The Turner House (17 page)

“Shit yes,” Lelah said. “I hate them. They're designed to make people feel triflin. They don't even focus on what courses they offer.”

“I know, but they wore me down. I had just moved back to Detroit after my divorce, and since I had only been in the service for ten years, you know, I didn't get a pension like Troy. I was just back on the east side with my mom, tryna figure out what to do next. I called the number on the screen, just like they say to. A year later I had an electrical engineering certificate, and I used that to get work installing for Comcast. It was kinda like the network engineering stuff I'd done in the navy. Then I got a hookup on a van, got my permits together, and started getting contracts.”

“Damn,” she said. “They should put you in the brochure.”

David stopped eating and looked at her.

“They did. I was on the front page of their website for a long time, too.”

Lelah laughed to the point of choking, and didn't regain her composure until after she drank some water.

“I told you. See, you laughed,” he said. “I've got good business from being up on that website though, so I'm not mad about it.”

The server cleared their plates, and David ordered another beer. Minor brain freezes had further slowed Lelah's progress on her margarita.

She and David talked about the state of the old neighborhood, both of their mothers' health, and the ongoing scandal with the mayor. It surprised Lelah how easily she could do this after falling out of practice; talk to a person about grown-up things, laugh at jokes, be a little funny herself. David never questioned Lelah about her job, and since he'd unwittingly done her this favor, she decided not to mention his brother Greg. Even from the vantage of the big-room window she could tell he was still strung out; he shuffled up and down the street in an old oversized pea coat that was too warm for the weather. He wasn't like the few crackheads she spotted on the block—skinny, jittery, and paranoid—he had the drowsy, old-man gait of a heroin addict. He often stopped and squinted up at the sun.

“I have this one tenant over by City Airport,” David said. “A man in his early fifties, and his great-aunt. The man pays me three hundred a month to rent the house, and he works for the city, so I know he can afford more than that, even with the furloughs. Few months ago the
Free Press
put out a report saying his zip code was one of the deadliest in Wayne County, but he won't move. Says he thinks moving will kill the aunt. It's crazy, right? A stray bullet might kill her too.”

“I don't know,” Lelah said. “It's his prerogative. It might be nice to know you can do better than a place but stay there anyway. It's better than the other way around, when you're just being delusional and living somewhere you don't belong.”

David squinted at her, as if trying to gauge her level of seriousness.

“I think I'd rather scrimp and save to afford something better,” he said. “Somewhere safe at least.”

Lelah laughed.

“That's that Heineken in you talking,” she said. “You just said the man was doing it for his
aunt
, not cause he didn't have the money to move. Why did you buy all these properties in the first place?”

“Somebody's gotta do it,” he said. “I get them so cheap, I don't even need tenants. If I just hold on to them, they'll go up in value eventually.”

Lelah thought they'd both be dead before that happened, but she didn't say so. In some ways, she had begun to feel less like a squatter in the Yarrow house and more like a rightful tenant. After Saturday's trip to CHAINS-R-US she did not leave the house for nearly forty-eight hours. She ate a few Cup o' Noodles, the water from the tap in the kitchen just hot enough that she didn't have to boil it. She'd sat on the bed in the big room and surveyed the street below. The boarded-up house directly across the way had orange numbers spray-painted on its door. They looked more municipal than gang-related, and Lelah spent a considerable amount of time trying to guess what they meant. Sunday saw more traffic on the street as younger relatives in sedans and SUVs picked up their parents and grandparents for church service. Twice Lelah thought she saw someone she remembered from growing up, but the only person she was sure about had been Greg Gardenhire. Odds were the others were relatives, younger facsimiles who mirrored the gait of a person she used to know, drove in the same leaned-back, one-handed fashion. Mr. McNair never stopped by. She felt possessive about the property, imagined her presence might be beneficial. She'd even put a few of her pots in the hard-to-reach cabinet above the stove.

“I have a place on the river, too, a loft, right up Jefferson,” David said. “All the buildings around there used to be industrial. You should come see it sometime.”

Lelah nodded, and hoped she came off as slightly interested but not too eager. He was Troy's friend, after all, not hers. The waiter brought the check to David, and he quickly paid in cash.

In the parking lot they exchanged numbers, and Lelah warned David that she wasn't the best at returning missed calls. They hugged quickly. David climbed into his van and pulled out of the lot.

She sat in her Pontiac and regretted not getting one last glass of water. She felt overstimulated. The lunch, pleasant as it ended up being, was more small-talking, face-to-face lying, and semi-serious flirting than she'd done in months. She did all of these things at the casino, but there her behavior operated on autopilot, a mindless warm-up to a serious game during which she spoke to no one. Even when the casino flirtations led to a few ill-fated dates, or clandestine meetings in hotel rooms upstairs, she was not presenting her true self, only her casino self, a bolder personality that could not be conjured up in the outside world. Her true self wondered if her lies were convincing this afternoon, her conversation engaging, and whether this was a charity lunch not to be repeated in the future. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the steering wheel.

She was at the precipice of a parking lot nap when her phone rang. It was David.

“Lelah? Hi. My three o' clock job just canceled. How'd you like to come see my loft right now?”

She said yes.

He waited for her in the lobby. He'd changed into a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. He looked even younger, and a little nervous.

“So you just seen the garage,” he said. “Let me show you the rec room and the roof deck.”

He held the elevator open for her and followed her out to the roof.

“The condo association has deck chairs that they bring out when it's warm,” David said. “No one hardly comes up here, but it's nice in the summer.”

They were eleven stories up, and the air was chilly. Lelah had been to rooftop bars in Chicago. She couldn't recall being on a roof this tall in Detroit. Facing south she saw the GM logo at the Renaissance Center, the central cylindrical steel and glass structure standing upright like a bullet among the cluster of skyscrapers downtown. To the east was Canada, and Lelah recognized the white, red, and gold of Caesars, her old home casino before the ones on this side of the river had been built. A squat lighthouse to the immediate northeast of David's building looked like a set piece from a theme park or miniature golf course. To the west was the city, the real city, a dull mosaic of green trees and brown rooftops, and a smattering of feeble gray columns of smoke.

“There used to be beavers in the river, like a hundred years ago,” David said. “But then they all left or died from the pollution. Now they're coming back.”

“Must be some brave beavers,” Lelah said.

They took the stairs two floors down to David's apartment. This was her first time in a loft, and with nothing but movie depictions of New York–style, high-ceilinged, granite tombs as her reference, it surprised Lelah to see how much this loft looked like a regular apartment, just with more open space and cement floors. She'd imagined a place with no walls.

David left her in the living room as he used the bathroom. Lelah heard keys jangling in his pockets, and since the walls were thin enough for this sound to escape, she anticipated hearing the sound of his urine hitting the water in the toilet, or at least the sound of flushing, but she didn't. He was opening drawers, rummaging, it sounded like. He's looking for a condom, she realized, and her heartbeat accelerated. How strange to be listening to the unemployment woman talk about MARTHA one moment, then listening to this sound, and knowing what it meant so soon after. She stood in front of the sofa and looked at a framed blueprint of a 1960s US Navy aircraft carrier on the wall. On either side of the blueprint were smaller prints of Japanese woodcuts. Ink-rendered oceans flanking the plans for a ship.

“I got those two small ones in Japan,” David said. He stood behind her. “And I found the blueprint at a stall at Eastern Market last summer.”

“They look good together,” Lelah said. She turned around and faced him. He smiled at her, a big, toothy grin that Lelah might have described as stupid on another person.

“What?” she asked.

“You look the same,” he said. “I'm still tripping off of it.
Exactly
the same, maybe even better.”

This, of course, struck Lelah as a bold-faced lie, but it was the impetus she needed to act on an urge she'd had since the parking lot of the restaurant. She stood on her toes and kissed him.

Twenty-five years ago they had gone on one real date, a trip to Belle Isle in David's father's menthol-clouded Regal. David had parked the car and they'd begun kissing. Lelah remembered his knuckle grazing her clitoris through her underwear. Just a few up-and-down strokes and Lelah had made him stop because the backseat of a Regal on a less-than-concealed part of Belle Isle would not do for the first time. He'd stopped without protest, bit his bottom lip, and grinned at her. Grabbed her hand and put it on top of his. His fingers were slick. “You feel that?” he'd asked. “Your mind's just about the only part of you not ready.” Well, that was all too much too soon for Lelah, even though he'd been right, so a few days later she said she wasn't interested in him “like that,” said he wasn't “worldly enough” for her. This explanation came to her on the spot, and it worked fine enough.

Now there was no such thing as too much or too soon.

David pulled her shirt over her head, pressed her against him, and undid her bra. He kissed her neck, her breasts, her stomach, her breasts again. They fell onto the couch, and for a moment Lelah was pinned under David's surprisingly substantial weight, his hips kneading hers. He pulled off her jeans and panties and knelt over her, one hand cupping her breast and the other on her waist. Soon enough he was naked and still kissing her. She felt his dick, warm and solid against her thigh, then his fingers inside of her, and as much as she preferred to say nothing at all, she said “condom” and he said “uh-huh” and he pulled it from his back pocket and it was on and he was inside of her. He breathed into her neck and she could see over his shoulder down the gentle slope of his back to his muscular ass. She wrapped her legs—Prickly? Ashy? Who cares!—around his back so his chest was flush against hers.
You look the same
, he'd said. Good lord, Lelah thought. No one should have to go so long without feeling this feeling.

When it was over, and David shuffled to the restroom, Lelah lay on her side and breathed. What would happen when he returned? There are few moments more telling, more ripe with the possibility of humiliation, of implied derision or unwanted sympathy, than when a lover returns from the bathroom after sex. In the hotel rooms at Motor City, when Lelah had occasionally been in this position, her expectations were nil. She'd be dressed, her ponytail smoothed back and her purse on her shoulder by the time the man returned. Running out wouldn't do much good right now. It had been a long time, but she still knew David. And she wasn't remorseful. She took her time putting her bra and shirt back on, renegotiated her panties, and considered beginning the dance required to get into her jeans. David opened the bathroom door. She waited, jeans in hand.

His
jeans were back on, but not his shirt. This opposing yet similar ratio of undress seemed a good omen to Lelah. He held a pair of navy blue basketball shorts out to her.

“You wanna put these on?” He looked her in the eye, and she knew it wouldn't end badly. At least not yet.

“Sure,” she said.

“Want some water? All I got is water and beer, and I guess coffee if you want.”

David walked into the kitchen and took a Heineken out of the fridge for himself. Lelah asked for water.

“You can turn on the TV if you want,” he said. He sounded so relaxed. As if she'd been here before, in this living room, wearing his shorts.

“So when's the last time you seen your brother?” David asked.

“Troy? Maybe last month. My sisters Sandra and Berniece were in town.”

David took a swig of his beer.

“I seen him a couple days ago. He and Jillian got into a little fight, I guess, and we went out for drinks.”

He shrugged and chuckled a little, as if he were talking about two crazy kids he and Lelah knew and often talked about. She didn't laugh though; she couldn't. Troy and Jillian's dish-breaking shouting matches worried her too much. The two of them reminded her of being stranded on that base in Missouri with Vernon and the night that made her leave him. After Jillian's bad asthma attack last winter Lelah had tried to convince Troy that all of that fighting—all that aggression and volatility—wasn't healthy, but who was she to tell him anything? Troy told her it was none of her business, and that it was not as crazy as it looked from the outside, so she'd left the matter alone.

David lowered his arm onto her shoulders, pulled her closer. His deodorant smelled freshly applied.

“I'm not gonna tell Troy what just happened,” he said. “You don't have to worry about that.”