Angels of Detroit Page 3

  And then the meeting was over, but by then it was too late.

  As McGee straightened her papers and markers, Myles glanced from one monitor to the next. The men upstairs had vanished without him having any idea why they’d come. And now the meeting had ended, and he had no idea what had been decided.

  The walk home began in silence, except for the scraping of McGee’s boot heels on the cement.

  “It went well,” Myles said. “Didn’t it?”

  McGee didn’t speak or slow down or turn her head.

  “It’s going to be great,” Myles said. “People are going to be excited.”

  “Please stop talking,” she said. “It was better before, when you weren’t paying attention.”

  She was surprisingly fast for someone with such short legs.

  When they reached the building, she waited for him to open the door, the one bit of chivalry he was allowed. The overhead door was heavy, but she was like an ant, a thousand times stronger than anyone would think. Sometimes he wondered if she stepped aside out of pity, just to make him feel useful.

  The building had once been a factory of some kind. Ball bearings, according to one story, but it was hard to imagine something so small leaving such a mess. The lower half of the building was still full of metal drums spray-painted with skulls and crossbones. Myles had pointed them out to McGee on the day she’d brought him here for the first time, eager to show the place off.

  “Well, they’re sealed, aren’t they?” she’d said.

  Even though this was exactly the sort of stuff she was constantly getting agitated about. Brownfields and poisoned groundwater and toxic sludge. But for some reason she found it more compelling when these things happened to people other than them.

  He and McGee were the only ones living in the building. The rest of the second floor had been converted to artists’ studios. Maybe the light blasting through all those vast, uninsulated windows was flattering to canvases. On sunny days, Myles found the dirty glass had a way of making his life feel sepia-toned.

  Before the sun went down, though, the artists fled. Myles didn’t know where they went, but he liked to imagine little cottages in the suburbs with herb gardens and roaring fireplaces. He almost never talked to his neighbors. One was a mailman, or maybe he worked at the DMV. Something awful. His paintings were dark and blobby, like album covers for heavy metal tribute bands. And there was the middle-aged woman who rolled clay into thin gray turds that she assembled into something she called jewelry boxes but in fact looked like colanders made of Lincoln Logs. The third was a batty old hippie who taught art at the community college. Myles had never seen her stuff. She was always finding reasons for shutting her door whenever he came near.

  McGee didn’t mind the exposed ceilings or the wall of windows looking out over an old railway bed. Or the floorboards slathered in gray industrial paint. She didn’t notice that their futon, lying in the corner beneath a mound of blankets, looked like a jumble of newspapers swirled together in a dirty alley. She didn’t care that the bathroom had been an afterthought. There hadn’t been one at all when McGee found the place. But there were some things, thank God, even she was unwilling to live without.

  McGee had put Holmes in charge of building the bathroom. But Holmes didn’t know anything more about plumbing than the rest of them. His main qualification was that he owned tools and had at least a vague idea what to do with them. Holmes had stuck the bathroom where he could, in the middle of the sidewall, where it was easy to access the pipes crisscrossing nakedly overhead. A shower stall and toilet, side by side. Around them Holmes built a Sheetrock cubicle with a curtain for a door.

  On the other side of the bathroom was the kitchen. A single sheet of drywall was all that separated the toilet from the two-burner stove. The plastic, paint-splattered utility sink was the only fixture the place had come with.

  The day she’d given him that first tour, Myles had willed a convincing grin, saying, “It’s perfect.” And she’d taken him by the arm then, smiling her pixie smile, making his lie worthwhile.

  But that had been more than five years ago. Tonight, as soon as they came inside, McGee began to pace, walking back and forth in front of the windows. She didn’t take off her jacket, didn’t even turn on the lights.

  If Myles tried to talk to her when she felt like this, he’d only piss her off more. He’d say the wrong thing or in the wrong way. When she was upset, the best thing was to let her be, to pretend he didn’t notice anything was wrong.

  He sat down in front of the computer. But before he could switch it on, McGee was standing behind him.

  “Are you going to work on that now?”

  He was silent for a moment, trying to decide what was the right answer. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “I thought you were done.”

  “I’m going to finish tonight,” he said. “There’s just a few small things—”

  She turned back toward the windows. At this hour, the only thing to see outside was the electrical substation on the other side of the old railway bed. At night, lit up from below, it looked like an enormous loom.

  “Do whatever you want.”

  He pressed a button on the keyboard, and the computer awoke with a click and a hum.

  For the last two months, in his spare time, Myles had been working on a project of his own, assembling a video from footage of the protests they’d organized over the years. The idea had come to him one night in the basement of the bookstore. They’d been having a meeting, but really they’d just been arguing, and it had struck him that they’d all forgotten why they were there. They’d started out wanting to fix the world. Now they were just bickering and trying to keep each other from falling asleep.

  Myles had tried to explain his idea to McGee. “It’s about inspiring people,” he’d said. “Reminding them why we do this.”

  Reminding ourselves, he’d nearly added.

  “We don’t need nostalgia,” she’d said. “We need to move forward.” And ever since then she’d been rolling her eyes every time he tried to work on it.

  But he knew once the video was done, once she saw it, she’d understand.

  He didn’t know what time she went to bed that night. At some point he looked over, and she was no longer in front of the windows. There was a new lump on the futon.

  When he crawled into bed, hours later, his video footage at last burned onto a disk, daylight was creeping around the corner.

  “It’s done,” he whispered into McGee’s ear. He traced a finger around her shoulder, hoping she might wake.

  §

  The cinderblock walls bore patches of blue and green and brown, some of which looked suspiciously like mold. The floors were sealed with a shellac of beer and sweat and the gunk that traveled in the treads of shoes. Myles had never been to the club during daylight hours. He’d only ever seen the place in the dark. And now he thought he maybe understood why they usually kept it that way.

  He’d spent the walk over from the loft trying to remember when he’d been here last. Years, but how many? Back when Fitch and Holmes had started playing together, Myles and McGee had come here all the time. April, too. She’d just started seeing Inez. Holmes had just come out. It felt like forever ago.

  Walking past the bar now, Myles could tell a lot had changed. But what, exactly, he wasn’t sure. It was just a feeling, an unsettling sense of things being out of place.

  Fitch and Holmes were setting up onstage.

  “Is it done?” Holmes said when he saw Myles coming.

  Myles handed over the disk. “I was up all night.”

  Holmes tossed the plastic case onto the floor behind him and resumed rooting through a jumble of cables and equipment.

  “Have you seen McGee?” Myles said.

  Holmes tugged on a knotted cord. “It’s early.”

  “I told her seven,” Myles said.

  “It’s ten of.”

  “I know,” Myles said. “It’s just—”


  Holmes looked up impatiently, an effects pedal dangling from his fist like a rat trap. “I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

  When Myles woke up that afternoon, McGee had been gone. She was at the bookstore, he’d assumed, but he hadn’t wanted to call. He didn’t want to bother her, didn’t want to give her reason to remember she was mad at him.

  The place wasn’t open yet. The bartender was talking on his cell phone. The sound guy was playing Pac-Man in the alcove by the bathrooms. Fitch sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the stage, tuning his guitar. And then there was April. At the last minute, Fitch and Holmes had asked her to fill in for Chad, their usual drummer. Last week, without any warning, Chad had decided to move to L.A., leaving town in such a hurry he’d left his whole kit behind. When they’d told Myles, three days before, he’d thought they were joking. April had never played drums in her life. Or anything else. But here she was, hunched on her stool, looking tense and shivery, as if she were perched above a dunk tank. They could’ve found an actual musician, but Myles could tell Fitch liked the novelty of it. Sweet, pretty April, flailing away with a pair of sticks.

  When the bartender finally got off the phone, Myles went over and asked for a glass of water.

  “What?” the kid said.

  “Water.”

  The kid had a shaved head and a scepter tattooed on his neck. “We don’t have water.”

  “Tap,” Myles said. “Just tap water in a glass.”

  The kid slid the water across the bar, sloshing all the way to the end. The glass arrived half empty.

  “Was that really necessary?” Myles said.

  The kid had already turned away, punching a button and bringing the phone back up to his ear.

  Myles wondered what had happened to the old bartender. He’d played bass in a band of his own, and he’d known them all by name, even though Fitch was the only one among them who drank.

  In a few minutes, the overhead lights dimmed. The bouncer went over to unlock the door, propping it open with a hubcap and then sitting down on a folding chair, leaning his head against the wall. Nobody came in.

  Myles took out his notes. He’d written down some ideas, things he should say. The video would speak for itself. But not everyone understood the history, the context. All their old friends would know, people who’d been involved. But there’d also be kids here tonight too young to have seen any of it for themselves. High school kids. College kids. They’d need to be told what it all meant.

  Up on stage, the gear was set up. Amps, mics, guitars, drums. Fitch and Holmes and April must have gone backstage to wait. Myles thought about joining them, but he kept watching the door, wondering why the place was still so empty.

  Over in the corner, two guys and a girl were playing pool. The girl was learning. She was pretty, with long dark hair that got in her way every time she leaned over the table. One of the guys—her boyfriend, presumably—took every chance he could to help her, guiding her hands and arms, positioning her legs and hips. The other boy watched and waited, forced smiles on his face. He was in love with her, too.

  Two bored-looking guys leaned backward against the bar, staring into their beers. The bartender sat on a case of whiskey, half hidden, sending texts.

  The girl at the pool table shrieked. Myles looked over in time to see the cue ball go over the edge. All three of the players jumped back when the ball hit the floor, laughing harder than seemed necessary, managing to hold themselves erect only with the help of their sticks. The one who wasn’t the boyfriend retrieved the ball, setting it back upon the table as if it were a pearl on a velvet pillow.

  It was the same pool table, or at least the same spot, where he’d tried to teach McGee to play. She’d been in college then, just a little older than these kids were now. Myles himself must have been twenty-four. McGee had been in town for the summer. They’d met at a party. Even now Myles didn’t really understand how their circles managed to cross, friends of friends of friends. She’d been with a group of college kids, white kids from the suburbs with rings in their faces. She had a summer job counseling women, victims of domestic abuse. All her friends had jobs like that. April was teaching autistic kids to use computers. Others were feeding old people or rescuing dogs or chaining themselves to trees. They weren’t even jobs. They were volunteers. Nobody was getting paid, but still they had apartments and bought beer and cigarettes and managed to eat. McGee and April were sharing a place in Ferndale, even though they could have stayed at home with their parents for free.

  Some of Myles’s friends had been to school, too. He’d done two years of community college himself. But by the time he met McGee, he and Holmes had normal lives and normal jobs. Myles had been working in a video store, clueless that the place—that the entire idea of the place—was about to go extinct. Holmes had been doing odd jobs for his uncle, patching up houses and apartments on the cheap. He still was.

  Myles still remembered being perplexed when McGee explained the work she was doing then, helping abused women.

  “What do you say to them?” he’d asked her that first night at the party. “What do you say to these women?”

  “I help them,” she’d said. “I show them resources.”

  “But what do you actually say?”

  He couldn’t seem to explain what he meant. What could a girl twenty years old, a girl with no experience of the world, a girl who’d never been married, what could she possibly say that a grown woman—an adult who’d gone through genuine horror—would bother listening to? He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d just wanted to understand. He couldn’t imagine ever saying anything that would be of any use to anyone.

  A few nights after the party, they’d come here to a show, and Myles had shown McGee how to hold a stick. It was a test, partly, to see how close she was willing to let him get. It had been years since he’d heard her laugh like she did that night, miscuing balls all around the table.

  The brown-haired girl was ready for another try. She bent over the table and sighted along her stick. This time there was a solid clatter, and something sunk in one of the pockets. All three of the kids threw up their arms and cheered.

  The rest of the club remained quiet. The floor in front of the stage was still empty, but a couple of kids had gathered along the back wall, smoking and talking. Myles didn’t recognize any of them. They seemed so young, children with cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Where was everyone else? Where were all the people they’d known, the ones they’d always run into at shows, the ones who’d come to hear Fitch and Holmes play?

  And where was McGee? She was supposed to close the store and come straight here. There were still no messages on his phone. No texts.

  He started to type “where are you?” with the tiny keys, but then he stopped himself. It wouldn’t do any good to sound impatient, to make it seem he was checking up on her.

  “Come on,” Fitch said, appearing behind him. “We’re on.”

  April was back on stage, tapping out an unsteady beat.

  “Shouldn’t we wait?” Myles said.

  Fitch squinted at him. “For what?”

  Myles checked his phone once more. “We should’ve asked for a later slot. We should’ve gone last.”

  “Are you nuts?” Fitch said. “We’re lucky we even got this.”

  “Maybe we can switch with someone else,” Myles said.

  “The only reason we’re here at all,” Fitch said, “is because I called in a favor. For you.”

  “The video,” Myles said. “No one’s here.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “It’s important,” Myles said. “People have to see it.”

  Fitch put his hand on Myles’s shoulder. “I say this as a friend: I’m pretty sure no one here gives a shit.”

  Myles’s phone said quarter after seven. “McGee—”

  “She can see it at home.”

  “I made it for this,” Myles said. “The big screen. So people would remember it.”r />
  “They come to hear music,” Fitch said.

  “I passed out flyers.”

  Fitch shook his head. “We’re openers for the openers.”

  “Don’t make me do this.” April thrust herself between Fitch and Myles, teeth tearing at the nail of her pinkie finger.

  Fitch took her other hand. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The club fell into darkness, only the dimmest glow bleeding onto the stage and dance floor from the bar.

  Holmes was a blur in the darkness at the front of the stage, pointing a remote control at the ceiling. Behind him, an enormous square of blue light flashed on a white bedsheet suspended above the band. Then the blue light flashed to black, a sign the video was about to begin. But before the images came the sound, the speakers crackling to life with the roar of a crowd. The silent kids all around Myles looked at one another, as if they feared a mob were just outside, ready to storm the room.

  Within moments, the roar in the speakers began to ebb just slightly, the voices coalescing, changing to a chant. At least it was supposed to be a chant, but the words were so amplified, so heavy with bass, they sounded more like the grunt of industrial machines.

  After a few seconds, the black projection gave way, and at last an image appeared: a crush of bodies, protesters, mouths only slightly off sync with the chant. The camera pulled back, taking in more of the surroundings—the street, a skyscraper. Then the camera slowly panned over the front of the crowd, pressed up against a police barricade, fists in the air, shouting and pointing. On the other side, next to a dented gas canister, four riot cops stood shoulder to shoulder, rifles at the ready.

  At the lower edge of the screen, the crowd continued to swell. Against the pressure of all those people, the police barricade rocked, about to fall. One of the cops lowered his head, speaking into the radio strapped to his shoulder. The movement of his lips was firm and explosive.

  The chants intensified, thumping like drums. Now there were twice as many protesters in the crowd as before, picket signs bobbing. On the other side of the barricade, the riot cops were multiplying, too. And just when it seemed—even to Myles—that the tension on the screen was about to reach its breaking point, the girl appeared.