Before You Die

The City Will Change You Before You Will Change It

 Fiction

Author’s Note: Graphic Content/Trigger Warning.

This is my unorthodox love letter to the city that raised me. If you are easily offended, I suggest you skip this one. If you are from Detroit you can probably handle it.

The Ketchup Man was the first one to tell him. Slaw really didn’t see The Ketchup Man as being a real internet kinda guy. He had droopy eyes and a broad harelip -not a congenital one, one from someone parting his face between the incisors like an enraged Moses swinging channel locks- and something about him said he bought the word search books at the checkout counter and really dug ’em. Maybe dabbled in Sudoku. He just had an analog face.

He didn’t say shit until he handed Slaw the bag of burgers.

“Got the best bar in the state now, huh ?”

Slaw looked at him, waiting for a punchline or something, and the Ketchup Man said: “You ain’t seen it ?”

As Slaw was shaking his head no, without even bothering to say “see what” the Ketchup Man slapped his open palms on his filthy apron and scurried to the back of Trey’s Buy Em By The Sack as if he had been waiting for the opportunity. The smallest burgers on the planet, meat dwarfed by bun, but somehow a Detroit institution.

The Ketchup Man returned, legs moving but torso erect and stationary as he went between the grill and stainless steel counter.

Pushing his iPhone onto the carryout counter, he said: “You gotta scroll to M.” He paused. “For Michigan”. Slaw nodded.

The Ketchup Man said “It’s an alphabetical list” and Slaw kicked his head up slightly. No shit.

Slaw was just staring at the headline “The Most Righteous Dives in Every State” The subhead read “50 Places You Must Get Wrecked at Before You Die”.

“Foley’s? Get the fuck…”

“Yup.”

Slaw handed back the phone “Good lookin’ out.”

The Ketchup Man looked disappointed, puzzled.

“I’ll read it at work.”

“Congrats.”

“Foley’s Bar, not mine”.

“Thought he was leaving it to ya.”

Slaw shook his head as he walked out the door with his burgers.

He made a ballet out of devouring his food while driving, taking the last bite of each burger without ever letting his hands touch food and wadding up the wax paper in the same hand, missing the burger bag with a toss every time as he took his left hand off the wheel and grabbed another burger.

Puerto Rican drift squads cruised past in their banged up S-13s, a lot less brazen now that ICE was harassing every brown kid, and tearful Metro Airport deportation scenes were replacing military homecomings on the news.

Foley’s faced northwest where Michigan Avenue curved, about two miles from where Detroit turned to Dearborn.

If you were driving west from Downtown you could only see part of a tattered awning. To Foley’s east, blocking it from view, was a two-story industrial building that once made seatbelt parts, the little plastic covers you sometimes banged your ass on. Then it was an Islamic Wedding Rental Hall, and for the past year and a half had a handmade banner that said Barber and Beuty Supply Comming Soon.

Stormy, smelling like urine, was in Foley’s two minutes after Slaw unlocked the door then Ross, who salted his beer like it was bland soup.

Tracker racked the pool balls then shot all stripes, alone, with no competition, so he could tell Strickland he ran the table on some “beaner from the Tire shop” or some “Aaa-rab Uber driver’, not even caring that Slaw heard him and knew he was full of shit. There were no winks, there was no friendly pact. Tracker was just a dumb bigot, distantly related to Foley, and stuck in this bar like the urinal trough.

About ten after five a couple walked in. At first, the light through the one small rectangle window in front illuminated a bow tie, and Slaw thought one of the young Mexican Mormons that worked the Southwest had a flat tire on his bike.

But the guy wearing the bow tie had a Fu Manchu and was holding the hand of a girl two steps behind him.

Their heads darted around like they were being spoken to by a swarm of gnats until the bow tie guy turned back and stage whispered. Then they turned like a pair of figure skaters and slid onto some bar stools.

“Whucan I getcha ?” Slaw asked.

“How ya doin? the bow tie guy asked.

“One gig away from being a carnie” Slaw answered. “Whucan I getcha?”

“Do you have a beer list ? “ the girl asked. Slaw wanted her voice to be nasally and annoying to match her haircut. It was smoky and kinda cute. It paused him, but didn’t alter his course.

“Cooler has a glass door”. Slaw pointed.

“Oh”.

The girl seemed embarrassed and Slaw felt a ripple in his decibel meter of guilt, which was generally muted. “It’s our first time here”.

Slaw smiled before he could stop himself, instantly feeling like her eyes would go to the teeth missing to the left of his front two, two and a half of them gone with a silver filling jutting from the partial one.

“Yep” he said. More polite than “I know”, but a bit awkward.

The girl walked to the cooler, corduroy pants making a little rubbing sound.She had been a gymnast, maybe a cheerleader, soccer player. Solid thighs, but squashed in so as to be impossible to tell what it would be like unclothed.

Slaw slapped his eyes back to the tie guy.

“You?”

“Bulleit Old Fashioned ?

Slaw thought about it.

“Makers on the rocks”, he said. It was a statement.

The guy shifted in his seat. His pants made a noise against the tattered vinyl barstool.

“Don’t you have sugar? You don’t have to shake…”

“Sugar’s for coffee. This is a bar.”

“Got it. Maker’s, rocks. Double please.”

Slaw didn’t really like how that exchange went. He had no desire to be a dick. At 37, maybe he was too old. He hoped not. He didn’t know how to do shit else except roofing and he was never gonna do that again. Beyond all the other shit, he didn’t wanna freeze or starve in the winter.

The girl sauntered back. Her head was doing the talking to gnats thing again like she wanted to scope every inch of the bar. Not necessarily paranoid, but not comfortable. She made eye contact with Stormy, who sent her a friendly, stuck-together-on-a-bus-seat,might-as-well-not-make-it-uncomfortable smile. The girl returned it with a pure sympathy look. Stormy’s pants were piss-stained, but it didn’t look fresh and ..she was just Stormy. No sympathy necessary.

It was the last sentence of the Foley’s review in the listicle. “Be prepared for the not so appetizing denizens of the Detroit the developers want you to believe is already gone.”

“Already gone”? Gone where? “Not so appetizing”? Slaw didn’t like it, didn’t have to like it. It sorta fell under that category You can beat your brother’s ass, but fuck if someone else is gonna beat your brother’s ass in front of you.

“What do you want?” he asked. Even to himself, didn’t sound like he meant a drink. The girl turned as though she had been startled while reading a book at the beach.

“Ummm…PBR. I guess.”

One commercial break on the hockey game later he was pouring half a PBR in the slop bucket and straining the remaining Makers into a fresh rocks glass. It was Tuesday. Preacher would drink it when his ten dollars ran out. And thank Slaw for it until Slaw got sick of hearing it.

Two guys who looked like they fell off a truck full of accountants walked in during second intermission of the game, Wings down a goal. They were surprisingly relaxed until David Allan Coe came on the jukebox. They made a show of pulling a few potential tip singles off the rail and leaving just one. Then they were out the door and off into the night. Slaw thought about it. Old man Foley had given him a key to the money but not the CDs. Same shit had been in there for 20 years, probably longer. Hang On Fucking Sloopy for Lemmy’s sake. Still got played 30 times a week, too, and Slaw had Sundays off.

Mike Neil came in. Never just “Mike”. Always “Mike Neil”. Always had some Navy story, like he was a reject from Piano Man. Gang brawl in the Philippines, saved a chick from Honduran bikers, cleared out a greyhound race in Singapore.Kernels of truth surfing on waves of booze fiction. Not a bad dude, smart dude, stocked vending machines on commission. Just liked to fight, or at least start ’em knowing they would get broken up. And these guys, these pilgrims who read about Foleys, these would be the kinda guys Mike Neil would mess with. And these new “urban pioneers”-Slaw didn’t know where he read that, but he read that somewhere- they would be the kinda guys to call the cops. When Foley first hired him, Foley said, ‘“No matter what, block the payphone. Don’t let ’em call the cops. Panic button under the register if you need em. No one else better need ’em. Damn COGIC that took over the Monkey Wards, they’ll get me shut down if the cops are here more ‘n three times in a month. Any trouble, block the payphone.”

The payphone sat there, inoperable, just a shell. None of the regulars were prone to calling cops anyway. They just had a way of working things out.

But these New Detroiters, they were a different story. They treated bike theft like a baby kidnapping.

Donnie Menthol was putting his name in the touch screen game on the corner of the bar.

“Donnie?” Slaw asked loudly out of nowhere, before he forgot, “You say McNally’s sold?”

“Yep. I don’t clean up no more. They got a service. No more chili. Vegan corndogs. No more dollar beer Mondays. $9 jackfruit margaritas. And this…” Donnie turned his nearly full beer over and chugged it like it was part of his story “… will make ya puke. The dart room is gone. Thursday is drop-in origami lessons.”

“Get the fuck…”

“I’m not fucking with ya, Slaw. “

Slaw threw a sanitizer tablet in the glass cleaning water and cracked his knuckles. He wished Foley could leave him the bar. He’d never change it, except for a second pinball machine,new songs in the jukebox, maybe spice up their chili a bit.

Wings post-game was wrapping up when a tall, thin girl in a knee-length skirt and some kinda thick wool hat walked in. Twenty feet into the bar, she bent awkwardly, sideways and her head flopped to the side. Slaw thought she was having a stroke until he realized she was shrugging off an overstuffed backpack. In one swing she had it up on a barstool like she had done it hundreds of times.

“Hi!” she said so cheerfully that he immediately had her pegged for a sales rep. Foley’s only got the adventurous ones, or the ones “looking to tap into the urban market” with overpriced vodkas. It was pretty late…her left nostril was double pierced. Specialty booze. Tequila aged in chocolate ice cream vats, bourbon with a hint of spearmint… No, with just a delicate wash of “fuck no”.

“Whucaneyegetcha?”

“Double Jack, three or four rocks. And a pint of something local. Not too hoppy.”

“It’s all bottles and cans. Stroh’s was local, once. Want that ?”

“Sure, whatever’s easy.”

The old ice machine made a strange combination of shaved ice, slush, and some kinda barrel-shaped rocks with a hole in the center.

Slaw plucked out a few of the barrels and poured a healthy double. Set it in front of the cheerful girl and grabbed a can of Stroh’s from the cooler. He cracked it open where she could see him do it, a courtesy lost on some people.

“Thank you. I’m Marnie.” She reached a hand across the bar. Slaw wiped the clean condensation from the beer can off his hands onto jeans he probably hadn’t washed in two weeks.

He shook her hand gently. Slaw”.

“Short for Stanislaus?”.

“Nope”.

He turned and grabbed the remote, flipping the channel to the hockey game on the west coast.

He lingered on it a moment, then turned back to the tall girl. She didn’t smell like a sales rep.

“Paying cash or running a tab ?”

She was young. Her height had thrown him off. He could have probably carded her.

“Tab, if you take plastic.”

“I need ID with the plastic,” he said, lying, but covering his ass. Platter had used 17 different credit cards in one week, none of ’em his.

“No problem.”

Slaw took the blue card and the driver’s license.

Massachusetts. Some town he never heard of. She just turned 23 last month.

Her address was a single-digit on Pheasant Links Lane. Slaw had done roofing jobs on single-digit addresses. They were always mansions, usually on a lake in Grosse Pointe or way back in the woods in Bloomfield.

“Brings you to Detroit ?”

“ Ummm…work.”

“Sales rep ?”

“God no”.

“Sorry”.

“…I didn’t really take it as an insult.”

“Good”.

Slaw was into the west coast game for a while, Rakell hitting crossbar over Quick’s shoulder, missing the hat trick by iron, got Dumbo a Rumplemintz he carried just for Dumbo, cleaned a couple glasses.

Turned to check on Marnie.

Her Jack had a nice chunk gone, like she meant it, and she was writing in a notebook. But not just writing. She was glancing over her shoulder then writing, like actually taking notes.

He walked over and leaned back against the classic wooden bar. If it wasn’t so beat to shit, gouged, painted over, spilled on, cigarette burned, it would be an “antique”. It was just an old bar.

He leaned all the way back, head almost touching the bottle of Ouzo that was there for Foley’s Greek wife who had been dead four years. He folded his arms and cracked his knuckles on the inside of his opposite arms.

“You reviewing the bar too ?”

Marnie looked up and began to smile but thought better of it.

“No, not really”.

“You’re not, or you don’t really feel like telling me ?”

Marnie started to say something and Slaw knew it but preferred to lead.

“You don’t have to tell me. If you do, I’ll find out. Someone will tell me. The Ketchup Man will tell me.”

“I’m writing about this neighborhood. So this bar is part of it, sure. But it’s not a review, it’s…”

“Who you writing it for?”

“Myself, at its essence. But I plan on showing it to someone. Part of a Fellowship.”

“Like AA ?”

Marnie cocked her head crooked then smiled, a smile that slipped into some sort of sympathetic look. That was twice…

“An academic fellowship. I’m sorry, are you in the program ?”

Slaw laughed, unexpectedly. He was pretty sure spit got on his lower lip, or worse; moist slider bun from his teeth. He wiped from his nose to his chin, ear to ear, with the back of his arm.

“My mom is. Was. What’s an academic fellowship ?”

“It’s financial aid. It’s prestigious financial aid, and I covet a particular one…. Tell me about the Ketchup Man.”

It wasn’t a segue Slaw was prepared for. He squirted some pop from the gun into a VFW glass, slammed it, and asked: “Is this social work, journalism, or some government shit ?”

Marnie smiled. There had been glimpses of it before but this one swallowed him.

“Not government shit, for sure. So toxic, so male…no, this is journalism. I actually thought about social work, but that can be bureaucratic too. Will you tell me about the Ketchup Man?”

“Don’t really know much about him.”

“What does he do? How’d he get the name?”

“He works at Trey’s, the burger place over by the library, used to be a library. Fancy building that ain’t a library anymore.”

Marnie’s face showed a touch of disappointment.

“Three guys cook at Trey’s. He’s the one that puts too much ketchup on the burgers. But he’s been working there since I was a kid. You can’t tell a guy like that to put less ketchup on. He’s been doing it since like before I was born. So when he’s there, you just eat the burgers with too much ketchup. Or you don’t go.”

“What are the names of the other guys that cook there ?”

“One guy is Bobby, and the other guy is…Nick. I don’t see him too often.”

“Oh.” She looked like she had another question. For a scary couple seconds, Slaw wanted to see her smile again. He ditched the idea and wandered away, hoping someone would approach for a drink or a distraction.

“Can I have another beer ?”

With the amount of Jack gone, he had assumed she hadn’t put a dent in the beer.

As he walked to the cooler Stormy, called out to Slaw “Goodnight, sugartits!” She cackled at her little joke. She always cackled when she said it and she always said it when she left.

“G’night Stormy. Be safe.”

As she walked past Marnie, Marnie called out “Goodnight Stormy”.

Stormy paused, not knowing Marnie’s name. “Goodnight,” she said quickly and headed outside. The hiss of tires on wet pavement danced into the bar and then was muted by the closing door.

“How did Stormy get her nickname ?”

“Putting too much ketchup on people’s burgers”. He was hoping to see the smile and got it.

Slaw recognized what was happening in his head.

“I don’t fucking know how she got the nickname. Doubt it will be crucial to your fellowship anyway.”

Marnie stopped smiling. Her lips made an awkward straight across flat line, though it looked to Slaw like her tongue was moving behind it.

She put her head down and started writing again.

Slaw bet himself she would finish her drink and go. She ordered another double, politely, quietly and two hours later, at last call, it was down to her and Platter.

Platter paid his $14 tab with the credit card of someone named Dorothy, said “Be good, Slaw”, Slaw replied “You too”, like he always did, and Marnie was the last one left. He should lock the door, but the thought of locking her in with him gave him the creeps. He could only imagine what she would think. Her phone was on the bar. She had barely touched it.

“The night’s over, huh? Do you work tomorrow? I’d like to ask you some questions. If you’re not into it -and you don’t seem like you are- maybe someone else who works here would like to.”

He stared at her. “I work every day but Sunday.”

She smiled. The smile was sterner, and more professional, but it still hit Slaw like a baseball on a loosely gripped bat on a cold day.

“If you answered some questions tomorrow, I’d really appreciate it. Nothing too personal.”

“Sure,” he said

She picked up the whiskey, downed a considerable amount, swung on her backpack, and said “Thank you” like he had opened the door for her. Glancing at the security screens, there were no cars in the small lot or out front.

“Where’s your car ?”

“I’m taking the bus.”

“Not real wise. Run to the stop. Once the Michigan passes at two there ain’t another for an hour. Lucky for you they’re always late.”

She smiled. “See you tomorrow”.

Two minutes later he saw the bus on the screen. Someone got on. He assumed it was Marnie.

It was a routine cleanup, routine cashout. It wasn’t until he shut off the light to the Foley’s sign that it struck him.

Foley is selling this place. The new owners commissioned some kinda study. They’re trying to see if he’s worth keeping around.

He slept like shit.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

Before the sun went down he served the first three manpurses he had ever seen in Foley’s. At least they were all together like ants on a discarded sucker and not scattered about like cockroaches, like a manpurse takeover.

Marnie made good on her “see ya tomorrow.”

She was much earlier, drank singles, and carried a laptop in a tattered bag that looked to have been military issue of some sort, Korean war era.

Thankfully, she was pounding on the keyboard of the laptop and didn’t smile much, though the first one was enough to make him want to call Foley’s sister-in-law to see if she could cover.

Halfway through her fourth whiskey and Stroh’s combo, she asked “Ready? These are strictly off the record for data collection. I don’t write bar and restaurant reviews, I promise”.

He hesitated, then remembered he hadn’t said no to answering questions.

The first dozen or so questions were pretty basic and Slaw gave pretty basic answers. It was like doing a survey to win a spa at a carnival or something. Then:

“Where’d you attend high school ?”

“Borgess”.

“Public ?”

“Bishop Borgess”

“Oh… Catholic ?”

“Unless it’s a Chess Academy”.

Her smile followed that line and he wished he hadn’t said it. When she smiled he felt like he was at a party and heard gunshots. You didn’t know whether running or ducking would help, but you sure as fuck weren’t gonna just stand there.

Slaw reached into his pocket and felt quarters. He walked over and put em on the pool table, 3rd in line. Some guys only used dimes so people wouldn’t steal their quarters. He understood it, but also thought it was kinda ridiculous until two guys stabbed each other over fifty cents.

If Marnie really was someone from a hospitality company, he hadn’t told her anything they couldn’t have gotten off the internet, and he would miss the fifty-cent pool table. And his job.

A guy came in trying to sell steaks.

“No one has no truck steak money, dog.” Slaw cocked his head and flicked his eyes toward the door. The guy said “damn”, but clearly understood, nodded, and walked out.

Marnie put her drink on the bar, loudly.

“Did you just refer to an African American as an animal ?”

Slaw got an instant cold headache. The roof of his mouth went dry. This was the beginning of the takeover.

“You called him “dog”. I heard you.” Her voice sounded like a toddler’s mom trying to scold her kid at a petting zoo.

“He heard me too. If he didn’t get offended, why are you ?”

“How do you know he wasn’t offended ?”

“Because, that’s just a figure of speech in this neighborhood. Dog ain’t a..a slur… if he was offended…, he would have…forget it.”

She turned her head toward the screen of her laptop but wasn’t really looking at it.

“I guess we just have different values in Mass.”

Slaw paused but only long enough to realize he had no reason to hold back. He was gonna be out of a job anyway.

“Aren’t there any little bars in “Mass” your company could take over? Or isn’t there any vacant property to build a new bar on? Why Detroit? Why here? This place is almost sitting in East Dearborn’s lap. All those people-sorry, I’m sure that’s offensive too… “the residents” there are Muslim. Drinking is against their religion. You might think you can grow this business with reclaimed wood and pomegranate sandwiches, but you can’t. Tell your boss that.”

He walked down to the cooler and got a Blue. He twisted off the cap and snap spun it across the bar. She could type that in her laptop. Old man Foley didn’t give a rat’s ass if he had a few beers, but some east coast operation sure as fuck would. Goddamnit, he didn’t wanna go back to roofing.

“Um…I don’t work for a hospitality company. I’ve been honest with you.”

“Really ?”

“Really. I swear it. This is for a fellowship. If you’re uncomfortable, I can talk to the patrons first then come back to you.”

Slaw finished the beer in two quick pulls and leaned toward her.

“You never said a damn thing about interviewing customers.” It was a whisper, but it had a hiss hiding in it.

“I don’t see why it would be a problem. They can say no individually if they choose. Unless you feel you speak for them as a group.”

Without knowing why he did it, he grabbed the Jack Daniels bottle and filled up her glass somewhere between a single and a double. It fucked up the rocks to booze ratio and he glanced at the ice bin, then decided against fixing it.

“These people come here to relax. Some of them have been dodging Friend of the Court for two decades. Many of them are old and have been drinking every day for forty years or more. Some of them have mental health issues. One lady already thinks that the lottery drawing is the CIA talking to her in code. Bentario brings in his sketch pad from some charity art therapy and has tried to off himself running into traffic three times.A couple regulars who died, the only fucking people at the service were people they knew from this bar.

“If you were writing a review it might actually be ok, because they’d see their name in the paper and it would be something new and different for ’em. But having America’s Last Top Model asking them a bunch of questions for some grad school slum study ain’t gonna sit well with most of ‘em.”

She stared at him for a moment and took a breath that could have sucked old nicotine out of the ceiling tiles.

“Thank you for your time,” she said, gracefully slipped her laptop into the olive drab satchel and headed to the door. Slaw was kinda surprised she didn’t stomp.

Preacher was asleep against the jukebox. Slaw grabbed the glass of whiskey and strained the melting ice barrels out of it so the old guy would have a present when he woke up.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

Slaw hadn’t even gotten the jukebox turned on Wednesday afternoon when nine guys in some kinda soccer jerseys hit the door, loud, speaking in a slang Slaw didn’t recognize. The slang grated on him a little bit, but he got it; everyone had their own language. Between the watches and the fresh tattoo sleeves he knew they had money. Maybe this new crowd would buy him snow tires. It had been the goal the last three years but the March snow was bus exhaust black by the time he saved enough.

The crew wanted some fancy shit that he never heard of.

“It’s been the crushdaddy in Chicago for years, buzzlord!”

“Then go to Chicago and order it,” Slaw said, but slowly, and through what he figured resembled a real smile. They laughed. Slaw was relieved and pissed at himself for being relieved. Preacher came in and got two bucks off ’em, without Slaw even being able to make sense of what Preacher said to ’em to get it.

The soccer crew left after two rounds, they were pub crawling, “hitting all the troughs”, as they put it, including some place Slaw never heard of. Good tippers. Slaw started doing some quick snow tire math when Stormy walked in. She ordered a tall boy and “some of that Greek licorice shit”.

Her makeup was thicker than usual and she had jeans on that still had store creases in em. She was always in polyester or sweats. It was the stuff you notice when you saw someone four days a week. Especially someone who pissed their pants at least three of em.

Slaw could feel that she would tell him about the new pants without him asking. Her smile said she had a secret. It wasn’t the lottery. Whenever she hit the 3 digit she walked through the door already drunk announcing it. One time she had had a dream about Ella Fitzgerald’s birthday, 425, and it hit.

Slaw put the Ouzo on the bar, realizing he had poured a double because that’s what Foley’s wife always drank. He shrugged off his own mistake and walked down the bar toward the front door where a guy in a fancy varsity-style jacket had sat down. Reaching in a bag at his side the guy put a large purple glass bottle on the bar.

“It’s made with Upper peninsula hops…” “No”.

“Vanilla finish, creamy mouthfeel…” “No.”

“Take a free case and see what your people…” “No”.

As the guy walked out the door, he looked back at Slaw and said “The neighborhood is changing…bro”.

Slaw almost followed him out to pummel him. The sample magnum was still on the bar, eggplant purple with brown lettering. A photorealistic pencil drawing of a beaver leaned against the “r” in “porter”.

Slaw picked it up with his knuckles facing his own nose like he was gonna hit someone over the head with it, or throw it against the wall behind the ice machine, which he considered.

“What that wine do to you ?” Bennie 3rd Shift asked with a warm, but phlegm-filled chuckle.

“Not wine, Shift. Beer. Fancy ass beer.”

“Belgian ?”

“No, fucking Battle Creek, believe it or not.”

They both laughed. Bennie 3rd Shift started calling it cereal beer and Slaw opened it and poured himself a pint. Tasted like medicine to him and Bennie agreed it was like breakfast drink with medicine in it.

“It’s fuckin medicine all right”, Slaw said, reading the label. “Nine point five percent alcohol. More than fucking Steel Reserve”.

He threw the empty bottle in the trash with the table tent and business card the guy left.

The last of the Wednesday night firefighters were crawling out at 1:20 when Marnie walked in. She had a thick wool thrift store coat open over a ratty gray hoodie drawn tight around her face, otherwise, the last three guys might have seen her and stayed for a round or two trying to pick her up. Slaw wouldn’t have known who it was if he didn’t recognize the backpack.

If she came demanding an apology, the tequila the Ladder 22 guys had talked him into was gonna tell her to go interview people who loitered at the transit center. People there were happy to talk for hours even if you never said a word.

She shrugged her backpack off like the first time, maybe not as gracefully.

She said “Well whiskey rocks”, like the other night hadn’t been weird, and slid two twenties on the bar before her ass hit the stool.

He poured the whiskey and took one of the twenties for the drink.

“The other twenty is supposed to be for you. I didn’t tip you last…”

“You bought a bunch of shit for Stormy. We’re even.” He pushed the other twenty back toward the edge of the bar so it would almost fall in her lap.

“I overreacted the other night.” She grimaced like she had just done something wrong, that instant, and he noticed one of her teeth was chipped. He liked it. She had seemed too polished, despite the obvious attempt at the Salvation Army wardrobe, and too mature for her age. He wondered if she had any weird moles or was missing a toe or something.

He had spent too much time thinking about her.

“And I didn’t buy Ms. Szymanski anything. She was compensated for her time for my project.”

“She said you bought it.”

“I drove her to that weird mall down off 94, she picked everything out. I continued to interview her while we were there. Basically the same as compensating someone for a focus group.”

“Is your project done now, or are you gonna continue to do what I asked you not to?”

“You still think I work for a company that’s trying to buy this place ?”

“No. Stormy told me everything you asked her. No one from a hospitality company would ask her that shit. I don’t see why they would, anyway.”

“Oh. That’s disappointing. I had her sign an NDA.”

“She thought what she signed only applied to the media and the police.”

“She’s mistaken.”

“She’s an old lady who is too embarrassed to buy Depends at CVS but not too embarrassed to piss herself at a bar. Might be a clue she gets lost about some things.”

Marnie pulled the straw from her drink and sucked whiskey through her teeth.

“I’m not trying to upset you. The way you care about your patrons-they really love you too- gives me hope that you can help me.”

“Stormy loves everybody.”

“Mike Neil had very nice things to say about you.”

“Where’d you talk to him ?”

“He was at Trey’s when I went to interview The Ketchup Man. His name is Ted, by the way. In case it ever comes up.”

On the sink next to the dirty glasses was a light beer Slaw had opened by mistake. He never drank light beer, but he reached for it and took a pull, then swallowed and took a deep breath, almost mocking Marnie’s from the night before.

“So you’re interviewing the whole neighborhood. I guess that’s cool because at least they know no cop would be dumb enough to just walk around asking questions. But still, you ever wonder how many of them gave you a bunch of bullshit? Like you’re gonna turn in some school paper and half the results were shit people made up because they didn’t want to tell some out of town white girl the truth ?”

“When people aren’t under any duress or accused of a crime or of marital infidelity they have no real impetus to be dishonest.”

“You asked Stormy a bunch of shit about prostitution and human trafficking”.

“Because that’s the focus of my project.”

“How many people did you get personal information from before me?”

Marnie picked up a drink straw and wound it around her finger one-handed.

“Some law enforcement officials and some of the women from The Crossbearers. They help exploited sex work…”

“I know what they do there. Thanks for not telling me what your project was about, upfront.”

Marnie finished her whiskey and motioned for another one.

“Double please, and a Stroh’s. Please. Thank you…You work here. You told me that you didn’t see yourself making any major life changes. And you seemed trustworthy. Even a cop I had lunch with said the bartender here was a Southwest lifer. I was hoping that when I compiled all my research we could discuss what I had gathered and you would fill in some gaps for me if you thought there were any. Cops can only legally say so much.”

Slaw poured the whiskey for Marnie and a tequila for himself. He quartered a lemon, feeling like the vitamin C might help take the edge off the buzz. That fancy beer was still shaking his brain more than he intended it to, and the first tequilas were just a bad idea, but the Ladder 22 guys were a persuasive bunch.

He slammed the tequila and sucked the lemon quarter.

“I’m sorry a cop made you think I was your point man. I’m not.

“No toast ?” she said.

“Sorry. Didn’t think we were being ceremonial. Next one.”

“You mean tonight ?”

“If you want another one. You still taking the bus ?”

“Unless you’re gonna offer me a ride home.”

Foley’s Greek wife believed that people could read minds. She was adamant that it was a real thing, that everyone had it, and some people were better at it than others. Slaw looked at Marnie and hoped that she wasn’t good at it.

“No. No fucking way. I’ll call ya a cab. Do it now if ya want.”

Marnie leaned back in her stool and twisted the tab on her can of Stroh’s until it came off.

“I can take the bus when I’m ready”.

“Ok.”

“Is not giving customers rides home bar policy? I guess it makes sense, you have tips on you, someone could rob you.”

“If someone was so drunk I considered driving them home, they’d be too drunk to rob me. But that’s what cabs are for.”

“So you don’t want to take money out of someone else’s pocket.”

“I don’t wanna drive nobody home.”

Marnie smiled at him. His eyes went immediately to the chipped tooth and when she shut her mouth he realized her lips were perfect. Like naturally symmetrical, with the little groove under her nose the perfect width…he looked away from her, at the clock. He almost gave himself whiplash looking at the clock. Two o’clock was mercifully close.

She followed his eyes.

“Can I order a last call ? I promise not to linger”.

“I don’t care if you linger” Slaw said. It wasn’t the truth, but it slid out of him.

“As long as you don’t have to drive me home.”

“As long as you promise you’ll wait for the 3 o’clock bus at Treys.”

“I was gonna go there anyway, talk to some of the sex workers.”

Slaw leaned back against the bar, grabbed the remote and turned off both TVs.

“I don’t want to insult your intelligence, but you know they’re all junkies, right ?”

“The ones I have met thus far do seem to be in various stages of addiction, yes.”

“Junkies don’t tell the truth. Very rarely anyway.”

“My research isn’t focused on statistics, and I got what I needed from law enforcement.I’m looking to get a journalism fellowship. I want to hear these girls’ experiences.”

“It’s all basically the same. Get hooked on dope, give head for a few years to pay for dope, die.”

“That’s a very crass and dehumanizing generalization.”

“I didn’t beg ’em to bang dope, they dehumanized themselves.”

“So it’s the girl’s fault, men aren’t complicit ?”

Slaw backhanded his shot glass toward the beer cooler. It hit the ground, bounced twice, and smashed against the wall by the office.“Get the fuck out of my bar.”

“Mike Neil said you had a temper. He said you threw a guy off a roof.”

“Maybe Mike Neil should have asked you to sign a contract saying you wouldn’t talk about it.” Slaw felt every breath with every word. He started to hyperventilate.

“You obviously have a temper.”

Slaw rolled his shoulders until they cracked, and moved his head side to side so the tension in his neck would subside. It didn’t work.

“I do.”

“I do too when things frustrate me. This project has been very stressful and I’m not close to done.”

“But you chose it. You didn’t think it would be stressful, coming to the big city from your wealthy little postcard town…?”

“How do you know about my town ?”

“ Read it on your license and Googled it.”

“That’s a bit stalkerish, don’t you think ?”

“You came here curious about my neighborhood, I was curious about yours.”

‘You remembered the name of my town from my license. Still a little creepy, but you have a good memory.”

“Most of the time I wish I didn’t.”

She smiled at him, that sympathetic one, just like the girl who looked at Stormy.

“I’d love to ask you another question, but I don’t wanna set you off.”

“What if I said yes, and you set me off anyway. What do you think I’d do ?”

“Nothing to me. I have pepper spray and a brown belt in Jiu Jitsu.”

“I wouldn’t do anything to you anyway. I’m not like that. I mostly just break shit, yell.”

Marnie finished her beer.

“Didn’t you throw a guy off a roof once ?”

Slaw put his head down and folded his arms across his chest, cracking his wrists and knuckles on the inside of his arms. He looked up at her, through her.

“Is that the question you wanted to ask me ?”

“Yes.”

“Even before I said I mostly just break stuff ?”

“Yes.”

Slaw grabbed a pretzel twist from a wooden bowl on the bar and broke it, gently, but didn’t put either piece in his mouth.

“Yeah, I threw a guy off a roof once.”

Marnie nodded. Slaw felt a next question brewing. There were a few that used to get asked all the time.

She finished her beer in a bigger than comfortable swig and put the empty can upright in the well.

“Was it worth it ?”

“Did you fucking talk to my P.O.?”

“I didn’t even know you had one until just now. And he couldn’t discuss you with me anyway.”

Slaw brought Marnie a new beer.

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“You put it in the well, that means you want another.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s yours now. You don’t have to drink it. I don’t care. Just don’t come in here asking questions anymore. I mean, you can come in, but …”

“I’m almost ready to move on to the next phase anyway. Participatory journalism.”

“Great, whatever that means. Good luck.”

“You obviously like sports and you’re from Detroit. You know who George Plimpton is?

“Yeah, Paper Lion.”

“My grandfather went to Harvard with him, admired him. I plan on experiencing what sex workers experience first hand.”

Slaw started to say “How?” For the first time he saw how young she really was.

He leaned over the bar. His chest was tight.

“First hand? Like, get in a car with a pro?”

Marnie took the beer off the bar. And held it in her lap. She looked at it like it was the first one she had ever seen.

“I’m going to participate. As though I am one of them. I’m gonna donate whatever money I earn to a women’s…”

“Get that idea out of your head. You’re… you have no clue what that’s all about.”

His left hand was gripping the post on the service bar and his right hand had her wrist.

Marnie stared but did not pull back.

“I’ve already come to terms with my decision.”

“Come to ter…you have no idea what you’re…”

“You’re a man, it’s not like you could possibly have an idea what these women…”

“They’re junkies. It’s not some escort service at the Westin. Junkies. They don’t want to be on the streets, they get beat… they get murdered.”

He let go of her wrist. He was afraid she was trembling from his grip, but it was him.

He grabbed the bar gun and squirted some pop in a VFW glass. Sprite. He looked at it like it was in his way before filling the rest of the glass with well tequila and taking a strong pull.

“Didn’t Mike Fucking Neil tell you why I threw the guy off the roof ?”

She shook her head no.

“Because the guy gave my sister dope to have sex with him.”

“This is obviously an upsetting topic for you…”

“It’s not a topic for me at fucking all, usually. Girls don’t usually come in here talking to me about plans to suck dick for money.”

“Was…your sister a sex worker ?”

“Street girls aren’t “sex workers”, they’re just junkies. My sister was a junkie. When she was too high to swing from a pole at a strip club, she just hit the street. No girl just does it to get a new dress or something and no girl does it for a got-damn school project either. They do it to buy dope.”

“I’m confused.”

“You sure as fuck are. You wanna suck dick to get financial aid from grad school. That’s confusing as fuck to me.” Slaw stifled a belch.

“I’m sorry, but if your sister was acting as a sex worker for drug money, what about this particular man’s transaction…”.

Slaw laughed, it was a bitter laugh, it was a just lost all your money on one poker hand laugh, but it was still a laugh.

“He wasn’t a man. He was a little weasel bitch I did roofing gigs with is what he was. Ronnie. He didn’t give her money to get dope. He just straight up gave her the dope.”

Marnie looked at her coat. Her voice recorder was in her coat and had been on for quite a while. Part of her was thrilled, part of her thought Slaw might really lose it if he knew she was recording him.

“Is that an uncommon practice, I mean…”

She looked younger to Slaw every time she opened her mouth.

“Yeah. I didn’t really want him fucking her at all, so yeah, it was “uncommon.”

“You objected to him having sex with her for drugs, so you threw him off a roof ?”

“No, that’s not why. He watched her bang dope, then he fucked her.

When she started ODing, he ran away and left her there to die, so I found him a few days later on a job and threw him off the roof.

I happened to get back from cashing my check at the right time. Picked her up half-naked and put her in the back of my car because no ambulance is gonna be in a hurry on their 17th OD run of the week.

I got pulled over for running a red on the way to the hospital. I explain to the cop, my sister is ODing, cop pulls me out of the car and throws me onto West Grand.He don’t believe it’s my sister. Calls me a perv and all kinds a shit. I was sitting in a cop car in handcuffs when she died in a fucking ambulance, so I threw Ronnie off a fucking roof.

Cops knew what she did, you know, for work or whatever, they got her before, wanted to make sure I didn’t rape her myself, so I sat in jail for 72 hours while they tested my own sister for my DNA. That’s why I threw him off a roof.

I got charged with possession because some of the dope he gave her fell out of her coat pocket onto my car seat, that’s why I threw him off the roof.”

Some cop had to tell our 68-year-old mother that her daughter was dead instead of me doing it because I was in Wayne County Jail. That’s why I threw him off the roof.

They couldn’t prove Ronnie gave her the dope that killed her. That’s why I threw him off the roof.

And I wanted to break his legs so bad that he could never run away again when someone was ODing, that’s why I threw him off the roof.

And no city jury was gonna blame me for throwing him off the roof, so they knocked down the charge and got me to a plea to somethin’ less and that’s why I only did less than 5 years.

And that, right there, is why I’ll never fuck with a guy about silly shit like too much ketchup on a burger.”

Marnie’s eyes looked like she wanted to say the perfect thing. Slaw wanted her to leave before he threw up.

“Thank you for sharing your story.”

Slaw leaned over and puked in the trash can next to the ice bin. He wiped his mouth with a bar rag and threw that in the trash.

He turned back to Marnie. If he wasn’t in a rage he might have noticed she was holding her voice recorder.

“You know what I remember most? I’m handcuffed in the cop car and I look down. I got my sister’s juice and Ronnie’s jizz all over my forearm from carrying her outta the house. I can’t get it up no more. I can’t have a girlfriend. Because I still think about that jizz, dripping down my arm. Go home. Get out of my bar. Get out of my city. Before you have some stranger’s jizz dripping out of you. Before you die.”

***

Photo by Elliott Blair on Unsplash