The day finally completed, her legs aching and her hair reeking of fried food, coffee, beer and sweat, Jess trudged up the narrow steps to the apartment above the café, reveling in her tiredness. She was exhausted, but her mother was still going strong. It had been a long day full of food and drinking, and she could still hear the Grim Angels in the café below, talking over the heads of their passed out brothers, mixed with the dull thump of music from where they blasted their stereos on the deserted street outside.

 

She could feel the heat growing as she made her way up the steps. There wasn’t enough money left after the café had been renovated to also update the included apartment, and when it was this hot, she could really smell how old the place was. She imagined all of Detroit smelled like this, abandoned and forgotten, full of history that no one cared about and the rapidly dwindling promise of a brighter future. Kind of like herself. It felt like every step she climbed was another level of sadness creeping back into her. She hadn’t gone out in over a year, her life nothing more than work and sleep in a continual loop.

 

She turned the key in the lock and found the apartment to be even hotter than the kitchen below. Immediately she moved to the large windows and yanked open the curtains. Like the rest of the place, the windows hadn’t been updated and it took her several minutes of sweaty struggle to unlatch them and get them open, her efforts loosening more wood and paint chips from the slowly rotting frame. The cool dusk air flooded into the room, filling it with the smell of hot pavement and the sounds and exhaust from the bikes below. Jess leaned out and took a deep breath. Underneath her, the remaining Grim Angels milled around their bikes. She was reminded, once again, of beetles, their shoulders rounded in their black leather, industriously building an underground network deal-by-deal and job-by-job.

 

Across the street from the café and all around them were low-rent housing and a few storefronts, long ago abandoned. She had seen a few people come and go from the area, but, in general, it was an empty, desolate place. People had either given up or been kicked out, pushed from their homes by either lack of money or motivation. She had explored those places often, hoping to find something interesting. She had done that a lot before that night at Luke’s place.

 

When the rest of her friends were out getting high and screwing each other’s boyfriends, she used to spend her spare time poking through the many feral homes and businesses that made up her neighborhood and the surrounding city. She was never sure what she was hoping to find, but everything she stumbled across became a treasure. Newspapers, old novels, bottle caps, canned food long ago spoiled, those unintentional time capsules intrigued her. So much. in fact, that she had been in the process of preparing her college entry essays before everything had fallen apart. If she had just followed her heart, things would have turned out so different.

 

The old abandoned buildings fascinated her, and as she crept through them, she imagined what they must have been like in their heyday. She wanted to study history, to learn about the past, and maybe someday curate a museum. That had been her childhood dream, following in the footsteps of Indiana Jones. Now, however, it seemed so far away and ridiculously, embarrassingly, naïve.

 

She was turning away from the window when she heard her name called out. “Jess!”

 

She stuck her head back out and looked down. The bikers were going back inside, but standing below the window, her round face peering up at her, was her childhood best friend, Angela Zeiss. She had been so busy in the kitchen that she hadn’t noticed she was with them as the club had continued to roll in. In the dusk, her hair looked like a platinum halo, curling down her back in the loose ringlets you only saw on prom queens or well-paid strippers.

 

“Hey! I’m like Romeo. Come down, come down sweet Juliet, you bitch!” Angela laughed, making a goofy romantic pose in the empty street.

 

“I don’t think that was a part of the play!” Jess called down, “I don’t think Romeo called Juliet a bitch. I could be wrong, though.”

 

Angela laughed again, a delightful sound in the growing dark. “Fuck Shakespeare! What did he ever do for me! Why didn’t you come say ‘hi’ in there?”

 

Jessica and Angela had practically grown up together. Both Grim Angels babies, their mothers had been best friends. Devoted old ladies, they had ridden with their husbands until their growing tummies had forced them to settle down, at least for a bit. The two girls had all their shared firsts in common. First cigarettes, first boyfriends, first heartbreaks, first… Jess stopped herself. That was where things changed radically.

 

“There’s a big bonfire party tomorrow for the Angels being back in town! Let’s go hit it up!”

 

Jess cringed at the idea. A party? She had been avoiding them. The idea of facing the people, the music, and the inevitable social interactions and resulting embarrassment was almost too much for her to handle. “Yeah…I’m a little tired.”

 

“Look, bitch,” Angela called, her grin taking the sting out of her words, “we haven’t seen each other in months. You need to get out! Look at you, withering away up there. You look like a fucking stick bug hanging out of that window. It’s the least you can do for ignoring me all day.”

 

“I was busy!” Jess shouted down in mock exasperation. It felt good. “I’m tired!”

 

Angela had a familiar look in her eye. She was not about to give up. She put her hands on her plump hips, the sleeve tattoos that covered both her arms and chest almost neon they were so colorful. They must have been expensive. Apparently her friend was doing all right for herself. “Don’t make me get drunk and stupid without you.”

 

“I’m—”

 

“I’ll do it, too. You know I will. I’ll do some stupid dance, or end up getting naked, or some shit.”

 

Jess rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “I’m sure Ed would love that.”

 

Angela had been a devoted, but extravagantly flirty, girlfriend to one of her uncle’s best friends for the last year. He was much older than her and looked so beat up they used to call him road kill behind his back. He was kind, though, and patient – patient enough to put up with the roly-poly little Persian that was Angela.

 

“Oh yeah! I have a boyfriend, don’t I? Oh well, I’m still going to get naked if you don’t stop me.”

 

Looking down at Angela, all plush and lovely, it was hard for Jess to say no. It would be nice to forget for a bit, to be the girl she used to be. At least to try again to be the girl she was supposed to be. Jess took a deep breath as she tried to decide. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. I’ll stop you from making a fool of yourself tomorrow night, but that’s it,” she said as she wagged a finger at her friend.

 

Angela’s face lit up and she gyrated her hips for a moment, rubbing her hands behind her head and through her hair, her eyes closed, grunting and moaning loudly, looking like she was deep in a mind twisting orgasm. “Awesome! Fuckin’ right!” she grinned, her show stopping as suddenly as it started.

 

“You’re completely hopeless,” Jess said, wagging her finger again.

 

“You look like your mom when you do that,” Angela teased. “Val’s got some guys coming up from Atlanta and they’re supposed to show up. I do love the way those southern guys sound,” she drawled out, then switched back to her normal voice. “You’ll have fun. I will make sure that happens. Don’t you chicken out.”

 

Jess grinned sheepishly. “I won’t chicken out.” Actually I probably will, but I can’t admit that to Angela.

 

“I’ll come up there and drag your skinny ass down the street if you do. Then won’t you be embarrassed?”

 

“Ooh...you’re scary.” Is that my voice? Jess wondered. There was lightness to it that she barely recognized, and she liked it. The café door below rang and Jess could see the squat form of Angela’s man stumbling onto the sidewalk.

 

Angela squealed and jumped into his arms, immediately planting a deep kiss on him. Jess watched for a while as Ed lifted Angela up and swung her about like a ragdoll. Her heels dangled in the air, her hands buried in his greying hair, becoming oblivious to her old friend. She was lost in her love for this steady, strange, old man.

 

Would I ever get that? Do I even deserve it anymore? She turned away from the window and made her way to the bathroom, mindfully stuffing her jealousy away in that same dark space she seemed to put everything these days.

 

***

 

It had been some stupid late night talk show. When she opened the door to Luke’s house, some vacuous celebrity was having an overly animated discussion with the host while the audience clapped and giggled in all the right places. Was the sound even on?

 

It was hard for her to remember anything during the day, but the details were clear in her dreams, and tonight as she walked into the house for her nightly visit, she could hear the canned laughter blaring. The laughter didn’t stop. It didn’t stop when she opened the door to the bedroom. It didn’t stop when she saw the girl’s body. Hysterical laughter, deafening her as she stood at the base of the bed and stared. Whoever she was, she looked like a mannequin, painted with a deep and glossy red from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. Her hair was matted with it, her nostrils filled with it. So many cuts and all so deep, the only word for it was mauled. Like a rabid dog filled with inhumane hunger had attacked her, she had been sliced and torn apart. Oh how it must have hurt.

 

Luke had given her pain throughout their relationship, but he had saved this kind of hurt for others. Why? The girl’s eyes stared, shocked but lifeless up to the ceiling, her eyelashes thick with badly applied mascara.

 

Luke always had a thing for eyes. Whoever this nameless girl was, she knew him enough to know that. Canned laughter thundered from the living room, growing louder and louder until it sounded less like hilarity and more like screams. In her dream, the laughter became the shrieks of a tortured woman, screams and constant applause, egging on the pain and congratulating it. Jess’s mind hummed with the sound. She clapped her hand over her ears and her head began to vibrate until she was sure that it was going to burst. She pressed her hands tight, her hands over her ears, trying to block out the sound. But she couldn’t, and the screams of laughter mocked her.