Unburying Hope (18 page)

“Of course you have.”

Celeste turned around and kissed Eddie’s lips,
whispering, ‘Hi, honey’.
 
Then she
took his hand and formally introduced him to Frank.

“She’s my girl,” said Eddie, still with a
growl.

“Down, Rover,” said Frank.
 
“She used to be my girl.”

Eddie looked around, “This dive is where you
guys come to drink?” he asked.

“No,” Celeste said.

“We picked this place for you,” Frank said.

Eddie was eyeing Frank and scoping the
interior, Celeste could see.
 
She
registered a flicker of activity in his eyes, checking doors, exits, windows,
the bouncer he’d had to pass.
 
He
turned his stool so that he could see both the front and back door.
 
“Can’t we sit in a booth?”
 
He walked to a nearby banquette, taking
a seat where his back was to a wall of the building, where he could still see
the front door and the bar door to the kitchen.

“Like we have a choice,” Frank whispered.

Celeste gave him a look that silenced him and
she watched as he changed his gait, copying Eddie’s stalking walk.
 
She couldn’t stop a giggle, he was a
nearly perfect mimic.

She sidled into the booth next to Eddie,
suddenly realizing that Frank was saving her room on his side.
 
She reached her feet under the table to
tap him on the foot.

“That had better be you, Missy,” he whispered
under his breath.

“Have you two slept together?”

Celeste choked and waved her hands, “No, of
course not.”

Eddie leaned back to look at her as she
coughed into a napkin.

“What? I’m not good enough for you?” Frank
teased, speaking with a hyper-deep twang, no trace of his regular voice left.

Eddie leaned forward, both hands on the
table.
 
“I’m not the jealous type,
my friend, but she’s my girl.”

Frank relaxed into himself, Celeste saw.
 
He ran his fingers through his hair,
spiking the short bangs at his forehead.
 
He tucked his shirt tails into his pants and delicately rolled up his
sleeves, looking less and less like an older college student, transforming
himself into the warm gay young man that she loved.

Celeste watched Eddie’s face.
 
His territorial anger receded and he
mellowed like a puppy that knows that a stranger is here to visit instead of
attack.

“Oh, it’s like that!” he said.
 
He turned and Celeste saw relief in his
eyes.
 
“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t tell him?” Frank said in
disbelief.

“Why would I say that?
 
It’s neither here nor there to me.”
Celeste asked.

“It’s who I am.”

“And then I wouldn’t have been worried all
these weeks.”

“I thought you weren’t the jealous type,”
Frank said, smoothing himself back against the banquette, comfortable again in
his skin.

“I could kill you with my bare hands,” Eddie
said, leaning forward with a half smile.
 
“So no more full body hugs.”

“It’s not like I enjoyed it,” Frank said.

Celeste rolled her eyes.
 
She was relieved.
 
“I thought you might not like gay
guys,” she stammered.

“Celeste,” Eddie said, his eyes focused on her
for a few seconds before he resumed his scan of anyone entering the bar, “I
don’t give a shit who Frank sleeps with as long as it’s not you.”

“Well, that’s my passport to the lovely world
of men,” Frank said.
 
“I don’t know
how you do it,” he said to Eddie, “playing straight is immensely boring.
 
There’s no style to it.”
 
He spiked his hair a bit more.
 
“Think I can order a cocktail here?”

“As long as it doesn’t have an umbrella in
it,” Eddie said.

“How about me, can I get a drink with an
umbrella in it,” Celeste laughed.

“No, no umbrellas.
 
You picked a beer swilling honky-tonk.
 
Not many of these places left.”
 
Eddie signaled the waitress.

Celeste relaxed into Eddie’s arm, which he’d
casually draped around her.

“I’m not a fairy,” Frank said
defensively.
 
“I’m just gay.”
 
He ordered a scotch on the rocks and
the waitress turned to Eddie.

“Fuck it,” Eddie said, “Bring me a gin and
tonic and make sure there’s an umbrella in it.”

Celeste ordered a glass of champagne.

“This is a country bar, Miss,” the waitress
said, “We don’t have champagne.”

“Then I’ll have a Mai Tai,” she said.

“You and your tropical drinks,” Frank said.

The waitress was short tempered, “Don’t have
that either.”

“Just a beer, then, make it American,” she
shooed the waitress off.

Frank laughed.
 
“A tropical drink in a dive bar in Detroit, the blight of
the Midwest.”

“I drink my dreams, Frank,” Celeste said,
clinking her glass bottle with their cocktail glasses when the drinks arrived.

“Frank, you should think of moving,” Eddie
said.
 
“This can’t be a good place
for you.”

“Why, because I’m gay?” Frank asked
defensively.

“No, because there’s no future here.”

“There is too,” Celeste said.

Eddie eyed her thoughtfully.
 
“You think you’re going to live forever
in the City like Celeste does?
 
With broken down bus systems and no jobs?”

“We have jobs, for this week at least,” Frank
said.
 
“Not good ones, but they pay
the bills.”

“But aren’t you guys at the point in life
where you want to move forward, be somewhere you can grow?
 
I mean, I love Detroit too, but I think
it’s time to bail.
 
The big banks
are saying they’ll pay to tear down the empty houses but that means they’ll own
the land and can sell it for other purposes. You heard the Mayor ask people to
move into one-third of Detroit, they’re going to leave the other two-thirds to
grow wild, maybe rent it out to big agriculture.
 
It’s going to be a mess here for the next five years at
least.”

“I think about it.
 
I want to move down to South Carolina, but the hurricanes
there keep destroying the coastline.”

“Yeah, you have to draw a line about ten miles
inland around the country.
 
Global
warming’s going to flood the beaches.
 
We need to put trees in on the coastline, reforest so the winds won’t
take down houses.”
 
Eddie put his
hands together into a steeple, his voice distant.
 
“You need to reconnoiter northerly before it gets too hot,
you need to have land to have a garden so you can feed yourself.”

Frank lowered his voice.
 
“See, Celeste, I’m not the only one who
plans on having a Farmagghedon.”
 

“We’re in a tough time, my friend,” Eddie
said.
 
“The US is propped up on
false hopes.
 
The car companies are
even off-shoring the electric cars, the one thing that’s supposed to save
Detroit.”

Frank straightened and looked at Celeste with
a sideways glance, she shook her head side to side, no, she hadn’t told Eddie
about her graffiti.

Celeste leaned in, “It’s too easy to get
mesmerized by all that’s wrong with the world.
 
You have to balance that with what’s right.”

“Little Mary Sunshine,” Frank said, smiling at
her, she could see that he was relieved at the change in tone.

“Like what?” Eddie asked.

“People are working together to fix things
locally.
 
I walk past a place that
operates out of a church.
 
It
teaches people how to paint, how to do construction work.”

“They can’t put up new buildings when so many
are being torn down,” Eddie asserted, “We’re in a meltdown.”

“But people are working to fix things,”
Celeste said, “and I believe in that.”

“You know you can still help them, from
another location,” Eddie said.
 
“I
think you could set up online communities and connect your old folks groups,
from a different state.
 
We don’t
have to stay here.”

Frank’s eyes zeroed in on Celeste in
shock.
 
“You’re moving, together?”

“Frank and I have a pact, not to move without
each other,” she said, sitting back on the banquette.
 

Eddie nodded slowly, looking back and forth
between them.
 
“But you know it’s time
to get out, right?”

“Why?”
 
Frank asked.
 

Celeste could feel him prickle across the
table.

“Because this place is about to blow.
 
The Mexican drug cartel is trucking in
crystal meth.
 
There’s enough here
to addict half of Detroit.”

Celeste looked at the anxiety on Eddie’s face
and put her hands on his arm to soothe him.
 

Frank leaned in, “I’ve been reading about the
gang murders.”

Celeste shook her head, “Not that again,
Frank.”

“My favorite childhood theater,” Frank said.

Celeste felt Eddie tense up, so she moved
closer to him, looking at his stricken face.
 
“What?
 
Eddie,
what’s up?”

“Nothing,” he said, brushing her off gently.

Frank continued, “It’s been abandoned for ten
years.
 
They shot up the place but
left a body.”

“I know.”
 
Eddie’s eyes averted.

“How do you know?” Celeste asked.

“He reads the newspaper,” Frank said, “and
they off’d a guy, beheading him like they do across the Mexican border in
Juarez.
 
A couple months ago, they
found a bunch of dead bodies on the same stage, drug guys.”

Eddie nodded his head.
 
“That’s why you guys have to move.
 
It’s getting crazy now.
 
They don’t give a shit what they do, they
will kill anyone as a message.
 
Like the Taliban.”
 
His
voice lowered.

Frank leaned back against his seat, looking
quickly at Celeste, signaling Eddie’s change in demeanor.
 

Celeste knew this was one of those moments
when Eddie could slip emotionally away.
 
She hadn’t told Frank about these moments, because she didn’t want to
make them real by telling their story.
 
But here, right next to her, he was vacating his body, his eyes were
going blank and yet he sat, looking at Frank.

Frank sat silent for a few moments, and then
said softly, “There are crazy people all over the world.”

“Word, brother,” Eddie responded, nodding his
head.

“But we have each other,” Frank said,
grounding Eddie by pointing to Celeste.

Eddie looked at her and she felt him pull
himself back here into the bar, away from his dark ghosts.
 

“Why a farm?” Frank asked.
 
“Celeste and I don’t even know what
half the vegetables are when we go to the Farmer’s Markets out in the
Townships.”

“Gas prices,” Eddie said.
 
“The cost of trucking food across
country is going to get out of control.
 
I’d like to have a garden, grow some sweet potatoes, vegetables, salad
stuff.
 
Then you can have fruit
trees, if you can move away from the frozen winters here.
 
And you can buy your grains from
markets.”

“Are you vegetarian?” Frank asked
curiously.
 
“Or are you going to
kill your protein?”

Eddie grimaced, “No, man, I couldn’t do
that.
 
I don’t eat a lot of meat,
just every once in a while in a restaurant.
 
I could probably go vegetarian, but only if we have to grow
our own food.”

“You really think things are going to get that
bad?“ Frank asked.

Celeste said with a half smile.
 
“We should all get a farm together and
eke out a living.”

“Oh, no, Missy, count me out, you two go north,”
Frank said, waving his hands over the table.
 
“I’m okay with moving out of Detroit, and I’m okay with a
few chickens, but I’ve got to be in a civilized city, somewhere southerly.
 
Georgia or the Carolinas.”

“You’re leaving me?” Celeste blurted out,
sitting straight in her seat.