Annie of the Undead Read online

  I got out of my jailbird orange and into the bra –the final remnant of my last shift on the outside, and the faded khakis, Red Wings T-shirt, and nondescript gray hooded sweatshirt the jail had supplied from their bank of third-or-fourth-hand clothes from God knows where. They even gave me a pair of junk tennis shoes that deserved incinerating more than my old shorts could have. I felt like a concentration camp survivor being clothed in the raiment of the dead. Nothing fit right. The bra was too small, a result of not working out and jail food, the pants and shirt were too big by a couple of sizes, and the shoes were too narrow for my wide feet, even without socks. It all felt like scraping into someone else’s skin. Come to think of it, the last twenty-five years had felt like that.

  And now I looked like a damned Red Wings fan. What a thrill.

  Phil, a big guard who looked something like a red-headed Santa Claus with a snide streak, reached for the door to the outside. Before opening it he looked at me and asked, “Anyone here to meet you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe that son of a bitch whose girlfriend I knocked the hell out of, or maybe that shit who thought paying for my training meant I’d be his sex toy, or maybe that Pit Bull that used to attack me every time I came out my front door down on Birch Street who I cracked a couple of times with a bat and kind of walked sideways ever since. Other than that...probably no one.”

  Phil shook his head.

  “You’re too smart for all that stuff. A girl like you should be going to college, not squabbling with pimps and substance abusers.”

  “White people always say shit like that.”

  “Hating white people won’t do you any good either.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I hate black people too.”

  Phil tried to ignore what was too confusing for him to understand.

  “Well, just think about it. School’s the way out, you know.”

  “I did my time in school. Wasn’t a good fit.”

  “Well you’d better find something that does fit. Don’t get yourself thrown in here again, Eastwood. You’re the kind they burn the book on.”

  “What, are you gonna take me in? Rehabilitate me like I’m some angel in the rough?”

  He showed his teeth in a miserly smile.

  “No. You’re no angel. Only person who’s going to take care of a girl like you is you. You’re just rough all over. I’m just sayin’.”

  “Well stop sayin’ and open that damn door.”

  He shook his head.

  “See what I mean? What good’s that going to do you, talking like that to someone like me? All your time in here, and you still haven’t learned to shut your trap long enough to help yourself. You know, one of these days…”

  I didn’t stay to hear the rest. He had opened the door, and I didn’t hang around one more second to hear an overweight jail employee’s preachifying. I walked through the lobby, past the people society labeled good or bad, distinguishable by their uniforms: the clean-pressed suits of the normative and socially acceptable people here to do their honest work for the system and the drab garb of the underprivileged. They all really looked the same to me.

  I stepped outside into the exhaust-perfumed, harshly-lit streets of nighttime Detroit. I shuddered immediately against the cold. When they had dragged me into the can, it had been summer, but there was no sign of summer now. What was it, five o’clock? Six? The sun was already spent. Rain had dragged all the leaves from the few trees that sprang from their caged holes in the sidewalk. And the cruel wind ripping through the flimsy cotton sweatshirt I was wearing warned that a cold front was moving in. The front might bring rain, snow, or some devilish combination of the two. Ma Nature spares Michiganders little of her diabolical creativity.

  Shivering in the cold at the top of the steps was a transvestite who had been regurgitated from the belly of the penal beast just before me. He’d rejected the humdrum men’s clothes they’d offered him on the way out, choosing instead to exit looking as glamorous as when he came in. He was leaning against the wall, hiding behind his collar from the chill wind wailing down the street, waiting for his ride, smoking a cigarette. He was skinny and his bare legs looked cold in their tight leather skirt and red high heels.

  I fished the box of Marlboros out of my pocket. There were three cigarettes left inside. I extracted one and straightened out the ninety-degree bend as well as I could. I naturally hunted for a lighter. I didn’t have one.

  “Need a light?” asked the transvestite by the wall.

  I went over, accepted the light. Sucking in that good, cancer-invoking smoke for a second almost made me forget about the biting cold and wind that blew the overgrown bush that I sometimes called my hair into my face. I held hot smoke in my lungs for a moment, then exhaled and went for seconds.

  After a minute, the transvestite said, “Well you could say ‘thank you’.”

  “For some reason, I’m just not in the mood.”

  “Well, I just got out of jail too, and you don’t see me being a bitch.”

  I looked at him, at his tragic over-bleached, over-ironed hair, his denim jacket and his fuck-me heels, and, for some reason, I just laughed.

  “Well, fuck you, cunt!” he shouted, and continued to shout, but I was already walking away, down the cold, gray sidewalk and into the grim world of concrete and overcast, indifferent skies. That was the second idiot today to think I needed to hear something he had to say.

  So I was out. I had kept myself busy in jail. I had twiddled my thumbs and watched some shitty movies. I had briefly considered reading some like I had on previous visits, but couldn’t work up to it for some reason, and then didn’t consider it anymore at all. I contemplated life, the universe, and everything. I counted flowers on the wall, played solitaire ‘til dawn –you know, all that stuff. But mostly I got out of shape and made other people’s lives miserable, or at least a little more miserable than they already were. If you’re in jail, your life probably isn’t exactly the berries to begin with. I had gotten so good at doing all that that I now wondered what to do with myself.

  One thing I could do was get out of the clothes the penal system had put me in. I didn’t have any money for new ones, but I didn’t want new clothes. I wanted Chris’s clothes. Chris was my brother, or he had been before he’d been killed by an IED in the desert fighting someone else’s war. His clothes and my memory were all that was left of him, if indeed any of his clothes were left. If there were any left, they would be at his ex-girlfriend’s house halfway across town.

  I didn’t have any money for a cab, but I had never been afraid of hoofing it. I needed the exercise anyway after eating all that jail slop and lying around like a bloated hog. I hated being a bloated hog. It wasn’t in my nature to be soft.

  The worst thing about hoofing it was the Michigan wind, ripping through my clothes and into my flesh like the tongues of banshees and blowing my hair insanely in my face. I tucked the unruly mop into the hood of the sweatshirt, shoved my hands into my pockets, and set out through the grim buildings, icy streets, and alarmingly erratic drivers of Detroit, gritting my teeth against the air and the city.

  It took me three hours to hike to the house. My pinched feet were threatening murder by the time I limped up onto the back porch. I used a flower pot to break the window in the back door to reach the dead bolt. I was glad no one was home. Breaking in is a hell of a lot easier than dealing with a house’s owner.

  I kicked the angry dachshund that came yapping toward me in the head and let the yellow cat scurry out the door past my leg. The dog ran into the bathroom and started to pee in terror. I closed the door to keep it there. I never liked pets. They have a tendency to yap and scurry and pee. I heard the thing whining inside. Then I heard the sound of a toilet paper roll being rolled into infinity. That would be a treat to clean up.

  The house was neat and prim for a working class neighborhood. Chris’s ex had done very well for herself, living in the little one-bedroom house he’d paid for. Now,
as I nosed around the place, seeing the brand new X-Box game console, the his and hers toothbrushes on the bathroom sink, and the pair of men’s cross-trainers by the edge of the bed, I saw that she was doing so with another man. My big brother, dead for less than a year, and she already shacked up with…Roger Freidman. His name was printed on the utility bill on the living room coffee table. So she’d found somebody else to pay the bills too.

  I found Chris’s Zippo lighter lying on the coffee table next to a bunch of candles. I used it to light the second-to-last cigarette in my pack, and I began my search. A couple of sticks of buffalo jerky on a side table made it into my possession –one into my mouth and the other into my pocket. I found Chris’s clothes easily, hanging in the closet. I pulled out a khaki military shirt and smelled it. Then I got out another one –a dappled marine utility shirt. They didn’t smell like him. In fact, they didn’t smell like her or this house –they smelled of the deodorant and BO of another man. Roger. I clenched my teeth.

  I found one of his T-shirts in the middle drawer of the armoire. I got out of the charity clothes and into the tee and a pair of his desert camo utility pants as fast as I could. He had been a few inches taller than me, so I had to roll up the legs. His ex had a pair of running shoes that weren’t half bad on my feet. I shrugged on one of Chris’s long-sleeved shirts and his Carhartt and packed the rest of the clothes into an empty duffel bag that had been on the floor of the closet. I walked out into the little living room and looked around. Maybe she still had one of Chris’s knives? I could sure use one. I hated to go unarmed. Not in Detroit.

  I tapped my ash into the potted plant by the front door and started knife hunting. I was rummaging through the trunk in the corner of the living room when I heard them pull into the driveway.

  Their car was a shiny new yellow Mustang. They got out of it and came up the walk, laughing and nudging each other like one of them had just told a good joke. Or maybe they just always laughed like that. Some people do. She had two-hundred-dollar hair extensions and he a Movado watch. The bitter cold didn’t seem to bother them at all. How could it, when you’re so damn happy?

  The new guy was taller than Chris, but not as muscular. He had a soft face, and he wore a button-front shirt and a tie under his Red Wings jacket. Great, he’d like the T-shirt I had left for him. He looked like a cubicle guy, or maybe a bank teller –nothing I couldn’t handle.

  I let them open the door and find me at the trunk, digging for some remnant of my brother. Seeing me did not tickle the ex’s funny bone, not like finding your wiener dog wrapped in toilet paper like a wiener mummy might. It took her about two seconds to express the fact.

  “Annie? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Good to see you too, Anjelah. Would you mind telling me where Chris’s Ka-Bar is?”

  “Is this the Annie you told me about?” asked the new boyfriend with sudden concern

  “Are you the guy that’s been wearing my brother’s military uniforms?”

  “I…uh…”

  “Is that Bubbles crying?”

  Hearing the whining coming from the bathroom, Anjelah went to it and opened the door. The wiener erupted forth, rolled up in TP like a burrito and dragging a length of it behind it as it charged three-legged into the living room. Anjelah stared for a moment in confused displeasure. Nope, that didn’t tickle her funny bone either.

  “What’d you do-?” said the boyfriend, looking down at the partially mummified dachshund.

  “Oh my God!” said Anjelah, walking across the room to the back door. “You broke in? Are you nuts?”

  “She broke in?”

  “Did you see my cat? Did she get out? She’s not supposed to go outside. Annie, where the hell is my cat?”

  I stood up, having no luck with the trunk.

  “You tell me where to find Chris’s Ka-Bar, and I’ll tell you where your cat is.”

  She glanced out into the backyard, then closed the door.

  “What is that, some kind of threat?”

  I ignored her, heading to the kitchen, rummaging through drawers, starting with the bottom drawer and going up so I wouldn’t have to close one to search the next, like a good ransacker.

  Anjelah’s voice was escalating.

  “Hey! Where the hell is my cat? Huh?”

  “Angie,” said the boyfriend in a small voice. “Should I call the police?”

  “You’d better answer me! Where’s my cat? Don’t turn your back on me, bitch–”

  I spun. My muscles tensed, my fist weapon-ready, so eager to strike her, but I held it. I stared down the sudden fear in her eyes.

  “Hey!” said the boyfriend, stepping up behind Anjelah, putting his arm between us –that soft arm, as if that would have been enough to stop me from doing anything, “Leave my girlfriend alone! Who do you think you are?”

  “No, Rog! Stop,” said Anjelah.

  “What, babe? I can take care of this…”

  I exhaled a nice cloud of secondhand smoke into Anjelah’s face. She pretended to swallow her fear in order to avoid doing so to her pride.

  “Fine,” she said, her eyes growing wet from adrenaline and emotion –or maybe from smoke.

  She pushed past her boyfriend into the living room, then took a shoebox down from the shelf in the coat closet. She thrust it toward me.

  “Here. Take all of it. I don’t want it anymore anyway. Take it and go.”

  I opened the box. The knife was inside, along with some photos and other things that had been Chris’s. I closed it, looked at her.

  “That’s all he means to you, huh? Just a bribe to get the Devil out the door?”

  “Just take it and go,” the new boyfriend echoed Anjelah.

  He was trying to intimidate me with nearness and height. I looked up at him blandly.

  “You got the stones to back up your demands, or are you only good for boning other peoples’ girls, Roger?”

  His face got as hard as a face like his could, which wasn’t very, but Anjelah grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away from me.

  “Don’t! She’s a boxer, Rog, and she hangs out with some very bad people. Just let her go. Go on!” she said to me like I was a rat with the rabies, to be shooed out of the garage but not approached, “Get out of here, and don’t ever come back.”

  Roger, reluctant to back down from a girl and in front of his girl, but equally reluctant to find out if whatever Anjelah had told him about me was true, settled on a different solution.

  “I’m going to call the police,” he said, pointing a finger at me resolutely, “Right now.”

  Just then, a car honked its horn out in the street. There was the sound of squealing brakes and then a cry, high and strangled, like a small thing dying in agony.

  I walked to the front door, opened it, and stood in the threshold. I figured I ought to hold up my end of the deal I’d made with Anjelah. Or maybe I just did because it was fun to say.

  “Better go scrape up your cat.”

  Okay, so right about now, you’re thinking, Anjelah was right. Annie, you are a bitch. And I say in answer: Ya think? But let me just correct a small but integral detail of that statement: I was a bitch. But things have since happened to me –supernatural things that sort of changed my view of humanity and the world. When you are confronted with terrifying and unnatural things, like, say, politicians or vampires, you gain a little perspective –perspective that, as in my case, can help you become a better human being.

  But becoming a better human still had a ways to go that night. The debacle resulting from going to get Chris’s stuff wasn’t quite over yet, because the person I would have least wanted to see in all the world –less than my drug-dealing ex, less than the rich patron who had put me in the boxing ring and then tried to put me (at gunpoint if necessary) into his bed, less even than those tools of Satan who call themselves Nickelback –the one person who had the ability to make me lose even my appetite for fried chicken (and God knows how I always loved me my fried chic
ken) at the mere thought of her, happened to be driving the Acura that had squashed the cat.

  “What in fresh hell are you doing here, Mother?”

  The witch herself got out of the car, careful to avoid the blood smear the cat had left on the pavement with her prissy little peg-heel shoes.

  The very first thing she said to me was: “You look like you’ve gained thirty pounds.”

  “You look like you’ve aged thirty years.”

  She pretended my comment was beneath her notice.

  “I went to meet you outside the jail,” she said, oblivious to Anjelah, who ran past her down the drive, screaming hysterically at the little orange corpse partly tucked beneath the rear tire. “But they must have released you early. I’ve been driving all over town looking for you. I almost didn’t try here. I didn’t think you would come, but then you’ve never quite gotten it through your head that Chris isn’t here anymore.”

  She looked around at the little cul-de-sac like it was some third-world outhouse. Amazing, how quickly people from meager backgrounds can become snobbish after marrying into a little money.

  I said, “I know where he is. Chris is in the ground. Been to see your son lately?”

  “I have a service put flowers on his grave every month.”

  “Why are you here, Mother?”

  “To take you home,” she said peevishly. “To extract you from this dangerous life you’ve chosen. To give you a fresh start.”

  “Isn’t that interesting?”

  I didn’t buy that load of sow shit for a second. It wasn’t natural for me to be near the top of my mom’s priority list. I took a draft of my smoke and glanced around, checking for cops. They couldn’t be here this quick if Roger was calling them, but they could be if my mother had something up her cashmere sleeve. She wasn’t remarkably devious –in fact, she wasn’t remarkably anything except a bitch, but life had taught me never to underestimate anyone’s capacity for treachery, especially the person who gives you life.

  My mother took out the compact that she carried always in her purse and began compulsively dabbing the sticky orange substance it contained onto her face.