely naked and larger, fuller than he was.

“It’s too early for surprises …” he began. And then again, “How’d you get in here?” He spoke slowly, the better to control the anger he felt rising in his throat.

She rolled over onto her back, fluttered her eyelashes. The sheet had slid down below her breasts. They were smaller than Sylvia’s but firmer, and they made it impossible for him to forget how young she was. Violet’s skin was a deeper, richer brown than his wife’s, and soft—the softest living thing he’d ever touched.

“Sylvia let me in to borrow an egg—” Violet paused, adding a moment later, “As she was leaving.” Then she sighed, dramatically, her chest rising and falling. “Looks like I forgot to lock the door when I left.”

He saw her arm move, and then he felt her hand between his legs.

“I remembered there was something else I needed to borrow.” Her fingers fumbled in the fly of his boxers. She gripped his shorts by the elastic and gave them a tug.

Darius held on to the side of the bed, and she let the elastic snap back against his hip.

“What’s your problem?” she said, turning away.

From behind he could see the outer swell and lift of her breast, and he felt regret. He reached out and put an arm around her waist. She allowed herself to be pulled toward him, even helped. Their bodies came together, stopping only when they both felt the length of his erection between her buttocks.

“So you are happy to see me,” she said.

He was, in part, and it was that part that ruled the moment.

They finished just seconds before the alarm went off. Darius was glad when its wail gave him an excuse to let Violet go.

He was a stupid, stupid man. As they lay silently, several inches of sheet between them, Darius swore to himself that it would never happen again. But then again, not only could he remember each of the reasons he’d already thought of for breaking off the affair—finally and completely—he could recall himself on this bed, in exactly this position, making the exact same pledge.

Violet stood naked before him, her body strong and confident and intimidating.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he said.

She slipped on her panties, a faint sliver of fabric that somehow seemed to make her even more naked than before. “I switched.” She pulled on her sweatpants and a T-shirt that had been washed almost to transparency.

“Otherwise I never get to see you.” She reached out and touched his toe, and the sweetness of the gesture only increased his misery.
When she bent down to pull up her socks, Darius ducked under the blankets. He allowed a minute to pass, pretending to search for his underwear. When he resurfaced, Violet was gone.

He leaped out of bed, still undressed, and sprinted to the living room. As he locked the front door behind her, Darius felt again the loss of those fourteen minutes. There’d be no getting them back, not when every minute of the next five hours was accounted for in advance. He’d already promised Sylvia he’d do the shopping. They’d talked about it the night before. He always called her during his break, just as she was getting into bed. He’d been careful to set aside just enough time to get to the store, but that was before Violet.

He walked over to the window and lowered himself into the recliner with a sigh. Now, on top of everything else, he’d have to wash the sheets, too.

The vinyl cushion squeaked against his naked skin as he reached out to raise the blinds. The afternoon sun washed through the glass, pouring over his body. He didn’t bother to cover himself. There was nobody outside to see him. The street below was empty. The building across the street was empty, too. There’d been a fire a couple years ago. But if it hadn’t been a fire, it would’ve been something else. The emptiness was everywhere. All across the city it was the same, a landscape full of monuments to loss and oblivion.

He stood in the shower just long enough to rinse off the smell of Violet’s perfume. He passed a razor over his cheeks and chin. And then he was running down the stairs with the laundry basket. It was a three-and-a-half-block sprint to the Laundromat, and he made it there in record time, only to find that the few washers not out of order were already in use.

The TV in the corner was playing a telenovela, but the Guatemalan lady who ran the drop-off service was nowhere in sight. Darius collapsed against the wall, letting the basket fall to his feet.

A woman sitting in one of the slick plastic chairs by the windows nodded at the TV. “He doesn’t know she’s his sister.
Hermana
,” she said. “It means sister.”

Darius glanced at the screen, an airbrushed young couple smashing their mouths together.

The woman in the plastic chair wore fuchsia stretch pants with matching toenail polish. “I dated a Spanish guy once.”

Darius slid into the seat beside her. A zipper ticked in one of the dryers, round and round with every rotation. It was impossible not to feel the time slipping away. “I have a hard enough time following these things in English.”

“You get the hang of it,” the woman said. “Everyone’s diddling everyone. The ball to keep your eye on is who’s got the loaded gun.”