Unburying Hope Page 12

  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.

  “Um, sounds like you guys are leaving me,” said Frank.

  Eddie stared at the two of them and then looked away. “I’m not making her leave. I’m just saying the drug wars are going to get bloodier. And a lot of Detroit’s cops and the Feds are reservists doing tours in Afghanistan.”

  Frank frowned. “That scares me.”

  “It should.” Eddie finished off his cocktail. “There’s no hope, it’s going to be an all out war across the streets, unless someone can find a way to pit the two sides against each other.”

  “How could the cops do that?” Celeste asked.

  “Cops lost all their funding and they’re too busy trying to lock up the little guys,” Frank said.

  “Yep,” Eddie said, nodding to Frank. “You’d have to focus the cartel against the local dealers.”

  “Sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this,” Frank said in a halting voice.

  Celeste looked between Frank and Eddie, seeing a momentary connection, then Frank’s confusion and Eddie’s evading glances. She didn’t know what she saw. Maybe it was just the agreement of two conspiracy theorists.

  She shook her head. God, getting Frank off of the news websites on his phone at work was a never-ending job. Adding Eddie to this overarching neurotic storytelling was too much.

  “Too many people want this town to survive,” she said in a strong voice, waving them both off.

  Eddie leaned in, “You might notice that all the real connective work, the real kind work, the caring for people and the City, it’s all done outside of the local government, by people, individuals, not with tax dollars.”

  “I know,” Celeste’s words burst out of her mouth, “See? It matters that each person steps up.”

  “But my point is that the government is unwilling and unable to stem the tide, the government is too late to the dance. They can’t fix anything. The people who ripped Detroit off, who took all Detroit’s value to offshore banks, they’ve left us to die. It’s like slitting the throat of your enemy on a side road and then going into town for hot tea. The only people doing any good here are individuals, with no power and no money.”

  “So it matters that I step up.”

  “Yes it does,” he said with only a bit of energy. “But the government has thrown up its hands. The government is supposed to be of the people, for the people. But instead, it’s powerless.”

  “Celeste,” Frank said softly, “the City is already under. It’s buried. Maybe we’d better flesh out Plan B, pronto.”

  “No offense, honey,” she said, patting Eddie’s hand, “but Frank, we’re not giving up that easily, are we?”

  Frank looked between the two of them, shaking his head. “I’ve never felt this sure of anything in my life.”

  “But Eddie says the meth is made outside the US, so that means the chemicals won’t hurt us.”

  Eddie shook his head too. “Celeste, people are using drugs because life is so shitty here, no jobs, no income, losing houses or apartments, welfare was cut, no doctors are giving Medicaid care. Meth is the Dr. Kevorkian needle that’s finally killing Detroit. The car companies are making surface-to-air missiles, their future is in war-making, not car-making.”

  “And we’re supposed to leave Detroi
t, right when she needs us most? We should instead be re-staking our claim to her,” Celeste said softly, knowing in her heart that walking through neighborhoods with her head held high was no longer a viable way of saying that she loved her City. The neighborhoods were half ghost towns, half wells of hopelessness. She’d help a little old lady open her front gate if she saw her struggling with a key, but she’d turn away when she looked in to the lady’s apartment to see just a chair in the bare kitchen, with a cracked coffee cup and a dried out tea bag about to be reused for any more flavor that could seep out. The need felt too great.

  “I think you guys should be careful when you’re heading to and from work,” Eddie said. “Don’t be out on the streets at night.”

  “Well, that takes all the joy out of being single in the City,” Frank joked half –heartedly.

  Eddie nodded. “I know. But take care of yourself, Frank, keep your eyes open.”

  “Like you?” Frank asked, “I see that you scope everything out. But Celeste promises me you’re not a spy,” he said, winking at Celeste.

  “I was trained to do that,” Eddie said, his voice lowered. “It’s a hard habit to drop.”

  Celeste glared at Frank. “He’s not a spy, Frank,” she said, looking to see if Eddie was angry. “He’s just cautious.” She drained the last of her own beer ready to get out of the bar. It was morose throughout the large darkened room. It was hard to keep the flame of hope for Detroit burning in a place that was so swamped with losses.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The laptop screen turned on and Celeste hit the three buttons that would visibly connect her with Frank via Skype. It was nice to see each other for chats instead of speaking on their cell phones. They had known that their jobs were going to be on the chopping block when they each shut down their home landlines and went solely to cell phones. Then calling and email dropped off, traded for the immediacy of texting. And now Skype erased the use of cell phones as speaking devices and they only used their cells to text each other during the day, an expensive form of passing notes in class.

  Before she met Eddie, if they weren’t out at night together in a bar, they’d turn on their laptops and Skype, leaving it open for ten minutes, half an hour, sometimes hours, watching TV shows, reading books, together digitally, not physically.

  It was comforting to be with him in this way. She’d never had a brother or sister, and this felt familial.

  But she didn’t miss it when Eddie was over, which gave her a twinge of guilt.

  She watched the call progress on Skype and was relieved when he answered.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, smirking disdainfully. “My ex-old lady.”

  “I know,” she said, pulling the edges of her lips down into an exaggerated frown. “My bad.”

  “You are right, Missy!” Frank said, shaking his pointing finger at her. “How can we stay soulmates if you dump me whenever you get a boyfriend?”

  “I’ve never had a boyfriend,” Celeste protested. She sat down in front of the laptop.

  “What are we drinking tonight?” Frank asked, “Mai Tai, Tequila Sunrise?”

  “Water,” she said, pulling her glass to the screen in front of her so that the camera would pick it up.

  “What?” Frank asked, teasingly aghast. “FAIL,” he said. He pulled a bottle in front of his screen, a dark brown champagne bottle with a glittering label on it, which he shoved right up to his laptop’s camera. “The good stuff! And I might not finish it all myself tonight,” he said, “since my ex-old lady is probably staying home. Too bad I can’t pour it through the screen,” he said. “Tell me you’re not going sober on me, please, I just bought a couple bottles of this stuff and I will never forgive you if I have to drink it alone.”

  Celeste clinked her water glass on the laptop camera, “Cheers,” she said.

  “So, why are you calling me?” he said, his voice hurt by her non-response.

  “Eddie’s out and I wanted to check in with you,” she said.

  “You want to go out drinking?” he said, his face brightening. “Or we could go out and get dessert and pay a corkage fee, I’ll bring the champagne.”

  “Sure,” she said, “but you’re going to kill me, I don’t drink as much these days.”

  “You’ve changed,” he sniffed. “At least it’s for the good. Don’t stop drinking completely, though, or I’ll have to go get a boyfriend myself just to finish my wine collection.” He poured himself a glass of water and said, “But sit down first, Missy. You’ve got to fluff that hair up and go heavy on that eyeliner before we go out. I can’t let you ruin my public image with the healthy hausfrau look you’re settling into.”

  Celeste opened her mouth in mock horror, then walked off screen for a moment to retrieve her makeup case from the bathroom. It used to be in the living room next to where she sat with her laptop so that she could do her makeup and get Frank’s approval. He didn’t seem to notice the meaning of her delay, that she’d moved it closer to Eddie’s own kit on the shelf next to the mirror above the vanity. She used to Skype Frank early in the morning, asking if navy blue eyeliner worked with her forest green dress, or if a lipstick was too red to go with her navy sweater, while he experimented with spiked hair. Even though they both knew that only distractedly sad and broke phone users would see them, their morning primping was frequently the most fun part of their day.

  “I’m not a hausfrau,” Celeste objected.

  “You’re a hot hausfrau,” Frank insisted, gesturing with his hands around his head, “pull your hair up like this,” he said, “just the front part up into a half pony tail. Then straighten the bottoms for a second or two before you leave. And please, god, no peach lipstick. Stick with the raisin. Peach no good when sun go down, raisin good.”

  She laughed, holding up the dreaded peach tube. “You know I only keep this to torture you.”

  “And you do, Missy, you do,” he shoved his head in too close to the camera, scolding her affectionately.

  “Okay, I’ll meet you in half an hour. That cheesecake place,” she said.

  “No, too tacky. Let’s go down by the river.”

  “There’s nothing down there but old hotels.”

  “There used to be a nice coffee place with a bakery. I went there with my dad sometimes when I was a small lad after he’d bring me on the train to the theater,” Frank said. “I want to see if it’s still open. If not, we can eat in the Renn Center.”

  “It’s desolate at night,” Celeste protested. “Are you sure it will be safe?”

  “Yeah, and I’ll bring my bottle of champagne, I’ll use it as a club if I need to,” he laughed.

  “Okay, I’ll get the bus,” Celeste said. “How’s my hair,” she turned side to side.

  “No bus, they’re shutting down our line, did you hear that? They’re so broke that they are pulling half the busses offline,” he said. “Take a cab. And bring a hairbrush in your purse. It’s like the beauty care fairies totally refused to bless you with talent when you were born,” he said.

  “Remember last time,” Celeste laughed, “when that old couple was in line for the two restrooms and you waltzed out of the ladies room with me?”

  “And they should not have said anything!”

  “My god,” Celeste laughed, “you gave them a heart attack saying you’re halfway through a sex change.”

  “With both pee organs,” Frank laughed along with her. “That’ll teach them. They shouldn’t have been so nasty.”

  “They thought we were in the bathroom being nasty,” Celeste said.

  “As much as I love you, Missy, it would be nasty to do the nasty with you, so there!”

  Celeste rolled her eyes, taking her hair out of the rubber band. “Wait, what? They’re shutting down our bus lines?”

  “They put up flyers today after work, it says most bus lines going down in a week.”

  “That makes me insane, Frank,” she could feel her blood boiling. If she couldn’t get to work, how could she
afford to live in the city? How could anyone get out of the dead zones? Her mind raced. How could she let her anger flame out? What colors and what message would she paint? Where would she paint it? The bus yard.

  “Oh no, I don’t like that look on your face,” Frank shook his head. “What are you going to get us into?”

  She stared at the screen but didn’t see him.

  “Celeste,” Frank said, “we are getting squeezed out. It’s time for us to leave home. I know it’s not what you want, but,” his voice tapered off.

  “I’ve got a good one, Frank. A plan.” She cleared her head and looked at him. “Give me an hour, I’m going to make a new stencil. I’ll meet you at the bus terminal, it’s going to be utterly empty at night. Except for sleeping homeless, but they won’t care what we do.”

  “Alright,” he said sheepishly. “It’s like we’re an old married couple,” Frank added, “except that you have a hot Army boyfriend.”

  “He is hot,” Celeste said, guiltily wishing he were there.

  “So, let’s go,” Frank said, “you sign off.” This was their favorite game, a modern version of ‘you hang up first’. So many times, neither of them would hang up, they’d each absentmindedly leave their apartments, laptops on, to find their Skype open hours later when they’d each return to their own places.

  This time, Celeste reached for the off button, just in case Eddie did the unthinkable and came home while she was gone.

  “You are NOT going to hang up on me, are you?” Frank snorted, real pain visible in his face. “How about I put a picture of something non-threatening in front of my camera,” he said, “so he knows you’re not out with a strange man?” He pulled a travel magazine from his bookshelf and stood it up in front of his camera. “I mean a man who wants to get in your pants,” she heard him laughing behind the magazine but knew that he was hurt to have to consciously limit their open involvement.

  “He knows you’re not a threat,” Celeste said, suddenly realizing the sting of that double-edged sword. “I’ll see you in an hour, I’ll go out to grab a cab.”

  “Not in your neighborhood,” Frank pulled the magazine away, looking straight at her. “Call for the cab, then I won’t worry.”