Shot In Detroit

by Patricia Abbott

  If things were a little iffy, if it seemed awkward between us, the contract could wait and so could the story of my father. My main goal was to have Bill in my corner again—have him want to make love. Love me even. The photographs were secondary. Admitting that was a big step for me. Admitting anything could come before my work was a chilling thought. Where had letting people become important gotten me in the past?

  I still had the final photograph to take—and I might take a thirteenth once I had the twelfth. Create a safety net, a margin for error in case Ted rejected one of them; in case it all fell through.

  Bill arrived ten minutes early, a good omen. As he stood at the door, his mouth fell open when he saw me. “You didn’t tell me I was supposed to get dressed up,” he said, looking down at his jeans, his rumpled blue oxford shirt, his running shoes. Remembering his manners, he added, “You look gorgeous, Violet. I’d forgotten how nicely you clean up. I feel like a handyman next to you.”

  “You are my handy man.” I almost blushed at my stupid joke but waved him in. “Been so long since you’ve been up here.”

  This came out in a whoosh I regretted at once. I sounded like Mae West. Or, even worse, needy. Who likes needy? He started to say something, but I motioned him to the sofa before he got it out, hoping my tone had sounded whiny only to my own ears. Bill sat down hard and a small cloud of dust rose. Hoping he didn’t notice this either, I headed toward my makeshift bar.

  “I’m not drinking alcohol these days,” Bill said. “You know—holding the diabetes off. Athena gave me a regimen to follow. Dropped eleven pounds in three weeks.”

  I turned around to look and he slid his hands down his sides. “I bet you hardly recognize the new me.”

  “Your own personal nurse?” I said, sitting down empty-handed, angry again about Athena Grace—wishing the bitch was on her way to Cleveland. I should never have let Di deter me. I’d have liked a drink, but it seemed inappropriate if my guest wasn’t joining me.

  “I think I have some cranberry juice. Club soda, coffee?”

  “Sit down with me for a minute. We can talk about food and drink once I’ve had an eyeful of your lovely dress.” He patted the seat. Thankfully, no dust rose this time.

  I was surprised he seemed so relaxed, so into me. He hadn’t seemed like this in months. It was almost worrisome. But would a man about to break up with a woman appear so calm? Good morticians probably excelled at composure though. I put a hand on his cheek and leaned in for a kiss. He didn’t refuse.

  “Your own personal nurse, you said?”

  He pulled back slowly. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you much about her, have I? She’s taken my mom and me in hand with this damned disease. Mamma’s already feeling better.”

  An angel apparently. Steaming again, I got up and headed for the liquor cabinet. Like it or not, I was having a drink. It was only wine, for God’s sake.

  “So how did you happen to meet—Athena, is it?” I managed to say her name as if it weren’t imprinted on my brain. I wanted to hear his version of it.

  “Cajuan Grace’s sister. Remember? Rapper with his own celebrity photographer I buried a few months back? I think you took a picture of him despite the fact we had no contract.” He shook a finger and chuckled a bit. “Probably she would’ve let you take one if I’d worked on her more. Turns out she’s a softy.” He chuckled in a way that made me want to punch him. “I was cowed by her mother though; one of those stern old biddies running the Baptist Church. Hortense. The only Hortense I ever heard of before her was a cow. But Athena’s a softy,” he repeated, stretching. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned her.”

  Just how soft? And why couldn’t he stop talking about her?

  “I remember Cajuan,” I said, trying to sound casual. Glass in hand, I turned around. “Sure you don’t want soda water? It’s diet.”

  “Sure, sure. Anyway, we got to talking one day and it turned out diabetes was her specialty. Written papers on it. Taken part in research studies. She earned a PhD in nursing, you know. I’m sure I told you.”

  “So you’ve said.” Would his recitation of the wonders of Athena Grace never cease? “Put you on a diet? What else?”

  “She’s been up to see Mamma a couple of times.” He paused. “She helped me pick a present for her birthday a few days ago. Why are you so interested in her anyway?”

  Me? Was it me who couldn’t wrestle the name from my tongue?

  “I would’ve been glad to help with a gift, Bill. Why don’t you ever ask me?” I was half-relieved and half-hurt. “I’d have liked to help.”

  Was that why they were coming out of Tiffany’s? Had to be.

  “I know you would’ve come along. But she’s met Mamma. And they hit it off.”

  “And because she’s black. African-American, like you.” Maybe this was the time to tell him?

  He nodded. “Both of ’em have the same Sunday School kind of taste too. They like tiny pieces of jewelry. Dainty stuff.” I tried not to look down at the large onyx pendant hanging heavily between my breasts. “Teensy kitty-cat pin, I got her. With emerald eyes. A garnet collar. Egyptian-looking.” He laughed. “Loved it. Exactly what she wears. So anyway, life is looking better now.”

  “Sounds like you two have become close.”

  Bill chuckled again. “Ha! You don’t need to be jealous, sweetie. It’s not like that at all. She’s not my type.” He paused. “Way too churchy for me. Too much like Mamma. Me, I have a different taste in women.”

  A deep breath. A soaring feeling.

  “Lucky for me. Food or sex first, Bill?”

  I’d happily skip over the next ten minutes of planned conversation. Things were going better than I’d dared to hope. Once we were back on solid ground, I might tell him about the contract. And about my father. He’d help me make sense of it, explain my father’s action, his attitude. We’d be a true couple, at last. I wanted this—I really did.

  “Food’s the last item on my mind.”

  Smiling, Bill rose obligingly, stretched, and headed for the bedroom, stepping out of his loafers as he walked. Within seconds, we had our clothes off and were in bed. Under the scarlet sheets I’d chosen for the night, the sight of him in the mirror was exhilarating. He was sleek, toned. I was whittled down to nothing. Not that I had a fetish about weight. But still we looked nice. Together.

  “Hey, you know what I was thinking?” Bill said, as he reached for me.

  “What?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t the beginning of a discourse.

  “I was thinking that not counting the big mirror you got hanging from the heavens, you’ve got only one other mirror in the whole place. And that is,” he continued, “the teensy, worn one over the bathroom sink, half of it blacked out with age. How do you put your cosmetics on?”

  I shrugged. “I guess I know where my face is by now.” Actually I’d never liked looking at myself. Not since the Allure Fur days. The mirror above us was not for looking at me.

  He laughed. “Sounds like you don’t like your own face. And such a pretty one.”

  I’d waited months for a compliment and sucked this one in like oxygen.

  When we were finished, and it must have been an hour later, I threw on a robe and headed for the kitchen.

  “Relax, baby,” I said. “I’ve got dinner under control.”

  Of course, I didn’t, and I was still struggling with how to light the broiler when I heard the sound of the damned treadmill upstairs. Ben had returned from wherever he’d been and was giving his machine a good workout. The thumps seemed louder than before—like he hadn’t oiled the stupid thing in months.

  “Sorry, Bill,” I called out as loud as I could. “Thought we were done with the damned treadmill.”

  “I’m used to it,” Bill called back. “It’s our background music, the big drum roll at the end.”

  We both listened from separate rooms as the pounding grew progressively louder.

  “Sheez!” It sounded like Ben was descending through the ceilin
g. I looked around for a broom to pound out my concern on the ceiling—not that he’d hear me.

  “What?”

  Bill was saying something but I couldn’t hear him.

  There was a sort of a roaring sound—maybe from inside an air shaft? But quickly the roar, or more accurately a sort of cracking, splitting sound, grew so loud I knew it had to be inside the apartment. It was like a train coming through the walls. Or, I thought, looking up, through the ceiling. I bolted through the living room in time to see the mirror pull away from the bedroom ceiling, dropping with frightening speed onto the bed. It plunged as if it had been fired, hitting what lay below with ferocity.

  Bill lay propped up in bed, his head cushioned by pillows, so his face, which registered only a small look of surprise, was untouched. For a moment, I had hope. It seemed too preposterous to be true—that something like this could happen. Surely he would shrug the mirror aside momentarily, dump it onto the floor, and smile up at me. Laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation. Laugh at the worry on my face.

  But the weight of the mirror must’ve killed him instantly. His right foot quivered for a second, and then went still. I stood frozen, watching helplessly as small pieces of paint or plaster continued to rain on top of the mirror, on top of Bill. His hair turned white from the downpour in seconds—like a terrible aging process had been accelerated by events.

  And horribly, the sound of the treadmill continued relentlessly above. Ben didn’t know what’d happened, what his treadmill had done. He was probably wearing earphones, listening to his iPod. It was the bolts, mirror, and coat of plaster in my bedroom that gave way, not the ceiling itself. I stood there counting the beats of my heart, the thump of the treadmill; I wasn’t sure which. The thumping went on. And on. Still I couldn’t move. Only seconds had passed, possibly a minute, but it seemed like hours, days, months.

  Breaking loose from my stupor, I raced across the room, managing with considerable exertion to slide the mirror off him. Bill was as motionless as any of the men we’d worked on together these last months. In fact, I never saw anyone more still. I cleared the plaster away as my tears, unfamiliar till lately, fell hard and fast. And suddenly I was screaming, throwing myself on him, and begging him not to be dead. The sound of the treadmill drowned out my screams; no one could hear me.

  White dust covered me when I finally rose. Tears stung my throat, which was plugged by another pent-up scream. With enormous effort, I stopped crying. The shaking stopped too.

  Like an automaton, I went for the camera, setting it up as fast as I could, pulling over a lamp head, finding a high enough stool to stand on, making the necessary adjustments. My best lighting was at Bill’s. The stepladder too. This would have to do.

  Bill would need a little makeup, I thought stonily, looking at him through the viewfinder. I walked to the bathroom and grabbed my makeup case, which was still on the sink. Was it only a few hours ago that I had applied my own makeup? I didn’t have the range of cosmetics Bill kept, and the cover-up was a bit too light, although not as far off as I would’ve guessed. I quickly looked in the mirror in the bathroom as I turned away. The mirror was worn and tiny, inadequate for a grown woman; why had this never occurred to me before? My only decent mirror was in the darkroom, a place Bill had never been.

  My face was unfamiliar anyway. A harridan stared back: the artist, the professional, the survivor—the one that Hal Hart, Bobby Allison, Ted Ernst, Mr. Polifax and his customers—the one none could defeat but all of them used, screwed, or deserted. I was screaming again, but only in my head.

  Bill was naked, and putting clothes on him was too risky; he must be left as undisturbed as possible. Bill’s would be my only photo of a naked man. I shot a dozen pictures, several dozen actually, memorizing his body as I’d never done in life. I shot until my eyes were blurry. I shot until I knew I had to move on, to finish up the rest of it.

  So I cleaned Bill’s face of the makeup, carefully stripping away the evidence of intrusion, making him look like any dead man at the scene of an accident. Afterward, I sat still for ten minutes, composing myself. Then I walked across the room, found the business card near the phone, and called Detective Saad. I knew he wasn’t the right person to call; my apartment was not in his district, but I did it anyway. I knew I should have called the cops before snapping the pictures, but what if there hadn’t been enough time? What if I’d been denied the most important of all my photographs.

  I needed the closest thing to a friend Detroit’s finest could offer.

  Detroit Free Press: William Fontenel, a prominent Detroit mortician, was asphyxiated when a heavy light fixture tore loose from a ceiling and fell on him. Mr. Fontenel, a lifelong resident of Detroit, was thirty-eight years old and well known locally for the unusual care he took with preparing the dead. He is survived by his mother, who lives in Saginaw, Michigan.

  (September 2011)

  Detective Saad hammered on the door about thirty minutes later, took a quick look around, and called the local police. Both of us stood aside while a quartet of cops examined the ceiling, the bed, Bill, the floor above my apartment, my neighbor Ben and his treadmill, the janitor’s supply closet, his ladder, the bolts, the plaster, the mirror itself—each cop systematically peering into my hidden places.

  Or that’s what it felt like: a dental instrument probing decaying teeth. Numbness and grief eventually gave way to anger as I answered questions put forth from a late-arriving police photographer, lab technicians, detectives, some cop or firefighter who seemed to specialize in building collapse. Did they hire engineers for cases like this or were there men on the squad who knew buildings? Who’d have thought the city budget of Hazel Park could afford such a battalion? Maybe they’d called for backup from a wealthier neighboring suburb. The tears, which seemed profligate an hour before, had dried up as I came to realize I was under siege and went into fight mode.

  “Do they think I did this on purpose? Murdered Bill?” I asked anyone in earshot.

  It was incomprehensible. I’d anticipated trouble but not that they’d have the idea I’d set this up to murder Bill. Did they imagine I could drag a twelve-foot ladder in here to loosen those bolts, climbing to the top, calculating the mirror’s fall—when and how it would happen? Did they think I made Bill lie on the bed so that the mirror would fall on him when the treadmill began its trek to nowhere upstairs? Was there a way to know for certain it would kill him? Or when? What if he’d turned to reach for his reading glasses as the mirror fell? What if the phone rang and he jumped out of bed? Couldn’t it have happened with me in the bed? Couldn’t the both of us have been crushed? It was ridiculous.

  When I pointed this out, no one seemed impressed by, or even interested in, my logic. In fact, they asked me to step outside so the officers could do their job.

  The engineer interviewed me, asking: why hadn’t I inspected the bolts for tightness after Ben installed his treadmill upstairs, where had I bought the bolts, and had I specified at Lowes the weight they’d have to secure? How much did the mirror weigh, how had I gotten it up in the first place? Why was it up there? Did I move anything after its fall? Clear anything away? Touch Bill or the bed at all?

  “Bill,” I said. “I just touched Bill.”

  They looked at my footprints on the fallen plaster with displeasure. “We can see where you stood,” one fellow said.

  It was basically, if not technically, true.

  The cop frowned. “Well, you shouldn’t have touched him. Don’t you watch TV?” He looked around the room, saw none, and shrugged. “You’re never supposed to disturb the crime scene.”

  Crime scene? Bill was already a body to them and possibly a murder victim. Wouldn’t any woman run across the room to see if her lover had survived? Picked up his arm, checked his wrist, shook him? Moved the mirror away if possible in hopes he was still alive? It wasn’t a crime scene. It was the scene of an accident.

  The questions fired at me made me feel incompetent, callous, murderous, per
verted. The one saving grace was the questions and activities going on in my apartment kept my mind occupied, kept me from sliding into a well of grief.

  In retrospect, I should’ve inspected the bolts, I told the cop who asked, but the walls were thick and I thought the floors and ceilings would be too.

  “It’s the plaster that tore away, not the floor or ceiling,” he reminded me.

  We both looked up.

  I’d hung this mirror in other apartments, in other cities. It’d had never been a problem before. Yes, I’d bought brand new bolts when I moved in seven years ago, asking the clerk at the hardware store (was it Home Depot or Ace?) for the strongest ones, explaining the job. The lanky black cop evaluated me, surely wondering what went on under that looking-glass, what kind of woman hung a mirror over her bed. Only men were supposed to do that.

  “You’re lucky he had a ladder high enough,” the cop added. “The super, that is.”

  “He cleans the fans with it,” I said, motioning to the ceiling fan on the living room ceiling.

  I remembered questioning the mirror’s safety weeks ago when it seemed to vibrate over my head. If I’d followed up on that—if I’d been less preoccupied with my pictures of the dead…

  “Do you think I did this on purpose?” I said, over and over.

  Saad and I were standing in the hallway, an alert, rather muscular policewoman hovering nearby in case I should make a break for it. Saad had lost his credibility, the trust of the local cops. Once they’d seen the two of us huddling together on the sofa when they arrived, he’d lost his leverage in the case. Perhaps he had laid under that mirror once or twice too, they were probably thinking.

  Saad shrugged, unwilling to choose a side apparently, silent for once. I glared at him, but he was unmovable, offering me nothing.

  Ben, from upstairs, owner of the nefarious treadmill, hovered in the stairwell too, dressed in the outfit he apparently ran in: flannel pajama bottoms, a stretched-out striped turtleneck, ballet slippers with vinyl treads on the bottoms. Ballet slippers? Didn’t he skid?