Say Nice Things About Detroit (13 page)

“How are you?” Suzy asked.

“I ended my marriage,” Carolyn said. “You were right.”

In the background the band started up “Sweet Home, Alabama.”

“I'm sorry,” said Suzy.

“Well,” Carolyn said, “I'm less miserable.”

The handsome man from the coat check walked by. Carolyn and Suzy watched him pass.

“Look at Paul Michalowski, all grown up.”

“Who is he?” Carolyn asked.

“Exactly. Never even noticed him in high school, and now look.”

“What's he do?”

“He's a bankruptcy attorney. Not for people but for corporations.”

“Looks like he's doing well.”

“Yeah, well, business is booming.”

• • •

T
EN MINUTES LATER,
Carolyn found herself standing close to him. “Excuse me,” he said, “but aren't you Carolyn Evans?”

“I am.”

He smiled down at her. It was almost paternalistic, that smile. “Paul Michalowski. I asked you out once, to homecoming dance, tenth grade. You said no.”

“I was a bitch then,” she said. “I mean, what did I know?”

He chuckled. “What did any of us know?”

• • •

S
HE RAN OUT
to her car, the air biting. Her eyes teared. She turned the engine over, then ran back to the vestibule to wait. It reminded her of being a girl, when her father would let her start the car in winter. How old was she then? Fourteen, maybe. Now her classmates were trickling out, though the band was still playing, this time an endless version of “Sympathy for the Devil.” Dale Mortola came up to her.

She'd looked for him. She'd lost her virginity to him, the typical fiasco; the whole experience should have been enough to put her off sex for good, though of course it hadn't. “It'll get better,” Natalie had assured her at the time. Now she realized that Natalie had been talking about David. And she was right.

“I was hoping you'd be here,” Dale said. “And I'm surprised you are. Thought you'd be a million miles away.”

“Me, too.”

“I'm sorry about Natalie. I mean, it's horrible.”

“Yes, it is.”

He asked questions and she answered, aware that she should ask him about himself. Deep down he was a sweet guy, kind, caring, from the look of him not all that successful. His wife came up, a plump woman with an elaborate hairdo, hair stacked on her head with tendrils dropping down, the whole effect unfortunate. But then she moved to him, put her arm around his waist, and he returned the gesture and smiled, and Carolyn thought,
Look at that, these two people are still in love
.

She drove home feeling that she was getting it down, the cold and heating cars and the old boyfriends, the whole world she'd lost still there, beating away, if a bit more decrepit. It was snowing fairly hard now. The wipers swept the white flakes away from her windshield in a rhythm that made it seem there was a dream or a memory out there, if she looked hard enough into the darkness.

XIII

S
ONOFABITCH IF THERE
weren't two or three inches of snow in the yard, on the driveway, and it was still Thanksgiving weekend. Sol, as a young man, had always welcomed the snow, the clean freshness of it—even on those brutally cold nights in Korea he had appreciated the snow—but lately he was beginning to see it for the pain in the ass others thought it was. Now, for instance, he wanted the paper and it was at the end of his white driveway. He kicked around in the closet, trying to find his boots, and then decided he'd just wear his loafers. It was only to the end of the drive and back—why make a federal case out of a minute or two of cold feet?

And cold they were—he didn't bother with socks either—as he made his way down the drive. It was slippery, and with each step he could feel a little sliding. He slowed, careful not to fall. Down at the street was the
Free Press
, wrapped in a plastic cover, along with the part of the Sunday paper that could be delivered on Saturday. Once he'd sent David to do this. He bent and grabbed the freezing plastic bag. As he stood a car honked its horn, and when he turned to look he lost his footing. He never saw the car, just heard it retreating. Maybe it was two cars. His hip was on fire with pain, though he was lying in the snow.
Christ,
he thought.
A broken hip, maybe
.

Or maybe not. He lay there on the cold pavement, afraid to move. It was his right hip. Also his right hand and wrist. He moved the hand slightly, then his body, to get flat on his back. It was freezing. Above, the sky was gray, a deep whitish gray that seemed very close, or possibly very far away.

The thought occurred to him, clearly and calmly, that he might die, that the end could come in just such a ridiculous way. He thought of his wife, tackled to death. Wasn't the moment of death always unexpected in that way?

“Hey, mister, let me help you up.”

He heard this and was at first unsure if he was dreaming it, but there was a kid there, blue eyes, head of blond stubble. “You okay?” the kid said.

“I fell.” Sol reached out a hand. “Help me sit up.”

The kid did as instructed. Sol sat. His hip hurt, but it wasn't too bad. He looked at the kid. “Who are you?”

“Brian Kleinstadt, from down the block. You need me to call an ambulance?”

Sol noticed his decrepit car parked along the curb, an old Camaro skirted in rust. “Not yet. Let's see if I can stand.”

The kid walked him to the house, even carried the paper. He helped Sol to his couch. Sol felt embarrassed by the mess of the room and by his weakness, especially when he was maneuvered by this specimen of Aryan physicality. It wasn't what he would have expected, though. The kid had done a mitzvah.

“You sure you're going to be okay?” the kid asked.

“I'm good,” Sol said. It was what young people said nowadays, apparently without irony. “Will you excuse me if I don't see you out? I'm very grateful, though.”

Once the kid left, he called Cathy Brown. He could have called David, but he'd asked enough of his son. Cathy Brown was a shiksa he saw from time to time, the perfect woman because she always waited to be called. He asked her to come over and make him tea. He had a chill. “Actually, I can't,” he said when she suggested he make it himself. He wouldn't say more.

He knew she would hurry over. He also knew he would be fine, for now, but that in time he might look back on this day as the beginning of the end.

XIV

M
ARLON SHOWED ALMOST
an hour late, but David didn't mind. He had plenty of work now. He'd found that Detroiters were far more amenable to planning for their deaths than the people of Denver, and whether it was Michigan's economy, its lack of consistent sunlight, or something deeper in the midwestern soul, to David this made a certain intuitive sense.

He walked out to the lobby to get Marlon. Heather, the front receptionist, a pretty girl still in her twenties, no doubt planning her escape to Atlanta or San Diego, made eyes at David. What-the-fuck eyes. There were two young black men. One slouched in his chair, one of those kids gaunt in a way that seemed almost feline, though he wore clothes big enough for a 250-pound man, also a baseball cap with a Detroit Tiger Olde English
D,
and earphones around his neck. He looked like a guy who worked on an airport tarmac. Next to him the other kid was similarly dressed, this one with narrow, almost Tartar eyes and earphones emitting a scratchy beat.

Neither looked at David. Maybe enough suits had already walked by that they didn't feel the need to look up.

“I'm David Halpert,” David said.

The kid with the Tigers cap snapped to attention. This what a hundred grand could do.

“I'm Marlon,” he said. “Booker.”

They shook hands. The other kid removed his earphones. “This is E-Call,” Marlon said. “Eric McCall.”

McCall nodded but didn't offer his hand.

“Well, Marlon, we should go to my office,” David said. “If Mr. McCall would like to—”

“You good?” McCall asked Marlon, and got a nod. McCall looked around, and David realized he didn't know what to do.

“You can wait here,” David said. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Huh?” the kid said.

“A drink? A Coke, maybe? We've got Vernor's. Something while you wait.”

A moment passed. “Coke, then,” David suggested.

“What's it cost?” the kid asked.

“No, no, Mr. McCall. We're happy to give you the Coke.”

McCall looked at Marlon, who shrugged and said, “I'll take a Vernor's.”

“Me, too,” said McCall.

David nodded to Heather, and she headed off, reluctantly.

David and Marlon walked back to David's office, Marlon looking around as if he expected to be followed. David had to practically force him to sit in a chair. Heather appeared with his drink.

“Okay, Marlon,” he said. “I need some ID, like a driver's license, and your signature, and I'll get a check out.”

“Sure would like cash if you could do it,” Marlon said.

“I can't. You know, the tax is taken care of.”

“Tax?” the kid said.

“You won't owe tax.”

“Okay.”

“So why worry about cash?”

Marlon leaned forward, spoke softly. “Who am I gonna get to cash that sucker?”

“A bank. Don't you have a bank account?”

Marlon sat back as if to say,
No, of course not.

“Get a bank account. Deposit the money. Then save it. Do you have anyone who advises you on financial matters?” It sounded crazy to say this as soon as it came out of his mouth. This kid wore a Tigers cap indoors, sideways on his head.

“Advise me?” Marlon said.

XV

E
-CALL OFFERED TO
come this time, too, but Marlon didn't want him. Even E-Call admitted that this David guy wasn't dangerous and probably didn't want Marlon's money. Or if he did, he was going to take it with a briefcase, not a gun, and E-Call wasn't going to be any help at all. The real issue was that Marlon needed David to like him. David would soon be living in Dirk's house; Shelly was already gone. Marlon had to get back in there and get his money; it would be best to be invited.

They were meeting at a bank. Marlon never went to banks—“Nothing but security cameras,” E-Call warned—but Marlon figured that this might be the way to go. Put some money where no one could get at it, not even the police, because it was legal cash. It was an idea that always gave Marlon pause: all that money, legal.

The bank was Comerica, same name as where they played baseball now. Marlon needed an address, and so he used his mom's in Ypsilanti, same as his driver's license. He signed the back of the check, above the line, as instructed, and they gave him a receipt for the money, a one and five zeros. Then the dot and two more zeros. He got a booklet with checks. He'd have to find out how to use them. He got a cash card to let him get at the money, up to three hundred bucks at a time. He set a secret number—he used E-Call's birthday—and David showed him how to use the card.

Back on the street, Marlon needed clarification. “So, you write out the number here?”

“That's right, then put the number of cents over one hundred.”

“I seen that,” Marlon said, though he never knew why it was that way. He liked having this one mystery solved. “You didn't have to do that, right?” he said to David. “Take me in there.”

“No,” David said.

“So why you do it?”

“Someone had to.”

“You one a those do-gooders? Good Christian and all that?”

“Not even close, Marlon.”

“You expecting a tip?”

David laughed, a real laugh, and Marlon felt embarrassed because he didn't understand what was funny. The man didn't want money, and there obviously was no woman involved, and so it was hard to know what he was up to. Maybe he really was one of those always-guilty, churchgoing types who wanted to help his fellow man.

“No tip,” David said.

“Michelle says you're buying Shelly's house.”

“That's right.”

“You crazy, huh?” The man seemed to know a lot about the larger world—wills and banks and cash cards and such—but nothing about the place he was standing in at any particular moment. He didn't even notice that he was moving into a neighborhood where white people didn't live.

“Certifiable,” David said. He looked back at the bank. “You know,” he said, as if he knew what Marlon was thinking, “with all that money in the bank, you could change your life.”

“You really think that happens?”

“I do, all the time,” said David. “Just look at me.”

“What's changed about you?”

“Everything.”

“You're still a lawyer,” Marlon said.

“I'm saying that you can do better, Marlon. You can change—and you have the chance to do so. You can be somebody.”

Marlon appreciated that David expected more of him. No one else really ever expected anything. “Why you care?”

David stood there a moment, seriously thinking on the question.

“I don't know,” he said. “I just do.”

XVI

C
AROLYN WALKED INTO
the kitchen to find Tina making a cup of tea. It was time to face up to things.

“Want one?” her mother asked.

“Mom, I'm pregnant. Also, Marty and I are splitting up.”

Her mother turned and looked at her as if she were a stranger, someone who'd just come in off the street.

“It's not Marty's,” she added.

Her mother walked over to the table and sat down.

“And I'm moving,” Carolyn said. “Back here.”

“To Detroit?”