Detroit Circles

Cadillac - Broadway - Grand Circus - Times Square - Michigan - Fort / Cass - TCF - Joe Louis - Financial - Millander - Renaissance - Bricktown - Greektown - and back to Cadillac. 

These are the stations of the People Mover. 

Uno shifts in the plastic seat and turns his head to the window. Bobs along to music only he can hear. Droplets condense on the plexiglass from the front comin’ off Eerie. Zero, hunched over, stares at the floor - tappin’ his thumbs together. 

Bricktown slides away behind them. An empty car all to themselves. 

“We hafta tell…” 

Uno pulls a wireless earpiece out. Offers it to Zero. He plugs it into his ear. 

“Who?” 

“Dunno. Someone.” 

“You. Not me. You. You’ve - not even got to - want to.” 

Zero snorts. 

January. Ice on the rails. Icicles under every overhang. Snow caked between the brick of the buildings downtown. Leopold and Loeb going in circles on a line.   

“They concluded that...he fell off. They’re not wrong. People don’t kill people - gravity kills people. The laws of physics kill people. Know why everything has to die? ’S a simple principle - all chaotic states have to move down to a stable state - absolute zero. No one is to blame. For anything.”    

“Next you’ll be citing Malthas’ theories on population growth-” 

“Malthus was wrong. Despite the four proverbial horsemen, there’s always been a boom. It’s globalization and technology that’s causing the populace to plateau-” 

“I was just making a point.”  

A soft rustle as thumb tips rub against each other. Aggressive. Nervous. 

“Reporters said his name was Davidowitz.” 

The pin-studded jacket rustles. Fluorescents gleam off Uno’s bald head and the silver edges of three small Iron Crosses pinned to the nylon jacket. 

“Pig with a Jew name. Amazing.” 

“You know, you’re really going to fit well with those Scorpio Rising pooftas with the Swastikas branded on their ass crack in the prison yard.”  

Uno bites his thumb, grits his teeth and rises outta the seat and pounds up and down the empty car, steel-toed Doc Martens banging like Jackhammers in slow motion. 

“I have this notion. I think, what people mistake for guilt is paranoia. You tell yourself, there will come a knock on your front door. First the knock, then the gas chamber. So you think to yourself -  lessen the ordeal. Pull the trigger. Hope they see “Oh, he’s not all bad. Just fucked up one time and one time only. We all do that.” That’s not how it goes. You are defined by your lapses and your lapses only. You are not a 3-dimensional character of history, but the mistake you commit. If you want to give up on life, and make it easy for them, that’s your defect, but what’s worse than dragging down others who - to people like you, perhaps idiotically - still follow the billion-year-old self-preservation imperative hard-wired into them?” 

Silence. Stations slide by in the mist. They take no notice. A tinkle on the roof. A steady patter. Hail comes. Cuts through mist outside the window. 

“It’s a terrible thing, to live in fear, visions that one day lights will appear on your horizon, and spooks will glide across your yard, all casual - because everyone knows, the meat-grinder is for everyone else, never them - and press their snouts to your window.”  

Stations come and go. A voice monotonously announces the next stop down the line. 

“You are pathetic, Zero. Pa-thet-ic. You’d fling yourself at the hangman’s feet, the noose already tied neatly around your throat, just for stepping on a cockroach.”  

Zero bites his lip. 

They slide the counter-clockwise. People shiver on the platform when they pull in at Grand Circus. The double-digits shift over to the other side to get a better look at the park across the way. One clever kid pulls the pellets together, empties a packet of salt on the hail to partially melt and make it easier for the stones to stick and gnashes them into an ice-ball. He hucks it at another kid. He runs away. 

Two girls get on and plop down at one end of the car, teasing hailstones out of their hair. When they rumble on, the binary brothers resume their original spot.  

“You’re a bad mouthpiece-” 

“And you’re a weak strawman.” 

Hailstones whip past the windows.   

The next song on the playlist comes up. Uno taps back to the last one. 

“Fucking up the living isn’t gonna necromance the dead back to life. That’s the problem with the assholes who got here first - they tell you the only way to atone is to pin the butterfly to the wheel.” 

“The fuck does that mean?” 

“I take it you never read Pope.” 

“Pope who?”  

“Speak of the devil, you know there was this pope - Gregory the something-or-other - who had them exhume a previous pope, and put the corpse on trial cuz, you know, he hadn’t been nearly fanatical enough. This pope Gregory, he was deposed pretty quick and his cellmate strangled him in prison shortly after.  

And these are the fruitcakes who crossed over and named this country.” 

The stop at TCF is at the mouth of a short tunnel through the Convention building. 

Half a minute passes. They shoot through the tunnel.  

Uno stares across the car, running his eyes along the shapely curve of the girls’ legs. 

“Wouldn’t you miss that? That’s the worst of it. Motherfuckers won’t even afford you that much-” 

“When we stop at Joe Lewis, I’m throwing myself in the river.” 

“...I think that’d be best for everyone.”  

Uno holds out his hand. Zero plucks out the earpiece and plants it into his palm. 

Joe Lewis comes up. Zero’s on his feet. The doors aren’t even fully open when Zero jumps onto the platform and plummets down stairs, hopping entire landings. 

30 seconds pass. Uno resets the song he’s been listening to on a loop since they got on. 

Uno presses his face to the window as the People Mover curves away from the station, catching a glimpse of Zero dashing across the lot, booking it for the river.