by Lenzo, Lisa;
“I tell him he’s gotten his twenty and that’s already too much, and I start walking away. And he starts crying out in this pathetic voice, ‘Man, don’t leave me! Don’t leave me here! My knees, my knees—I can’t get out!’
“So I turn back around, and I notice that the man’s knees are jammed up under the steering wheel because the seat’s still adjusted for Annie. And he’s crying like a little kid, ‘Please don’t leave me here—don’t leave me!’ So I walk back to him and push on the lever, and the seat glides back. And he gets out of the car and closes the door and says, ‘You still need to pay me, man.’
“I say, ‘You got your twenty dollars, and that’s all you’re getting.’
“And he starts whining, ‘She paid me, but you took it back! She paid me, but you took it back!’
“I just walked away. Meanwhile he’s shouting, ‘Don’t cheat me, man! Don’t lie to me! You owe me!’”
Murray shakes his head and lifts his wineglass and takes another slug.
“What about my car?” I ask.
“It’s fine,” Murray says. “Miraculously, not a scratch.”
“Does it need to be moved?”
“No, the lot it’s in is empty, closed for the night.”
“Are you sure it won’t get towed?”
“I showed the club guys where it is, and they say it’s fine.” He lifts his glass as if toasting. “I’m going to need another couple of these, though, to help me settle down.”
I slide my arm across Murray’s broad back and lean my head against his arm, soaking up his warmth and solidity, reveling in his palpable presence while at the same time feeling guilty. “I feel so bad that I sent you off with that guy.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Murray says, as usual not wanting to make a fuss.
“He could have robbed you. He could have had a knife, or a gun.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s over with.”
Across the table from us, my parents have the same sad, troubled looks on their faces as when I complained to them a year ago about Detroit. The expressway leading to downtown had been closed for repairs, so we had to take the city streets in, through mile after mile of rough neighborhoods, past abandoned, burned-out, or simply crumbling houses and boarded-up storefronts, block after block where the only viable businesses were liquor stores and bars. Night had fallen, and shadowy men stood out in front of the bars, even though it was winter. A Hummer with tinted windows tailed us through a dozen traffic lights. Finally, it turned off onto a side street, but by then I wasn’t sure where we were anymore, and I’d started to panic. I’d been attacked by a mob of girls one winter day when I was growing up in Detroit, and even though that was decades ago and I escaped being badly hurt, the fear I felt at being knocked down and clawed at and dragged down the street still returns to me at times, in an instant.
“Why do you still live in this place?” I asked my parents after we finally arrived at their condo. “It makes me mad that in order to come see you, we have to risk our safety. If our car had broken down in one of those neighborhoods, we’d have been dead meat.”
My mom and dad kept as quiet then as they are now. But as we sit at the table in Cliff Bell’s, I don’t say anything about Detroit being dangerous. I don’t want to make my parents feel any worse than they already do. Except for that one time, I’ve never complained about returning to my home city. Although my feelings about Detroit are definitely mixed, I still love coming back to visit.
⊙
Cliff Bell’s is offering a buffet, and after Murray has soothed his nerves with a second glass of wine, we stand up and fill our plates with ribs, chicken, salad, and mac and cheese. A friend of my parents joins us, and Murray tells him about his ride with the wannabe valet. Murray’s story grows a little with the second telling—this time, instead of the car doing only one three-sixty spin, after exiting the alley, Murray adds another full-circle spin, right before the car comes to a stop below the thirty-dollar-a-day parking sign. Once when I admonished Murray for exaggerating—he told his mom that the snow in his yard was all the way up to our thighs when really it only reached to my calves—his middle son said, “Well, we all know the Dad exaggeration equation: divide by half.”
After we’ve eaten, I approach the manager. “Did you get my twenty back?” I ask him.
He shakes his round-hatted head. “Not yet. But we’re working on it.”
“Did you find out anything else?”
“Not so far—we turned the homeless guy over to the police.”
“He’s homeless?”
“Yeah, I believe so,” the manager says, trying not to show that he thinks I’m naïve.
“I thought he looked kind of disheveled for a valet,” I say.
“Did he say he was a valet?” the manager asks.
“I don’t remember. He said something about parking my car, and that it cost twenty dollars.”
The manager continues to look at me as if trying not to reveal what he thinks.
“I was trying to get my dad into the club, and things were kind of confusing, with all the snow in the street, so when this guy walked up to my window, I assumed he was your valet. I can’t remember if he said he was. He just asked for twenty dollars and my keys.”
The manager nods, trying unsuccessfully to hide his incredulity, not wanting to appear impolite. We stare at each other for a moment without speaking.
“Well, I grew up in Detroit,” I explain, “but I’ve lived out in the country for a long time.”
⊙
James Carter and Hot Club of Detroit start off their show with a rocketing blast, all of the quintet and Carter in sync and fired up. It’s hard to believe it’s the first song of their first set—they sound as if they’ve been jamming all night. No wonder they call themselves Hot Club of Detroit, even though, except for the sax, what they play don’t seem like the hottest of instruments: two acoustic guitars, an upright bass, and a button accordion. James Carter stands at their center, playing sax also, his golden horn flashing as he bobs and sways. Carter is black—a deep, dark, velvety brown—and the Hot Club of Detroit are various shades of white. Jazz musicians have always shared a kind of ease with each other, a color-blind understanding that is rare among the general public, and as the six of them play together, trading riffs, handing off solos, they are grinning and joking like cousins at a family reunion. But I’m not feeling relaxed, and after that first song, I have trouble focusing on the music. I’ll be enjoying an incredible sax riff or an intricate guitar solo, and then my thoughts will return to the wannabe valet. I wonder if he would have tried to rape me if I had driven off with him. But probably he simply figured that, since I’d been dumb enough to give him twenty dollars, he might be able to milk me for another ten.
Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I can see that the man looked homeless. But only potentially homeless—he didn’t have that filthy and severely disturbed look of an end-stage alcoholic or seriously mentally ill homeless person.
My adopted hometown of Saugatuck, where I’ve lived for more than thirty years, has hosted only one homeless man that I know of, a one-armed artist who lived in a tent by the river for several seasons before taking off for Colorado. But I’ve seen a lot of panhandlers and homeless people in Detroit, more and more over the years, at the Eastern Market and in Greektown, by the riverfront and on all the other streets around my parents’ condo. Sometimes I’ll give one a dollar or two, but more often I’ll look away from eyes so tired and worn, so filmed over or deranged, that it’s hard to meet let alone hold their gazes. This year, as part of my Christmas present to my parents, instead of donating another sheep, pig, or llama in their name to a family in a foreign country, I decided to give closer to home, and I wrote out a check to Detroit’s oldest soup kitchen. As I face the stage, tapping my feet, watching James Carter ease the mouth of his horn up to the mike and then draw slowly back, controlling horn, hands, lips, and breath perfectly to milk out the sweetest notes, I wo
nder if the wannabe valet ever eats at that soup kitchen, if part of my money will provide him with a meal. I think of how he demanded I go with him, and I imagine taking his soup bowl from his hands and throwing it in his face. But that image dissolves as quickly as it appears. He didn’t hurt me, or Murray, either, and even homeless scammers deserve to eat.
⊙
On our last trip in to my hometown, in front of the Detroit Institute of Arts, a woman asked me for money. Murray had stopped after we left the museum to take some close-up photos of the building. Sometimes I complain when Murray turns a brisk walk or vacation outing into a photo expedition, but that day I paced up and down the sidewalk to pass the time while he stepped close to the building’s perimeter and angled and shot. I’d walked up and down the block three times when a woman approached me from behind and off to my right. “Miss,” she called softly. “Miss—I need your help.”
I turned toward her and stopped.
“I know what I need to do,” the woman said, “but I need your help.”
“What kind of help do you need?” I asked, looking at her as closely as I’d just gazed at Van Gogh’s portraits. Her skin was very dark, and she was built small, like me. She was also like me in that she wore no makeup and her clothes were extremely casual: faded jeans, a worn tan coat (mine is black), and scuffed leather athletic shoes. The main difference in our dress was that she had no hat or gloves. She looked like she could be a panhandler or homeless. But not necessarily.
“I need to get to the battered women’s shelter,” she said. “I know where it is, and I know how to get there, but I need five dollars for bus fare for my children and me. It’s a dollar fifty for me, plus three more for my children.”
I looked into her dark face, into her eyes. I’ve never been good at telling if a person is drunk or high. Or lying.
As I stared at her, she said, “See these bruises?” She traced her skin right below both eyes. It was slightly darker there, but whether from bruises or from lack of sleep or other hard luck, it wasn’t clear.
I used to volunteer two nights a month for a domestic abuse crisis line, and I’d heard plenty of stories from abused women who were ignored or not believed. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my wallet. All I had were two singles and two twenties. As I started to pull out a twenty, her eyes flickered. I paused, looking beyond her, up the street. “Where are your children?” I asked. All I could see were college students and other adults.
“I left them at the library,” she said. “They’re waiting there for me.”
I hesitated another second. Then I slipped out the bill and held it out to her. She took it, said, “Oh, thank you,” and turned away. The woman started strolling up the street toward the corner, walking more slowly, it seemed, than someone in a hurry to get back to her children and transport them and herself to safety. Either she was half dazed, unable to believe her and her children’s good luck, or she couldn’t believe her own, solitary good luck and was trying to decide whether to buy wine, whiskey, heroin, or some of each.
I would rather chance wasting twenty dollars on an addict than turn my back on a battered woman, yet I still wanted to know whether or not I had been fooled, so when Murray rejoined me, I told him what had happened and asked if he thought she was telling the truth.
“From what you’ve said, I can’t tell.”
“Well, what do you think the chances are that she was telling the truth?” I pressed.
“I’d say about fifty-fifty.”
I wondered if Murray was lying to be nice. “Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”
He frowned. “I don’t know, Annie. It’s impossible to say.”
“It’s impossible to say whether she was telling the truth, or whether you are?”
He smiled and said, “Both.”
A few days before this, in one of our rare arguments, Murray had complained about what he calls my obsession with the truth. He had asked me to meet him early for dinner and then had kept me waiting for a half hour, and we were in disagreement about the surrounding facts. Finally I had said, “I just want you to admit that you were wrong.”
He had answered, “I wasn’t wrong, I was late. And why is it important?”
“Because I like to get the facts straight.”
“Jesus, you’re supposed to be a freaking fiction writer.”
“And you’re supposed to be a photographer! The most true-to-life type of art.”
“What are you talking about?” he had said. “Photography is the greatest fiction there is! It’s all about angles and lighting and tricks.”
“Well, fiction is mainly about telling the truth.”
“Why does one person have to be right?” Murray had asked. “What if both of us are right? What if both of us are wrong?”
I had kept quiet, pondering what might be the right and truthful answers to these questions.
⊙
James Carter and Hot Club of Detroit finish their first set with “Summertime,” despite, or perhaps to spite, all the snow piled up outside. The acoustic guitars and the accordion, which make me think of a campfire, cause the song to sound like a cross between “Summertime” and “Home on the Range.” It is an odd yet pleasant hybrid.
After it’s over, we stand up to leave. I tell Murray that I want the real valet, the club’s valet, to retrieve our car for us.
“No, we’ve had enough bother,” Murray says, pulling on his coat. “I’ll get it. It’s right around the corner from here.”
“But what if that guy is out there? He could be waiting at our car, mad at us because we called the police on him.”
“He won’t be out there,” Murray says. “The police hauled him off.”
“They did? Are you sure?”
“Yes. I saw them put the handcuffs on.”
“Were they black or white?”
“The police?”
“Yes.”
“One of each, I think.”
I feel somewhat relieved, although I know a cop being black doesn’t guarantee he’ll be humane. And though the man who scammed us has been hauled off, that doesn’t mean the streets are safe now. “I’m going with you,” I tell Murray. “I’m walking with you to get the car.” I don’t want to let him out of my sight. If someone else tries to take him for a ride, they’ll have to deal with me, too. I’m small, but I can be fierce.
On our way out the door, I ask the manager, “Did you get my twenty back?”
“No,” he says. “We weren’t able to. Sorry.”
“Well, what about the seven dollars you got from him?” I ask. “Can you give me that?”
The manager ducks his round-hatted head and shifts his eyes away. “He said the seven dollars was his own money, so we gave it back to him.”
“You gave it back to him?”
“Yes. He said it was his.” He glances at me again. “We told him we’d give him back his seven if he gave us the twenty.” He lowers his voice. “And then he wouldn’t give us the twenty.”
I look at him as he looked at me earlier in the evening, when I told him I’ve lived out in the country for a long time.
⊙
Holding hands, Murray and I make our way down the snowy, slushy street. I’m still a little worried that something bad might happen before we reach my car. After all, we are walking in Detroit at night, and if we could run into trouble once, why not twice? That I’m alert now to possible danger isn’t much solace. Whenever I’ve made a dumb move, afterward I always reassure myself that I won’t make that mistake again. Next time I won’t hand my keys over to a scruffy stranger, or send the love of my life off into the night with a madman. But the problem with this reasoning is that the next time is always different.
Rounding a corner, I see my car, the only car in the lot, lined up at surprisingly right angles to the street and looking reassuringly fine: whole and unmolested despite its brief, wild spin. Overhead is the sign Murray mentioned: Parking—All Day—$30.
&nb
sp; I click the remote to unlock the car and open the driver’s door. As I’m about to step in, I notice a folded-up bill on the driver’s seat. “Murray,” I call. “Come here—look at this.”
Murray cozies up to my side. I point down at the bill. “Look what I found. Lying right there.”
Murray reaches in, picks up the bill, and unfolds it. It’s a twenty. “So he was telling the truth,” Murray says.
“The truth!”
“Well, part of the truth,” Murray amends.
He hands me the bill, and I slip it into my pocket. Then Murray says, “Damn!”
I glance around us, alert, but all I see are the still city streets, empty except for the waves of snow and slush. “What?” I ask.
“I should have taken a photo of him! I had my camera in my coat pocket the whole time.”
⊙
We pick up my parents at the door of the club, and then Murray has me stop the car at the alley he was taken down, and he gets out and takes some pictures of the ruts carved in the snow as my car veered toward a massive metal dumpster, angling away just in time, cutting more curves as it fishtailed up the alley. I peer as far as I can up the dark, snowy corridor, trying to see to the alley’s far end; I’m attempting to discern the marks of a three-sixty spin, but it’s too dark and distant to tell what’s there and what isn’t.
On the drive home, the four of us are laughing, lighthearted. The whole night has tipped from potential or averted disaster to a comedy of errors. “Look at it this way,” my mom says. “You got a thirty-dollar parking spot for free.” Then she tells a story about my sister, who lives in a suburb that borders Detroit and is regularly approached by homeless men on her trips into the city. Nicole has taken to giving them whatever food she has in her car. When a homeless man approaches her window at a red light, she’ll grab whatever she has—candy, crackers, cookies—roll down the window, and say, “Here.”