I miss the earth so much, I miss my wife
It's lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight...
- Rocket Man, Elton John
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May
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Another three days. Three more days before I could sleep in my own bed, sleep under Jessie, eat homemade food, do something with my time besides listening to presenters drone on about government regulation.
I like detail, the ways and rules that make things work - shit, I'd been on track for a programming degree at a Minnesota University before dropping out to study economics at a community college - but this presenter had a voice like a mosquito buzzing in my ear, and listening to people I'd never choose to meet or listen to tell me how to do my job pissed me off totally.
My bank had sent me and the rest of the commercial loan managers in the organization to one of our satellite facilities across the lake to brush up on our regulatory compliance, so here I was in Detroit, sitting in a hotel bar at the end of a long day, missing my home and my woman, nursing a drink and enjoying the silence.
Besides the government monotone man droning on, I was getting sick of hearing the same questions from my fellow commercial loan managers. I was something of a celebrity in the bank culture after surviving Morgan's attack in my office, and it seemed like just about everyone I ran into wanted to hear about it. The nosy wanted to see the scar on the side of my head. The REALLY nosy had plugged my name into Google and found this was not the first time I'd been shot. I was polite to them that wanted to hear about the fight in my office, but when people brought up Minnesota, they were politely and in only slightly different words told to fuck off.
It had gotten so irritating that rather than going back to the company-provided hotel for a company-provided meal and the same three conversations with my fellow students, I'd walked straight out the doors and into the warm spring air of the downtown.
I'd Skype'd Jessie and we'd wandered around the downtown together, looking at the tall buildings, the riverfront, the parks. Besides the size of the buildings and the names of the streets, I was coming to the opinion that most big cities were pretty much the same. You see one or two, you see them all.
Jessie and I ate dinner together, her eating curry from Ashley's store, me chowing down on a thick piece of Detroit pizza down by the water's edge. She'd asked me how my day was, if the other managers were still irritating, if I'd slept with anyone fun on the trip.
Boring, yes, no.
I wished I could've brought her. Sitting by the river would've been fun, and I could easily imagine her infectious, giggly energy as we explored the city.
But it was not to be. The first semester of nursing classes was almost done, and she was stressing out about finals. Essentially unemployed now that her marketing work was done and she was sitting on an absurdly large bank account, she'd taken an extra-heavy course-load, and now she was feeling it. I asked if she'd slept with anyone fun in my absence - she'd previously told me about a really hot guy in her Ethics One class that she wanted to invite to a threesome - and she pouted and said no.
I let her go early so she could study, and she'd flashed me her tits, blew me a kiss, and told me that she loved and missed me and that she couldn't wait for me to get back.
And then the call terminated, and I was watching the sun descend and turn Motor City gray and gold.
I wandered down streets shaded from the dying light by cliffs of concrete and steel and glass, watched orange lights spring to burning life as the sky turned to dark blue and black. The streets were a little more deserted late at night, but the storefronts were still lit, bright yellow and white light casting stark shadows on the sidewalks, and I weaved among shoppers and joggers and people heading to and from bars and dinner and tried to turn my mind off.
I tried not to miss Jessie. Tried not to be irritated by the droning, mundane presenter. I tried not to think about Sienna, who hadn't said even one word about our kiss, and was acting distant to me and friendly to Jess.
I tried not to think about the OTHER reason I hadn't invited the love of my life to experience a new big city with me.
The Brotherhood of The Red Flag.
As much as Detroit had rebounded in the late twenty-teens, there was still a graveyard of poverty around it. Outside of the downtown and the suburbs, square miles of literally crumbling neighborhoods sagged towards the ground, utilities intermittent at best, house condemned, windows smashed out, unmaintained homes showcasing the worst possible outcomes of the worst possible corporate and governmental policies.
The Brotherhood hasn't needed to put much effort into recruiting here, they'd found angry, disaffected people aplenty.
Strangely, there was a larger contingent of the California neo-Luddite movement here as well. Those amusing radicals had been popping up all throughout the coastal state for the past ten years to vandalize and harass tech companies, arguing that big businesses weren't wanted or needed, that what California really needed was an agrarian, communal way of life and less electronic distractions created by companies that did nothing to help the local population.
They sure did use a lot of smartphones for a group of people who wanted to jackhammer the Google Headquarters and plant crops in the ruins.
Now that the weather was warming up, the agitators were out in force. Every day found this strange confluence of groups protesting outside one or more of the businesses downtown, usually banks or one of the technology orgs that had moved in as the Detroit downtown had been revitalized in the twenty-tens.
It was disconcerting to look out the conference room windows on a break and see an ocean of black and red and protest signs down in the streets below. It was a nightly occurrence to hear sirens responding to flipped, torched cars, smashed storefronts.
So as much as I missed Jessie, there was no way I was bringing her into this political powderkeg of violence, even if she could get away from her studies. Been there, done that, got the fucking t-shirt.
I wandered the streets aimlessly, savoring the feeling of being anonymous, one nameless blood cell in the organism that was the city. The sky darkened overhead, dark blue to deep black, stars poking bright white pinholes in the canvas of night, streetlights shining radioactive orange on the corners, headlights sweeping the streets and casting long shadows. I checked my phone. I didn't have to be back at the hotel for a long while, the last two days were late starts.
Time to find a drink.
I picked The Shinola because the name amused me.
The interior was very...square. Bold-colored chairs and couches, blonde wood tables, even the blonde woodwork and the light fixtures on the walls were mathematically precise to the ninetieth degree. The walls were peach and white and covered with abstract art and random portraits, and a real wood fire blazed in the - again, very sparsely square - fireplace.
I bypassed the greeter desk and headed for the back corner, a softly lit bar room of light brown leather and dark brown wood. The bottles in front of the etched mirror were perfectly regimented and a burly, bearded guy lounged against the bartop, checking his phone. I sat down on one of the stools and scanned the selection as he straightened. "Evening," he rumbled.
"Night, actually," I replied with a grin. "How your day going? Doesn't seem to be too busy."
"Easy day. Looking to be an easy night. What can I get ya?"
"You have Wild Turkey?"
He shook his head without even turning towards the bar. "Regular, no. Russell's, yes. Same distillery. Sort of like an enhanced version."
I shrugged, pulled out my wallet, flipped my ID and credit card on the bar. "Double on the rocks if it's not too much trouble."
He rolled his eyes, made a big show of looking around the nearly deserted bar. "Really?"
I watched as he hunted up the squat, cranberry bottle from its fellow soldiers, drizzled the amber liquid generously over the ice, finishing the pour with a precise lift and gentle turn. "Tab or finish?"
"Tab." I sipped at the bourbon, enjoying the burn, a little harsher and a little more flavorful than I was used to. Good though.
"Here on business?" the bartender asked, scrubbing out a tumbler with a bar towel, removing whatever microscopic speck of dust he thought occupied the already spotless glass.
"Yeah. Weeklong company gig. I've had more fun at the dentist's office."
"Well, at least you're finishing out the day right."
I raised my glass. "Indeed." I registered motion at the bar doorway in my peripheral, glanced back to see a well-dressed party of seven or eight head toward a both at the back. The bartender smiled, said "Let me know if you need anything," and headed to help them.
I sighed and relaxed, rolled my back and neck to get the creaks out. Too long sitting in an office chair today.
My phone held my attention for a while after that as I perused Detroit attractions, other bars, parks, sights to see, historical attractions. Maybe someday I'd bring Jessie here. I had a feeling she'd enjoy it. Maybe someday when the world was more peaceful.
I snorted to myself at that ridiculous thought.
"You don't know what a Lemmy is? Don't you guys keep notes from one night to the next?" A female voice cut through my musing on the dismal state of the world, a combination of high and deep, restrained power.
"Yes, we do. The bartender last night said you were trouble."
I looked over to see a young woman on the stool two down from mine, elbows on the bar learning forward with a look of disbelief.
"She means a Jack and Coke, bud," I told him, trying to defuse the bemused, turning-to-angry moment between the two.
"Could've just said that," he grumbled, then turned away to assemble the drink.
She swiveled the still towards me. "It's not like I ordered a Black Tooth Grin," she said, a hint of amazement in her voice.
"Never even heard of it." Turned towards me I could get a better look at her. Red and black striped dress down to her thighs. The skin between the dress and her black leather knee-high boots was crisscrossed with fishnet stockings. She completed the aggressive look with a sleek but busy side-zip leather jacket. Wavy, auburn hair hung down to below her collarbone, and her face was youthfully soft, wide lips stretched back in a smile even wider than one of Jessie's gasps of pleasure, eyes that seemed made for a scowl. Something about her seemed familiar but different. Like I'd seen her across the room before or met her at a checkout counter.
I held my hand out and she shook it. There was strength in this woman. If she told me she was an MMA fighter or a boxer, I wouldn't be surprised.
"Keep looking at me like that, I'm gonna ask you to pull my hair," she said with a grin. Her voice was femininely powerful, and I couldn't help imagining her sounds of pleasure, given her overtly sexual comment.
"Sorry. My bad."
"Sound like an accusation?" She slid off the stool, climbed up on the one next to me.
"Damn, you guys are corny," the bartender muttered as he measured ingredients into a shaker.
She flipped him the bird over her shoulder, and he flipped her one back before bringing her the drink. She sipped at the thin straw and sighed. "So what brings you to the most expensive hotel in Detroit at this late hour?"
