Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

“What makes you think I want this to be easy?”

The old woman pursed her lips. “My husband will be annoyed,” she said. “I was supposed to meet him for dinner after the symphony.”

“Tragic.”

“What you kids today call a ‘first-world problem,’ ” Mrs. Freeman said. “Maybe a little disappointment will be good for him.”

“Maybe it’ll be good for you, too.”

It was so overcast, there were barely even shadows outside. McGee couldn’t remember ever seeing a darkness so thick and impenetrable.

“Are you married?” Mrs. Freeman said.

McGee didn’t even bother glancing in the mirror.

“What about the others who were with you before?” Mrs. Freeman said. “Your friends?”

McGee turned to look out her side window.

“Where are they now?”

“Maybe they’re out there,” McGee said, waving her hand toward the darkness.

The old woman seemed to think about that for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

“What makes you think you have any idea?”

Mrs. Freeman leaned back. “You just seem like someone who’s very much alone.”

“I couldn’t do this alone,” McGee said, allowing herself a satisfied smirk at the car and her captive.

“There are different ways of being alone,” Mrs. Freeman said.

“You want to analyze someone,” McGee said, “analyze yourself. Maybe you should be thinking about what’s wrong with you.”

“If you were to ask my husband—”

“I’m not asking him,” McGee said. “I’m asking you. What’s your excuse for the things you do?”

“I suppose it’s the same as yours. As everyone’s.”

“And what might that be?”

“Fear, first,” Mrs. Freeman said. “And then, much later, regret.”

“I’m not afraid,” McGee said. The old woman was simply trying to weaken her, to make it seem like they were the same — two people sharing a sinking ship lost at sea. But really Mrs. Freeman was the captain, commandeering the only dinghy in order to save herself.

It was three minutes to ten. McGee searched among the posts sticking out of the steering column until she found the right one. With a twist, she turned on the headlights. And then the high beams. And for good measure, the fog lamps, too, illuminating the ugly hulk of a building in front of them. The lot was ringed with sodium lights, but they’d all been turned off. Every last loss had been cut. All except for the blinking red light, which marked the place like a hazardous shoal.

McGee pointed to the factory across the immense parking lot, the compressors and all the equipment now on its way to China. “Do you know where we are?”

“Of course,” Ruth Freeman said. “It’s ours.”

“It was.” McGee reached for her duffel bag. Inside were a few changes of clothes, her keepsakes, the little money she’d saved. She took out the cell phone Michael Boni had given her. Now she handed it to Mrs. Freeman.

“It’s already dialed.”

Mrs. Freeman looked at the phone and then at the building. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You know that, right? It’s a write-off. An insurance claim.”

“To you, maybe.”

Mrs. Freeman set the phone down in her lap. “What if I refuse?”

McGee tucked her hair up under her hat. “You won’t.”

“And what about you?” Mrs. Freeman said. “Your life in exchange for a building?”

McGee shrugged.

Mrs. Freeman settled back into her seat. “I think it’s a poor trade.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“If it were up to me—”

“It’s not.”

“I’d leave it as it is,” Mrs. Freeman said.

McGee offered a nod of exaggerated surprise. “I’m sure you would.”

Mrs. Freeman gazed into the darkness still outside her window, at whatever else was out there. “This is what the world will look like after we’re gone.”

McGee shook her head. “That’s one theory.”

Mrs. Freeman had the look on her face of someone not accustomed to being contradicted. “Do you have another?”

“I don’t believe in theories,” McGee said. “Maybe I don’t have your imagination.”

“You’re a doer,” Mrs. Freeman said, “not a thinker?”

“When I was twelve,” McGee said, “I destroyed the tree house my parents built.”

Mrs. Freeman blinked at her uncertainly.

“I’ve never felt as much clarity as I did then.”

The old woman raised her eyes, staring at the factory. “I tried to save it,” she said. “I really did.”

For the first time all evening, she looked as though she’d made a move without first plotting her defense.

“But I was too late,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Years and years too late.”

McGee realized a new piece had come on the radio, something she didn’t recognize. “I told you something about myself,” she said. “What about you?”

The old woman raised her hands, and for a long moment she studied them, the wrinkles and spots and burgundy old-lady nail polish. And then she lowered them again, folding her hands on top of the phone in her lap.

“I’ve never had a cigar.”

McGee reached into her duffel bag and took out her cigarettes. She handed one into the backseat. “It’s the best I can do.”

Mrs. Freeman took the cigarette between her fingers. They were shaking more than they had before. “This must be important to you,” she said. “I don’t believe I’d have your courage.”

McGee stretched out her arm and picked up the phone and placed it back in the old woman’s palm. “Here’s your chance.”

Mrs. Freeman lifted her eyes, once again looking off across the parking lot. She put the cigarette between her lips. “How about a light?”

At first there was only one small explosion, a cloud of smoke and dust that enveloped the factory almost all the way up to the top of the smokestack.

McGee feared something had gone wrong.

But then the second explosion followed the first, and almost in slow motion, an enormous brick wall folded in on itself. Then came the third and the fourth and the fifth explosions, and even the red light on top of the chimney flickered out in the thick black haze. On the roof and on the hood and on the windshield of the car, bits of debris rained down like hail. Within moments, they could no longer see through the glass. In the backseat of the car, phone cradled in her hand, the old woman sat openmouthed, awestruck. The cigarette dangled between her lips, continuing to burn.

McGee opened the door and got out. Now fade away.

The dog appeared one afternoon, uninvited, walking in the open front door and settling down beside the mattress. It didn’t bark, didn’t sniff, didn’t explore. Went right ahead and made itself at home. It looked a bit like a corgi, squat with little legs. Dobbs couldn’t imagine how such a ridiculous animal could have made it out there in the wild.

Inside the house, Dobbs had been making do with whatever Clementine brought him. Which on the day the dog arrived turned out to be a sack of broccoli and a couple of eggs.

“He’s cute,” Clementine said.

But he was also filthy.

Dobbs groaned himself into a sitting position. “Where’d the eggs come from?”

Clementine shrugged. “May-May’s neighbor.” She lifted the eggs out of the sack and set them up in a wobbly row on the table. “He went somewhere, I guess. Left a bunch of chickens.”

She had a small knife in the bag, too. Through his swollen eyes, he watched her cut thick slices of cucumber. “Lean back,” she said.

She arranged the cool cucumbers on his lids, not quite as gently as he would have liked.

“Feel better?”

“Better than nothing.”

Clementine had been the one to find him after Mike and Tim left him here, bloodied, huddled up in a ball. Not for dead. Not yet. She’d risked another grounding, she’d pointed out, saving his life.