The first wedding was at a community centre on a street in Detroit that used to have a diner on the corner. The diner was gone now. In its place was a nail salon that had been open for four months and was probably going to close in four more. The wedding took place on a Saturday afternoon. The ceremony lasted twenty minutes.

Mike Harris stood as best man. The groom was his neighbour's brother, a man he had known for three years and still could not remember the name of. After the ceremony, in the parking lot behind the community centre, Mike stood in the smoking area because the centre did not allow smoking inside.

A woman was standing by a grey Toyota with a license plate that was missing a section of paint. She was the bride's distant cousin. Her name was Rebecca. She was from Cleveland. She worked at a fast-food restaurant in a mall that was currently posting store-closed signs on three of its windows.

They smoked one cigarette together. Rebecca said, You are not getting married? Mike said, Not yet. A suitable one has not come up. Rebecca said, Neither has one for me. Then she put out the cigarette and went inside.

The second wedding was at St. Joseph's Church. Mike went because someone had to. He saw Rebecca outside the church. She was standing next to a construction worker whose hands were full of calluses, the same kind of hands Mike had before the factory closed. Mike did not go inside the church. He stood in the parking lot for ten minutes. Then he went home.

Four months later, at a wedding in a VFW hall, Mike saw Rebecca in the bar. She was sitting alone with a beer. Mike walked over and sat beside her. They talked for ten minutes. Rebecca said Cleveland was snowing. Mike said Detroit was snowing too. Rebecca said it snowed more there. Mike said maybe. Then Rebecca's fianc came over. The construction worker. He looked at Mike. Mike looked at him. Mike stood up and left.

At the party after the VFW wedding, Danny sat beside Mike. Danny had gone to work at a new construction site after the old one closed. Danny said the safety equipment was not up to code. He had reported it three times. Nobody cared. Danny said something was going to happen someday. Mike said stop thinking about it. Danny said I am thinking about it.

A week later, Danny died at the construction site. He fell from a scaffold. Six stories up. Mike saw it on the news.

He went to the wake. It was held in a simple funeral home on the east side, the kind of place where the flowers are real but the carpet is not. There were thirty people. Mike stood in the corner. He saw Rebecca at the end of the wake.

They met in the parking lot afterward. Rebecca said, You knew Danny? Mike said, Worked together. Rebecca said, He had a daughter. Mike said, I know.

Rebecca took a piece of paper from her bag. It had a phone number written on it. She handed it to Mike. Mike took it and put it in his pocket. They walked away from each other in different directions.

Mike got home. He took the paper from his pocket. He looked at the number. There was a grease stain on it. The last four digits were not legible.

His grandmother had arranged a marriage. A woman, forty years old, had a house, had a job at a supermarket. His grandmother said, She is stable. Mike did not object. The wedding was scheduled for Saturday.

Saturday morning, Mike did not get out of bed. He turned off his phone. He put on his coat, went out, and walked to the mall where Rebecca worked. The mall was closed. The store was closed. There was a handwritten note on the door in Rebecca's handwriting: Moved out, March 2016.

Mike stood at the door for a while. Then he turned and walked away. He walked to the corner, took the piece of paper from his pocket, looked at it once, and threw it into a trash can. He did not look back. He walked down the street, not knowing where he was going.

It was snowing in Detroit.

OTMES-v2-DTW-018-M2-180-9R42I-V9C4 Variant: V-05 Dirty Realism Zero-Degree Narrative | TI: 42.0 (T4) | Angle: 180 | Style: 肮脏现实主义零度叙事