Later, she would wonder if it was possible that her thoughts had somehow summoned him, pulled his likeness from the ether, a mixture of memory and yearning designed to torment her further.
But he was real.
She took the long way home after spending three hours in a cafe, nursing a cup of scalding hot coffee and feeling sorry for herself until it was close to the time she’d normally be clocking out at the Overrail.
She felt no satisfaction from what she’d done to Ty Wilkinson, though she didn’t regret it. The son of a bitch had it coming, and God alone knew how many battered women in the man’s life she had struck a very literal blow for today. And yet she felt nothing but emptiness. Ty had been a victim by proxy, a pinata for all the pent-up anger, frustration, and self-hatred that had been gathering within her over the past few months.
As she turned the corner on East Pleasant Avenue, the hair prickled on the nape of her neck. She tugged up the collar of her fur-lined parka and shivered. It was cold, the sidewalks like polished glass, the wind dragging its ragged nails across her cheeks.
What the hell had she been thinking coming to Detroit?
It was a silly question of course, one she would have been better not asking herself again, for the answer never failed to further darken her thoughts.
She had come here because of Wayne, whom she’d loved, whom she feared she still loved, despite realizing long ago that every second word that spilled from his mouth was a lie, his promises glass birds destined to shatter sooner or later against the cold hard surface of reality. And the worst truth of all, the black knot in her heart that she couldn’t unravel, was that for this life, for this misery, she had abandoned with hardly a second thought a man and a child who had truly loved her, dumped them for a yellow brick road that had led her straight into a wasteland. She’d shut the door and driven away without looking back at the sad weathered man and his simple-minded boy, who would never understand the lure of her dreams, the hunger for ambition that drove her. Into Wayne’s car and out of their lives, headed for a recording studio in Detroit, where Wayne’s cousin Red was as eager as he to make her a star.
700 miles later, she’d realized her mistake.
There was the cold, a development she had anticipated but which still came as a shock to her system. Even so, her spirits held. She was prepared to make sacrifices for the sake of her career, and if singing her heart out in an icy room while the whole world got buried under six foot of snow outside was what it took, then so be it.
But there was no studio, and for all she knew never had been.
According to Red, he’d been forced to sell his studio a month before when the bank threatened to take his house for failure to make mortgage payments. From the look of the man—shifty eyes, shiny red leisure suit, hair in cornrows, smile so full of gold it made her wonder why he hadn’t sold them instead of the studio to save his house—they’d been had. Wayne would tell her later that he thought Red had a drug problem, that he was a habitual user and a compulsive liar. Three months of ever-worsening misery would pass before Louise would lose her cool enough to tell him that maybe he and Red had the latter attribute in common.
And Wayne would stun her, figuratively and literally, by responding with his fists, breaking her nose and two of her teeth in the process. It was the first time he’d hit her, and wouldn’t be the last.
And still she wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t. Despite his infrequent bursts of violence, she was drawn to him by the other part of him, the part that held her in bed at night and sang songs in her ear, the part that told her everything was going to be all right and that she should never doubt that he loved her. The tender side of him that promised someday everything would work out, that he never meant to hurt her.
She supposed that today she had proven how hot-headed she herself could be. After all, didn’t what she had done to Ty for his ill-chosen remarks make her no better or worse than Wayne?
He was her anchor. That was it. Her anchor in a hurricane, the tether that kept her from being swept away in an ugly wind that might destroy her in a maelstrom of loneliness, of isolation and fear, a fear that was infinitely worse than her fear of him when his moods turned black.
He was all she had left.
Wayne, and the dreams that stubbornly refused to leave her be.
Dreams, hope, and her memories of better times.
Wincing against the bitter sting of the cold, she pictured Jack and his son standing at the door to their rundown old farmhouse, the red dust swirling about their feet then rising behind the tires of Wayne’s car to obscure them from view, leaving nothing but dark crooked smudges amid that cloud, over which the eave of the sagging roof cut a red triangle from the clear blue sky.
She blinked away tears, and stepped over a mound of slush to cross the street. Her apartment was close now, and a dull pang of unease passed through her. Wayne would not take too well the news of her being fired, and though Louise had no doubt she could pick up something else soon, he would be sure to make a production out of it, as if berating her was a ritual he had a religious obligation to fulfill. But she knew his tirade would be nothing more than a means of avoiding reality yet again. She had lost her job; he’d never had one, and probably figured if he gave her a hard enough time about getting fired, she wouldn’t think to point out his own insufficient contributions to their survival. He smoked too much, drank too much, and frequently vanished on late night walks she had long ago ceased believing were as benign as he made them out to be.
Sighing heavily, she told herself that at least Ty hadn’t pressed charges today, a development that had surprised her until she realized having her arrested might mean word would spread about what had precipitated the drama between them, and he would be understandably leery about such details hitting the streets where his wife might hear it. It was about the only positive she could find in another dismal day.
Someone was standing outside the apartment.
For a moment, she thought it might be Wayne, but as she drew closer, she saw that the body was too thin and a little too short. Only the jacket he wore looked the same. The man stood there, staring up at the windows on the second floor, alternating between stamping his feet on the sidewalk and blowing into his cupped and ungloved hands. She felt sorry for him being out here so ill-equipped for the harsh cold, but had no notion of stopping to tell him so or to offer him charity, which in this part of the city, was most likely what he wanted. The streets were too dangerous here, and if he wasn’t a bum hoping for a handout then chances were he was waiting for some unlucky sucker to rob.
Louise surreptitiously reached for her purse and unzipped it. Inside was the can of Mace Marcia at the Overrail had given her on her first day, after Louise told her she wasn’t driving home, but walking.
As she approached her building, stepping off the curb to avoid having to pass too close to the man, he stopped his bouncing and turned. His lower face was hidden by a threadbare black scarf, a wool cap pulled down almost to his eyes.
She saw that he was young, the visible part of his face unlined by the wringer through which all young men were passed as the dark secrets of life were eventually revealed to them.
Louise ducked her head and moved past him.
He mumbled something to her.
“Sorry,” she said, nerves jangling, and quickened her pace. It was not a question, but an apology that she could not stop to listen. She hadn’t been able to make out the words, but it had sounded like he’d said “Wanna sleep.” Trying hard not to think too much about what such a cryptic message might mean, she trotted up the steps of the building and quickly snatched her key from the jumbled guts of purse, her hands trembling from the day’s ardor as she drove it into the lock and turned. When the man spoke again, his voice was clearer and this time his words made her freeze, every hair on her body standing on end.
Eventually, she turned.
The man—the
“Oh God.”
Her past approached her in small careful steps, wreathed in the smells of dust and leaves and forgotten
