“I get to see my kid this weekend. Lawyer finally forced this issue.”
Nikolai threw another rotor on the Hummer axle, then turned his head left for the next one on the line.
Bambridge asked, “What you gonna do?”
“No clue,” Nikolai said. You got any idea what an eleven-year-old girl likes to do these days?”
“Know what a counselor told me, man? Take your kid to do something you liked to do when you were a kid. If they get bored, you can always do something else.”
Bambridge popped on a fluid plug and stamped his mark under the valve. “Least that way they get some insight into what you were like when you were their age.”
Nikolai swung and grabbed a rotor off the top dunnage.
“Know what I liked to do? We’d go down to the little pond over to the corner of Gilbert and Brewster and catch frogs. We’d name ‘em, try to race ‘em, make ‘em our pet for the day. Let ‘em go when it got dark out. It was fun...back then. Now they got virtual reality and shit, so---”
“So what, virtual reality,” Bambridge said, sucking the top of his frozen Gatorade, just starting to thaw in the heat of the plant, “take your girl frog playin’. Little girls love animals. Maybe not frogs necessarily, but there gotta be birds and flowers and shit down at that pond. She’ll love it.”
“Gilbert and Brewster,” Nikolai repeated. “They filled in that pond and put up those luxury condos. Gentrification Valley, baby.”
“Aww, hell,” Bambridge set down his electrolyte iceberg. “Them big Tudor style condos over there north of 94? Wait... Whatta they callin’ that place?”
“Brewery Meadows.”
“Ain’t no brewery in that neighborhood.”
“Ain’t no pond, either, anymore. They build right over it. So I can’t take Keeran there.”
“I just saw a thing on the news about that place. Some o’ those things are 3500 square feet. They’re having a hard time peddlin’ ‘em. Like a whole bunch are vacant.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, man, I saw it on Channel 4 like a week ago. Said the developer dumped a bunch of money into the interior design and most of them bad boys are just sitting there.”
Nikolai threw another rotor.
“Ruined a perfectly good pond for some fancy condos no one wants.”
“Apparently.”
“That Wild Kingdom reptile place still open on Woodward?”
“Far as I know.”
“You still got those rolls of Visqueen left over from that basement remodel Janice decided you guys couldn’t afford?”
Bambridge dropped his stamp.
“What you thinking about, Nik?”
“You know what I’m thinkin’ about. I’m about to bust into one of those condos and build my kid the biggest terrarium in Detroit.”
***
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
***
Author’s Note:
One might think it a little difficult to “throw” Hummer brake rotors all shift long. That was simply the slang we used on the assembly line when I worked on one in the early OTs. It would be really tough to throw one and get it on the bolts, though I did see people try once or twice. And almost everyone froze their Gatorade overnight so it would stay cold all shift.
Also, I played a little make-believe with Detroit geography in this one. Brewster and the real Gilbert St. don’t intersect. I chose Brewster because it was the scariest housing project when I was growing up (even though I lived way closer to the Smith Projects at Evergreen and Outer Drive), and if you’re from Detroit you know why I chose the name Gilbert. If you’re not, I’ll be happy to explain it to you.