So even though it’s out of character, Wendy stands from her seat. She walks over to Michael and tugs at his elbow, loosening him from the waitress. Bernice goes without argument and begins again to sing.
Later, in Michael’s parked truck, overlooking the Hudson from the edge of the West Harlem docks, Wendy will lean uncomfortably across the truck’s wide center console and lay her head on Michael’s shoulder. The windows will be cracked, and the river will smell of fish and refuse, New Jersey on the other side, a shimmering mass of white light, so close you could swim if you had to, launch yourself into the black water and let the current take care of the rest.
Wendy will try to recall Bernice’s voice, its tone and timbre, its breathy texture. She will place a hand on the damp unbuttoned area over Michael’s breastbone. She will hold her palm to his sternum. She will twist a lock of his chest hair so that it loops around her finger like a ring.)
American Americans in America
Michael
The wind’s too strong to ride roofless, but we brave it, gun in the glovebox. My Porsche clanks along in the right-hand lane. It’s been due for a tune-up for years. The car crosses the Taconic, paced by Vermont-plated Subarus and shit box hatchbacks bearing Red Sox insignia. White-bearded riders on Harleys from New Hampshire zip past like they’re late to audition for the ZZ Top reunion tour. New York plates are bolted to an absurdly high number of vans and SUVs, which gives me pause to wonder where they find city parking. Maybe in the badlands out beyond the limits, like Westchester. Rachel’s on my right, wind in her hair, sun on her scorpion. She speaks, but I can’t make her out over the noise.
“What did you say?”
“It’s fucking freezing.”
“You want me to pull over and put the roof up?”
“Fuck no, you pussy.”
Rachel twists the volume knob. The tick of an E-MU snare comes clean through my system. I once read an essay that claimed Eminem’s popularity wasn’t due to his whiteness, but to the clarity of his diction. It seemed racist to me, giving points to a white guy for elocution. I thought the writer was wrong, that the real reason for Em’s intelligibility is the sparse perfection of Dre’s beats, so much cleaner than the racket turned out by his successors. Then again, I’m always playing the apologist’s role, even in my own head, whitesplaining my white taste by way of Dre’s endorsement.
We’re going through Em’s catalogue in chronological order. We skipped Infinite, though, the twenty-four-year-old’s passable Nas impression that purists consider his official debut. Nothing against the record, but it lacks the nuance of the later oeuvre. Besides, it isn’t on Spotify. Rachel slept through most of The Slim Shady LP, the true debut, a product of industry rejection, relationship angst, and raising a daughter in Dante’s Detroit. Now she’s awake and I’ve dialed in that album’s follow-up, The Marshall Mathers LP. Rachel yawns.
I want so badly for this music to communicate something to my sister about who I am that runs deeper than taste. I want my favorite rapper’s nasal whine to be a musical madeleine that transports Rachel to my headspace during seminal moments. I want her squeezed beside me in Dave Goode’s Honda Civic, limbs silky from ecstasy, nodding to “Drug Ballad.” I want her at prom when the DJ plays “The Real Slim Shady” and my legs begin moving of their own volition, a foxtrot meets Riverdance that doesn’t sync with the beat, but feels too good to stop. I want us to weep during “Stan,” and I want her to know how I feel in this moment, now that Lucas is no longer the villain whose exposure would restore moral balance, and Ricky’s not the innocent victim I need and believed him to be. This is too much to ask. The car swerves and Rachel tells me to watch the road.
We aren’t sure when Broder left the house, but my gut says this morning, after four or five hours of restorative sleep on my parents’ guest bed. He must have woken at sunrise into the awful awareness of the well-rested man. I imagine he panicked, ditched the gun, and walked five miles to the interstate, where he hitched a ride to Montreal.
I found the gun when I went to wake him. There was no one in the guest room, just that old children’s blanket in a heap on the floor. I thought he may have gone out for air, but then I found the gun. Rachel helped me fish it out with barbecue tongs and seal it in a Ziploc gallon bag.
It was easy to piece things together after that, to look back on what Broder said last night—words that seemed, in the moment, like a madman’s rant—and figure out what he meant: that Ricky brought cocaine to Broder’s wedding and offered it to the sober bride; that Broder blamed Ricky for Aliana’s death; that he’d fantasized for years about exacting revenge.
We took separate cars and searched the streets. When Broder didn’t turn up, Rachel, Donny, and I reconvened at the house—our parents still asleep—and I tried calling the detectives. Neither answered; I’d left a dozen crazed messages last night. Rachel discouraged me from calling the local cops for the convincing reasons that (1) the force was comprised of idiots we went to school with, and (2)
