Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

She would spend the night. That would be easier than going through everything all over again with Inez.

Through the narrow windows, April could see the rain pouring down, but the thick stone walls muddled the sound to a soothing drone.

Three other people remained in the station. She couldn’t be sure if they were passengers or if they’d come in to get out of the rain. There was a woman talking to herself by the pay phone, agitated, jerking her head and sighing. By the restrooms, an old bearded man in a folding chair appeared to be reading. The obese guy in the shrunken fatigue jacket beside the windows looked as though he were asleep.

As she paced the imaginary boundary of her quarter of the station, April read and reread McGee’s letter.

Thanks so much for writing. It’s nice of you to offer to come and visit my parents with me. Things are always so difficult with them. I’d rather not have to do it alone. Uncle Xavier put together a package and asked me to ask you if you can bring it with you when you come. He’ll drop it off sometime soon, if that’s alright …

No matter how many times she read it, the letter made no sense. It was the first April had heard from McGee in the nearly three months since she’d left. What was April supposed to have written? She didn’t even know where McGee was, aside from the Detroit postmark. And McGee hadn’t seen her parents in years, even though they lived only a couple of miles away. Things between them definitely were difficult; that much was true. But there was no Uncle Xavier, at least not that April had ever heard of.

Then there was the simple fact that McGee had written a letter . An actual, physical, pen-on-paper, stuffed-in-an-envelope-and-stamped letter. Who did that anymore? But no return address on the envelope, just instructions about when and where they would meet upon April’s arrival.

April had tried to find out what was going on, but no one else seemed to know anything either. Myles hadn’t heard from McGee. Neither had Holmes or Fitch. But April wasn’t surprised.

Everything had fallen apart so quickly.

In custody, the morning after the fiasco at HSI, they’d refused to give their names. But the men who’d arrested them already knew their names. These were guys straight out of the movies, cheap suits and mirrored sunglasses. Were they federal agents? Cops? Private security? April never thought to ask. The men who’d arrested them already knew everything, carrying out their interrogations only as a matter of course. After just a few hours, Myles and McGee and Holmes and April and Fitch were free to go, like children caught shoplifting. No charges. The men who’d arrested them didn’t say why, but they didn’t need to. The company didn’t want the publicity. For their effort, the five of them received only a warning. Next time, and the kindly agents sincerely hoped there wouldn’t be a next time, each of them would pay for everything he or she had ever done — of which the men were well informed — and for a few other things as well.

The rest had unraveled in stages. Inez had been applying to grad schools. After what happened, she couldn’t get out of town fast enough. And given the long, exhausting battle April had had to wage to win Inez’s forgiveness, how could she not go with her?

The move to Portland had originally been Fitch’s idea. But he didn’t have a hard time convincing Holmes to come along. Myles hadn’t planned to join them. Not at first. He was going to stay in Detroit, work things out with McGee. But within a month, the two of them were hardly speaking. At the bookstore he finally hung a sign saying it was closed for good.

McGee had been the only one who stayed, but she’d left the loft and no one knew where she’d gone. Other than underground. But why?

The one thing the letter didn’t say was the one thing April understood: McGee was in trouble and needed help.

Inez had been incredulous when April told her she had to go back to Detroit.

“What does she think you’ve got left to give her?” Inez wanted to know.

April had no answers. McGee had made her into some sort of spy, extracting orders from a complicated code.

Back at the apartment, April had been packing her bag when there’d been a knock at the door. A pale man with a puff of a moustache had stood in the hallway in cutoff jeans, his legs little more than bones and completely hairless.

“She wanted me to make sure you’re coming,” he’d said.

“Who are you?”

“Xavier.”

He’d handed April a small package tied with a green ribbon. Then he’d stalked away on his birdlike legs.

So April had become a courier too. But whatever the package was, neither McGee nor Uncle Xavier had said anything about not opening it. And now, here in the station, she had nothing but time.

The ribbon was knotted. She had to use her teeth, her fingernails chewed down to nubs. Beneath the paper was a white cardboard box. April untucked the flap and lifted the lid. Inside was a lump of aluminum foil. A clump of chocolate chip cookies.

“What the fuck?”

“Do those have nuts?”

April looked up with a jerk into a bearded, smiling face — the man who’d been reading by the bathroom. From up close he was decades younger than he’d seemed across the station. He reached into the box and took one, biting into it tentatively.

“Good, no nuts. I’m allergic to nuts. Peanuts, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, walnuts. All kinds. Doctor once told me to stay away from nuts unless I wanted to end up in the hospital again. Been back to the hospital plenty of times since then. Had nothing to do with nuts, though. These are good. Make them yourself?”

“No,” April said uncertainly. “Uncle Xavier—”

“Your uncle makes a good cookie. Nice and soft. Lots of brown sugar.”

April watched him swallow, not knowing what to expect. It crossed her mind that he might choke on something hidden in the batter and she’d have to save him.

“Aren’t you going to have one yourself?”

She wasn’t, of course, but she couldn’t think of any easy explanation. Taking up the box and paper, she struggled to put the package back together. When she got to the ribbon, he offered his finger. Around it she tied a bow.

“Think nothing of it,” he said, though she was too flustered to thank him.

The obese camouflaged man in the pew across the room was still asleep. The agitated woman by the pay phone seemed to have dozed off, too, her head resting on the plastic-bound yellow pages. Nowhere in the enormous station was there a single excuse for getting up. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and April didn’t want to offend someone who had so far done nothing but invade her space.

“I hope you won’t take this the wrong way,” the man said, sitting down beside her. “I was sitting over there watching you. You’re a very pretty woman. You probably hear that all the time.”

He must have noticed the look in her eyes, because he shook his head apologetically. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. It’s just you seem like a very nice person. You can tell even from across the room. But I should know better than to bother a pretty lady all alone in the middle of the night. Lord knows you meet enough crazy people when you ride the bus.”

“It’s okay,” April said, forcing a smile. “It’s all right.”

“To tell you the truth,” he said, “usually I don’t find pretty people all that worth talking to. They’re usually so dull. But there’s something about you. You see people all the time, walking around, thousands of them a day, and what do you know about them? Nothing. Not a damn thing. You live in the same city, walk the same streets, breathe the same air. It’s a shame we should all be such strangers. You shouldn’t need to know a person by name to say hello. You shouldn’t look at someone suspiciously just because he asks how you’re doing. Do you know what I’m saying?”