The High Cost of Living Read Free Page A

Don’t worry.” If only she could stop herself from worrying. It was a sickness to be balanced always on the blade of anxiety, twanging alertness. Yet the first time she had been attacked, she had been purely thoughtlessly happy, overflowing with a clear liquid ample joy as she walked with Val out of a Howard Johnson’s and across the parking lot. Two men blocked their way. At first she had not understood. Val and she had been walking intertwined, that was all. She could still see that man’s face bloated with righteous anger then a fist coming. She had not known how to fight. She had never hit anyone except for paddling her dog Satan when he had been naughty on the floor, or once in a while whacking her youngest brother. All she had done was scratch the man’s cheek before he had left her in the parking lot with a broken jaw.
    She had played that scene fifty thousand times. “A male atmosphere like this one makes me edgy.”
    â€œIt’s pretty … greasy.” Honor giggled. “Our entrance was the event of the night. Here comes our waitress.”
    Leslie relaxed. She was ridiculous sometimes. Maybe it was the four months of working on the rape hot line right after she had come to Detroit. Black women, white women, old ladies, kids, all bleeding. Never again, she could not take it. She could not live with that knowledge of pain. Just to mind her own business and survive, somehow intact. “Three black coffees—”
    â€œI don’t wish coffee, and I don’t take it black,” Honor interrupted, bridling. “I would like tea.”
    â€œNot for you. For Cam. And a glass of milk for me.” It was the only thing she could find to consume. She was too wired to drink coffee and she would not eat bad food.
    â€œOh, that’s a good idea. I’ll have milk too, instead. And pie—What kind of pie do you have? Blueberry with strawberry ice cream.” When the waitress had left, Honor leaned forward. “I’m sorry I jumped at you. I thought you were being officious. You’re so practical!”
    â€œSo practical. I spend my days sorting hundred-year-old rent receipts. Or I feed a balky computer information on capital formation trends and capital accumulation in selected northern industrial centers during the post-bellum period. At least with the Simpson papers I dig up ancient scandals, like finding fossil condoms in a bed of sandstone.” She wasn’t doing anything wrong, just showing off a little.
    â€œSimpson papers? What are they?”
    â€œThe Simpsons are local money. They left the University their family archives and a tidy sum. We’ve got grant proposals out for the capital development project, but the Simpson papers are what’s supporting me.”
    â€œWere there really old scandals? Incest and mad wives in the tower like Mr. Rochester?” Honor asked.
    â€œBusiness chicanery mostly. But there’s syphilis and even a bastard daughter who perished in a fire.
    â€œArson?”
    â€œThey had lots of fires. All the flimsy wooden buildings. Open fires, candles, oil lamps, straw. It was a raw place in the 1870s, which is when the daughter bought it.”
    â€œIt’s a raw place now.” Honor shrugged. “I think you’re hired to make that up. I know, in grade school we studied all that: Founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in seventeen-whatever. But you know it’s a lie. Henry Ford founded Detroit in the twenties, and everything before that is invented. It was put together like a freight train made up of odd boxcars marked Chevrolet and Great Lakes Steel and Wyandotte Chemical. It was all put up at once and now it’s all rotting at once. That’s what you can see. Antoine Mothball is just a story they make up to teach in school.”
    The coffees arrived and Cam began drinking the first, shuddering. “Mama’s so fussy about you. What does she expect anyhow? The princess