Chapter 7 — The Coterie on Chicago Chronicles

The Mansion — Tuesday, 24 July 1990, 8:19 PM

Tue, 24 Jul 1990 20:19:00 +0000

Kendrick’s Auto / Modius’s Mansion / East Side Broadway / Adams Street Payphone Gary, Indiana

The envelope was on the table when she woke. Pete had left it next to a bag of Popeyes that was already cold, and the cold chicken and the manila paper and the cinderblock walls of Kendrick’s Auto made a still life that nobody would hang in a gallery because it was too honest to frame.

The Leash — Monday, 23 July 1990, 8:20 PM

Mon, 23 Jul 1990 20:20:00 +0000

Kendrick’s Auto / Adams Street / Docks Bar Gary, Indiana

She woke to the smell of motor oil and the sound of two men breathing and the particular silence of a building that had given up trying to be anything other than what it was. Cinderblock and a roll-up door and the heat of a July Monday pressing through the walls like a hand. Kendrick’s Auto. Her territory. Three ghouls and a couch and a woman who drank blood and called it management.

The Handshake — Sunday, 22 July 1990, 8:21 PM

Sun, 22 Jul 1990 20:21:00 +0000

Kendrick’s Auto / Seventeenth Street / Fifth Avenue Studio Gary, Indiana

Rain found the cracks in the cinderblock and came through as a seep, a thin mineral sweat that darkened the floor near the roll-up door and smelled like wet concrete and iron. She opened her eyes to Sunday night and the sound of water on metal and two men breathing and the specific weight of being responsible for people who hadn’t asked to be hers.

The Proxy — Saturday, 21 July 1990, 8:23 PM

Sat, 21 Jul 1990 20:23:00 +0000

West-Side Haven / Berth 7 Gary, Indiana

The haven smelled like dust and the chemical signature of roach traps that had stopped working in June. Darius opened his eyes at 8:23 PM and the first thing he heard was the heartbeat through the wall. Sixty-two beats per minute. Patient. Controlled. The rhythm of a man who had been waiting eight hours and had decided to be professional about it, because Marcus Webb had been professional about Darius Cole’s instructions for four years and the habit was structural, built into the foundation of a relationship that was about to become something else entirely.

The Kennel — Saturday, 21 July 1990, 8:22 PM

Sat, 21 Jul 1990 20:22:00 +0000

Kendrick’s Auto / West Side / Dot’s Bar / Fifth Avenue Studio Gary, Indiana

The concrete smelled like engine grease and something sweeter underneath — the copper-penny trace of vitae soaked into the floor from a ceremony nobody in this building had a name for. She opened her eyes to darkness and heat. Eighty degrees trapped inside cinderblock, the moving blankets over the windows holding the July day prisoner, and the sound of three men breathing around her like a choir that had forgotten the melody but remembered the rhythm.

The Predator — Friday, 20 July 1990, 10:00 PM

Fri, 20 Jul 1990 22:00:00 +0000

The Torch / West Side / Kendrick’s Auto Gary, Indiana

The Torch was doing its Friday night routine. Bobby Brown on the jukebox, the air conditioning failing against July, bodies filling the barstools and the booths and the spaces between them with the particular density of a crowd that had nowhere better to go and knew it and had made peace with the knowing. The drywall crew spending Thursday’s check. The nursing students from IU Northwest sharing a pitcher of something yellow. Two men at the pool table who’d been playing since six and would be playing at last call because the game was better than whatever they’d go home to.

The Landlord — Friday, 20 July 1990, 9:00 PM

Fri, 20 Jul 1990 21:00:00 +0000

Access Road / Warehouse District / Wasteland Gary, Indiana

The machine shop smelled like cutting oil and cold steel. Lakovic & Sons had been closed since ‘87 but someone still maintained the locks, and the back office where they’d died for the day had a concrete floor and no windows and a door that bolted from the inside. Good enough. Darius opened his eyes at 9:02 PM and the first thing he registered was Sable already awake, sitting on a folding chair with her legs crossed and her jacket zipped to the throat, watching the wall like it owed her money.

The Cartographer — Wednesday, 18 July 1990, 10:30 PM

Wed, 18 Jul 1990 22:30:00 +0000

The Torch / Telton Cemetery / The Wasteland Gary, Indiana

The notebook landed on the table between them like evidence being entered into a case file that nobody would ever read. Blue spiral-bound, coffee ring on the cover, forty-three lines of inventory in a dead man’s careful hand. Sable sat across the booth and didn’t explain it because the room she’d found it in was already behind her, filed in the part of Humanity 5 that catalogs horror as geometry.