you hated yourself for using, but you smoked, snorted, or injected it anyway, because you loved his magic circle even more. Ultimately, he was the drug that killed Shelly, but he was also the drug that had allowed her to live—at least for a while.
5
We drove eastward through the half-light of the early summer evening and through the failing heart of Ogontz. At every turn, I half-expected a roadblock.
“You have the disc?” Gordon asked.
I performed one of those lame self-pat-downs people do when they’ve been caught empty-handed and know it but want to delay the admission of their screwup.
“Shelly said she gave it to you,” Gordon insisted.
“I know she gave it to me,” I said. I could feel a panic attack mustering in my chest. “I must have left it at home.”
“Where do you live?”
There it was. The real source of my mounting terror. Gordon Byron of literary, athletic, and erotic greatness was about to journey inside my miserable excuse for a life. This wasn’t part of the plan.
* * *
Ogontz, Ohio, is a worn-out notch on the rust belt that stretches beneath the bloated-from-economic-famine belly of the Great Lakes, from Detroit in the northwest to Buffalo in the northeast. It’s a onetime blue-collar city—too large to be quaint and too small to be worthy of note—full of American dream–believing suckers, the middle-class beneficiaries of the post–World War II manufacturing boom, especially in the auto industry. The past few decades, however, have seen that golden teat dry to a trickle. In desperation, Ogontz has chosen to prostitute its lakefront and transform itself into a resort town that caters to tourists, fishermen, boaters, and especially condo dwellers—who are willing to mortgage their futures for a killer view and are willing to drop an occasional dollar on the community nightstand.
Before he died, my dad would sometimes recall the “old days” growing up in our east end neighborhood. “It was a fine part of town then, John. Working people [think white people]. Everybody knew everybody else and looked out for each other. Not like it is today. Hell, half these people don’t even own these homes around here anymore; they’re renters [think African Americans]. Renters don’t give a damn about their property or neighbors. It ain’t theirs and they don’t plan to stay. They invest nothing but want everything, like the world owes them a living.”
It’s a good thing our home
was
bought and paid for, or I don’t know where Tom and I would live. It’s the one good turn the folks did us before dying.
* * *
“Fifth Street and Elm,” I answered Gordon, seeing no escape.
Ogontz is laid out in an almost perfect grid. East to west streets are numbered, and north to south streets are named. West side streets are named for the array of Native American tribes who once occupied the area, downtown streets in the central city are named for presidents, and east side streets are named for indigenous trees. Gordon’s deceleration as we entered my neighborhood suggested what I assumed to be his unfamiliarity with my side of town. Or perhaps, I thought, it was a genuine sociological curiosity with how the other 95 percent lived. Or maybe it was concern for the attention his BMW was attracting as we passed porches and front yards crowded with “renters” driven from their non–air-conditioned homes into the still tropical night air.
“The next corner,” I said. “The last driveway. You wait in the car. I’ll run in and get it. It’ll only take a minute.” It felt odd to be giving Gordon orders, but there was no way I was letting him inside that house of death.
I handed Shelly to Gordon, then ducked hurriedly from under the automatically retracting shoulder belt. Climbing the cracked concrete steps two at a time, I bounded onto the porch in two strides. As I removed from my pants pocket the three keys necessary to unbolt all of the locks, I saw Gordon
5
We drove eastward through the half-light of the early summer evening and through the failing heart of Ogontz. At every turn, I half-expected a roadblock.
“You have the disc?” Gordon asked.
I performed one of those lame self-pat-downs people do when they’ve been caught empty-handed and know it but want to delay the admission of their screwup.
“Shelly said she gave it to you,” Gordon insisted.
“I know she gave it to me,” I said. I could feel a panic attack mustering in my chest. “I must have left it at home.”
“Where do you live?”
There it was. The real source of my mounting terror. Gordon Byron of literary, athletic, and erotic greatness was about to journey inside my miserable excuse for a life. This wasn’t part of the plan.
* * *
Ogontz, Ohio, is a worn-out notch on the rust belt that stretches beneath the bloated-from-economic-famine belly of the Great Lakes, from Detroit in the northwest to Buffalo in the northeast. It’s a onetime blue-collar city—too large to be quaint and too small to be worthy of note—full of American dream–believing suckers, the middle-class beneficiaries of the post–World War II manufacturing boom, especially in the auto industry. The past few decades, however, have seen that golden teat dry to a trickle. In desperation, Ogontz has chosen to prostitute its lakefront and transform itself into a resort town that caters to tourists, fishermen, boaters, and especially condo dwellers—who are willing to mortgage their futures for a killer view and are willing to drop an occasional dollar on the community nightstand.
Before he died, my dad would sometimes recall the “old days” growing up in our east end neighborhood. “It was a fine part of town then, John. Working people [think white people]. Everybody knew everybody else and looked out for each other. Not like it is today. Hell, half these people don’t even own these homes around here anymore; they’re renters [think African Americans]. Renters don’t give a damn about their property or neighbors. It ain’t theirs and they don’t plan to stay. They invest nothing but want everything, like the world owes them a living.”
It’s a good thing our home
was
bought and paid for, or I don’t know where Tom and I would live. It’s the one good turn the folks did us before dying.
* * *
“Fifth Street and Elm,” I answered Gordon, seeing no escape.
Ogontz is laid out in an almost perfect grid. East to west streets are numbered, and north to south streets are named. West side streets are named for the array of Native American tribes who once occupied the area, downtown streets in the central city are named for presidents, and east side streets are named for indigenous trees. Gordon’s deceleration as we entered my neighborhood suggested what I assumed to be his unfamiliarity with my side of town. Or perhaps, I thought, it was a genuine sociological curiosity with how the other 95 percent lived. Or maybe it was concern for the attention his BMW was attracting as we passed porches and front yards crowded with “renters” driven from their non–air-conditioned homes into the still tropical night air.
“The next corner,” I said. “The last driveway. You wait in the car. I’ll run in and get it. It’ll only take a minute.” It felt odd to be giving Gordon orders, but there was no way I was letting him inside that house of death.
I handed Shelly to Gordon, then ducked hurriedly from under the automatically retracting shoulder belt. Climbing the cracked concrete steps two at a time, I bounded onto the porch in two strides. As I removed from my pants pocket the three keys necessary to unbolt all of the locks, I saw Gordon
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