Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

§

Constance got the oven from Michael Boni. She traded him her old microwave. The stove had been his grandmother’s, and he had no use for it. Everything he ate came straight from a can. He treated eating as if it were a burden.

But the oven still needed to be moved, and only she and Michael Boni were there to do it, now that Dobbs had disappeared.

She hadn’t seen Dobbs since the night he’d helped with the booths and tables. She’d known him only a couple weeks, but she’d gotten used to him, had made the mistake of counting on him to show up. But for three nights in a row, he’d failed to appear at the garden. And Constance wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Last evening, while she was out watering peas, Clementine had emerged from the weeds, saying, “I know where he is.”

Constance had waved her off. “We’ll manage,” she’d said, though in fact the list of chores she’d assembled for him was already longer than she could remember.

“I can take you,” Clementine had said, offering her hand, determined for some reason not to give up. “There’s these mattresses—”

Constance had cut her off with a shake of her head. “I don’t want to know.”

“He’s getting things ready,” Clementine said. “They’re almost here.”

“It’s okay,” Constance had said. “We’re fine without him.”

Michael Boni was shifty too, but he was almost always there when she went to pound on his door.

They’d set out from his house with the stove an hour ago. He was able to hump the old hunk of steel about three yards at a time before having to stop and rest. So far they’d made it about thirty feet, to the middle of the street, where Michael Boni now squatted with his head between his knees, trying to catch his breath. It was a good thing there wasn’t any traffic.

“Does your son know about this?” Michael Boni said, reaching around to massage his own back.

Constance opened the oven door and peered inside. “Are you sure this thing works?”

“It better.”

She let him rest another couple of minutes. Then Michael Boni wrapped his arms back around the oven and grunted. They made it maybe nine more feet before it all came crashing back down.

“Why do you even want a restaurant?” he said, gasping again for air.

He was doing a lot of whining for someone who still had another whole block to go.

“Did I ever tell you about Charles?” she said.

Charles, Constance said, was one of those people everyone knew. Not just the whole school — the whole neighborhood. But Constance had always been a grade behind him, and Charles had no reason to notice Constance until she turned seventeen and inherited the figure her mother had lost.

There was an intensity to Charles that drew people toward him. He wasn’t athletic or outgoing. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he was striking, his brow and his cheekbones so pronounced that his small, deep-set eyes seemed to disappear between them. Even standing face to face, Constance sometimes couldn’t tell where he was looking. It made her uneasy, not knowing if she had his attention. That was Charles’s allure. His gaze was like a gift.

Her only problem with Charles was his friends, James and Bobby. James and Bobby were large and shovel-faced and enjoyed cornering girls in stairwells. Like anyone with any sense, Constance had long made a point of avoiding them. But suddenly they were everywhere she was. Charles and his friends spent most of their time hanging out at the rec center, Constance now in tow. James and Bobby were both trying to become the next Joe Louis, but James was too slow and Bobby’s left arm was stiff as a broom. When the two of them met in the center of the ring, they looked like pigeons tussling. But Charles took their training seriously. Charles took everything seriously. While the boys sparred, Charles would stand at the ropes and take turns waving them over and whispering in their ears. Charles didn’t know the first thing about boxing, but Constance found his confidence transfixing. Watching from a bench in the corner, she was prepared to believe he could do anything.

Michael Boni scraped the stove up onto the sidewalk. “Is that right?” he said, lifting his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face.

“We got married the summer I finished high school,” Constance said, but Michael Boni wasn’t paying attention. He sat down on the curb, looking as though he were about to pass out. “How much farther?” he said, though he knew perfectly well all they’d managed so far was to cross the street.

Where had she found such feeble men? “We’ll finish it another day,” she said.

Michael Boni looked up at her with hopeful eyes. “The stove or the story?”

“Both,” she said.

Michael Boni sighed. “Better hope it doesn’t rain.”

§

Constance found the paint at a secondhand building supply store. The cans were half and three-quarters full, with spills on the labels showing what color they were. Mostly white and off-white, but that was okay. They would make the place look clean and bright.

There was more she’d wanted to say about Charles, but not all of it was fit for Michael Boni’s ears. For instance, she remembered being in bed at night, newly wed, with Charles above her, and how sometimes she’d felt as if she could be anyone, that he didn’t see her there. She was just a body. He took what he needed, and all he gave in return was soon flushed away. But she was just a girl then, and the feeling of isolation had seemed like a small price to pay. After all, Charles had saved Constance, freeing her from her mother. In return, how could she not give herself to him completely?

§

The lights were from a junk shop, left in a bin out front, full of stuff free for the taking. Dobbs had spent the last couple of hours trying to hang them, but the fixtures were old and the wires were loose and Dobbs, it had become clear, had no idea what he was doing. Now he and Constance were sitting at the red plastic booth, drinking coffee, gathering strength for a second attempt.

He’d shown up tonight for the first time in almost a week, and now he was strangely quiet, preoccupied.

“You haven’t told me about a single dream,” she said.

“I’ve been busy.”

Constance refilled his cup. “Clementine was telling me something. About some people you’ve been waiting for.”

Dobbs looked away, held up one of the light fixtures, wires dangling like a wind chime. “Are you sure these aren’t broken?”

Constance took the light from him, set it down. “Did I ever tell you about the night Charles was arrested?”

Dobbs squinted at her from somewhere far away. “Who’s Charles?”

It was June, she said, and Clifford had a cold. He’d just turned a year and a half. It was the middle of the night, and Constance was in the kitchen filling a cup of water to settle Clifford’s cough. There was a knock at the door. The next thing she knew, the cops were kicking Charles, curled up on the living room floor. He was handcuffed, wearing nothing but boxers, shouting “I’ll fucking kill you!” between blows.

Constance had never heard Charles make so much noise. She was in her nightgown and Clifford was crying and one of the cops said something about a stolen truck. The cops were all white. There were three squad cars parked out front with flashing lights. They pushed Charles into the back of one of them, and he looked so small as he rode past her, his face turned away from the window.

Constance stood there paralyzed. They’d taken him away before he’d had a chance to tell her what to do.

By the time she got to the station, the charges had expanded to armed robbery, assault, grand larceny, conspiracy. Constance tried to get the desk clerk to explain what was happening, but nothing he said made any sense. There was the clatter of typewriters and the clanging of cells. There was no space left for words. Someone eventually led her to an interrogation room, where Constance sat down, smoothing her skirt. When she looked up, Charles was being handcuffed to the table.