4

i didn't sleep well that night, after the incident with the car keys and hiding Sarah's car down around the corner. This might have had something to do with the fact that I slept on the couch in the family room, which is leather, which meant the covers kept slipping off, and every hour or so I would wake up, freezing from neck to toenail.

I shifted into a sitting position around 4:30 A.M., turned on a light, and thought about going for a walk. Almost every day, I'd take one through Valley Forest Estates, passing houses in various stages of completion. Many were done and landscaped, like ours; others looked nearly finished but lacked lawns and exterior details like light fixtures. Sheets of drywall lay stacked out in front of several others. There were the skeletal homes, nothing but wood frames that allowed you to see through the entire structure, and finally, at the furthest reaches of the development, there were huge holes in the ground, some with concrete basement floors poured. Beyond that, fields, and a pathway that led down to the banks of Willow Creek, home, evidently, of the soon-to-be-extinct Mississauga salamander.

It was, I decided, too dark for a walk. And besides, it was better to save it for when I most needed it: that time of the day when I'd be staring at the computer screen, unable to write another line of dialogue or describe the workings of an alien monster's digestive system. Walks were the best way to work out plot points.

These walks, to some degree, had gotten me interested in the community, at least to the point of reading what was going on in it. There's a tendency among us suburbanites, especially those of us who have moved from downtown but still have strong ties there, like Sarah with her job, to not give a rat's ass about what's going on in our own backyard. The suburbs are just the place where you live, but the city is where everything happens. So you read about what the downtown mayor is up to, even though he's no longer your mayor, or the police chief, even though he's no longer your police chief, because city politics and city crime are always going to be more interesting than suburban politics and suburban crime. First of all, there's more of it. And it tends to be a lot sexier. No matter where you live, you probably know the name of the mayor of New York City. But who's the mayor of White Plains? Who presides over the council of Darien, Connecticut? And who cares?

Three times a week, a local paper—called, appropriately, The Suburban—would land at our doorstep, free of charge. It was nearly as heavy as the sport utility vehicle that shared its name, thick like a weekend paper. But there was no magazine, no book section, no Week in Review. The Suburban rarely got above twenty pages, but it was stuffed with enough flyers to wrap an entire English village's fish-and-chips orders for a month. The news stories most likely to get in were also those most likely to attract ads, so the opening of a new restaurant or hardware store always rated a few inches of copy. The Suburban's editorials were of the “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” variety, and went to great pains to offend no one.

The only thing consistently worth reading was the letters page. There'd be someone ranting about high taxes, maybe a letter from a local politician defending himself against a taxpayer rant in the last issue, someone else complaining that the whole world was going to hell and someone ought to do something about it.

So, having decided against an early morning walk in the dark, I grabbed some unread Suburbans that had been stashed on the lower shelf of the coffee table, and leafed through them. I spotted a familiar name on the letters page. There was a submission from one Samuel Spender, who identified himself as president of the Willow Creek Preservation Society.

When will this council, and in particular the members of the Land Use Committee, recognize the importance of the Willow Creek Marshlands, and prevent the destabilization of this environmentally sensitive ecosystem? Development has already been allowed to encroach too closely upon this area, but there is still a chance for the council to do the right thing and stop the approval of the final phase of the Valley Forest Estates development. This phase, if allowed to proceed, will put another hundred homes within a pop can's throw of the marshlands, threatening the homes, and the very survival, of a wide variety of species, both land-based and aquatic.

Standing at the banks of Willow Creek, surrounded by some of the only trees within a five-mile radius, I had worked out several characters' motivations over the last few months. (Does the alien slime monster eat the Earthling's brain out of hunger, or did a troubled upbringing make him do it?) When you stood next to Willow Creek, held your breath, and listened to the sounds of the shallow waters flowing by, you could almost imagine that you weren't a few hundred yards from a soulless subdivision. I could remember, when we went in to sign the deal to buy our house, seeing this area on an oversized map on the wall behind Greenway. I had to agree with Spender's letter, that it would be a shame to see the land near the creek developed, but felt like a hypocrite at the same time. What had this entire area looked like before the developers took over? What had the land where our house now stood been before the surveyors marked out where the streets would go, and the bulldozers came in and leveled everything? Had it been woodlands? Had it been farmland? Did corn used to come out of the ground where we now parked the cars? How many birds and groundhogs and squirrels had to relocate once the builders broke ground on Valley Forest Estates?

But at least our house didn't back up onto a marshland. It's not like we were tossing our trash into the creek. I've never been what you'd call a rabble-rouser, a guy who stands up at meetings and demands change. I'm not the type of taxpayer who gets on the phone to his representative and demands a stop sign at the corner. I've always been content to let others be activists, and maybe that comes from a background of reporting. You felt you were doing enough just by keeping a record of what the champions for change were up to. I gave you a voice, I got your story into the paper, but don't ask me to get involved personally. I've got articles to write.

I didn't know that the developers of Valley Forest Estates were a bunch of environmental rapists, but I did know that they were unable to properly caulk a window or keep a leaking shower from staining the kitchen ceiling below. Maybe they should be stopped from building more homes anywhere, not just on the banks of Willow Creek.

When I was finished reading the Suburbans and some sections of the Metropolitans from the previous weekend, the sun was up. I heard Sarah go into the kitchen, and she said nothing when I wandered in.

The remainder of the day before had not gone well. I expected to make amends with Sarah shortly after I returned with her car. But she took the car out again as soon as I was back with it. She went, it turned out, to the drugstore, and bought a tube of ointment for my burned hand. She pulled into the driveway half an hour after she'd left and found me sitting at the kitchen table, where I had been wondering whether Sarah had left me for good and what that meant in terms of how many burgers I should throw onto the barbecue. She pulled the tube out of her purse and threw it at me, nailing me right in the eye.

She didn't speak to me for the rest of the evening. We started out in the same bed, but there was a gulf between us under the covers. I reached over tentatively once, to touch her back lightly, a lame gesture at trying to open communications, but Sarah shifted away, and matted the covers down around her as a defense against any more entreaties. So I slipped out from under the covers, tucked a pillow under my arm and grabbed a blanket from the closet, and went downstairs.

Paul and Angie, taking their mother's side, had given me the cold shoulder the rest of the day. Paul had filled Angie in, when she got home, on my car-hiding stunt. I tried to explain to them, while their mother was upstairs, that it hadn't been my intention to be mean. What I'd done was for their mother's own good. Sure, she was angry with me now, but did anyone think she'd ever leave her key in the lock again? Huh? Did they?

They walked out of the room on me. And the next morning, at breakfast, they said nothing as they poured themselves juice and spooned down some strawberry yogurt. Actually, Paul used a spoon only to finish off the residue of yogurt he was unable to consume by tipping the small plastic container up to his mouth and hurtling it down like an extremely thick milkshake. And then they left together, walking a half block to the corner to meet the high school bus.

I offered to make Sarah some tea and toast, but she indicated she was fine, she'd take care of it, although what she actually said was “Move.”

I went to reach for the kettle to fill it from the tap, but she nudged me out of the way and grabbed it herself.

“I'm really sorry,” I said.

Sarah said nothing.

“And thanks for the stuff, that ointment. I was surprised you still went out and got it for me. I wouldn't have blamed you if you hadn't. I put it on my hand and it was right back to normal this morning. It stung a bit in the night, you know, but then it went away, so, thanks.”

Sarah got out a teabag and a slice of bread for the toaster. When couples aren't speaking to each other, all the other sounds in a room become heightened. The ticking of the electric kettle warming up, the scraping of the butter knife across hot toast, the clinking of a spoon against the inside of a china cup. As much to break the silence as to find out what was going on in the world, Sarah turned on the small under-the-cupboard TV. In addition to reading a couple of papers every morning, she watches a lot of CNN and local news so that she has a good handle on what's happening before she gets to the paper.

“—the third house in the region police have raided this year,” said the morning man with the very nice hair. “Police are alarmed by the growing number of people who have turned their homes into massive marijuana-growing operations. Not only is it against the law, but it's a major fire hazard, considering that these illicit growers bypass the electric meters, sometimes inexpertly, and all that extra power can overheat circuits with disastrous results.

“A woman in Bentley says the thief who stole her purse from her shopping cart also made off with a winning lottery ticket for $100,000. Lottery officials say they are paying special attention to people coming in to claim prizes.

“Finally, more about a story that still haunts this city, nearly two years later. Police say they may have some leads in their hunt for Devlin Smythe, wanted in the death of little Jesse Shuttleworth, who—”

Sarah scrambled for the remote on the kitchen table and turned up the volume.

“—was found dead in a refrigerator in Smythe's apartment. Police believe Smythe also went by several other names, including Devin Smythe, Daniel Smithers, and Danny Simpson. There have been reports of suspects matching Smythe's description in the Vancouver and Seattle areas.”

“Jesus. Two years,” Sarah said. “They always call her ‘little.' Of course she was little. She was five years old, for Christ's sake.” It was the most she'd said in my presence since the day before.

“Authorities in those areas are assisting local police in their inquiries. Coming up: Take a close look at those bills you've got in your wallet. They may just be counter—”

Sarah turned off the TV, dropped off her plate and cup in the sink, and went upstairs to brush her teeth before heading into the city. I refilled the kettle and plugged it in to make some coffee for myself. While the water heated I went into my study around the corner from that ground-floor laundry room, which was no longer the aphrodisiac it once was, booted up my computer, and opened the file folder next to the keyboard where I kept the pages of my manuscript. The word “Position” was scribbled across the otherwise blank title page, but that was just an inside joke. The real title, the one that would appear in the publisher's spring catalogue, was TechnoGod. There were 357 more pages under that title one, and only a last chapter to write and some proofreading to do before bundling it off to my editor.

I write science fiction, mostly, and you could probably figure this out by stepping into my study. Or else you'd conclude that I'm a thirteen-year-old boy trapped in the body of a forty-one-year-old man. Maybe you'd be right on both counts. The room is littered with SF kitsch. Star Wars figures, Terminator statuettes, plastic Jurassic Park dinosaurs from Toys “R” Us, a rubbery shark from Jaws, small diecast models of the various flying machines from the Thunderbirds puppet show, an assortment of Enterprises from all the Star Trek series and movies. My writing center constitutes the short end of a large L-shaped desk, while the long end is my modeling center. On this particular day there were two model kits on the go—a foot-long Seaview submarine from the 1960s television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and a resin model of Ripley, the Sigourney Weaver character from the Alien movies. I like building models of things—spaceships, submarines, futuristic cars—more than assembling models of people, but I've always been partial to anything related to the Alien flicks.

I'm aware that it may not be normal for men in their forties to collect such toys, but then again I don't make my living in a normal way. Being an author of more conventional fiction would be unusual enough, but writing SF puts you in a different category altogether. Science fiction writers don't find their books reviewed in Time or Newsweek or The New York Times, although the latter has its token science fiction column in the book section every couple of weeks. I've never understood the ghettoization. Science fiction offers cutting-edge social commentary, inventive allegory, a grand vision of where our current social and political trends are taking us, an exploration of the human condition told through high-tech metaphor. And, of course, little monsters with razor-sharp teeth bursting out of people's chests.

I'd been putting the finishing touches on my fourth book, and had hopes, as all authors do, that this would be the one that would once again earn me some critical attention, even if only in the cozy SF community, but in the pit of my stomach knew it wouldn't be. The novel would be published to little fanfare. There would be virtually no publicity. The author tour would consist of two magazine interviews by phone. It would be ordered by the major book chains in such disappointing numbers as to make it impossible to create an impressive display of copies near the front of the store. Instead, it would be put back in the regular stacks, spine out, on a shelf reachable only by NBA stars, thereby guaranteeing that no one would ever find it. The publisher would arrange one book signing, not at one of the big chain bookstores, but at a mall store, where I would be seated behind a table in view of passing shoppers weighed down with Gap and Banana Republic bags and carrying containers of vinegar-soaked New York Fries, who would wonder who I was but not care enough to stop and ask, and I would smile and nod as they passed, and then, miracle of miracles, a middle-aged couple would slow as they walked by, pause and look at the display of my books, turn, and approach, and my heart would begin to swell, that someone was actually going to talk to me, and maybe even buy a book, which I would be delighted to sign, to make out personally, even. And the woman would say to me, “Do you know where the washrooms are?”

I actually thought this new book might have a chance. It was a sequel to my first novel, Missionary, a title my publisher really liked because it would make people think that, at some level, it was about fucking, but which was actually about missionaries of the future. Or more precisely, reverse missionaries. The time is several hundred years from now, and religion has been outlawed on Earth. Faith has been overtaken by technology. Computers are God. The missionaries decide to take their message to other worlds, to persuade civilizations deemed more primitive than ours to abandon their beliefs in supernatural beings and embrace the computer chip. Things go badly when our know-it-all Earthlings, in the act of setting ablaze a house of worship on the planet Endar, have the life crushed out of them by a huge hand reaching down from the clouds.

I'm not a particularly religious person, but this book found its way into Christian bookstores as well as the mainstream ones, did reasonably well, and it was that book's success that has kept me going since. It seemed odd to see Missionary in the window of a religious bookshop, displayed alongside God Is My Anchorman, by a noted network news executive, and the collected scripts of Touched by an Angel. The book probably never would have made it there if the shop owners knew my editor thought its title would make people think about fucking. He's not a particularly religious person either, but it was his irreverence that prompted me to tentatively call my new book Position. My second and third books tanked (number two, Slime, was about nasty sewer creatures that pass among us by disguising themselves as cable company executives; and number three, Blown Through Time, about a guy who goes back in time to keep the inventor of the hot-air hand dryer from being born, had real potential, I thought, but went absolutely nowhere), so my decision to revisit my missionaries was an easy one. They seemed my best hope of coming up with another modest hit.

I was in the newspaper business when Missionary came out. I'd started out as a two-way, a reporter-photographer, which meant that most out-of-town assignments went to me. No need to buy two airline tickets for a reporter and a photographer—one seat would do. Although I liked shooting pictures, I grew weary of being on the road so much, and when a position became available at the city hall bureau, I applied. This, as it turned out, was a mistake. I became an expert in everything municipal. I knew all there was to know about planning acts and planning boards and official plans and amendments and amendments to amendments and zoning restrictions and parking enforcement and snow removal and zero-based budgeting, and there were times when I thought I'd like to take a copy of the city's collected bylaws, tie it around my neck, and throw myself off the pier at the foot of Majesty Street. I began to wonder if maybe journalism just wasn't my thing, and I plotted an exit strategy. My first book, written late at night and on weekends, became my way out.

The money from Missionary didn't go as far as I'd hoped, which meant taking the odd freelance assignment. I'd written articles for The Metropolitan (some futurist stuff, where the city would be in fifty years, that kind of thing), some magazine pieces. But with a nonexistent mortgage on the new house, we figured we could manage fairly well on Sarah's income until my next ship came in.

So I worked from home, was there when the kids left for school and when they got home, and could be counted on most days to give Sarah a kiss goodbye before she left for the paper. It didn't look as though that particular service would be required this day. All Sarah said as she headed out the door to the car was a simple “See ya.” Enough to let me know, officially, that she was out of the house, and that she wasn't interested in any precommute snuggling. I watched from behind the curtain as she got out her keys, opened up the Camry, backed down the drive, and disappeared down the street.

 

writer's block arrived before noon, so around eleven, on the way back from my walk along Willow Creek, I swung by the sales office for Valley Forest Estates. Phone calls hadn't worked. Maybe a face-to-face encounter would be more effective where honoring a new-home warranty was involved.

The office was just as you drove into the neighborhood, a couple of mobile homes stitched together with an elegant front built around it as a disguise. I had a feeling that once the development was complete, they would pack up their fancy desks and high-tech photocopying machines and architectural models of the subdivision, rip out the trailers, and build one last shoddy house on the lot where it stood.

Okay, maybe that's unfair. We'd had some problems with the house, but surely they could be fixed. I would turn on the charm with these dickheads.

As I entered the sales office, I glanced at the wood-paneled wall, where pictures of the various sales staff and company executives hung. I was looking for the guy who sold us the house. There he was. Don Greenway. The man our street was named for. Every day we basked in his celebrity. It was like living on Tom Cruise Boulevard and meeting Tom Cruise.

I approached the reception desk.

“Hello,” said a perky blonde woman in a white blouse, her hair falling down around her shoulders. “Welcome to Valley Forest Estates.”

“Hi,” I said. “I wonder, is Mr. Greenway in?”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No. I was just hoping I might be able to catch him. I was passing by.”

“Were you thinking of purchasing a Valley Forest home? Did you want to see some of our brochures or take a look at our model homes?” She smiled the whole time she was talking, like an Entertainment Tonight reporter.

“No, we already own a home here,” I said. And the receptionist's smile instantly vanished.

“Oh, I see. And what did you want?”

“Well, we've had a couple of problems and I wanted to see about getting them fixed.”

“Oh.” I had the sense that I was not the first person to come in here with a complaint. “Well, Mr. Greenway is very busy today, but if you'd like to leave your phone number with me, I'll make sure that he gets back to you at his earliest possible convenience.”

“Well, that sounds great, but we had some trouble before, when we first moved in, with water seeping into the basement? And I had to drop by here several times before anyone came to take a look at it. And I've been in here before about our upstairs window, how I have to caulk it outside all the time, but the wind and the rain still manage to come through, and now our leaky shower has caused part of our kitchen ceiling to discolor, so there's this big stain, you know? If it's all right with you, I'll just wait around awhile until Mr. Greenway becomes available.”

“Well, Mr.— What is your name, sir?”

“Walker. Zack Walker.”

“Mr. Walker, I assure you, Valley Forest Estates takes any problems you might have very seriously, and I will convey to Mr. Greenway your concerns and—”

The door to the office where Sarah and I had signed the deal to buy our house opened and out stepped Don Greenway, all five-foot-six of him, about forty-five, a bit of a paunch held back nicely by keeping the jacket of his expensive suit buttoned.

“Stef,” he said to the receptionist, “I wonder if you could get me the papers for—”

“Mr. Greenway,” I said cordially, extending my hand. “I'm so glad I was able to catch you.”

Stef said, “Yes, this gentleman, Mr. Walker, was waiting to see you. I explained to him that you were quite busy today but that we could set something up.”

“It'll only take a minute,” I said.

“You look familiar to me,” Greenway said. “You're on my street, at the corner of Chancery Park.”

“That's right,” I said. “My wife Sarah and I.”

“You went for the upgraded carpet underpadding.”

Whoa. He was good. “That was us,” I said. “I wonder if you have two seconds.”

“I'm really on my way to a showing, but sure, go ahead.”

I told him about our most recent problem, the stained ceiling in the kitchen, caused by, I believed, water leaking from an improperly tiled and caulked shower stall on the floor above. “I think someone needs to come in and redo the shower, and once that's done, fix the hole in the drywall in the kitchen. I understand these things are still covered for two years, if I remember the contract we signed and all.”

Greenway considered what I'd said. “You sure you've been using the shower properly?” he asked. “Because if you're not, that could be your problem.”

“Using it improperly? We turn it on, stand in there, and shower. If there's a wrong way to do that, we haven't figured it out yet.”

Greenway shook his head, suggesting I didn't understand. “Pretty long showers?” he asked. “I seem to recall you saying you have teenagers? You know how they can be, letting the water run and run and run.”

“Look,” I said, starting to bristle, “I don't see what that has to do with anything. Water's leaking out and wrecking the ceiling in the kitchen. And I think you guys should do something about it. This isn't the first time we've had a problem, you know, and I don't exactly think we're the only ones in the neighborhood who've been having problems.” I thought of Earl, whose windows were often fogged up with condensation. I'd been meaning to ask whether he'd launched a complaint of his own. “My neighbor across the street, for example, all his windows, they've got moisture or something trapped between the panes, you can't see through them, and—”

“I don't have to listen to this. By your own admission, you've acknowledged that your teenagers are running that shower virtually twenty-four hours a day, so it's no wonder some water may have spilled over the sill and that's why you're having the problem you've described.”

“By my own admission? I never said that. You just said that. What's the deal here?”

Greenway's cheeks were starting to get red, and a vein in his forehead was swelling. He was raising a finger to me, about to say something else, when he saw someone over my shoulder coming through the front doors. Now the finger was moving away from me and pointing to the newcomer.

“You get the hell out of here!” Greenway said.

I whirled around to see who he was talking to. I recognized him instantly as Samuel Spender, still dressed in his jeans and hiking boots, but this time wearing a white cotton shirt. He glared angrily at Greenway.

“I know what you're up to, you son of a bitch,” Spender said. “You think you can buy them off but you can't.”

“Get out! Get the hell out!”

Stef, the receptionist, was on her feet. “Mr. Spender, I'm going to have to ask you to leave or we'll have to call the police.”

“Go ahead and call them,” Spender said. “I got lots to tell them.”

“You have nothing but rumor and lies,” Greenway spat at him. The vein on his forehead was a garden hose now, ready to blow. “You're out to ruin people's jobs, to end their livelihoods, to save a few fucking tadpoles, you fucking moron.”

“It's salamanders, not tadpoles, you jackass, but you wouldn't give a shit either way, would you?”

Greenway started to lunge for Spender, and instinctively I stepped in to hold him back. He broke free of my grasp, which really didn't amount to much, but my brief interference seemed to have been enough to make him reconsider any sort of physical attack.

Spender hadn't stepped back when Greenway appeared ready to attack. He looked ready to fight if he had to, and if those hiking boots were any clue, he got a lot more exercise than Greenway and could probably clean his clock.

“You can't buy me,” Spender said. “I'm not for sale.” And then he left, kicking the trailer door wide open on his way out. Greenway stuck an index finger down between his neck and shirt collar, moved it around in a futile attempt to let in some air. He reached inside his jacket for a handkerchief and blotted his cheeks and forehead.

“You should sit down,” Stef told him.

“Get me Carpington, and then Mr. Benedetto,” he said, went back into his office, and closed his door. Stef got back in position behind her desk and picked up the receiver, then noticed I was still standing there.

“What about my shower?” I asked.

She looked at me for only a second, then started making calls for Greenway.

 

back home, i plunked myself down in the computer chair, and sat, staring at the screen, for a full ten minutes, working up my nerve. Then I called Sarah.

“City. Sarah here.”

“Hi. It's me.”

It was like I'd placed a long-distance call to the North Pole. You could feel the chill coming through the line.

“What,” Sarah said.

“I just wanted to say again that I'm sorry.”

Nothing.

“Did I tell you about that guy who was going around the neighborhood with a petition?”

“What guy?”

“Okay, then I didn't. Some guy, his name's Spender, he's trying to keep Valley Forest from building homes near Willow Creek.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, I ran into him when I was over at the sales office today.”

“You told them about the mark on the kitchen ceiling?” Now, she was talking.

“Well, I brought it to their attention, anyway. They might need to be reminded again. They seem to have a lot on their minds over there. It's not that big a job. I might be able to do it myself.”

“You're joking.”

“I could take a shot at it. I've got the caulking gun. I could put some stuff in the corners of the shower, see if that took care of the problem.”

“I've seen what you can do with a caulking gun. There should be a three-day waiting period before people like you are allowed to own one.”

“Anyway, what I wanted to ask you was, do the names Benedetto and Carpington mean anything to you?”

“What?” Annoyed again.

“Benedetto and Carpington. They came up when I was over at the Valley Forest office. Greenway, you know, the guy we bought from? He got in a bit of a discussion with this Spender guy, and those names came up.”

“Well, Carpington, I think, is the councilman for our area,” Sarah said. “In the city, I always used to know the name of my alderman and the school board members, but since we moved I don't keep track as well. But I think that's the guy.”

“And Benedetto?”

“That sounds familiar. Hang on—” big sigh “—let me do a library search.” I heard her hitting several more keystrokes, muttering “Come on, come on” under her breath. “Okay, it's Tony Bennett's real name, but that's probably not the guy you're looking for. There's two other hits for this year, four for last, then, like thirty, the year before. Just a sec.” More waiting. “Yeah, here's why I remembered the name. He's some developer-wheeler-dealer guy, government department that was unloading tracts of land had a guy who allegedly, hang on, I'm trying to get another screenload here, okay, allegedly took kickbacks from this Benedetto guy so that his bid for the lands would be accepted. Of course, the bids were ridiculously low, then Benedetto resold the land in parcels and made ten times the money back.”

“So what happened?”

“I'm just looking ahead here. Looks like not much. There was some sort of government investigation launched, but you know how those things can go. People forget about it, it never gets wrapped up, who knows. That's it.”

“Thanks,” I said, paused. “What time you think you'll be home tonight?”

“Gosh,” Sarah said, “it could be late. I misplaced my keys, so the car's probably stolen, so I could be late.” And she hung up.