Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

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.

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.