Remaining always a step ahead of Mrs. Freeman, the bellhop ripped open the blinds with such drama, it was as though he were revealing a fabulous prize. And it was a prize of sorts—a view of the lazy river dozens of stories below. Then he showed them the bar with its selection of fine liquors, and he commenced a tutorial on operating the air conditioner. Mrs. Freeman teetered into a wing chair. Tiphany supposed it would fall to her to offer the man a tip, and preferably soon, before he moved on to the rudiments of the television remote control. She had no idea what was appropriate.
The bellhop accepted the ten dollars she offered with neither open gratitude nor scorn. But perhaps it was in a mild gesture of appreciation that he returned to the living room, where Mrs. Freeman sat with her eyes closed, and removed the cushions from the sofa, exposing the bed folded up underneath. Tiphany was so relieved, she would have given him another ten, but her wallet was empty. She hoped she’d be reimbursed before Mrs. Freeman fired her.
As soon as the bellhop was out the door, Tiphany began preparing her apology, assembling ideas for possible acts of penitence. But then again, she wondered if it wouldn’t be best to say nothing at all—to avoid annoying the old woman any further.
“The room’s big enough for three anyway,” Mrs. Freeman said, as if reading her assistant’s mind. Tiphany knew better than to believe she meant it, but she took it as a hopeful sign that Mrs. Freeman also wished to put these unpleasantries behind them.
“Yes,” Tiphany said, stalling as she tried to think of something witty and self-deprecating to say. “Yes.”
Mrs. Freeman got up to mix herself a cocktail. “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate coming to these things?”
The question was clearly meant to sound rhetorical, but to Tiphany it was like something from one of those personality tests she’d taken when applying for retail jobs in high school. One of the questions was always something like “There are occasions when an employee might be justified in taking something without paying for it.” The answer was always strongly disagree.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Tiphany said.
“You’ll see soon enough.” Mrs. Freeman swung her feet onto the ottoman and kicked off her shoes. “It’s like walking into a crowded men’s room.”
“Oh,” Tiphany said, as if she understood.
No one had ever made her as nervous as Mrs. Freeman. Tiphany was pretty sure she’d done the right thing saying she was happy to be here, but she also knew one right answer wouldn’t be enough to make her boss forget whose fault it was that she now had an unwanted roommate.
In the morning, while Mrs. Freeman ate breakfast, Tiphany read and reread the schedule of the day’s events. She felt nauseated, watching the old woman chew her eighteen-dollar over-easys and toast. She supposed her nerves were to blame. Her nerves and her boss’s silence. All night, and so far this morning, Mrs. Freeman had persisted in hiding her anger. Tiphany was beginning to think she might prefer the old woman simply yell at her and get it over with.
The morning’s meetings were closed to all but the most senior members and officeholders. Even among them, Tiphany had observed, Mrs. Freeman enjoyed a position of doting reverence. After breakfast, Tiphany led the old woman downstairs to the hotel lobby and from there down a twisting corridor to a darkly furnished room polka-dotted with bald and gray heads. There Mrs. Freeman assumed the burden of her briefcase, telling Tiphany to return for her at two o’clock.
“Call me if you need anything,” Tiphany said as Mrs. Freeman walked away. She could only hope the old woman wouldn’t take her up on the offer.
Once outside, Tiphany felt her nerves finally settling. They seemed to settle all the more the farther she got from the revolving door and the taxi stand and the luggage trolleys. Soon her pace had increased so much, it must have seemed she was fleeing some kind of conflagration.
Several blocks from the hotel, she came across a square bordered by cafés and small shops. It was early, but the place was already choked with tourists. In the center of the square was a small elevated park enclosed by a wrought-iron fence, upon which hung row after row of paintings, most of them streetscapes. The artists themselves—there were perhaps a half dozen—sat languidly in the shade.
One artist in particular caught her attention. Maybe he looked a bit like Sasha, with his wavy brown hair and several days’ worth of stubble. He wore tight, paint-spotted jeans and a thin, almost pulpy shirt. His fingernails were dirty, his forearms blue with ink. His display consisted entirely of representations of the portion of wrought-iron fence and the foliage behind it that passersby saw when they looked at the display of paintings on the wrought-iron fence with the foliage behind it or, more precisely, that they would have seen had the paintings on the wrought-iron fence not been obstructing the view of the foliage.
Thinking back on it now, Tiphany could remember the paintings so clearly because at the time she couldn’t stop thinking how Sasha would have made fun of them. Sweatshop art, he called it. Down the conveyer belt it went, dab a few butterflies and fluffy clouds, and then on to the next.
While she was standing there watching, a man and woman in ventilated safari shirts approached the display, and the woman pointed at one of the pieces and asked the price. Tiphany didn’t hear the artist’s answer, but a few moments later she observed the exchange of cash, one tattooed forearm driving a thick wad deep down into his threadbare pocket. If only Sasha were here to see it.
As she watched the couple walk away with the canvas wrapped in paper, Tiphany recalled being at a party once with a bunch of Sasha’s artist friends, and Sasha going on about rich people with more money than taste, dragging home monstrosities from galleries, hanging them in the gilt “foy-yays” of their McMansions, forcing their children to look at them day after day, torturing them with garish, derivative clichés, and how the kids would grow up to wear pleated khakis and boat shoes and despise art and everyone who practiced it. Sasha had been drunk, acting out the parts, a tube sock as an ascot, and Tiphany had laughed so hard, she snorted a burning jet of rum and Coke.
But really, the paintings in the square didn’t seem that bad. A little boring, maybe. But she wasn’t an artist like Sasha. Tiphany didn’t exactly know what she was. A secretary, an assistant? No one important. Not like Mrs. Freeman. It was strange. Tiphany knew she shouldn’t, and she knew she could never admit it to Sasha, but in truth she actually kind of liked her boss. The old woman was smart and opinionated and didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her, which made it all the more amazing that powerful people listened to her and took her seriously. And now Tiphany had let her down.
When she looked again, the landscape artist had filled the gap in his display with an exact duplicate of the one he’d just sold.
* * *
That afternoon Tiphany ate lunch alone and then met up with Mrs. Freeman in the main conference room. But it was too loud in there, too congested with the crowds of jovial, back-slapping men. The old lady pushed her way out to the corridor, where she and Tiphany could talk in peace.
“How is it outside?” Mrs. Freeman asked, leading Tiphany to a quiet corner.
Tiphany made a point of glancing out the window. “Warm, I think.”
Mrs. Freeman cocked her ear, as though hard of hearing. “You think? Good lord, go outside. There’s no reason for both of us to suffer in here.”
Tiphany nearly took the bait, nearly confessed. “I was going over your material,” she said. “For your panel. I wanted to make sure everything was there.”
“Go have some fun,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Be young.”
Then a man emerged from a plume of cologne and put his hand on Mrs. Freeman’s shoulder, asking if she was ready to get started.
Mrs. Freeman sighed. “If we must.” She moved off before the man could take her arm, forgetting to say goodbye.
It took Tiphany several hours to finish Mrs. Freeman’s tasks, tying up loose ends from a project they’d left unfinished back at the office.
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By the time Tiphany finally made it back outside, the landscape painter had left, taking his canvases with him. The crowds of tourists had started to thin. Lethargy had settled over the square. A palm reader wearing sweatpants and a head scarf had fallen asleep at her card table. Reclining on a park bench, a four-man jazz band played ragtime for an audience of two little girls, their pink, sparkly sneakers flashing strobes of red light every time they tapped their feet. At a souvenir stand on the corner, two college-age boys flipped through a rack of postcards, grinning grotesquely at an enormously fat woman posed in the nude, strapped to a pair of vintage roller skates.
This was the farthest Tiphany had ever been from home. Compared to Detroit, New Orleans almost seemed like a different country. She could picture Sasha rolling his eyes at how crass it all was. Tourist bullshit, he’d say. He was all about grit these days, Detroit the only authentic place on earth. Dirty and raw and real, and if you didn’t like it, get the fuck out. Tiphany wasn’t quite so sure, but she liked Detroit, too, all the old buildings and neighborhoods. It was where she’d been born, about the only place she really knew. Sasha had been there less than a year, since he finished college, but he was already saying he’d never leave. Tiphany supposed that meant she wouldn’t either.
Soon after arriving at the square, Tiphany had spotted a girl lounging on the steps of what appeared to be a courthouse. The girl was younger than Tiphany, but only by a couple of years. She was clearly in bad shape. Even from several yards away, Tiphany could see her eyes mapped in red veins, her greasy hair congealed into a sort of fin. As Tiphany passed the courthouse, the girl had gotten up from the steps, and for the last several minutes she’d been following Tiphany everywhere she went. At first, Tiphany had tried to ignore her, but the girl clung so close, Tiphany could smell her, a mix of patchouli and rancid butter.
Tiphany had made it almost all the way back around to the palm reader when she slowed down, shortening her stride. The girl stumbled into her, and Tiphany reached out to keep her from falling. “Are you all right?”
The girl grinned, baring her teeth. “They’re planting dreams in my head.” White spots glistened on her gums.
Tiphany tried asking the girl her name and where she was from, and in response the girl mumbled something Tiphany didn’t understand. And then Tiphany didn’t know what to do, but she couldn’t bring herself to walk away. She was looking around for help, maybe a police officer, when she happened to spot the mime.
The mime was in whiteface and black tights, sauntering toward Tiphany and the girl, moving against the flow of tourist traffic. He seemed heavy for a mime, his black-and-white-striped shirt clinging to his belly, exposing a patch of hair just below his navel. When he was only a few steps away, the mime leaned in toward Tiphany’s ear and pointed at the girl, who was now laughing quietly to herself.
“At least someone’s having a good time,” he said.
The mime was smoking, and his words had curled around and up Tiphany’s nose. Then they were gone, and she wondered if only she had heard them. In midstride she stopped and turned, as if to verify that what she thought had just happened had, in fact, just happened.
The mime said nothing else. Having reached the entrance to the park, a few yards away, he too came to stop. There he stood for a moment, his back to the low stone wall, savoring a final drag of his cigarette, as if a firing squad awaited.
Slowly, reluctantly, the mime pulled the cigarette from his mouth and let it dive, filter first, onto the sidewalk. Somewhere behind Tiphany, the girl continued to laugh.
Eyes cast downward, the mime watched a thread of smoke twist up from the ground, thinning to nothing before reaching his knees. Tiphany thought she read resignation in the curl of his lower lip. A few inches above the butt, the mime’s heel began its descent upon the embers. Clearly he meant to grind it out, nothing more complicated than that. And yet the moment his foot touched the cigarette, it immediately recoiled, as though his heel had landed on a loaded spring. With exaggerated outrage, he raised his foot a second time, stomping again on the cigarette. Again his foot bounced back.
Sensing some sort of performance, passersby began to slow. A few people at a time, a small crowd gathered. Unsure what was happening, they watched the mime glower at the sidewalk, and they looked too, trying to find the object of his fury. Chest puffed, the mime faked another stomp, as if hoping to catch the cigarette off guard. Then for a moment, he seemed to give up, content to let the cigarette smolder. He turned his back on it. But this too was only a ruse. His plan was to lull the cigarette into a false sense of security. And then he spun around, and then he leaped. Not just one foot this time—he raised both knees to his chest. Swiftly and heavily his feet hit the ground. His aim was perfect. But something went wrong. The instant he landed, his feet sprang back up again, rising higher as the mime toppled over backward. When he hit the cobblestones, Tiphany thought she heard something inside him crack.
The show was over. On his back on the sidewalk, the mime watched with boredom as the last of the spectators wandered away. Into his hat, which he’d lost in the fall, an old woman in a wig tossed a few coins. Seeing that no one else remained to help him, Tiphany came forward and extended her hand. The mime waved her off, preferring to pull himself up by an invisible rope.
That evening, sitting alone in the hotel restaurant, Tiphany nursed her second beer and marveled at the world in which she’d found herself. A day had passed in which only four people had spoken to her: Mrs. Freeman, a fucked-up street kid, a mime, and finally her waiter. The first hated her. The second was barely conscious. About the third she could only guess. Judging by his neglect of her, the fourth seemed to have already decided Tiphany’s tip wasn’t worth the effort. For anyone else, she was sure, such encounters came easily. For anyone else, the trip would have been simple. A free vacation. A per diem. A break from Detroit’s endless winter.
When she got back to her room after dinner and found that Mrs. Freeman wasn’t there, Tiphany gave Sasha a call. The thing she wanted to talk about most was the mime.
“ ‘At least someone’s having a good time.’ That’s what he said.”
“If a mime’s going to speak,” Sasha said, yawning into the phone, “he must have something pretty important to say.”
“He was right. I don’t belong here,” Tiphany said. “And she’s probably going to fire me when we get back.”
“So you have to share a room,” he said. “She’s old. She probably won’t even remember.”
“You’re not helping.” It was always the same. He offered jokes when she was looking for comfort. The day after she’d told him she’d be going on this trip—the first business trip of her life—he’d gone to the thrift store and bought her a beat-up attaché case, which he monogrammed himself with a permanent marker.
She’d been planning to tell him about the landscape artist and his paintings, but now she just wasn’t in the mood.
Tiphany was getting ready for bed when Mrs. Freeman returned, stepping out of her shoes before even shutting the door.
“Would you mind making me a drink?” the old woman said, crumbling into the chair. She seemed to fall instantly asleep. But at the sound a moment later of the clinking ice beside her ear, Mrs. Freeman opened her eyes and gratefully took the glass. After a few sips, she’d recovered enough to sit up straight and answer Tiphany’s questions about her day.
“Buffoons,” she said, “blowhards, posses of chittering monkeys. They left their brains at home to save space for their golf clubs.”
“Some of the panels were interesting, I thought,” Tiphany said, hoping Mrs. Freeman wouldn’t ask for examples.
Mrs. Freeman rattled her ice and waited for the last drops of gin to reach her tongue. “I hadn’t realized you were so interested,” she said. “You should come with me tomorrow. Frankly, I wish you’d take my place.”
There was nothing Tiphany would have liked less. But as she unfolded her bed, she couldn’t help feeling sh
e’d made some slight progress toward amends.
Having been unable to think of an excuse for backing out, Tiphany began the next day at Mrs. Freeman’s side, and there she remained up through lunch. There were six of them at the restaurant, the four men old friends and colleagues of Mrs. Freeman’s. Tiphany forgot their names the moment she was introduced.
They spent much of the meal discussing their favorite resorts. Mrs. Freeman seemed especially fond of a hotel in Haiti, of all places. Tiphany kept quiet, ashamed to admit the hotel she was in right now was the most exotic place she’d ever been. But as the conversation wore on, she kept feeling everyone was looking at her, waiting for her to say something, anything. Finally, in a moment of desperation, she choked down a gulp of frigid ice water and, turning to a ruddy-faced man who’d just concluded a long, boring story about a trip abroad, said, “I can’t remember—what part of France is Belize in?”
All at once, it seemed, everyone reached for their napkins, dabbing at their lips so as to have an excuse not to answer. After a moment Mrs. Freeman reached across the table to pat Tiphany’s arm. “I can hardly remember myself sometimes.”
After that Tiphany was sure every time she opened her mouth, she was making a fool of herself. But what could she do? They were smart and successful and sophisticated, and she was just a glorified secretary. She’d obviously embarrassed Mrs. Freeman as well, and that was why the old woman was so desperate to get rid of her when the meal was over, claiming she had business to attend to alone.
Despite having spent the day sitting down, at the end of it Tiphany was more exhausted than the day before, when she’d walked for miles. For the second night in a row, she had dinner and drinks in the hotel restaurant. Afterward, depressed and slightly drunk, she went upstairs and called Sasha.
Angels of Detroit Page 24