“This next neighborhood is The Gardens. It’s a more established neighborhood than what you just saw … mmm, less in transition, you might say.” Betsy Henry—a diminutive dynamo in her early sixties with salt and pepper hair stacked and pinned to the back of her head—wore a string of yellow pearls big enough to choke a hippo. They clashed with the lanyard for her orange reading glasses. She had on a floral patterned dress with a frilly white lace collar hugging her neck, hiding age lines. She breezed along Central Avenue in her forest-green Mercedes, five miles over the speed limit.
Alex figured her use of the word transition was real estate speak for gentrification. They just toured a residential area in an old section of the city characterized by gone-to-seed mansions selling at rock-bottom prices to young professionals eager to restore them to their past glory. Alex neither had the time nor inclination to get involved in a renovation, preferring instead a turnkey, move-in-ready home.
Alex kept a city map open on his lap to learn streets and start the arduous process of familiarizing himself with general geography. He was also keeping track of the distance from neighborhoods to the medical center, an important issue for taking night call. A contiguous series of ratty, tired businesses—fast-food franchises, 7-Elevens, discount gas stations—lined both sides of the wide street, interspersed with residential stretches of peeling clapboard homes with cluttered, dead yards and an occasional refrigerator on a front porch. Overwhelmingly African American, from the people he saw walking the streets.
Betty slowed and turned right into a short asphalt road, driving up to a brick guardhouse that stood between two sections of a ten-foot-high brick wall. A uniformed guard behind the lower half of a Dutch door stood as Betty pulled alongside and rolled down her window.
“Howdy Miz Henry. Fixing to show today?”
“Yes, George. Should be about an hour, give or take.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded as the gate began to slide open.
“A nice feature of this neighborhood,” Betty said, slowly accelerating to twenty miles per hour, “is security. As you can see, it’s a gated community with random patrols day and night. You’ll appreciate that aspect when you’re at the hospital all hours of the night and your bride is home alone. When you leave for vacation, the guard service will stop by to pick up mail and newspapers and walk the perimeter of the house. All of this is extremely comforting.”
Considering the economically depressed neighborhoods they just drove through, Alex figured these winding, oak-lined roads with substantial homes and manicured landscapes would be the first choice of any burglar in search of high-yield items. “You live here?”
“No, but I’m in and out frequently enough that the guards know me. I’ve sold many a home in this neighborhood over the years, all to physicians.” She seemed pleased with herself.
She parked next to an emerald lawn with parallel boxwood hedges on either side of the brick walk that led to a brick portico with balancing white columns. The one-story house had a large peaked roof. “I believe you’ll like this place.”
“What’re your thoughts?” Betty asked as they strolled slowly back to her car.
“It tops all the others we’ve seen so far.” He liked the location: equidistant between Baptist Central and Baptist West, the two opposite directions he’d drive if called out at night. This house was certainly much nicer than their present home. It quickly became clear the housing dollar went much further than in their present location, but he wasn’t so keen on living in a gated community. It seemed a bit pretentious. “I’ll have these pictures developed soon as I get home,” he said, holding up the disposable Kodak camera he’d purchased that morning at the hotel gift shop. “If Lisa likes the house, we’ll fly back so she can see it in person. I expect to have an answer by Friday.”