She should have known that she was not the type for overnight transformations. Her whole life had been devoted to making things last. But here she stood in a three-hundred-dollar ensemble, trying to look like someone else. It was eleven-thirty, and she had half an hour to get to the restaurant. She started to panic. The shoes were pinching her feet. She would trip on the steps leading into the restaurant. Rummaging through her closet, she found a pair of sensible, reliable flats. They could have used some polish, but at least they were black. Would Norm really notice her shoes, anyway? Lydia was long and slender, even elegant. With any luck, he would be focused on her eyes, not on what she was wearing.
Her face looked unfamiliar this morning—waxen and severe. She put on a bit of blush, lipstick, and mascara, then went to Jessica's room. Standing before the full-length mirror, she untied the dog-eared scarf and tossed it into a corner. Now the shirt seemed to wash out her features. So obvious that she was trying to appear younger. She decided to go with an old standby: a short-sleeved button-down with a Peter Pan collar. The gray-blue color was a bit too close to the gray skirt she had on, but at least she was looking a little more like herself. The slit skirt stood out now, but she'd run out of time to bring the outfit together. She was already late.
When she got to the restaurant, Norm hadn't yet arrived. Lydia sat at a table by the window and watched the passersby, trying to pick him out of the crowd. Teenagers with tattoos and Day-Glo hair passed mothers pushing babies in double-strollers. Lydia fiddled with the collar of her shirt, soft from so much laundering. Her skin felt loose on her face, as if she were aging by the minute. She was still looking out at the street when a chair scraped the floor, and there was Norm, sitting across from her.
"Did I surprise you?" he asked.
"There you are." She smiled.
He looked different from the man she'd met at the museum. His hair was down, over his ears, and it seemed shorter, shoulder-length. He had on the same glasses as before and a white shirt with a mandarin collar. On someone else it might have seemed studied, but Lydia got the sense that Norm had always been able to carry off a look. He was probably the kind of professor whom women fell for and men described as "cool." Lydia suddenly felt off balance.
"Some drivers you have here. They're out to kill. I'm still not used to it," he said.
"They have a reputation to keep."
"Well, it's an honor to meet you officially now." Norm reached across the table and shook her hand.
"Same here." Lydia felt vaguely disappointed by this greeting.
"Has someone come by for drinks?"
"I told him to wait," Lydia said. She felt awkward and provincial, regretted changing out of the new clothes M.J. had picked out. What had happened to Norm's aging hippie look?
"So, how was your flight back from Minneapolis?" she asked. A stupid question, but the only one that came to mind.
"It was a nonevent."
"I haven't flown in twenty years." Lydia tried to break the ice. "I'm terrified of getting on a plane. There's something unnatural about loading into a giant dart and praying that it finds its target."
"That's kind of extreme, don't you think? I fly all the time."
"It's just not for me. I'd do it if I could get up the nerve, believe me. I have kids on both coasts, and I hardly ever see them."
"Fear of flying. We better not get into that conversation." Norm relaxed in his chair and beckoned a waiter over. "Two sangrias," he said. "You want a sangria, don't you?"
"That would be fine." Lydia was searching for something to say. She hated herself when she was nervous, and here she was going on about her fear of flying. Norm was not the talker that he'd been before. She could sense herself growing anxious, eager to fill the silence. "I hate bridges as well," she said. "One time when my daughter was barely a teenager I refused to cross the Mackinac Bridge. We had been up north visiting my father's side of the family—it was just us girls—and we decided since we were up there, we might as well keep going and cross into the U.P. Have you ever been to the Upper Peninsula?"
"Can't say that I have. I hear it's rather dead."
"The fact is, neither have I," Lydia said. "Just as we approached—it's one of the longest suspension bridges in the world—I panicked. I told my daughter, 'Jessica, just wait here; I'm going to find a policeman to drive us across,' but she was at the height of adolescent self-consciousness and the idea of someome seeing us out there—she just couldn't take it. So we turned around and drove home. I still think about that moment when I pulled over and knew I couldn't do it. Five miles across. I can't tell you how impossibly far that seemed. And it gets windy. You hear stories about gusts throwing people over the edge. And the bridge is so close to the water. The cars looked as if they were driving right into the Straits of Mackinac, about to be swallowed up and lost forever. Jessica hardly spoke to me on our drive back to Detroit. Still, I can't remember feeling more relieved or closer to her. It's strange. There she was, hating me for freezing up, but I felt this intense bond, for having survived a trial together."
Lydia broke out of her reverie and saw that Norm was looking away. He seemed distracted, perhaps wondering where the waiter had gone. "I don't know why I'm talking about this," Lydia said with a little laugh.
"We've all got our quirks." Norm took off his glasses and set them on the table.
In the uncomfortable pause that followed, Lydia felt foolish for having said so much. She worried that Norm had lost interest the moment he'd seen her again, and wondered whether her clothes did matter, after all. Or maybe she was so poor at flirtation that she had stunned him into silence. He had conveyed such energy in his e-mails. But already he seemed weary, could barely meet her eyes without looking away.
"Have you had a chance to check the menu?" he asked.
"I don't know much about tapas. I'm counting on you."
The waiter came by with sangrias, and Norm ordered a variety of dishes for the two of them—jumbo shrimp, andouille sausage, baby lamb chops, and new potatoes in tomato sauce. Lydia rarely ate meat other than chicken, and she had guessed, quite wrongly, that Norm would be a vegetarian. She also couldn't remember, except for that time with M.J., when she'd last had an afternoon drink. But she was in new territory now, she reminded herself, trying to keep an open mind.
When the bread and olives arrived, Lydia ate to settle down. Norm was describing his former position at the urban design center and his new job in Windsor. As he talked, he kept pulling his hair behind his ears. It occurred to her that maybe he was as nervous as she was.
"After this, we should go downtown and tour the Necropolis," he said.
"Necropolis?"
"Detroit, where the dream began. It's a cemetery now. I thought we'd pay our respects."
"Be nice. That's my hometown you're talking about."
When the tapas arrived, Lydia had a few bites of potato and more bread and olives. Norm ate all the shrimp and sausage.
"Wasn't it Henry Ford who said the best way to solve the city problem was to leave the city?" Norm gnawed at a lamb chop.
"That's our Henry."
"And Detroit is the result."
Lydia did not want to get into this conversation on what she had hoped would be a date. Save your lectures for the classroom, she thought.
"I love the Utopians in particular," he continued. "So many of them were so wonderfully wrong. I teach a seminar on the Utopian planners, and my favorite is Le Corbusier." Lydia knew all about the modernist architect who, like Bel Geddes, had influenced the expansion of the suburbs. She had written about him in The Magic Motorway, but Norm nevertheless went on. "You've got his Radiant City right here in Detroit. The highways shoot off in every direction, like spokes from a wheel, radiating out like sunbeams. In the Radiant City the idea is to drive on your radial tires as far away from the center as you can. I mean, who can survive in the middle of the sun, where it's hot, crowded, and treacherous?"
"My ex-husband moved to Phoenix." Lydia trie
d steering Norm off the topic. She was happy to talk about highways and cars—they were her subject, after all—but not here in a public place, with him growing louder and more didactic. And not today, when she'd had every reason to expect that she and Norm would continue where they'd left off. What had happened to the pet names, the wordplay and innuendo? Where had that person on the computer screen gone?
"Phoenix? Now, there's a Radiant City," he went on, and Lydia felt her patience slipping. When the waiter returned, she ordered another sangria and finished it off before the bill arrived.
"I've got this." Norm reached for his wallet. "I've been meaning to bend your ear."
"Sure," Lydia said. She thanked him for lunch, feeling more frustrated by the minute. She wished he had warmed up right at the moment when she confessed her fear of bridges. She had given him an opening, a personal insecurity. Perhaps she should have said more. Or maybe that was the trouble. She had talked too much about her own family.
She was too old for this nonsense.
Lydia followed Norm out of the restaurant to his car, a small green convertible with a long rounded nose and short rear end.
"So is this your 'car of tomorrow'?" she asked.
"It's a fuel cell. I've got it on loan from a firm I do research for. These are my summer wheels."
"Nice," Lydia said.
He surprised her by opening the passenger side door. So their date was continuing? She had a moment's apprehension about getting into a car with someone she barely knew. But since this was her day of adventure, she decided to go through with it. Surely Norm would soften up once they spent more time together. And she didn't want to tell M.J. that she'd been the one to cut it short.
"So I assume that you're working on your own designs as well?" she asked, getting in.
"I don't like to talk about work in progress."
She wondered what he'd been doing on the message board if he didn't talk about his work. "I know what you mean. I'm the same way." She was trying so hard to be agreeable.
"I've got a lot on my plate," Norm said. "Mine's a whole-model approach. The car is just one component. Then there's the city, the highway, products in general. And all the various materials that go into making those products."
"When do you sleep?"
"Not often." Norm turned the ignition. "So what do you say we tour the ruins?" But he didn't wait for her reply.
They took Woodward Avenue south toward downtown. The day was growing chilly. With one hand Lydia held the knot of her hair in place, and with the other she clutched her shirt collar to keep warm. They didn't speak again until they were parked in the underground garage of the Renaissance Center, the half-billion-dollar mall and office tower complex that Henry Ford II had helped build to revive the business district. It was just Lydia and Norm in the near-empty garage under the massive downtown structure, and she felt that note of unease again. She wondered what her children would think if they could see her now.
They approached a sign to one of the towers. "It's easy to get lost in this place," she said. "That might as well read, 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.'"
Norm laughed, which made her feel a little better.
The Renaissance Center, originally built for shoppers, businesspeople, and conventioneers, was a colossal failure in design. From the outside it looked like a glass fortress—built to keep "undesirables" away—and inside was a concrete Inferno, a dark maze of connected circles, with levels of footways and blind alleys. Nearly all the stores were vacant or empty. As many policemen wandered about as customers. There was no center, no gathering place, only a huge concrete column rising from the middle of a ground-floor wishing pool.
Lydia and Norm had been following a path of red floodlights but found themselves back where they had entered. They took several wrong turns before finally making their way through a tunnel and onto the People Mover, the aboveground train that looped three miles of downtown. The only other passenger was a solemn-faced security guard. "Listen to this." Norm laughed. He had picked up a People Mover brochure and as the two-car train departed the Renaissance Center, he began to read out loud:
'"You'll board the People Mover at one of thirteen attractive, conveniently located stations—some of them actually inside downtown buildings.'" His mocking voice filled the small space. Lydia was trying not to catch the security guard's eye. Below them, though it was the middle of a workday, the sidewalks and buildings were empty. '"You'll enjoy a breathtaking view of the city as you move quickly, quietly, and safely above the streets on one of the most technologically advanced transportation systems in the world.'"
A minute later they were already at the next stop. An elderly woman stepped onto the train and smiled at Lydia. Within the next six minutes, the People Mover had stopped at six more stations, including Greektown, Cadillac Center, Grand Circus Park, and Times Square. Norm seemed to get a great kick out of Detroit's Times Square, a couple of burnt-out buildings and a weed-filled lot with a rusted sign: PARK HERE $2.75 ALL DAY. Not a single car sat in the lot.
"So I have this idea that I wanted to run by you," he said as the train pulled into Michigan station. "I've been studying this place for years—it's one of the reasons I moved to Windsor. Let's face it, there's no more devastated city in America. Newark is bad, but Detroit is hopeless. I mean, look out there; it's like Dresden after the firebombing."
"You could keep your voice down," Lydia whispered. The elderly woman still smiled, a few seats away. She held an aluminum cane in front of her, both hands resting on top.
"I was listening to Click and Clack on Car Talk," Norm continued, a bit softer. "Click asked Clack in his funny accent: What's the cushiest job in America? Answer: Working for the Detroit Bureau of Tourism. Well, they had a big laugh at that, and I guess it must have been funny, though I was thinking at the time, if it weren't for Detroit, you two wouldn't be on the radio. But I wondered: What if Detroit actually did reinvent itself as a tourist town?" Norm held his finger up as if anticipating a response. "I know it sounds outrageous, but hear me out."
A trio of teenagers got on at Joe Louis Arena, which did nothing to deter Norm. He talked about black empowerment and economic pragmatism, the different approaches of the city's mayors, and he said downtown didn't stand a chance unless someone did something radical. "Making Detroit a tourist mecca—now that would be dramatic. And not just a tourist town, but an environmental wonderland. So—" He clapped his hands. "I'm devoting the next issue of Nuplan to something I'm calling the Emerald City Project."
Lydia looked around, as if for support. The old woman still seemed lost in her own world, and the security guard focused on the teenagers, who were laughing and talking among themselves.
"Mayor Young was halfway there with this People Mover. It's like a toy train tootling around a war zone," Norm continued. "But he was trying to lure traditional business. As I see it, the only way to use these abandoned buildings is to turn them into greenhouses. Look." He pointed to a high rise with moss and ivy growing on its walls. "The earth's already taking Detroit back. Why not showcase the organic city?"
"The organic city?" Lydia asked, incredulously.
"Let's face it. The most successful tourist destinations find a way to create fun for their visitors and along the way shake them down for a few dollars. Look at Orlando, Anaheim, Las Vegas. I'm no fan of kitsch, but people spend money there and that money goes into the city's coffers."
A computer-generated voice announced the approach of the Renaissance Center. Lydia stood up but Norm stayed where he was. "Let's go for another loop," he said. "I haven't told you my plan yet."
"I doubt I want to hear your plan." She began to move toward the doors.
"Oh, come on." Norm grabbed her hand and squeezed it. He hadn't touched her since the beginning of the date, but now she felt like pulling away. This was not the beginning of something, as she'd actually believed it might be. "Am I embarrassing you?" he asked.
"There's a time and place."
; He gave her a look that seemed to say What, you don't like me?
She had liked him on the Internet—a crusader on the message board, a charmer over e-mail—but in person he had the balance all wrong, at turns noisy and dispassionate. "It was different on the message board," Lydia whispered. It was all she could say. You were different. She'd built him up, just like Cy, let him grow in her mind into an ideal. She wondered how she'd set herself up for this.
The teenagers got off at the Renaissance Center, replaced by a policeman and a young couple who seemed to lean into each other to keep upright. The woman with the cane stayed on. Perhaps she would ride all afternoon.
Norm let go of Lydia's hand. She sat back down and half-listened with increasing agitation as he pointed out the dilapidated buildings they passed. "There's beauty in wreckage—just look at Rome," he said as they passed Greektown and the boarded up windows of the Book-Cadillac Hotel. "I've always believed that one person's trash can be another's treasure. I love eBay," he said. "And I still check the papers every Saturday, get up early to go looking for yard sales. One of my favorite things to do is to take something old and give it a new life."
He talked about the way Disneyworld and Las Vegas combined the past with the future. "Nostalgia has never been more chic than it is today, but I see domes of glass and steel, too, futuristic sculptures with moving parts and lights dancing all around them, geometric shapes juxtaposed with the rubble in strange and beautiful ways. And all of it would run completely clean. No pollution. Solar power. Everything that goes out comes back in. It would be the perfect closed system. And what a symbol! Imagine making Detroit—birthplace of the car and highway—the new ecological model for the world."
He drew shapes on the train window with his fingers, as if to superimpose his blueprint over the city. His voice rose with excitement. "The roofs would be made of grass, all the parking lots would be porous. There'd be wetlands over there by the Cobo Arena that would filter into the Detroit River and make it run as clear as rainwater. I see canals with tourist boats crisscrossing the city, trains like roller coasters running in wild patterns underground, in the air, through tunnels, into buildings, sweeping through the streets like benign demons. Come on, Lydia. Don't be a skeptic. Imagine the rides, the thrill spaces. People will flock here, as if it's the new Eden."
Drives Like a Dream Page 15
