by Sheena Kamal
Unfortunately, my luck has never been that good.
As my foot hits the last step, I hear the soft click as the safety is flicked off a gun. In the narrow hallway, somewhere behind me.
My hands go up, the briefcase still in them.
“You know, people get the wrong idea about this neighborhood all the time. We still got a community here, girlie, and people know how to use cell phones when somebody knocks out a basement window.”
Well, it wasn’t a perfect plan. And it’s been a long time since I’ve had to sneak around like this.
I turn, careful to keep my movements slow and steady. Harvey Watts has a handgun pointed right at my heart. Michigan isn’t an open-carry state for nothing. I wonder if he had taken it with him to walk his granddaughter to school. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. “You lied to me about my father. You did know him. He was your brother.”
Watts snorts and the gun does a little dance. I try not to think about the fact that the safety is off. “Some brother.”
“I just came to take what belongs to me, that’s all.”
“That briefcase don’t belong to you. It’s been mine since he upped and left, telling me he’s off to find his real damn family. Like I weren’t nothing. Like we didn’t grow up together in this fucked-up house.”
“Aw,” I say in mock sympathy. If he wants to start in on difficult childhoods, we could be here all week.
His cheeks flush. “You know I’ve thought from time to time about what Sammy’s girls would be like. Never imagined you.”
If this was meant as a compliment it falls short of the mark. A compliment is all in the tone. His has all the warmth of a polar ice cap, one that is holding out against global warming. “Look, I just want to know about my dad. That’s all.”
“Yeah, well, after he left I didn’t hear nothing back from him. He said to forward all his mail to his place in Winnipeg, but he never spoke to me after that. Then your sister writes me years ago, telling me he died and could I please tell her his life story. All I got of him is in that briefcase there and good fucking riddance. Take it if you want. I ain’t sad at all that he’s gone. You tell your sister that. Lauren, or whatever her name is. Just leave me the hell alone.”
He puts his free hand on the wall and coughs into his sleeve. “B’fore you go, though, someone is paying for that window downstairs.”
He’s not joking. I look at the gun. And then I put the few bills of cash from my wallet on the stand in the front hall. I retreat with my hands up, pausing at the door. “Did he ever . . . did he ever say anything about Lebanon? About some trouble he had there?”
“Like he would tell me,” Harvey Watts says, his expression dark. “Haven’t had a thing to do with your dad in a long time, and that’s how I like to keep it. He took off when he was eighteen and didn’t come back until after he left the military. Then he was gone again. So I don’t owe you nothing.”
Maybe it’s pointless, but I have to try. “After the military, though. What did he say about that?”
Watts takes a step toward me and I am careful not to make any abrupt motions as I move back, maintaining the space we have created between us. A delicate dance, with a gun as the high school chaperone, keeping us apart. “We’re done here,” he says. “Get out. And don’t come back. Don’t be talking to my granddaughter, either. She told me how you gave her a lollipop. You stay the hell away from her.”
The little traitor. You can’t trust anybody in this world. She must have kept the bit about the ribbon to herself.
I leave, this time via the front door. Like a normal person visiting her long-lost uncle, with a briefcase full of keepsakes tucked under her arm.
A curtain twitches from the house opposite and I see a shadow by one of the upstairs windows. The concerned citizen, no doubt. Waiting to see how it all turns out.
Me, too, I suppose.
13
The trouble with Lebanon is that there’d been a lot of trouble in Lebanon. During the Cold War, it had been the place where proxy wars by the Americans, the Soviets, and multiple Middle Eastern factions were fought, along with its own internal strife and the civil war that ensued. It’s where Hezbollah was born and the point of inception for the world’s current suicide-bombing phenomenon. Where refugees from Palestine fled to simmer as the waters around them boiled. Where they’d been massacred in 1982 while a group of foreign soldiers stood by their camps and watched. Hard to figure out exactly what my father might have gotten himself into there but, according to a stack of incomplete paperwork, he was, in fact, a marine.
Maybe I knew that.
I think I must have figured out that he’d been in the military after he left Detroit as a teenager, and before his big move to Canada. Like so much, however, I’d chosen not to look too closely. Him being a marine in Lebanon, in the late seventies or early eighties meant that he’d probably been stationed either at the American Embassy or with one of the peacekeeping missions there. The public is not generally aware of this benign overture toward stability in the Middle East. Not that those peacekeepers ever did much for stability in the region, but at first there was a kind of youthful optimism about it, like the beauty pageant contestants who stand onstage with their tits on display and wish for world peace. No matter how many bikini-clad young women or uniformed soldiers or gray-haired bureaucrats wish for it, peace is a hard thing to pin down. But if he was in Lebanon, my father must have been part of the attempt. In his own way.
I add the contents of the briefcase to the contents of the box and spread them all out on the floor of my motel room in a circle. In the middle of the circle I sit in a desk chair with wheels and walk my feet around to move the chair. I saw this once on a British television program and it resulted in a spectacular breakthrough by the lead investigator. But it doesn’t work for me. I get rid of the chair and just sit in the middle of the circle. I focus on a photograph of my father in uniform with three other men, their arms slung around each other. The photo isn’t dated and there’s no other identifying information on it. My father didn’t, after all, flip the picture over and write down the names of the men with him. I stare at their faces and, even given some leeway for the decades that have passed between now and the day this photo was taken, I don’t see the veteran who was following me. He must have missed the memo for this photo op.
After a few minutes of thinking about it, I post the photo on a comment section of the website for the Marine Corps veterans of Beirut, on the off chance that someone might recognize my father, or one of the others. From what I’ve seen of their online discussions, they’re a pretty active bunch.
I wish I knew more about his time in the military, but his life had defied documentation. If he had managed to accumulate any at all, this little I have in front of me is what is left of it. It’s not enough, even, to put in a request for his military records. Not even a service number. I close the webpage for the online requisition form. There are too many required fields still blank for me to continue, so I turn back to the contents of the briefcase.
There’s another scrap of faded blue silk here, cut like a ribbon. Just like I’d found in the yellow shoe box.
At the police station a few hours later, I run the ribbon through my fingers as I stand in front of the desk officer on duty. It doesn’t seem possible that he was admitted to the Detroit Police Department based on the stellar results of his personality test. If he’s ever had an ounce of sympathy, he’s used it all up on the person before me.
“And the vehicle was stolen yesterday?” he says, frowning.
“Sometime between six forty and six fifty-five in the evening. Do you want me to write it down for you?”
“Well, why didn’t you call yesterday?”
“I did. My phone battery died while I was on hold.” A world war could have begun and ended in the time I was on hold. Mountains could have crumbled. Glaciers melted. I think about mentioning these things to the officer, but he has chosen this moment to lose himself
in whatever’s on his screen. Which, because he seems like the sadistic type, I imagine to be a video of a kitten climbing out of a cardboard box.
“Okay, have a seat. Someone will come take a report.”
“But I thought that’s what you’re doing?”
“No. I’ll get someone for you.”
“I’ve waited twenty minutes just to speak to you!”
“Ma’am, please calm down.” The modulation in his voice doesn’t change. He’s clearly dealt with far worse threats than me. He disappears down the hall.
My phone rings and on the call display I see it’s the dog walker, Sunil. “Everything okay?” I say when I answer.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s just . . .” He coughs nervously.
“What’s wrong?”
“Mr. Crow . . . looks terrible . . .”
I frown. Either the connection leaves something to be desired or Sunil hasn’t learned how to hold a phone properly. “Call an ambulance and get him to the hospital.”
“He refuses. Says he’s got . . . appointment tomorrow and he’s going to wait for that . . . sure he’s fine,” he says.
And I’m sure he’s lying. But before I can respond, he continues quickly. “I had some trouble reaching you earlier—”
“My phone was dead.”
“. . . Okay. It’s just . . . Maybe I can have the number of the place you’re staying? Just in case I need to get a message to you?”
I give him the name of the motel and tell him what room I’m staying in, and what to do if Seb gets worse, and how to handle Whisper if he does. There could have also been a few tips thrown in on how to survive a zombie apocalypse with Seb’s and Whisper’s safety intact. Sunil hangs up in the middle of it. Minimum wage isn’t enough money to deal with this kind of shit, even for a college student.
After failing to get him back on the line a few times, my phone loses its will to fight the good fight. The screen goes blank. I can’t even send a message to Brazuca to check up on them. I slump against the hard chairs in the waiting room, feeling like Hamlet. Pathetic. In limbo, with the ghost of my dead father hovering over me. Stuck between doing what I know is right, which is leaving this town, and wasting time in my own personal hell. The desk cop comes back into the room with a mug in his hand and continues to pretend I don’t exist. I suppress my murderous instincts and continue to wait it out. Like a confused asshole.
14
It’s late by the time I get back to the motel. I charge my dead phone and take a lukewarm shower because that’s all the highest heat setting will get me. When I emerge from the bathroom, there are half a dozen new emails in my inbox. All of them are in response to the photo I put up, speculating on the identities of the men with my father. None are from any of the marines in question.
I’m left with a problem that a multitude of women face every day: how to find a man in America. Being Canadian, I’m out of my depth. I don’t think kinky ads will help me here. Online searching only gets me so far, and I’m looking for a number of men. I am also looking for specific ones. Marines who presumably served with my father. Only one of the names suggested by the helpful citizens of the Internet seems to be in the Detroit area. Two of the men in the photo have obituaries that I’ve unearthed. I’m not sure how useful tracking down the marines in this photo will be, but I send the names to Simone anyway. Maybe she can help me figure out how to get in touch with their families.
Then I do what any normal woman would do when the menfolk are scarce. I go to a place where people drown their sorrows.
The bar is just gearing up for the evening, so the crowd hasn’t gotten too raucous yet. A few tables are scattered with people, but the barstools are filling up. It’s a working-class joint, but not necessarily a rough one. People seem largely to be minding their own business. I zero in on an older man at the far end of the bar, in the corner. He’s settled comfortably, watching the news crawl and ignoring everyone around him. There’s an empty stool next to the man sitting beside him, who is roughly my age, so I hoist myself up on it and order a virgin piña colada with an umbrella. The bar man stares at me hard until I revise it to cranberry juice. “Want some vodka in that?” he asks.
“Do I look like a pussy? I take my juice straight up. I’d inject it raw if needles weren’t so damn expensive,” I say, tapping my veins. He takes this as his cue to give me my drink and move to the other end of the bar before I can try to communicate with him some more.
I look at the man beside me, who has the fashion sense of a long-haul trucker. “What’s the point of any of this, am I right?” I say, with a hand gesture that is meant to say “life” but only ends up upsetting a menu stand.
He gives me a disgusted look and edges away. But he’s on a stool and there’s only so far he can go.
“I mean, my ex, that loser. He gets out of jail, shows up at my trailer at six o’clock in the goddamn morning and I think he’s looking for sex, but that’s not what’s on his mind. He’s come for the dog. Can you believe it?”
He sighs. “Can’t get no peace nowhere,” he mutters, downing the remainder of his cheap whiskey in one long gulp. He puts some money on the bar and leaves.
I take the opportunity to move onto his empty stool and settle in. The older man looks at me. “You sure do have a way with people.”
“It’s my good looks and shining personality. You a regular here?”
He laughs. “S’pose you could say that.”
I don’t crack a smile. “I hear this bar is owned by Mark Kovaks, used to be in the marines?” Kovaks was the remaining name on the photograph. The only one I’d managed to locate, who conveniently had a bar in downtown Detroit to save me some trouble.
The smile disappears and he takes a good long look at me. “Yeah. He’s been gone about a week. Went to Jersey to see his grandkids. ’Spect he’ll be back soon.”
“I think Mr. Kovaks served with my father in the marines. Thought he might remember him. He died when I was a child,” I add, conversationally.
“Sorry to hear that. In the line of duty?”
“No. After.” In the long mirror mounted over the bar we can see a mic and amp being set up on a little stage in the corner. “I’m looking for information from anyone who might have served with him. Maybe something happened that’s not online. He was from here. Detroit. I was hoping Mr. Kovaks could help me out.” I don’t tell him about the list of names.
“Take shots in the dark, do ya?” We watch in the mirror as the MC does a sound check. It seems we are to be blessed with an open mic night.
“Apparently.”
“What’s his name?”
“Samuel Watts.”
“Never heard of him ’round here. What rank?”
The MC announces a cash prize to the winner of the night, which distracts me for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Battalion? Unit? Postal code?”
“Not any of that, either.”
“Well, good luck to you,” he says, his voice heavy with doubt. “You don’t seem to have much to go on.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Would help if I could, but I wasn’t even in the corps. Bad heart.” He downs his beer and signals the bartender for another. His heart may be shoddy, but his liver appears to be hanging in there. “My brother was. Used to come here with him till he kicked it. Served in ’Nam, survived hell, gets hit by a drunk driver. Life.”
“What’s the point of any of it?”
On this positive note, we avoid eye contact and watch the performances, if they could be called that, in the mirror. After half a dozen god-awful renditions of pop songs, a collective groan ripples through the room. And I thought it couldn’t get any worse. A young black musician who looks to be in his late twenties perches himself on a stool. There’s a little smile on his face, but it’s not directed at anyone in particular.
“Calm down,” the MC tells the crowd. “Y’all didn’t bring it so we’re gonna have a repeat of last week and the week before, and
the week before that. This is on you.” But, funnily enough, he doesn’t sound unhappy about it.
For a moment after the MC leaves the stage, the man on the stool just runs his fingers over the strings of his acoustic guitar. Absently plucking here and there. Just getting started. I’m not much of a guitar player, but I know enough about it to appreciate what he’s doing. He’s beginning the story right now, from a place of apparent carelessness. If you watch closely enough you can see that there’s nothing careless about it. This is all for our benefit, so we can see what he puts into it. So we appreciate it before the first note even plays. And he doesn’t strum. He picks, which is a skill unto itself. The chords form into something unpredictable and magnetic. Then he opens his mouth and sings a song about being in love with a woman who is trouble personified. I’ve never heard it before but his smooth voice makes every note resonate in some part of me. It may be an original and, if that’s the case, I wonder why he’s not a huge star. Because that’s what’s onstage right now. Raw talent and star power. He breaks into an incredible guitar riff in the middle and it’s all I can do to keep myself on the seat. It’s that good.
I stand up at the end of the song. The MC takes this as some kind of cue, even though I’d just meant to leave on a high point in the night. “And we’ve got another contender!” he announces.
The crowd shakes off the residual enchantment, not sure if they’re in the mood to hear something else. They eye me with a kind of hostile curiosity. “Go on, honey,” says my friend on the barstool.
I take a few hesitant steps toward the stage. Pause. What decides it for me, I think, is the look on the bluesman’s face. So sure. So confident that he has something that I don’t. I’m not above playing dirty. He is barely off the stool when I take the Martin leaning against the amp and lower the mic.
“What are you going to do for us?” shouts the MC.
I don’t reply. Like the bluesman, I block him out. Being onstage is about presence. You can either give it away or take it for yourself.