The Dead Circle (2 page)

It took her fifteen years of working overtime at dead-end jobs to cobble together enough money to rent her little store, but she knew her grandmother would have been proud of her. She was not interested in expanding and creating an empire, or even in trying to compete with the 68 flavors at Friendly’s. If she could sell one more waffle cone a day than she needed to pay her rent, she would be happy for the rest of her life.

Shirley arrives at her shop, Scoops, at five o’clock in the morning. It’s a tiny space, only twelve feet wide, with a counter separating the entrance from her freezer and the three large ice cream machines she had rescued and restored from a scrap yard—she reluctantly had to give up stirring by hand. She sets them up with ingredients for the only three flavors she offers: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. As the machines whirl behind her, she gets the toppings ready and prepares to make fresh whipped cream and homemade waffle cones.

It’s a lot of work for one person, but she can’t afford to pay any employees yet. When she opens the doors at eleven o’clock, just in time for the office buildings to start emptying for lunch, she’s already exhausted. Shirley has just taken one last thin waffle out of the press to roll it expertly into a cone shape to cool and harden, when the door chimes and in walks the hipsterest hipster she has ever seen.

“Whoa, this place is amazeballs. It looks like my grandma’s kitchen wallpaper took Molly.”

“Oh, thanks! It was actually inspired by
my
grandmother.” 

“It’s so brilliantly tacky and pathetic. It’s like a John Waters set! Is this some sort of ironic pop-up restaurant?”

“Um… It’s not ironic at all.”

The guy is in his twenties and sports a mustache and thick glasses under a trucker hat. His corduroy pants have been cut off above the knees, perhaps to show off his orange tube socks. She watches as he ostentatiously keeps shifting a pack of American Spirit cigarettes from hand to hand.
As if to dare me to tell him they’re going to kill him so he can point out that they are ‘organic,’
she thinks.

“Do you have any dairy-free Thai basil bacon flavor?”

“Uh… no? Sorry?”

“Oh, you totes should get some. I read about it on a blog. It’s apparently disgusting, but in an awesome way.”

Didn’t people stop saying ‘totes’ years ago? Or has he already appropriated it ironically?

“I see. What I have is-”

“How about anything with kale?”

“Well, I have vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.”

The man considers this for a moment.
He is literally twirling his mustache.
Does he think he’s in a movie?

“Oh, wow. Are you sure this place isn’t a joke?”

“Nope. Just selling ice cream. Do you want to try some? It’s made fresh this morning, right here in the shop.”

“The locals can’t handle anything complicated huh? Not ready for the big bright world of adult flavors? I wonder if anybody here in the flyovers even knows what kale is.”

“I’m a local. I’ve lived in Detroit my whole life.”

The man continues talking obliviously. “I came over from Brooklyn. Williamsburg you know? I mean I actually grew up in Kansas, but I didn’t find my relevancy until I hit the burg. I’m a proud 718.”

“Huh?”

“Brooklynite. Obvy.”

Shirley starts to feel like his whole persona is verging on performance art. She wants to scream ‘you can’t be serious!,’ but she can’t honestly tell if he is or not. 

“Uh huh.”

“I moved there after I finished my doctorate in comparative poetry and contemporary mythology. My thesis was about Professor X from the X-men as an allegory for moral relativism in pre-soviet Russia.”

“Interesting. How long were you in Brooklyn?”

“I occupied it for about eighteen months. Until my tyrannical one percent overlord kicked me out. I would have asked my parents for money, but they just bought me the Vespa, you know?”

He looked at her like she totally understood what he was going through. She did not.

He continued. “I can’t believe my landlord wouldn’t accept barter for rent. I was willing to teach him Klingon as a second language.”

 “Hard to imagine there are limitations to the barter system. So, do you want some ice cream?”

This has got to be some sort of elaborate joke. Right? Right?
Shirley couldn’t decide if he was making fun of her, society, himself, or just an idiot.
Maybe he can’t tell either? Perhaps he has spent so much time swimming in sarcastic detachment that he’s lost track too
.

“Oh no. Gross. I don’t eat dairy. It’s all just steroids and cow mucus.” He scratches his mustache with his pinkie.

I wonder if he knows that in a couple of years, hipster facial hair is going to be the 21st century mullet.

“So is there anything I can get you?”

“Call me when you open a place for people with educated palates.” He starts to leave.

“Yeah. Have a good day.”

Trying to hide her frustration, Shirley puts her head down and cleans the already spotless counter until she hears the door close.
This is going to be one of those days huh?

*

When she finally exits the shop at 6:15 PM, she decides to sit down on a bench in Grand Circus Park. She often jokes with her customers about the name—pointing out that it is neither grand nor has a circus—but it is a great place to stop and breathe for ten minutes before she gets on the bus to go home. She looks down at her register receipt, grimacing at the fact that she only sold forty-seven items. Most of her customers bought waffle cones for four dollars each. Her grand sales total is $193.43. It’s enough to pay that day’s expenses and leave her with the tidy sum of $3.56 for her efforts. She does the quick math and realizes that she made just shy of twenty-nine cents an hour.

Fall has finally started pushing summer out to pasture and she knows it will only get harder to sell ice cream when it is ten degrees outside. The only glimmer of hope is that a woman who works in the tower down the block expressed interest in Shirley providing ice cream for an office birthday party later this month. All Shirley really wants to do is scoop her own ice cream in the storefront one cone at a time, but she knows that if she wants to survive, she will need the money that comes from catering. She pulls the woman’s card out of her pocket. It reads “Rebecca Anne Louis - Office Manager.”

“Well Rebecca Anne Louis - Office Manager, expect a call from me tomorrow along with a free pint of each flavor delivered to your desk!”

The evening sky is overcast and a strong wind blows through the artificial canyons between the tall buildings. It’s one of her favorite types of weather. The early October breeze, while blustery, still clings onto the last heat of summer, sending thick clouds blowing across the sky at twice normal speed. It will rain soon, but not yet. Shirley takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. She tries to let the stress of her day wash off as she muses that in this particular spot, from this very specific angle, Detroit is really beautiful.

 Grand Circus Park has been maintained carefully as if the city government, knowing that they are powerless to improve all the large swaths of forgotten neighborhoods and crumbling infrastructure, decided to make a few small pockets of the city really nice. The grass is mowed and trimmed and there are flowers planted in neat little rows along the sidewalks. The litter which seems to coat most of the city has been eradicated on at least this block. She imagines that from space, the park must look like a small clean spot rubbed off a filthy window with a giant thumb.

 Shirley reminds herself that when it gets dark in a couple of hours, even this beautiful park won’t be safe and that if she walked a single block to the west, she’d come across that strange empty space of crossing streets leading nowhere.

Her stomach grumbles. All she’s had to eat today is ice cream. It’s free, but does murder on her stomach. A gnawing tickle in the back of her throat reminds her that she’s thirsty too.
When was the last time I had anything to drink? Coffee this morning? Did I even drink the diet coke I brought for lunch?
As the sole employee at her store, she is entirely at the mercy of customers. She can’t really do anything that can’t be immediately interrupted by someone walking in the door. It makes meals and bathroom breaks somewhat awkward. She would prefer her customers not see a half-eaten tuna sandwich sitting behind the counter and she definitely doesn’t want them to know that the lady who is serving them ice cream just took a crap.

Being slammed with customers is stressful and exhausting. Having nobody walk in the door is also stressful and exhausting, for different reasons. She reaches into her purse for her water bottle to discover that, surprise surprise, she has forgotten it in the shop. She considers going back for it, but just shrugs.

“Hey, I’ve got more than three whole dollars burning a hole in my pocket. I can afford a bottle of water.”

She looks around the park hoping for a hot dog cart or a newsstand. Strangely she doesn’t see anyone selling anything. In fact, she doesn’t see anyone at all. At 6:30 PM in the business district, people are already starting to close up shop and disappear into the suburbs. Much like many centers of struggling cities across America, by 8:00 PM downtown will be a ghost town.

With a slight grimace, Shirley notes a water fountain perched between two shrubs. It’s old, surely original, as it is far more regal than anything that would be installed today. The fountain is iron and carved stone rising out of the pavement. It’s an art-deco remnant of Detroit’s economic glory days. A hundred years after being installed, it’s covered in grime and graffiti. Half of an old bumper sticker is affixed to the side. It says ‘Fire Millen.’ Somewhere in the back of the useless trivia folder in her brain, she thinks this has something to do with the Lions. She’s not sure if they did indeed ‘Fire Millen’ yet or not.

“Water is water right?” She says aloud.

She gamely walks over and takes a drink. The water tastes flat and metallic. Grimacing, she wonders if her tongue feels the tiniest bit numb, but she figures she’s just imagining it.
Gross. I should have let it run longer. When was the last time someone was brave enough to drink from this fountain? How old are the water pipes? What are the chances they are made of lead? Or are filled with rat shit or tetanus?

Shirley wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve and walks away from the fountain digging her keys out of her purse. Her mother always told her that women should have their keys in their hands before they get to a parking lot in case there is trouble. Reluctantly, she admits that this might actually be decent advice, especially at this hour.

Shirley’s keys drop out of her hand. She doesn’t fumble them, she just opens her palm and they fall to the pavement with a jingling noise. She does not stop to pick them up. Rather, she continues walking, making no sign she even noticed they were gone.

A few steps later, her purse hits the pavement. She doesn’t call herself a klutz and retrieve it like she did the day before. Today, she does not seem to care. It’s as if she simply doesn’t need it anymore. Her steps become slower, less assertive, but she’s still walking west.

Her right elbow twitches. It twitches again, more strongly. Her left arm flies out violently in an abrupt isolated movement that looks like something between a muscle spasm and a modern dance move. The body that Shirley used to inhabit steps out of one of her bright red pumps and continues walking barefoot.

She removes her thin pink jacket with an awkward jerky motion—taking it off like she doesn’t quite remember how it is attached to her. When she pulls it over her head, there is a ripping sound as the collar tears. She does not carefully fold the coat or hang it up like she has so many other times. She just drops it onto the dirty sidewalk in a crumpled pool of fabric.

Her hands awkwardly claw at her large beaded necklace. The fingers that had perfected shaping waffle cones in a single twist are now clumsy, almost arthritic, but have lost none of their strength. The necklace snaps, sending a cascade of beads chittering down the street behind her. She grabs the neck of the blouse that she purchased with her mother’s leftover Kohl’s cash and tears it wide open, exposing her bright green padded bra.

Her left leg starts a shuttering spasm and she almost loses her balance, but her right foot lands back on the sidewalk and she continues forward. The tattered remnants of her blouse hit the ground. She now is walking through downtown Detroit in only her bra and a black pencil skirt.

Shirley has a much more attractive body than what most people would imagine the owner of an ice cream shop would possess. She isn’t a roly-poly grandmother with a quick smile and soft middle. Her retro style actually hides a flat stomach, toned arms and moderately sized, but firm and shapely breasts. A passerby who prefers the company of women would probably enjoy this bizarre striptease in the middle of downtown Detroit, at least until he or she saw Shirley’s eyes.

She rips open the three snaps at the front of her skirt, revealing the top of her underwear as the fabric begins to slip off her hips. Her panties are more practical than her outward style, simple blue cotton. Her skirt falls below her knees and she steps out of it leaving her other shoe in the crumbled heap of cloth. In the span of three minutes, Shirley has laid a trail of retro but stylish breadcrumbs leading back to the water fountain.

 Her head abruptly snaps to the right as if she were an extra in Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video. She probably pulled every muscle in her neck and shoulders but she takes no notice. She reaches down, hooks her fingers into the elastic band on her underwear and tears it off, exposing herself to anyone in eyesight.

Her bra is the last thing to hit the street, leaving her breasts fully open to the warm breeze. If Shirley were still present in her body she might have thought that this is probably the first time her chest has been exposed to the outdoors since she was a toddler.