The Dead Circle (6 page)

On the upper level, there were going to be reading chairs and desks against the railing, allowing patrons to look down on the library floor as they read. There was also a small room off the second level that was to hold the head librarian’s office and a special collection of antique books donated specially for this branch from a European estate.

Beneath the Library proper—on the ground floor—was supposed be a level of administrative offices and restrooms. An unfinished basement below would house a large boiler and maintenance equipment.  

Construction was nearly completed, save both marble staircases and some of the plumbing, when the stock market crash of 1929 caused the city to postpone, then eventually cancel, any further construction. The library sat ignored and unfinished for more than thirty years of bureaucratic purgatory while the city waited for the economy to improve.

After World War II, the automobile industry had a second boom that lasted for almost twenty years. But in the 1960’s, the cancer of economic and racial inequality that lived under the metallic sheen of the cars rolling off the assembly lines finally bubbled to the surface. It eventually exploded in the infamous 1967 riots that burned large tracts of the city to the ground. It didn’t create as much as expose the broken industrial economy and Detroit plunged into recession and debt.  The city has yet to recover.

In 1969, an opportunistic real estate investment firm bought the unfinished library at a government auction for pennies on the dollar. The company’s plan was to wait for the downtown neighborhood, which now housed as many empty buildings as occupied ones, to improve enough to convert the library into condos. Unfortunately, the rest of the company’s investments were just as unwise and it went belly-up in 1987.

When there were no takers on the property at its second bankruptcy auction, the city once again took possession of the library and promptly forgot about it. Over the years, new buildings grew up around it. To the west sits a twelve-story office building that has yet to be fully occupied. A beautiful union hall used to sit to the east, but it was torn down in 1993 and replaced with a small parking garage. The four-story garage which stands shoulder to shoulder with the library looks a bit like a concrete fortress. Because the garage mainly serves commuters and closes at night, chain-link fences cover any opening on the first two floors. Many people on that street remark about the slightly sad juxtaposition of the beautiful—if unfinished—façade of the library sitting between the cold 1960’s architecture of the office building and the imposing bunker-like inner-city parking garage.

In 2012, with Detroit trying to avoid the bankruptcy that it eventually filed for the following year, the library was auctioned off a third time, for less than the cost of a double-wide mobile home.  

Chris and Sarah had no idea what they were getting into when the purchased the library. Sarah had been an architect, so she understood the structural issues in great detail, but she had spent her years designing new buildings for an enormous firm, where a team of lawyers took care of any city regulations and zoning problems. She had never repurposed an incomplete and abandoned building and was not prepared for the great deal of regulatory confusion. They had no idea that in order to live there, they would need to petition the city to re-zone the land for residential use. Because they bought the building at auction, they weren’t able to inspect it before they closed the sale, so they weren’t aware that the building had never been connected to the Detroit water grid. They didn’t know that it would be cheaper to install their own self-contained plumbing than retrofit and connect the pipes to the city pipes. They were unaware that the byzantine building codes would, for reasons beyond their understanding, force them to install a commercial-grade modern fire alarm and sprinkler system despite the fact that the building was now zoned as residential. And they were shocked to discover that the basement had never fully been weather-proofed and flooded every time it rained. Nonetheless, for the adventurous couple looking for a challenge in their second decade of marriage, the library was a dream come true.

The main entrance—the marble staircase that was to have led up from the street—was never built, so the back staircase was the only access point to the grand room. The little flight of wooden stairs was only intended to connect to the administrative offices and bathrooms. They seem small and insubstantial in comparison to the beautiful space they lead up to, but they were just fine for Chris and Sarah. They converted the offices into a makeshift apartment with a kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms.

Eventually Chris and Sarah embraced all of the unique quirks of their new home and were excited to begin the conversion. But without the money to pay contractors do to the renovations, they knew they would likely spend the next ten years doing most of the work themselves. And they couldn’t have been happier.

***

“Why is there never any food in the house?” Chris paws through the kitchen cabinet in search of a bag of chips he was sure he had hidden well enough that Sarah wouldn’t have found.

“There’s plenty of food!” She replies, looking up from her Kindle.

“Boring food.”

Yawning, Sarah tucks her bare feet back under the blanket her grandmother knitted for her when she was a baby. Their couch is cozy and she was lulled by the sound of the rain and her book so she hadn’t noticed the room getting dark as the sun had gone down.

When they purchased the building, one of the many things they didn’t anticipate was the problem of having
too much
space. Even with a grand piano, the main floor of the library was a large empty expanse. Ignoring Chris’ suggestion that they get a pool table, Sarah set up a make-shift living room under the huge windows that looked down over the street. After laying down a thick round rug, she put in a couch, a loveseat, and an easy-chair to surround their TV. The furniture is nice, but not expensive. After winning an argument with Chris, who didn’t understand why they would ever want to block the beautiful two-story windows, she installed large curtains that hung down all the way from the balcony to the floor. They weren’t cheap. It was hard to find curtains that drop almost fifteen feet. But the room is as cozy as it can be for such an enormous space.

Chris clomps up the stairs from the kitchen below. “We should order food.”

“No we shouldn’t. You just want to.” Sarah smiles without looking up.

“Fair enough.” Chris grins, knowing that she has already given in. “What do you want? I’ll pull up Seamless on my phone.”

“Whatever you want, surprise me.”

Chris sits down and works his phone while Sarah reaches for the TV remote.

“What do you want to watch? Biggest Loser is on tonight.”

“Sure, sounds great,” Chris doesn’t care. His mind is on acquiring calories, not watching people burn them.

“Huh? That’s weird.”

“Wha?” Chris does not look up from his phone.

“Look.”

Chris looks up at the TV. Confused, he turns back to his phone to check what time it is. It’s almost eight thirty, but the local news is still being broadcast. 

“That’s weird. Why is the news still on?”

“I’m not sure it is. Look more carefully.”

On the screen is the ABC 7 anchor desk behind a large graphic saying “DOWNTOWN CONFUSION.” Sitting on one side of the desk is a watch, a tie and a spray bottle presumably used to wet down that last perfect piece of anchor-hair. Behind the desk sits two chairs. On one chair sits a woman’s button-down blouse and a bra. The expensive articles of clothing have been haphazardly tossed on the arm. There’s no sound in the studio, but from the slight hiss in the background, they can tell the microphones are still on.

“Uh… what the hell?” Chris says, finally putting his phone down.

“They should have been off the air for two hours. Have they just been showing that the whole time? Maybe they forgot to switch back to the network? Or they’re having technical difficulties?”

“I guess so. But why are their clothes on the chair?”

“Maybe Steve and Sheena’s sexual tension got the best of them and they’re doing it under the desk?”

Chris laughs. “It’s about time. Though I somehow doubt they’d want to broadcast that to all of Detroit. Change the channel, maybe one of the other networks will have something.”

Sarah flips through the channels. The national networks—ESPN, HBO, HGTV, all appear normal. But the local networks are either off the air or showing something similar to ABC 7’s empty studio.

“Uh... what the hell? Did the TV stations go bankrupt too?” Chris says half-kidding, half-concerned.

“Some sort of natural disaster?”

“In Detroit? How would you notice?”

“Don’t be an asshole. All this stuff is digital, maybe a transformer blew or something? Or a crashed computer? Maybe that could cut off all the local feeds.”

“I guess it’s possible? You know computer stuff better than I do.” Chris looks down at his phone. “Speaking of feeds, where is my confirmation from Seamless? Everyone at the Indian place asleep too?”

“The whole city could be having communication problems. Maybe a rat ate through Detroit’s single line of internet cable.”

Chris laughs. “God knows, the wire is probably strung out of a window all the way from Chicago.”

“I thought we were just stealing their Wi-Fi. They’ll figure it out eventually. In the meantime, let’s just watch an episode of Property Brothers. The DVR still works. I have work to do anyway. This candy isn’t going to crush itself.”

They settle into a media-addled stupor, staring at multiple screens at once, but not really paying much attention to either. The TV drones on about home renovation while they separately stare at their phones playing the same game.

“That’s a nice looking house, but why would they shit it up by having so many cats?”

“Oh, come on husband. Cats are nice! We should get one.”

“Are you kidding? All they do is laze about stealing food and knocking things over.”

“How is that different from you?”

“I don’t shit in a box and ask you to scoop it out.”

It’s dully pleasant, killing time staring at LCD pixels. It’s an easy way to fill their minds with soothing white noise without really admitting that’s what they are doing.

***

Shopping can be tedious, especially for a six-year-old in the JCPenney menswear section.
Why is Daddy looking at so many pairs of blue jeans? They’re sooooo boring.
Chris did not understand what the difference was between one pair of pants and another. He just knew that his dad seemed to have looked through every single pair of jeans ever made. He really did his best to stay patient and sit still. He had promised to stay on the bench and not move. Or else. But the bench was hard and when five minutes stretched into twenty it seemed like an eternity to his child’s mind.

From his height, all he could see was rack after rack of boring clothes. To Chris the round displays of reasonably priced tops seemed as big as houses. In fact they reminded him of the willow trees at his grandmother’s house. He daydreamed that he was in a soft and colorful forest. He barely even noticed that he had left the bench when he started dodging in and out of them searching for treasure. He ran past a rack of collared shirts and discovered that it was the secret hideout of Cobra Commander! He was Storm Shadow on a secret ninja mission to track down bad guys. Giggling, he ran down the aisle and ducked into a rack of bulky red sweaters and hid on the floor beneath the Mediums. This would be his home base. He peeked out from between sweaters and secretly spied on a couple of shoppers who were obviously secret Cobra operatives.

But what is that? Is that a toy store?
From his fort, he was able to see through the glass doors of JC Poopy Boring Store and spotted a bright glowing castle overflowing with awesome toys! He had found his treasure!

Chris frowned. He knew he couldn’t go to the toy store because his father would be angry. Mad Daddy was no fun. In fact Chris knew he should go back to the bench before his father gets back from the dressing room. He felt a jolt of anxiety.
What if Daddy finds out that I left the bench?
He stood up and looked down the aisle in the direction he had come.
Or was that where I came from?
All of a sudden, none of it looked familiar.
Oh poop.

“Hey there Buckaroo.”

Chris heard a man’s voice from behind him and turned around to face a pair of khaki pants. He looked up at a large man who was wearing thick-rimmed glasses and a blue polo shirt. He sported a mustache and a thin black comb-over. From his vantage point, Chris could see an old stain on his shirt that had been slightly distended by the gut protruding over his belt. The man looked enormous, like a giant.

“Cat got your tongue?” He grinned down at Chris.

Chris ran through his mental Rolodex.
Do I know him? I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, but sometimes I forget people, like Mommy’s brothers and sisters.
He looked at the man again. He was smiling, but not really smiling. It was a strange sensation. Chris could feel fear starting to trickle down the back of his neck like cold water.

“Not supposed to talk to strangers eh?”

Chris shook his head and started to frantically look for his father.

“It’s OK Chief. I’m Frank. I work here. See the blue shirt?”

Chris reluctantly nodded. He saw that the man’s shirt was blue, but he wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Say, what are you doing in the boring old department store anyway? You know there’s a toy store right over there.”

Chris didn’t say anything. He was unsure what he was supposed to do. Frank smiled down at him and kept talking.

“You know what? If you’d like, we could walk over there and see about getting you a toy? What’s your favorite? He-Man? Transformers? I’ve got all of them you know. Even Optimus Prime. With the trailer that opens up into a secret action base. Would you like to see them?”