Broken Monsters (11 page)

Some shelters
make you play musical chairs. Move around, table to table. Same with recovery programs, TK has found. It's all about getting to know one another, but he figures it's a bit like taking off your pants. You have to expose yourself, naked for all the world to see. You stand up and you say
I'm a drunk. I'm an addict. I'm a murderer. I'm a whoreson
. It's supposed to be only part of who you are, but it seems to him once you take that label, you're stuck with it. Some words are stronger than others. It's…what's the Hollywood word for it? Your elevator pitch.

He's been looking into this stuff, reading websites on how to write a screenplay. But all that advice on how to get ahead in Hollywood involves a cash layout. Buy the book. Do the course. Have a professional reader give you notes on your synopsis. Same as the how-to-be-a-day-trader sites he was looking at seven years ago before the whole economy came crashing down around their heads exactly like a giant robot movie.

Life does that too, and the support programs, they want you to appeal to a higher power for help. Your call. God, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed. Whole damn catalog to choose from. TK chose his chair.

“You can't choose a chair, TK,” Celeste told him at that same meeting. Crack addict, hadn't spoken to her only daughter in ten years after stealing her ATM card and taking her grocery money, but there she was lecturing him about God.

“Sure I can. I can feel it right now. My higher power's presence supporting me—right under my ass.” Which cracked up the room, and the counselor slapped him on the back and shook her head. But he was dead serious. You can't tell him there's any God would allow the kind of shit he's lived through. Kids having to avenge their mommas. Public defender who barely even looked at him, let alone got his side of the story. What happened in jail after that. God who'd let that happen to a kid? That ain't somebody he wants to be palling around with. He'll take his chair, thank you, ma'am.

So it's not that he doesn't believe in God, it's that they don't see eye-to-eye. He'd never tell that to these people though, the ones lining up outside St. Raphael's in the shadow of Comerica Park, shabbier than the crowds they get here during a game. Some of them can spare him a smile, but some of them don't even have that in them. There's a way back from that place, if you can find it, if you can find your chair.

TK goes down the line, slapping hands in greeting. “Hey there, good to see you. We open at eleven. You hang in there.”

The church calls it a soup kitchen, but mostly they don't serve soup. They do sandwiches and hot dogs and chili in winter, and they hand out chips and sweets, whatever's donated by local grocery stores, sorted into brown paper bags by the volunteers. He's overheard Reverend Alan talking about how it's getting harder to pull in donations.

When TK was a kid, he thought that living in a free country meant you got stuff for free. He got disabused of
that
notion real quick. He used to hate the old men pulling him aside on the corner: “B-ooooy! I got something to tell you.” He didn't want to hear it. Had to learn the unfairness of it all firsthand. You think the world comes down to basic math. One plus one. Life for a life. But apparently that don't add up in the US justice system, no matter what the Bible says about eyes and teeth. It took him a long time to figure it out and now, pushing sixty, he's got his shit together, he's got it down, and none of them kids want to listen to him. He's become that old man. “B-oooooy! I got something to tell you.”

Ten minutes after the doors open, people barely sat down with their food, and Lanny is already complaining up a storm, bitching about pretzels when he wanted crackers. Used to be an ocular surgeon, he says. Which is a fancy term for eye doctor, because doctors need long words as much as they need scalpels and lasers and white coats. Lanny says he could take care of that bump on TK's eyelid, if his hands didn't shake so much. He says it's Parkinson's, but TK knows a drunk when he sees one, and not just by the half-jack of Carstairs White Seal he slips out of his pocket to spike his coffee.

You get all sorts in here. Not only ocular surgeons. Anyone can find they've been standing on the trapdoor when they thought they were the spotlight attraction.

“Lanny, Lanny,” TK says, slinging his arm around the man. The problem with being a self-appointed troubleshooter is it means you got to deal with the damn trouble. “Lanny, my man, it's nothing. Here, you swap with me. I got some crackers.”

Lanny is still grumbling. “They don't treat me right, TK. Man has a right to crackers.”

TK walks him over to the table where Ramón and his lady Diyana are sitting with their hands clasped together tighter than a clamshell, staring at each other like lovesick teenagers. But unlike teenagers, they've seen enough to know how rare and precious their feelings are.

Diyana is easy with the smiles these days. Used to be that she hid her mouth with a hand to cover up her one black tooth, but she's kinder to herself since she and Ramón got together. Love will do that.

“Nice shoes, Ramón,” TK says, noting the red high-tops with a wink and a twinge of regret. He sees he's shaved too.

“Thanks, TK.”

“Lemme see?” Lanny demands.

“Like the ones I had when I was nineteen,” Ramón says, sticking his foot out from under the table, twisting it one way, then the other, for them to admire. “Only those were white.”

“Gonna get soaked with the first snow,” Lanny grumbles.

“Then I'll switch to my boots,” Ramón shrugs.

 Lanny is already bored of the conversation. “You know they gave me
pretzels?
Did you get pretzels or crackers?”

“Lemme get you a hot dog. That'll make up for it, right, Lanny?”

TK is heading for the line when he sees a lost-looking man lurking by the door. Long white hair tied back in a ponytail, face as crumpled and ill fitting as his brown blazer. Midfifties, TK would guess, although the street has a way of making people look older. His features are gaunt and also saggy, with scooped-out cheeks and soft folds gathered up under his jaw, but his pale blue eyes are as sharp as a box cutter a kid might pull on you in the street. All sorts, TK reminds himself, but he automatically checks his hands to see if he's holding. Man with eyes like that in prison is a man with intent. Or a tweaker.

But the man is holding only an empty plastic cup, aiming for the table with the Kool-Aid. The back of his hands are pocked with little scars, like the ones you get in the screw factory, when splinters of metal filings shear off and stick into you and you got to pick them out with tweezers after your shift when you should be having a nice cold one. If you still had a job. If you hadn't sworn off the drink.

“Hey there, you okay?” he says, trying to set him at ease. It's one of the things he does, gets newcomers settled in. “You need something I can help you with?” The man's expression spasms, trying out different combinations. Ah, TK thinks, autistic. That's easier to handle than psychotic.

“I'm looking for someone.” He speaks hesitantly, dragging the words out like someone trying to control a stutter. “I thought it was Louanne. But it wasn't. Not the boy, either. He couldn't get up.”

“You got a name?” TK prods, gently. “If it's someone who comes here regular, I'll probably know them. If not, I can help you look them up on the computer. White pages, Facebook. You can find pretty much anyone these days.”

“I don't know,” he says, looking around the big hall, people clustered around the big tables with the cheery tablecloths. “Someone. It's very raw here,” the man says, rubbing the white stubble on his cheeks up and down, up and down. “Everyone is broken.”

“Hey, now,” TK bristles, “people get banged up a little. But they're good people. Why don't you come sit with us for a bit.” He keeps talking—it helps with ones like this, sets them at ease. “This place is like the movies! You got everything: drama, action, romance, hard times, good times, coming back from the dead times. You know they filmed all the
Transformers
movies here?
RoboCop,
too. I figure it's about time they did a movie about people instead of machines,” TK says. “Explosions and fighting robots and shit. What's that got to do with the heart?” He pauses. “I know I'm going on, but point is, you can't judge people by the outside. Like the Bible says, the body's just a vessel. Not that I'm religious or nothing. You know they make you choose a higher power when you go through the twelve steps? You know what I chose?” He gets ready to launch into his tale, honed like a comedy routine.

“A chair,” the man answers.

TK reels. “I told you this before? Have we met?”

“I can see things inside. Like shadows on the wall. People are messier. But I can see the chairs. I can see your momma.”

“That ain't none of your business. Here.” TK puts a brown lunch bag into his hands as they reach the front of the line. “Pretzels all right with you?” He shoves his tray at Big Dennis, who is dishing up today. “You want a hot dog too? Two with the works for me, please. No, wait, make it one ketchup, one mustard, onions on the side.” He can't remember what Lanny likes. There is bad weather brewing behind his temples. Might be a fit coming on. Black Sundays he calls them, although they strike on any day they feel like.

“You shouldn't eat that,” the man says.

“You see a salad bar around here?” It comes out sharper than he'd intended.

“Do you know what that's made out of?”

TK is dismissive. “Sodium, fat, whole bunch of chemicals with long names that probably gonna give me cancer. But it ain't killed me yet. Besides, it's not for me.”

“Scraps.”

“Sure. Lips and assholes. Still tastes good.”

“Intestines, fat, organs. Bits they scrape off the bone and spray off the floor of the slaughterhouse with hoses, and then they pulp it up in vats until all you have left is pink slime.” The man recites it like a nursery rhyme.

“Hey, now, you wanna be vegetarian, that's all right, but we got a rule here about preaching…”

“Pink slime. That's all you are inside. Like you said, vessels. You have to open them up.” He grabs hold of TK's arm, the gleam of revelation in his blue eyes. “You need to come with me. I got a truck outside.”

“I suggest you let me go, boy,” TK says, coldly. “This isn't that kind of place. I don't go that way.” He wrenches his arm free. “You want a pickup, you choose somewhere that ain't a church. I think you should take your meal and go now.”

But halfway back to his table he turns to see the man dangling the paper bag from his hand, looking down at the ground, all—what's the word from that comic TK likes so much about the little kid and his imaginary tiger?—discombobulated. That's it. He looks utterly lost. TK calls to him, “You should maybe think about coming in for counseling, man. Thursdays.”

Back at the table, Lanny's chair is vacant.

“Men's room,” Ramón says. “Said he might be a while. Pretzels upset his constitution.”

“All right. Guess I'll leave this for him, then.”

“You okay, Tom?” Diyana's the only one who can get away with calling him that. “You look upset.”

“I'm fine. Need to take my medication is all.” TK's annoyed with himself. The man brought up all kinds of wrong in him, and he can feel the pressure building inside his head. “I'm gonna go in back and get it.”

The offices behind the hall are usually locked up. Trust is a luxury item, like designer shoes and fancy coffee. You have to be able to afford it. But the room where they store the tables and chairs is always open. No one's tried to make off with the furniture yet—and no one thinks to look in here, which means a man can take a nap undisturbed, if he's so inclined.

He eases between the stacks of chairs, and then crawls under them, bunching up his jacket to use as a pillow. Ten minutes' shut-eye, to ward off the storm clouds and lay low from his new friend.

TK comes out of the darkness fighting. Diyana and Ramón are standing over him, looking worried, while Big Dennis is trying to stick a plastic serving spoon between his teeth.

“Get that shit out of my mouth, man. Don't they teach you anything?”

“Didn't want you to bite your tongue off,” Dennis says.

“Best thing with a seizure is to put a pillow under a man's head and let him get on with it.”

“All right, all right, TK. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be hard on him, Tom. He was trying to help.”

TK sits up, blinking. The light is too bright. It feels like it might set him off again. His head is full of ghosts of tortured metal and sheets blooming with bloody flowers. “What happened?”

“You had one of your fits.”

“I know
that
. I mean, what the hell happened to all the chairs?”

“We thought you did it,” Diyana looks around, puzzled.

The chairs are arranged all around him in perfect circles, a bull's-eye with him at the center. But that's not even the most disturbing part. It's that someone's gone and turned them all upside down, legs sticking up in the air like dead bugs.

“Not me, man,” TK says, leaning over his knees, feeling nauseous. “Not me.”

The extra-credit
Future Promise class Layla signed up for is canceled.
Por supuesto!
But no one has bothered to inform them. Double
por
supuesto
. Suits her, it was lame anyway. “Entrepreneurship! Creative economics! Personal brand building! How to capitalize on social media!” Sponsored by the Detroit New Business Association. The lecturer, who was barely older than they were, spent the last class explaining how to set up a Facebook page for your business, skipping over what kind of business that should be. She got the idea he was kinda hoping they would know.

“Why can't you just go private?” Layla said this morning, when her mom told her it was probably going to be another late shift.

“Because I believe in helping people, not hunting down bogus insurance claimants for some corporation,” her mother snapped. “
Unlike
your father.” She repented immediately. “Goddammit. I'm sorry, Layla, that was a shit thing to say. But I don't know why you have to always push me.”

More than half the class bails when it becomes obvious that no one is coming. She follows the stragglers to the gymnateria; a cluster of the cool kids. She only knows a couple of them by name: CeeCee Wallace, in her fur-lined boots and denim skirt with a fox tail clipped on the back, and Travis Russo, who slams his body around as if it's a new car he's learning to drive.

He goes off to shoot hoops with one of his boys, while the girls sit on the edge of the stage, swinging their legs and tossing out easy gossip about a bunch of people Layla doesn't know, which makes it hard to have an opinion. Who got with who, who is a slut, who's cheating on who, who's causing drama. She tries to turn it into a theater exercise, studying them, filing bits of dialogue and the way the intonation goes up at the end, what they do with their hands. She never knows what to do with her hands. This is probably why so many people smoke. Why they get fucked-up at parties. A beer is something you can hold on to.

She thinks about the props Mrs. Westcott has asked them to bring to rehearsals at the Masque to help them get into character. She wishes she had something to help her get into Layla-who-totally-fits-in.

There is a lapse in the conversation after they all agree that Abbie is a cheating whore. Layla tries to break in, having rehearsed the line that will make her seem witty and cool and deep. “Hey, don't you think—” she stammers as they turn their attention on her. “Smoking. It's such a primitive ritual, gathering around the fire.” In her head, she had used this as a way to move on to Plato's shadows on the cave wall, and how do you know what's really real? Like global warming, or your folks breaking up, or Abbie turning out to be such a cheating whore. You can't trust things to stay stable. Because a turkey thinks everything is peachy until the farmer comes along with a hatchet. But now her spiel seems horribly lame and pretentious.

“Yeah,” CeeCee says. “And cuz nicotine is totally addictive.” The others laugh and the circle closes around itself again. A cell that just repelled a virus.

Travis dribbles the ball over. “Is that your friend?” he says with real interest as Cassandra strides in through the double doors, looking around for her. She has a way of walking like she's in a heist movie, her coat flapping around her and her evil Hello Kitty backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Yeah,” Layla says, grateful for the rescue, but also a little stunned that Travis is talking to her. She bundles up her stuff. “I gotta go.”

“What up, bitch?” Cas calls across as she scurries to meet her.

“Class was canceled,” Layla explains. The stragglers have all gone quiet. She can feel their eyes on the back of her head, and she's grateful for the bubble of untouchable cool Cas carries around with her.

“Hey, aren't you—?” Travis starts to ask.

“No,” Cas says, dismissing him. “C'mon, slut, we're going to miss our bus.”

“We could always ask for a ride.” This is a time-honored tradition at high school, making nice to the kids who have their own cars, but Layla hasn't had the guts to do it before.

“With those jerk-offs? I'd rather walk. Besides, you're going to get your license in a month, right?”

“Assuming I pass. And then I still have to get a car.” Layla has to walk at a clip to keep up with Cas, but she is already more herself. Her friend brings it out in her. Her own personal power-up.

They pass by the rows of dented lockers and the bathroom that reeks of marijuana, and crash out the doors into the parking lot. It's a point of pride that Hines High doesn't have metal detectors—a testament to the quality of education and the faith the school has in its students. Which didn't prevent them from doing a spot search of the parking lot for drugs this morning.

“How was extra math?” Layla asks.

“Mathy. Don't know why I bother. I'm going to be a waitress anyway. You know what they say, big tits, huge tips. Watch out, Hooters.”

“Doesn't your dad want you to go to MIT?”

“Sure, and he wants to revolutionize social media too. Doesn't mean it's going to happen. Run! There's the bus.”

“It's a sad indictment of society…” Layla pants as they sprint for the stop, “that your boobs will probably get you further in life than my brains and talent.”

“Not forgetting my fine ass,” Cas says, barely out of breath, ignoring the bus driver's scandalized look as the doors hiss open and she swipes her card. “Besides. I'd rather be a happy Hooters waitress than a depressed out-of-work actor.”

“Who says I'm going to be out of work?” They head toward the back.

“Really?” Cas grabs the pole as the bus lurches into the traffic and gives Layla the perfect model-scout head-to-toe evaluation over her shoulder. “Cuz there are already
so
many roles for actresses of color in Hollywood. I'm just saying, you better start saving for your nose job. Get your boobs and liposuction done while you're at it. Skin lightening even.”

“Oh yeah? Well Detroit doesn't even have a Hooters, biatch.”

“I could start my own franchise. Or maybe a competing rip-off brand. Tooters.”

“Or an ass-centric one. Pooters.”

“You're so disgusting, Layla Jane Stirling-Versado.”

 She grins. “You like it.”

They grab seats in the middle, by the second set of doors, because Cas gets carsick. “Any new news on Dorkian?”

“I texted him. He didn't even reply.”

“Burn. You see the girl he's been posting to on Facebook?”

“What? No!”

“Some party on Saturday. She's coming from Los Angeles. An artist or whatever.” She pulls it up on-screen—the whole conversation laid out for everyone to see.

TimTam Linden. “Artist. Fashionista. Trouble.” In her profile picture, she has ash-blond hair in a sharp bob that flicks up at the front and a short-short fringe. Mod does punk. She's so cool, Layla could die. They flick through her photographs—heavily filtered pictures on the beach, posing with some vaguely famous-looking people, pictures of lights on a building.

“We have to go,” Layla says.

“To the party? My parents will never let me.”

“No, listen. We get a cab. You tell them you're sleeping at my house, I'll tell my mom I'm crashing at yours.”

“You're insane.”

“I'm in love.”

“Like I said.”

Cas's phone makes that super-annoying chipmunk noise she's set for her MChat alert tone. She sits upright and elbows Layla in the ribs.

“Damn motherfucker!” Cas shows her the phone. The old lady sitting opposite them wearing a knit cap with a woolen rose on it scowls at them.

“It's okay. I didn't need my spleen anyway. What is it? Did his relationship status just change?” Layla snarls, grabbing the phone. The chat window is open.

“I don't know what I'm looking at. Who is VelvetBoy?”

“Who do you think, dummy? A friendly stranger who wants to talk to little SusieLee.”

“Seriously?” She takes in the username, the profile pic Cas found somewhere of a tubby little blond girl, twelve-ish, sitting on a fence, grinning to show a slight gap between her teeth, holding a sunflower. “Is that photostock? No one's going to be stupid enough to fall for that.”

“Someone just did.”

“Oh my God, we have to reply.” Layla thumbs over the keyboard.

“Oh God, so gross,” Layla says.

“Keep going! Don't lose him.” But there's an edge to the way she says it.

“Like my vulva!” Cas says, gleefully. Rose Hat Lady jerks in her seat and gives them the eye daggers. “What?” Cas says to her. “You've got one too!”

“You should mistype more words for authenticity,” Cas says.

“For your information,” Layla says, getting into it now, “it's part of her character history. Little SusieLee is very precocious and happens to have won the spelling bee three years in a row.”

“Bingo,” Cas says.

Layla hands Cas the phone back. “Well that was fun. And…I feel really dirty.”

“So where the hell are we going to find a video of that same kid playing guitar, genius?”

“What?” Layla laughs. “We're not going to send him anything. Except maybe a ‘you're busted, pervert' message.”

“Why not? More of his time we take up, the less time he has to chase after actual little girls.”

“You want to go full vigilante?”

“Oh my God, yes.” Cas bounces in her seat in excitement. “We should
meet
him.”

“No way. And you don't know he's a perve for sure. He could be a kid himself. A lonely kid who knows what it feels like to get bullied. Maybe he's just reaching out, and we're the assholes.”

“Really? You
really
think that?”

“No,” Layla admits.

“So. Motherfucking game on, motherfucker.”

Layla glances out the window. “We missed our stop.”

“Christballs.”