* * *
“But that was a different time,” Constance said now to Michael Boni, sitting opposite her in the knotty pine booth. “I was a different person.” Someone capable, she thought, of mistaking a blue dress for love.
Michael Boni nodded distractedly, as if he weren’t even listening.
“Let me show you,” she said.
She reached into the pocket of her cardigan, taking out a newspaper clipping. Slowly, careful not to rip it, she unfolded the paper, smoothing it out on the table, directly in front of Michael Boni. There were two pictures side by side on the page, both of them black and white. Michael Boni saw them, but he didn’t yet understand.
The first shot was from more than half a century ago, a picture of a downtown building at night, glossy cars parked on the street out front, long swooping Cadillacs and Lincolns and Packards. There was a crowd on the sidewalk, the men all wearing suits and hats. The building’s marquee was aglow, spelling out THE SPARROW ROOM in bright white bulbs.
This was the “before” picture. The “after” was only a day old, a smudgy shot of crumbled walls, a weedy lot circled with police tape. Nothing recognizable, and yet the place felt just as she remembered it.
Pointing at the rubble, Constance said, “This was the corner where the bandstand was. Over there, the bar.”
And here, she said to herself, was the table where she and Charles had held hands, where James and Bobby had given themselves to the music, where Constance had lost the last piece of her innocence.
Now the place was gone. The night before, someone had come along and blown it to pieces, leaving little more than a crater.
“I know about the others, too,” Constance said, staring into Michael Boni’s eyes. “The grocery store, the shoe place. They’re not just buildings, you know. They’re memories. They have meaning.”
“What makes you think I know anything about it?”
“You men,” she said, “you think you’re so mysterious.”
“Think of the gardens,” Michael Boni said. “Think of the possibilities.”
She jabbed at the clipping with her finger. “This isn’t what I want.”
“Who said it’s for you?”
“Buy flowers for her grave,” Constance said. “Say you’re sorry. There are easier ways to make up for having been a shitty grandson.”
Michael Boni folded the scrap of newspaper back into a square and pushed it toward her. “They’re burdens,” he said. “We’re better off without them.”
Twenty-Four
The first one, a week ago, had been small and quiet as explosions go. The target had been a derelict old building, a former shoe factory. No one seemed to know what had happened. The news reported it as an “accident,” but they were short on details. Dobbs had no TV, no radio, no Internet, but there were trash bins and bus stops where a fat, damp wad of newspaper could still be counted on.
The story he’d happened to spot, buried in the metro section, had barely stood out. By now he’d been here long enough to know old abandoned places were always going up in flames. He was lucky no one had gotten around to torching anything of his.
The night he read the story, after finishing his work at the warehouse, Dobbs had gone to check it out.
Beyond the police tape, the building had still been standing. The only damage was to the wall facing the highway. There was an old advertisement painted onto the brick, an enormous brown loafer: BRINKLEY’S — COME WALK A MILE IN OUR SHOES! Over the years, the paint had aged just like real leather, losing its buff, turning gray. As bricks crumbled, even the sole appeared to have worn low.
Dobbs had wandered through the wreckage for a few minutes, and then he’d climbed the embankment to the highway and stood on the shoulder among the broken bottles and fast food wrappers. He couldn’t help wondering about whoever had set the explosives. Either they had no idea what they were doing, or they had a sense of humor — the hole they’d blown was at the toe. Now the loafer was a hobo’s shoe, worn through with age and left unrepaired, just like the city itself. So prominent was the building, so close to the highway, anyone entering the city from the west couldn’t help but see it and take note. A wry sort of welcome sign.
With the second blast, a few days later, they’d grown more serious. Or more competent. From a single punched hole to complete demolition. The place this time around had once been a grocery store, vacant when it blew. Vacant like every other grocery store in the city, just rows of empty metal shelves and a floor flaked in onion skins.
According to a woman in the neighborhood Dobbs later met at the scene, it had been one of the last of the markets to leave the city, selling off its stock at half price. In the remaining days before the store soaped its windows, the woman said, everyone with a coin to spare had shown up and bought as much and more than they could afford to, knowing it was the last time they’d be able to buy food in their own neighborhood. Afterward they’d pushed their cans and boxes of groceries home in the store’s rickety carts, commandeering every last one: a wagon train of settlers in housedresses and sleeveless undershirts.
Even ten years later, at the time of the explosion, Dobbs was able to stand at the roadside and see parts of the trail they’d blazed, overturned and wheelless shopping carts, scattered like the remains of mules that died along the way.
* * *
Two days after the supermarket was destroyed, the delivery Dobbs had been waiting months for finally arrived. Mike and Tim had given him a four-hour window in which to expect them, and he was at the warehouse, sweeping away the latest accumulation of dust, when the truck pulled up.
It was five in the morning, and they’d cut it close, just barely beating sunrise. Dobbs raised the overhead door, and the truck pulled in. It was a large panel truck, plastered in pictures of appliances, shiny stainless steel refrigerators and dishwashers and washing machines. Mike and Tim climbed down from the cab in their brown monkey suits and came around to the back. Even with the engine off, there was a bounce in the springs, weight restlessly shifting.
With the turn of a handle, Mike swung the cargo doors open. The response inside was instantaneous, a collective recoiling. But they were packed in too tightly, nowhere to go. They had to shade their eyes, even in the dark garage.
Tim, the fat one, was waving them out, wheezing Come on, come on, what are you waiting for, come on, through his crooked nose.
When still no one moved, Tim banged his fist on the bumper and shouted, “I said, ‘Come on!’ ” As if volume were the problem.
Mike, the short one, came over to join Tim in the waving. Maybe it was something about the sight of the flames licking his arms that made the people inside understand it really was time to go.
Dobbs watched them step down from the truck, disoriented and wary, legs uncertain as they worked to find sure footing. He wondered how long they’d been standing. Most of them needed help, and Mike and Tim grabbed them roughly under the arms, like a grade school bus drill. Except what Mike and Tim did was really more like dropping than setting down.
Once they were standing on firm ground, Dobbs could see them looking around. He tried not to be disappointed by the quickness of their eyes as they took in the dirty floors and blackened windows. He wanted to tell them all the things he’d done, what the place had looked like before. But they stayed huddled beside the truck, even as Tim tried to shoo them away. Turning to Dobbs, he said, “Are you just gonna stand there?”
Dobbs came forward, stepping into the circle of bodies. “It’s okay,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Come with me.” And he pointed the way through the doorway into the warehouse.