The woman turned back to the TV. The show had come back on. “I want to shoot it up every time I’m here.”
There was no point trying to make sense of it. Three days ago the super’s kid had gotten shot buying pop at the gas station. Four o’clock in the afternoon, and he never even saw who did it. A couple of weeks before, it had been one of Shawn’s friends, standing on a street corner, mistaken for someone else. Or so Shawn said, but who knew? In the end, what did it even matter?
Where was the future in this? That was what Michael Boni had said, that day two weeks ago when he and Darius had first met. The words had been echoing in Darius’s head ever since, demanding an answer. Michael Boni had been talking about the city, but Darius had come to see it was a conversation about his entire life, about all the mistakes he’d made, that he continued making. Where was the future in this?
The day he’d met Michael Boni had started out a lot like this one: a visit from Violet, a pile of errands. The landlord accepted only postal money orders. The ones from the check-cashing places weren’t good enough. So there Darius was at the post office, like every month. But that day the wait was even worse than usual. For five minutes already, his sneakers had been glued to the same grimy square of vinyl tile. Before him in line stood a stocky Hispanic guy with a ponytail carrying a package wrapped in a diaper box.
Ten people in line, and no one saying a word. Darius hated that, people all stuck together, pretending they were alone.
“Whatever happened to the wanted posters?” Darius had said.
The Hispanic guy in front of him moved his package from one arm to the other.
“Remember those?” Darius said. “Every post office had them.”
The Hispanic guy gave him a quick glance.
“When was the last time you saw one?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Now it’s just pictures of stamps,” Darius said. “Warnings not to mail explosives.” He pointed at a bright orange sign on the wall. “Is there anyone that doesn’t know that?” he said. “Are there people walking into post offices, saying, ‘Yeah, I’d like to mail this hand grenade’?”
The guy shifted the package again, his arms sinking lower under the weight.
“I miss the posters,” Darius said. “I liked to look at the faces. You wonder about their stories — why people do the things they do.”
The guy seemed to nod. Or maybe he was just stretching his neck.
It was hot in there, the boiler swamping the windows along the street, turning April into August. There was nothing to see outside but the boarded-up courthouse across the street.
“I remember when mine were that small.” Darius nodded at the diaper box, the little white baby blindfolded by a strip of brown packing tape.
The Hispanic guy was already turning back toward the front of the line.
“How old’s yours?” Darius said.
“My what?” the guy said sideways.
“Your baby.”
“I don’t have a baby.”
“The box,” Darius said. “I thought—”
“It’s just a box.”
The line still hadn’t moved. Everyone ahead of them, it was like they’d never been in a post office before, had no idea what one was for. The two clerks looked as though they’d been startled awake from some deep, traumatic dream.
Through the condensation on the glass, the old courthouse across the street was a glistening ruin. Darius and Sylvia had gotten their marriage license there. By the looks of the place, that must have been a century ago. Really sixteen years, Sylvia just pregnant with Nina. But in that time there’d been what the city called a “streamlining of services,” by which they seemed to mean injecting an atmosphere of punishment into every department of the government, the post office included. The old courthouse was beautiful but too expensive to maintain. Or so they said. A vine had climbed halfway up the flagpole.
“I was listening to the radio the other day,” Darius said, drifting a bit closer to the Hispanic guy. “I heard them talking about turning it all into farmland.”
One of the post office clerks had wandered off, leaving a confused old woman at the counter clutching what looked like a sock full of coins. The Hispanic guy dropped his heavy package to the floor.
“All of it,” Darius said. “The whole city. Tear it all down.”
Every couple of months it was something new, some grand plan to bring the city back from the brink. Artists were going to save it, filling empty warehouses with ceramics and easels. Or urban hipsters would come, spawning microbreweries and coffee shops. Or all the empty factories would be converted to make solar panels. Or engines that ran on cow manure. Or the entire city would become a post-apocalyptic film set, permanently on loan to Hollywood. Or maybe a Saudi prince would turn the place into his personal amusement park.
But a farm! Steam-shovel up the courthouse, till the lawn around the flagpole. And plant what, exactly? Acres of corn just off the interstate?
The line shuffled forward. The Hispanic guy toed the diaper box a few inches ahead. “Fuck it,” he said, gesturing toward the courthouse. He’d seen where Darius was looking after all. “Why not?”
From up front came the shriek of a tape gun.
“Are you going to become a farmer?” Darius said.
“It’s just going to waste.”
So what, put the city in a time machine and pretend the whole last century never happened? Even the people on the radio hadn’t been entirely serious, pointing out all of kinds of obstacles. “For one thing,” Darius said, “they’d have to tear everything down first.”
The Hispanic guy raised his paint-splattered boot and rested it on top of the diaper box, using the baby’s head as a footstool. “They tear stuff down every day.”
“Most of what’s left,” Darius said, remembering another piece of what he’d heard, “they don’t know who owns it. They can’t tear down what’s not theirs.”
“People are always burning shit down. They do it for fun.”
He wasn’t wrong. Kids did it, drunks did it. For a gallon of gas, it was cheap entertainment. Scavengers did it, too, trying to get to valuable scrap hidden in walls. The burned-out shells stayed there forever, until the rain and the snow brought them down. But that was criminals. The city couldn’t go around setting things on fire.
“And it’s expensive,” Darius said. They’d mentioned a number on the radio, the price tag a crazy fortune.
At the front of the line, an old man was flipping through the plastic pages of a binder — slowly, as if the stamps between the sheaths were pictures of old friends.
“It doesn’t have to be.” The guy mimed pressing down on a dynamite detonator like Wile E. Coyote.
Darius tried to chuckle. Look, he wanted to say, we’re only joking. But no one else in line was paying attention.
“If they want a farm,” Darius said, “they’d have to get rid of us, too.” And he pressed down on his own imaginary detonator to make his point. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You have a family?” the guy said.
Darius nodded.
The guy pointed back to the abandoned courthouse. “Where’s the future in that?”
The old man had finally picked out his stamps. The line edged forward. But the Hispanic guy remained where he was, the diaper box at rest between his feet. He extended his hand.
“Michael Boni.” The man’s fingers were discolored with what looked like cherry stain.
“Darius.”
“The farm,” Michael Boni said. “It’s a pipe dream.”
“I was just talking,” Darius said.
“That’s all anyone ever does.” Michael Boni lifted his diaper box. “But you’re right.”