“Friends, nothing has changed in essence.

Wages don’t cover expenses, wars persist

without end, and there are new and terrible viruses, beyond the advances of medicine.
From time to time, a neighbor falls dead over questions of love. There are interesting
films, it is true, and, as always, voluptuous women seducing us with their mouths and
legs, but in matters of love we haven’t invented a single position that’s new.

“Some astronauts stay in space six months or more, testing equipment and solitude. In
each Olympics new records are predicted and in the countries social advances and
setbacks. But not a single bird has changed its song with the times.

“We put on the same Greek tragedies, reread “Don Quixote” and spring arrives on time
each year.

“Some habits, rivers, and forests are lost. Nobody sits in front of his house anymore or
takes in the breezes of afternoon, but we have amazing computers that keep us from
thinking.

“On the disappearance of the dinosaurs and the formation of galaxies we have no new
knowledge. Clothes come and go with the fashions. Strong governments fall, others rise,
countries are divided, and the ants and the bees continue faithful to their work.

“Nothing has changed in essence.

“We sing congratulations at parties, argue football on street corners, die in senseless
disasters, and from time to time one of us looks at the star-filled sky with the same
amazement we had when we looked at caves. And each generation, full of itself,
continues to think that it lives at the summit of history.”

I pull my hood tighter to my head and immediately shove my hands back into my
pockets. It is bitterly cold and listening to Frank Claymont rant to Detroit’s poor does
nothing to improve my situation. I turn my back to the preaching anarchist and attempt to
push my way out of the crowd that has formed around him. He keeps talking.

“Why then, has society failed us? Why do we live in this post-apocalyptic battleground
when the rest of the world lies in the lap of luxury? It is we as a people who need to get
together and make a change. Force a change. The world cares nothing for our city. The
world has forgotten all about us.” This provokes a reaction from the crowd. I look back
upon Claymont from the outside and watch him draw a hush over them by raising his
hand. “Listen to me,” he yells, “it is not too late. It is up to us to take back our city.”

Exactly what we need, Claymont, more violence. I turn around and continue to walk
away from that lunatic. For months he’s been speaking out and protesting that the poor
people of Detroit need to band together and take back control of our city from the
oppressive bastards governing us.
Detroit has been under martial law for the past six years, ever since the gang violence
was so bad it escalated into an all out war in early 2006. It ended quickly when the army
sent troops in to “maintain peace and order.” They sure as hell haven’t made it peaceful,
and as far as order is concerned, crack is more abundant than gasoline. Soldiers patrol the
streets by jeep, rarely on foot, and even then do little to help anyone but themselves and
those on their ‘list.’ The army is based in the old armory center, lead by the corrupt and
sadistic Lieutenant Carl Verges. It is common knowledge that he receives payoffs from
the factory owners and drug lords alike in exchange for their protection. In Detroit, the
army acts eerily similar to the mob. Which of course pisses off the real mob.

Vinnie Tortelli, the boss of Detroit’s mob, moved in shortly after the gang wars. He saw
the lawless streets as the perfect opportunity to sell drugs and rip off the factories. He
took his crew to the top of the organization and united all of Detroit’s crime families. I
often see them clashing in the street, the goons of the mob trying to steal from slave
driving factory owners or gang drug lords and the soldiers being paid to protect them. I
once worked for them, as a hit man, hired to kill who ever the boss desired. I quit, and
had to fake my own death in order to do so. Once your in with Vinnie “The Ratchet”
Tortelli, your in for life. Or, in my case, death. It’s easy to fake an auto accident when no
one cares enough to check.

A light snow begins to fall as night comes creeping upon me and I hurry to get indoors.
Stopping to talk to a few people on my way, I reach my tenement with two things: a bag
of heroin and a hooker named Melissa. I open the door for the former and toss the latter
on the table. “This is where I live. You like it?” I ask.

I don’t believe I’m asking a hooker to judge where I live. Still, its something I would
only bring a hooker back to. There is very little furniture, only a table in the center with
one chair, and a small bed, low to the floor, stuffed in the corner opposite the door. A
small fridge sits to the right, and a stove and sink are built into a countertop around
corner from that. It is a very small place, eight feet by twelve feet, lit by a small lamp
hanging from the ceiling above the table. During the daytime it is lit by two large
windows above the bed.

“Honey, I love wherever you bring me,” she answers.

I smile at her. “Of course you do.” She smiles back and I rip open the bag of my drug.

A few hours later Melissa and I sit on the floor letting the drug run through our systems.
This is my favorite part about hookers: they make the best listeners. The overwhelming
euphoric effect of it always acts like a truth serum for me and I end up spilling my guts.

Melissa was lying on her stomach, one leg bent at the knee extended into the air, the other
one stretched out behind her on the ground, her short white skirt riding down on her,
exposing the small of her back. Her curly blond hair falls around her face as she rests her
head in her hands and listens to my life story intently.
I pull a picture from my back pocket and show it to her. “This was taken when I was a
week old. This is my father. See?” I point to him.

“He is young. He looks like Errol Flynn.” she says.

He is wearing a hat that tips over one eye, a suit that fits him good, and baggy pants. He
is also wearing those awful shoes, the two-toned ones my mother hates.

“Here is my mother. She is not crying. She cannot look into the lens because the sun is
bright,” I lie. “The woman, the one my father knows, is not here. She does not come till
later. My mother will get very mad. Her face will turn red and she will throw one shoe.
My father will say nothing. After a while everyone will forget it. Years and years will
pass. My mother will stop mentioning it.”

Melissa is looking at me with pity and intrigue. I point to myself. “This is me she is
carrying. I am a baby. She does not know I will turn out bad.” I look up at Melissa, and
stare into her eyes. She stares back into mine, while a look of confusion and intrigue falls
over hers.

“What do you mean ‘turn out bad’?” she asks. I smile at her; I think that she honestly
believes there is nothing the matter with our lifestyles. I guess its true, ignorance is bliss.

“Look at me. I just snorted a fifty bag with a whore in my jail cell apartment. Is this good
to you?” Maybe I was a little harsh with my words. Maybe I shouldn’t have raised my
voice as much as I did, either. But she’s only a whore, after all.

Maybe she was high, too, because she didn’t seem to mind. Or if she did, she didn’t show
it. She just kept smiling at me and said, “No, I’m serious. What do you mean ‘turn out
bad’.”

I returned her blank smile for a few seconds and tried to figure out where to begin.
“Before this whole city went to hell, when people still had real jobs, real lives, I kept a
decent place. ‘Bout twice the size of this. I was the daytime manager of a Denny’s.

“One day I came home from work to find out that my girlfriend had left me. No note, no
goodbye, no clues, nothing. She even took our two year old son with her. To this day I
have no idea where she went, or why she left.” I look up at Melissa. She was no longer
smiling, and neither was I. “That broke my heart. It still hurts. I picked up a pretty nasty
drug habit after that. Got me fired from my job, but it was cool, I sold this shit to get by.
Then the gang wars started.”

Melissa put her hand in mine, her fingers soft to the touch. “I’m sorry baby. That bitch
did quite a number on you.” Her attempt to console me only made me feel worse for
myself. Its been almost two years since she left me, and not a day has gone by that I
haven’t thought about her. It hurts less and less with each passing day, but it still hurts
nonetheless. I toss the empty plastic bag to the floor and slowly rise to my feet. “Where
are you going, love?” she asks.

I don’t answer her. Instead, I make my way to the fridge, opening it to obtain an
unopened bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. I turn back around to Melissa, still on her
stomach on the floor, and close the fridge with my foot. With much effort I return to my
place on the floor beside her, wrestling open the bottle of liquor. I take a large swig and
pass it to Melissa and she does the same as I continue my story.

“When the violence was at its worst, the drug dealers were the ones taking all the losses.
The mob and the gangs battled over territory. I was lucky, I killed a few gang members
and got liked by a few mob goons so they let me do work for them. I made less money
and did more dirty work but I was protected pretty well. I eventually got past all the drug
dealing bullshit and became one of Tortelli’s hired guns.

“During the war I had to kill anybody that pissed him off. Drug dealers, gang members,
factory workers, soldiers, didn’t matter. There’s a lot of blood on my hands and no
amount of repentance will wash that away.” I take another swig of my drink, then stand
and take another. I motion for Melissa to stand with me and hand her the bottle once she
does. “Do you know the waltz?” I ask her. She hands me the bottle once she is finished
with it and giggles, shaking her head. I put one hand on her waist and take one of hers
with the other. “Put your other hand on my shoulder.” I instruct her. We start out at a very
slow pace, doing the waltz while I hum the rhythm to myself. I take a few seconds in
between steps to steal glances at her eyes, glazed over and staring down at our feet.
Something about her makes me feel like a teenager with a girl for the first time. “The
whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy.” But I hung on like death: such
waltzing was not easy.

“We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf; my mother’s countenance could
not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle; at every
step you missed my right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head with a palm
caked hard by dirt, then waltzed me off to bed, still clinging to your shirt.” said Melissa,
recapping to me the events of the night before. I woke up next to her, possibly still drunk
but definitely hung over and not recalling anything shortly after arriving home. “It was
quite amazing,” she reassured me. I smiled at her and she leaned in and kissed me softly
on the lips. “I love you and I don’t even know your name.”

I sit up and take hold of her wrists. “You don’t love me. You don’t even know me.”

She pulls back her wrists and looks at me through hurt eyes. She’s still just a young girl,
no older than seventeen. A feeling of horrible guilt takes over me. She begs of me, “I
know that you don’t deserve all the scars you bear. This cold, cold world has hardened
you.”
I climb out of the bed and begin putting on my clothes. There are thousands of hookers in
Detroit and I get stuck with the clingy one. “Let me take you home,” I offer, the nicest
way to get rid of her. “Where do you live?”

“Usually in the streets where you picked me up,” she answered. This made it harder for
me to cast her aside. A homeless hooker should be the least of my worries, but I felt
somewhat connected to this girl. She stopped me from putting the rest of my clothes on
and once again kissed me softly on the lips. I could taste last night’s whiskey on her.

“My name is Jack. Jack Tyler,” I say.

She pauses for a moment and smiles at me, then kisses me again, biting my bottom lip
ever so gently. “Melissa Claymont,” she says, her teeth clenched firmly yet subtly around
my lip. I pull myself from her, slicing my lip on her teeth.

“Excuse me?” I ask in disbelief, blood trickling down my chin. “Claymont?”

“Yea..” she says, looking down, almost ashamed. “You’ve heard of my father, right?
Frank Claymont?” I nod and her eye begins to gleam with an anger that I only recognize
from seeing in myself in the mirror. “I hate that slimy bastard. He tricks people into
joining his cause and uses them to get what he wants. He forces girls into prostitution to
make himself rich. He forced his own daughter into this.” She held me close, her arms
wrapped behind my back, her fists clenched tight and pulling me in toward her. She
buried her head into my shirtless chest and cried.

After a few minutes she looks up at me, her eyes full of tears and says, “I had to run away
or he would have killed me. I had to fake my own death.” She can barely speak she is
crying so hard. I have no idea what to say to this girl. I picture him raving to an angry
mob the day before, I think about all the shit he has done in the past few months, and I
think about the toes he’s stepped on and the people he’s pissed off.

“I’m gonna kill that prick,” I say. Melissa looks up at me with her sad green eyes. I kiss
her hard and tell her to wait here.

What Claymont had going for him had spread like a cult. His followers, anarchists every
last one of them, believed his every word and did his bidding religiously. They hung on
his every word like he was the wisest man alive. The poor people of Detroit’s suffering
was so bad that he appeared to them as Jesus Christ, when in all actuality he was closer to
the devil than their savior. It all begun to make sense to me now. Claymont had no doubt
been using his prostitution money to fill his arsenal so he could take over Detroit and
claim all of the benefits. His plan was almost perfect: use the violence between the
dominant factions to wipe them both out, so that only he would remain. I’m gonna use his
own trick against him.

I pick up one of the public phones available nearby, one of the luxuries Claymont’s cult
has to offer. I snuck into his hostel, a “safe haven” of Detroit no doubt used as a front for
his secret operation, because tracing the call I was about to make back here was exactly
what I was counting on. I dialed Vinnie Tortelli’s home number. His butler answered after
two rings. “Yo, tell Vinnie the Ratchet that he’s dead fuckin’ meat, ya heard?” was all that
I needed to say. I hung up and dialed the next number, a number that belonged to one of
the major players in the gang’s cocaine business. This time I said, “Hey, paizon, if I ever
catch one of you hoodlums I’m gonna cut off your cahones and make you eat them in a
plate of spaghetti.” I hung up and took up a seat near the television, away from the door,
and waited.

It only took about twenty minutes for the hoods to arrive. Four of them walked in, red
bandanas displayed prominently on their heads, arms, belts, pockets, or anywhere else
they could hang them. The four of them had no less than 100,000 worth of jewelry on
them. And here I was, thinking that this city had a poor problem. Two of them attended to
the payphone and made a call while the other two took a look around. I made eye contact
with one of them, but only briefly.

“All the advice you need, only a dollar.” I turn around to find an old man, balding but
with long white hair in a horseshoe around his head, in a tan trench coat sitting on a
bench, watching me.

“Excuse me?” I asked him.

“I’ve been around a lot and I don’t have that much further to go. Help me out with some
spare change and I’ll help you out with the rest of your travels.” He extended his hand,
begging for change. I pulled a few dollar bills from my pocket and put them in his hand,
as he quickly accepted them and transferred them into his own pocket. “Thank you, thank
you. Please, have a seat with me,” he tapped the bench next to him.

I got up from my chair and joined him on the bench, albeit reluctantly. “Tell me, old man,
what advice have you got for me?”

The old man chuckled, and his red cheeks reminded me of Santa Claus, or a drunk. “In all
my years, if I learned one thing it’s to value human life. It’s so delicate, so fragile, it
could mean nothing or everything or both to different people. If you want to be truly
happy, get out of this desolate place and find someplace untainted by greed. This city, this
hell hole, is more like a place to die than a place to live. If we must die, let it not be like
hogs, hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, while round us back the mad and hungry
dogs, making their mock at our accursed lot.”

“If we must die, O let us nobly die, so that our precious blood may not be shed in vain;
then even the monsters we defy shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen,
we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, and for
their thousand blows deal one deathblow!” I whispered into his ear. He was either drunk
or crazy, or maybe a prophet. He looked at me, perhaps hesitating what to say next.
“What though before us lies the open grave?” he finally asked. “Like men we’ll face the
murderous, cowardly pack, pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!” He hesitated
once more. “No, it is a battle best not fought. If you valued your life as I do mine, you
would see that, and have so much more to value. And what a pity, for you have so much
time left and I have so little.”

“What would you have me see?” I asked him. Before he could answer me guns began to
go off outside. I looked up to see the gangsters spilling into the street with their guns
blazing. I sat with the old man, both of us calm, while the other people in the hostel
screamed and ran for cover, either upstairs or into the dining room. I could distinctively
hear both the mobsters and gangsters cursing each other out, firing many shots at one
another, in an outrageous turf war that I cooked up with two quick phone calls. There had
to be at least twenty gunmen outside, none of them shy with their weaponry.

The old man ignored all this and said to me: “Some say the world will end in fire, some
say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But, if it had
to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction, ice is also great
and would suffice.” I looked into his eyes, and he stared right back at me. I could see the
fire inside of him, the anger he suppressed now and had been suppressing for many, many
years.

“Let it out, old man. What do you know of hate?” An explosion rocked the building but it
stood strong, and I could see his anger grow.

“I know more of hate than you know of anything in this entire world. It is when you can
control your hate, your anger and your fear when you can really learn from it. I know the
value of life. There is more to be had with love than with hate.” I stared at him. More
screams from outside, barely audible over the constant sound of gun fire. Perhaps more
combatants had arrived, escalating this battle into an all out war.

“And isn’t love worth fighting for?” I asked him.

“Is your love worth dying for? Only time can teach you, that’s how I learned it, and that
is how you will learn it. Let me try to explain this to you. I grew up on this very block,
when this was a decent place to live. One summer when I was in high school I met a man
named Richard Cory. Whenever Richard Cory went down town, we people on the
pavement looked at him: he was a gentlemen from sole to crown, clean favored, and
imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, and he was always human we he
talked. But still, he fluttered pulses when he said “Good-morning,” and he glittered when
he walked. And he was rich - yes, richer than a king - and admirably schooled in every
grace. In fine, we thought that he was everything to make us wish that we were in his
place.

“So on we worked, and waited for the light, and went without the meat, and cursed the
bread. And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through
his head. You see, his fiancé left him for another man that very day. Broke his heart into
so many pieces that he just couldn’t go on living. That’s what you have to see, my boy.
The value of life is love.”

As suddenly as I found him, the old man got up and left me, heading up the stairs, most
likely to pass out stone drunk. I sat pondering his words, until Frank Claymont came
sniffing around like a rat to cheese. My plan worked perfectly, my trap was sprung. I
charged at him, catching him in the side with my shoulder and wrapped my arms around
him. I was bigger and stronger than he was and had no difficulty driving him backwards
six or seven feet into a wall. Still holding on to him, I lifted him up and threw him to the
ground below me, then stepped back and drew my pistol from my pants. He calmly stared
down the barrel and asked me, “Do you know who I am?”

“Frank mother fucking Claymont. Now shut up and let me ask the questions from now
on. Do you know--”

“Pawn! Tool of the state!” he interrupted. I struck him in the temple with the top of my
weapon and then pressed the barrel to the underside of his chin.

“Shut the fuck up, asshole!” I yell directly into his ear. “Where is your fucking
daughter?”

“I, I don’t have a daughter,” he lied.

“Liar,” I struck him with the gun once more.

“Dead!” he cried out. “She died six months ago, but you already know that, the state had
her murdered.” He spat on me and I immediately grabbed a hold of his face and bounced
it off the ground.

“Wrong, dick. She’s alive and well and sends her regards. Her and I are going to be very
happy together after I eliminate your devil cult.” I yell angrily into his ear, then push his
face into the ground even further. As I released him, he only laughed, and continued to
stare down the barrel of my gun.

“That whore will get what she deserves,” he said, “and so will you.”

Now I laughed and asked him, “You know the best way to kill a man?”

He spat blood on the ground and looked up at me, saying. “There are many cumbersome
ways to kill a man: you can make him carry a plank of wood to the top of a hill and nail
him to it. To do this properly you require a crowd of people wearing sandals, a cock that
crows, a cloak to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one man to hammer the nails
home.” As he spoke of the crucifixion, I knew that he was doing his best to persuade me
to spare his life. He was a master of his trade, manipulation, but he would not sway my
bullets tonight. Frank Claymont would be dead before the night was over. I let him
continue anyway.
“Or you can take a length of steel, shaped and chased in a traditional way, and attempt to
pierce the metal cage he wears. But for this you need white horses, English trees, men
with bows and arrows, at least two flags, a prince and a castle to hold your banquet in.

“Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind allows, blow gas at him. But then you
need a mile of mud sliced through with ditches, not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs and some round hats made of steel.

“In an age of aero planes, you may fly miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then require is an ocean to separate you, two systems
of government, a nation’s scientists, several factories, a psychopath and land that no one
needs for several years.

“These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more
neat is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, and leave
him there.”

I smiled at him and pulled the hammer back on my weapon. “Cute, but wrong.”

“Then what is the best way to kill a man?” he asked me.

“In cold blood.” I squeezed the trigger and in an instant my bullet was in and out of
Claymont’s skull and on the ground, along with parts of his brain. Outside, the melee
between the mob and the street gangs of Detroit continued just as fiercely as before. I
opened a window and climbed into the alley between this building and the next, and
prepared for the cold walk, the long way home.

When I opened the door to my apartment, I half expected Melissa to be gone, along with
what little I had. But when I entered, I found her sitting on the bed waiting for me. She
immediately sprang up and ran over throwing herself at me, wrapping her arms over my
shoulders. I held her tight and kissed her hard. “I love you,” she said to me. I stared into
her innocent brown eyes. I can’t take back all of my sins, but if I can protect this one little
girl then maybe it will make up for some of it. Maybe it will be the value of my life. I
kissed her again.

“I love you, too,” I said.