There was Brown Blanket Lady, who hunched on the sidewalk wrapped in a filthy afghan, rocking. She held out her scrawny hand in silence. I never saw her make eye contact with anyone, and I never heard her say anything. When someone dropped a coin or bill into her hand, she retracted it into her blanket like a spring-loaded bank.
There were Young Brenda and Drooly Rick, a couple who spoke, when coherent, of getting married and having kids in Montana.
At first I tried to befriend these people. You know, get to know them, because hey, the least of them speaks the truth, right? I'd learned long ago from my college professors that the poor are better people than the rich or the middle class, that prophets are commonly cast out of polite society, that the least prepossessing individuals are usually the wisest and worthiest.
These lessons were reinforced by literature. Quasimodo was insecure. Caliban was misunderstood. Boo Radley only wanted to make friends. Huck Finn had dirty feet but a heart of gold.
So I shared small amounts of my busking earnings with them, listened to their philosophies of life. I bought candy bars in bulk and gave them away.
But when I really got to know and interact with these people, I found way less life wisdom in them than in the guy who fixed my car or the lass working the pizza counter or my landlord. I don't know whether that's an insult, but I guess it isn't a glowing testament either. One day I was playing, getting into it, my eyes closed. I played a long series of variations on an Appalachian tune called "Forked Deer," and when I opened my eyes I saw that the money I'd accumulated in my case was gone and Drooly Rick was running away down the street dropping coins. I kept my eyes open after that.
I realized that the mandolin gave me a leg up on the other buskers in terms of authenticity—perceived authenticity, anyway. If I used tremolo, I could play almost any basic folk tune and people perceived it as Greek music. Most people's dim impression of Greek music is that it's played on an unfamiliar, plaintive stringed instrument. The Greek instrument is the bouzouki, similar to the mandolin but not the same. It's bigger, with a different fret pattern and overall sound. But the bouzouki is also a short-sustain instrument, meaning that when you want a note to linger, you must use tremolo. So most visitors to Greektown light up when they hear a tremolo folk tune, even if the tune is an American Civil War ballad played on a mandolin.
.
I backed up Blind Lonnie on "Happy Birthday," listening carefully as I played. It was nobody's birthday that I knew of. Then we launched into some variations on a Mexican melody he'd learned off the radio. Earningswise, we were doing better than we had for a couple of weeks.
It was a Friday night, we were at his traditional spot at the corner of Monroe and Beaubien, and I was working through some chord progressions he'd assigned me for the song, just forming the chords with my left hand and then letting my right wander around the strings. I was enjoying the night. People were hustling by on their way to dinner or the casino. The air was heavy with the smells of food: lamb, spices, lemon, and the bitter air-taste of thick Greek coffee. Cars chugged along looking for parking places. A reggae band on a distant corner clanged out a song. The shadows of the buildings had been creeping across the street, and now the streetlights were coming on. This June Detroit night was turning cool. A woman wearing an open-midriff top and tiny come-fuck-me shoes shivered into the arm of her proud date as they hurried along. People stopped to drop money into Blind Lonnie's case.
Probably because I was concentrating so hard on my chords, it took me a while to notice a man watching me from across the street. He walked past once, then he walked the other way, slowly. I glanced over. He stood at the curb not directly opposite us but off to the side. He leaned against a fat post and watched, then got behind the post and hugged it, his head poking out to one side, watching. From the angle of his gaze it was clear he was watching me as I stood behind Lonnie, who was seated as usual on his battered wooden box.
A really fierce Detroit lady cop had once told me all I needed to do to avoid getting jumped was to look around all the time and make bold eye contact with anybody who didn't look right. She demonstrated: "You give him a look that says I see you." Her inflection deepened and her eyes slashed across my face. "And I'm not scared of you."
I'd employed that direct look many times since, and, in spite of having been alone in some fairly dicey places, and in spite of minding business not entirely my own, I'd been all right. I gave this guy that look, but he kept right on watching me. So I watched him back.
He looked out of place in Greektown, out of place in Detroit as a whole, frankly. He could have been a European fashion model: the unmuscular, haunted type, only weirder. He wore a dark suit cut from what appeared to be raw silk, a glowing white shirt and a deep pink ascot. Perched at an angle over his floppy hair was a beret, for God's sake, and he was smoking a cigarette.
I tried to read his expression. His eyes, half hidden by the hair, were aggressive, but his lips were parted as if in a question.
He watched me and I watched him, and recognition dawned.
I knew this man.
He swung his arm off the pole and threw away his cigarette.
[End of chapter 1 of Lucky Stiff. Find out what comes next here.]
BOOKS BY ELIZABETH SIMS
Nonfiction
You've Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams
Fiction
(It is not necessary to read either series in order.)
The Rita Farmer Mysteries
The Actress (#1)
The Extra (#2)
On Location (#3)
The Lillian Byrd Crime Novels
Holy Hell (#1)
Damn Straight (#2)
Lucky Stiff (#3)
Easy Street (#4)
Left Field (#5)
www.elizabethsims.com
Elizabeth's Amazon Author Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Information
Reviews
Also by Elizabeth Sims
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgments
About Elizabeth Sims
Note from Elizabeth
Damn Straight Page 22
