by Scott Lasser
The kid did as instructed. Sol sat. His hip hurt, but it wasn’t too bad. He looked at the kid. “Who are you?”
“Brian Kleinstadt, from down the block. You need me to call an ambulance?”
Sol noticed his decrepit car parked along the curb, an old Camaro skirted in rust. “Not yet. Let’s see if I can stand.”
The kid walked him to the house, even carried the paper. He helped Sol to his couch. Sol felt embarrassed by the mess of the room and by his weakness, especially when he was maneuvered by this specimen of Aryan physicality. It wasn’t what he would have expected, though. The kid had done a mitzvah.
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” the kid asked.
“I’m good,” Sol said. It was what young people said nowadays, apparently without irony. “Will you excuse me if I don’t see you out? I’m very grateful, though.”
Once the kid left, he called Cathy Brown. He could have called David, but he’d asked enough of his son. Cathy Brown was a shiksa he saw from time to time, the perfect woman because she always waited to be called. He asked her to come over and make him tea. He had a chill. “Actually, I can’t,” he said when she suggested he make it himself. He wouldn’t say more.
He knew she would hurry over. He also knew he would be fine, for now, but that in time he might look back on this day as the beginning of the end.
XIV
MARLON SHOWED ALMOST an hour late, but David didn’t mind. He had plenty of work now. He’d found that Detroiters were far more amenable to planning for their deaths than the people of Denver, and whether it was Michigan’s economy, its lack of consistent sunlight, or something deeper in the midwestern soul, to David this made a certain intuitive sense.
He walked out to the lobby to get Marlon. Heather, the front receptionist, a pretty girl still in her twenties, no doubt planning her escape to Atlanta or San Diego, made eyes at David. What-the-fuck eyes. There were two young black men. One slouched in his chair, one of those kids gaunt in a way that seemed almost feline, though he wore clothes big enough for a 250-pound man, also a baseball cap with a Detroit Tiger Olde English D, and earphones around his neck. He looked like a guy who worked on an airport tarmac. Next to him the other kid was similarly dressed, this one with narrow, almost Tartar eyes and earphones emitting a scratchy beat.
Neither looked at David. Maybe enough suits had already walked by that they didn’t feel the need to look up.
“I’m David Halpert,” David said.
The kid with the Tigers cap snapped to attention. This what a hundred grand could do.
“I’m Marlon,” he said. “Booker.”
They shook hands. The other kid removed his earphones. “This is E-Call,” Marlon said. “Eric McCall.”
McCall nodded but didn’t offer his hand.
“Well, Marlon, we should go to my office,” David said. “If Mr. McCall would like to—”
“You good?” McCall asked Marlon, and got a nod. McCall looked around, and David realized he didn’t know what to do.
“You can wait here,” David said. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Huh?” the kid said.
“A drink? A Coke, maybe? We’ve got Vernor’s. Something while you wait.”
A moment passed. “Coke, then,” David suggested.
“What’s it cost?” the kid asked.
“No, no, Mr. McCall. We’re happy to give you the Coke.”
McCall looked at Marlon, who shrugged and said, “I’ll take a Vernor’s.”
“Me, too,” said McCall.
David nodded to Heather, and she headed off, reluctantly.
David and Marlon walked back to David’s office, Marlon looking around as if he expected to be followed. David had to practically force him to sit in a chair. Heather appeared with his drink.
“Okay, Marlon,” he said. “I need some ID, like a driver’s license, and your signature, and I’ll get a check out.”
“Sure would like cash if you could do it,” Marlon said.
“I can’t. You know, the tax is taken care of.”
“Tax?” the kid said.
“You won’t owe tax.”
“Okay.”
“So why worry about cash?”
Marlon leaned forward, spoke softly. “Who am I gonna get to cash that sucker?”
“A bank. Don’t you have a bank account?”
Marlon sat back as if to say, No, of course not.
“Get a bank account. Deposit the money. Then save it. Do you have anyone who advises you on financial matters?” It sounded crazy to say this as soon as it came out of his mouth. This kid wore a Tigers cap indoors, sideways on his head.
“Advise me?” Marlon said.
XV
E-CALL OFFERED TO come this time, too, but Marlon didn’t want him. Even E-Call admitted that this David guy wasn’t dangerous and probably didn’t want Marlon’s money. Or if he did, he was going to take it with a briefcase, not a gun, and E-Call wasn’t going to be any help at all. The real issue was that Marlon needed David to like him. David would soon be living in Dirk’s house; Shelly was already gone. Marlon had to get back in there and get his money; it would be best to be invited.
They were meeting at a bank. Marlon never went to banks—“Nothing but security cameras,” E-Call warned—but Marlon figured that this might be the way to go. Put some money where no one could get at it, not even the police, because it was legal cash. It was an idea that always gave Marlon pause: all that money, legal.
The bank was Comerica, same name as where they played baseball now. Marlon needed an address, and so he used his mom’s in Ypsilanti, same as his driver’s license. He signed the back of the check, above the line, as instructed, and they gave him a receipt for the money, a one and five zeros. Then the dot and two more zeros. He got a booklet with checks. He’d have to find out how to use them. He got a cash card to let him get at the money, up to three hundred bucks at a time. He set a secret number—he used E-Call’s birthday—and David showed him how to use the card.
Back on the street, Marlon needed clarification. “So, you write out the number here?”
“That’s right, then put the number of cents over one hundred.”
“I seen that,” Marlon said, though he never knew why it was that way. He liked having this one mystery solved. “You didn’t have to do that, right?” he said to David. “Take me in there.”
“No,” David said.
“So why you do it?”
“Someone had to.”
“You one a those do-gooders? Good Christian and all that?”
“Not even close, Marlon.”
“You expecting a tip?”
David laughed, a real laugh, and Marlon felt embarrassed because he didn’t understand what was funny. The man didn’t want money, and there obviously was no woman involved, and so it was hard to know what he was up to. Maybe he really was one of those always-guilty, churchgoing types who wanted to help his fellow man.
“No tip,” David said.
“Michelle says you’re buying Shelly’s house.”
“That’s right.”
“You crazy, huh?” The man seemed to know a lot about the larger world—wills and banks and cash cards and such—but nothing about the place he was standing in at any particular moment. He didn’t even notice that he was moving into a neighborhood where white people didn’t live.
“Certifiable,” David said. He looked back at the bank. “You know,” he said, as if he knew what Marlon was thinking, “with all that money in the bank, you could change your life.”
“You really think that happens?”
“I do, all the time,” said David. “Just look at me.”
“What’s changed about you?”
“Everything.”
“You’re still a lawyer,” Marlon said.
“I’m saying that you can do better, Marlon. You can change—and you have the chance to do so. You can be somebody.”
Marlon appreciated that David ex
pected more of him. No one else really ever expected anything. “Why you care?”
David stood there a moment, seriously thinking on the question.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just do.”
XVI
CAROLYN WALKED INTO the kitchen to find Tina making a cup of tea. It was time to face up to things.
“Want one?” her mother asked.
“Mom, I’m pregnant. Also, Marty and I are splitting up.”
Her mother turned and looked at her as if she were a stranger, someone who’d just come in off the street.
“It’s not Marty’s,” she added.
Her mother walked over to the table and sat down.
“And I’m moving,” Carolyn said. “Back here.”
“To Detroit?”
“Yes.”
“But what about Kevin?”
“He’s coming with me.”
Tina slowly shook her head and looked out the window. It was three in the afternoon, the light outside fighting its way around a pine tree.
“Everything is falling apart,” her mother said.
“You’ll have another grandchild,” Carolyn said.
“Sit,” her mother said.
Carolyn sat. Her mother reached out and took her hand.
“Whose child are you carrying?”
“I’d rather not say yet. I mean, until I tell him.”
“You are in trouble. That’s why you’re coming home.”
“Something like that, Mom.”
“What does Kevin say?”
“He doesn’t know yet.”
“You must tell him.”
“Of course.”
“He might forgive you someday,” her mother said. “If you’re lucky.”
• • •
THERE WAS NO choice now but to act deliberately, with forethought. Most people considered options a good thing, the American way, but one tended to squander those choices, or to choose badly, and then to call a bad outcome fate, as if the choices made had nothing to do with it.
Carolyn had grown up with all the advantages and now she felt she needed to give them to Kevin, and to her new child. This seemed easier in Detroit, with its lesser stores of social pressure and conspicuous consumption; with its unsettled weather; with its lowered expectations of how well things might turn out. Oddly, she thought this didn’t inhibit ambition but aided it: in California you might believe things came easily, while here you learned you had to work hard. She really couldn’t think of a better place to raise kids.
And then there was David. She realized she was afraid to tell him about the child because she thought she might lose him. She cared for him; she was willing to admit this to herself. In fact, she loved him. It scared her how precarious the outcome seemed. Once she told him about the baby, he’d make a decision, and what if he decided differently than she hoped? It exhausted her just to think about it. But she had to tell him. And soon.
• • •
KEVIN CRIED. At first there were just tears, and then when he realized his mother’s mind could not be changed, he wailed. She tried to comfort him, but he pulled away and then ran from the room. He locked himself in his bedroom. Carolyn insisted he open the door, pounded on it, put her shoulder to the wood, but he was on the other side, braced against it. He was twelve now, and stronger than she was.
“Open this door!” she shouted. “Or you’re grounded.”
“I don’t care!” he shouted back. “You’ve already grounded me for my life.”
She left him there and went outside. It was quarter to six in the evening, completely dark and freezing. She drew deep breaths of air, felt that odd coolness inside her, almost like water going down. She told herself she was doing the right thing. Then she said it again, aloud, so that it would be easier to believe.
XVII
THE POUNDING ON the door made him freeze. He’d been in the house a little over four hours, since right after the closing. He felt his heart racing, his mind slowly conjuring up the word: fear. Who was pounding on the door? “It’s okay,” he told himself. He said this aloud. The words, the sound of them, made him feel a little less alone. Besides, thieves didn’t knock.
He’d been in the kitchen, looking in the cupboards—he’d bought not only the house but most of its contents—and now he walked to the door and opened it. There was Marlon in a puffy down jacket, his breath a cloud of smoke around his head. It was half past six, as dark as the middle of any night.
“Hey, can I come in, Mr. Halpert? Damn cold out.”
David took him to the living room, flipped on the light.
“Nothing’s changed,” Marlon said. “Even the books and shit.”
“You a reader, Marlon?”
“Nah, not me. The paper, once in a while. Follow some basketball, but you can get everything you need from the TV, ESPN, you know?”
“Take your coat off, sit down,” David said. “You want something?”
“You mean like a Vernor’s?”
“I don’t know if I have any. I just moved in, but Shelly left everything. I bet I can find something.”
“Dirk, he liked gin. Bet there’s a bottle. You like a martini?”
“Sure,” David said, amused at Marlon trying to play the host.
“Mind if I make a couple?” Marlon asked.
“Mind if I ask you a question first?” David said, thinking there was no way this kid came over to tend bar.
“What?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Let me make the martinis, and I’ll get right down to it.”
David wasn’t sure what he should say. Barging into someone’s house and making drinks with his liquor was no one’s idea of polite society, though Marlon obviously thought about it differently.
“What is it, Marlon?” David asked.
“Dirk said no one ever just says what he’s got right off. Got to let it flow, right?”
“Perhaps,” David said. He wasn’t sure what the kid was talking about, but Marlon went to the kitchen and found the gin and the cocktail shaker and two V-shaped glasses, ice in the freezer. He worked confidently, apparently familiar with the ritual.
“Cheers,” he said. The drink, the strength of it, made David’s eyes open. He could feel a pulling in his cheeks.
“I like these glasses,” Marlon said, “how you tip ’em to your lips and the liquor slides right in.”
David nodded, waiting.
“It’s good, right? Everyone says I make a good martini. I’ve done some bartending here and there. Private clubs, you know.”
“It’s an honest living, bartending.”
“Yeah, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
“Remember before you said I could change my life.”
“I do.”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking, maybe you’re right. Maybe I can change. It’s not like I grew up wanting to do this. Thought maybe I’d get me a real job, stop worryin’ ’bout everything. Live like a civilian.”
“It sounds like a great idea. Dirk would be happy.”
“Dirk, man, it was never all that easy to make him happy, you know.”
“I didn’t really know him,” David said.
“You just live in his house.”
“I bought the house.”
“Yeah, and I got this idea about that.”
“What idea?”
“Dirk told me I always had a place to go. Times got bad, I could come here.”
“But Dirk’s dead.”
Marlon shrugged. He apparently thought that Dirk’s promise extended beyond death, that the obligation—the covenant—stayed with the house, no matter the owner. “You want to live in my house?” David asked, to make sure he had it right.
“Just the guest room downstairs, like always. I’m quiet. I can help out. And it’s good for you to have a brother living in the house, in this neighborhood.”
“Marlon, you can’t be serious.” What, David wondered,
actually went through this kid’s mind?
“Serious? I’m serious. I need a place. Can’t go back where I was.”
“Why not?”
“Just believe me, I can’t,” Marlon said.
“You could live with your mother.”
“You want to live with your mother?”
“You’ve got money,” David said. “Get an apartment.”
“You said you’d help me. That’s why I’m asking for a little help. Show me some civilian stuff, like you did at the bank. I thank you for that, by the way.”
“Civilian stuff.”
“Yeah. No one’s ever done that. I’ve learned a lot from you.”
“I don’t know, Marlon.” David remembered his own father taking him to the bank to open an account. He’d been about twelve.
“I’ll stay out of your way,” Marlon said. “Besides, what are you gonna do with all this space? It would be good for you, you know, to have somebody in the house. Not good to live alone.”
David took down his cell phone number. Marlon had a pay-as-you-go plan; the number was always changing. David walked him to the door, feeling dizzy from the drink, from Marlon’s request.
“I’ll think on it,” he told Marlon. David couldn’t decide if he was more taken aback by this bizarre request or by the fact that Marlon didn’t seem to think it was anything special. It occurred to David that no one had needed anything from him in a long time.
“Even pay you rent,” the kid said. David waited while Marlon slowly made his way out. Marlon took two steps from the door and then turned and waved. In that big jacket he looked like a little kid. David couldn’t help but like him.
XVIII
THROUGH A FRIEND Carolyn had gotten an interview with an ad agency, and so earlier that day she had put on her business clothes—the skirt was too tight, but the jacket covered that up—and driven downtown. When she was a little girl her father had taken her down Woodward to the old Hudson’s. Back then Woodward had been crowded with pedestrians, the street lit up with signs from stores and the streetlights themselves. People dressed up to shop at Hudson’s. Now Hudson’s was gone, and she was vying for the chance to pick at the dwindling marketing dollars left on the carcass of the Detroit auto business. The job paid roughly sixty percent of what she was making in L.A.
