Jim motioned me away from the door towards the back wall. The only seating in the place were a couple of backless wooden stools and he didn’t invite me to sit. He stared at me in silence, his face non-committal. I stared back and remained quiet. He finally turned away and stood looking out the one small window.
The blockhead with the walkie-talkie must’ve called for his boss because after about fifteen minutes some self-important, obviously higher level asshole in a black business suit carrying a briefcase, came walking up and began holding a quiet conversation with him. The goon who’d been watching me stepped outside and joined them.
They talked for a couple of minutes then the suit shook his head, pulled out something from the briefcase that resembled a credit-card reader, stuck my driver’s license in and pulled it back out. I guessed it was some type of copier but I wasn’t worried. It was valid, so no problem. He ambled in with my driver’s license and the envelope.
He didn’t introduce himself or ask my name, though I suppose he’d seen it on my license. After staring at the address side of the envelope for a second, he handed it and my driver’s license to me. He seemed nervous.
Giving me a cheesy condescending smile, he said in an odd accent, “There’s been a weather inversion and that’s what’s causing your eyes to sting. It’ll go away after a while. You’re free to go, ah, Mr. Marrie.” Then he told me how to get to Carter Street.
To avoid possible further detention, I composed my face into as pleasant an expression as it would go. I nodded and said, “Thank you” and didn’t correct him on the pronunciation of my name. He didn’t say what it was in the air that the weather was inverting but I didn’t ask him any questions including why the fuck the guard couldn’t simply have told me that.
“Oh, by the way,” he said to my back as I was going out the door. “It’s best to walk there from here. Don’t worry about, ah, about your car; it’ll be fine where it is.”
He gave a short chuckle that bordered on being a giggle. Couldn’t figure that out unless he was laughing because he thought my car was a joke and nobody would want the thing.
I didn’t turn to look at him. If I had, he might’ve gotten the impression that I was irritated. I nodded again and kept going.
At least they didn’t search me. If they’d found my gun or my knife, they probably would’ve taken them. The city didn’t ban concealed weapons but in spite of its decrepit state, Blue Heaven was a gated community and such places made their own rules.
But, lesson learned. If you wanted into Blue Heaven without impediment, you stated your business, forked over your credentials, didn’t ask questions, and moved on. I wondered why the hell they’d gotten so uptight about it. When I got back, I planned on asking Adam if he knew.
Annoyed, I hiked down to Carter Street. I noted the roadways had a curious oily sheen to them, and, except for Main, which was smooth and paved with blacktop, were as bad as Adam described. At some point, someone had put down a layer of ankle-turning gravel that didn’t really fill in all the potholes and ruts. I saw why Adam felt lucky not to have popped a tire. The sharp gravel would be murder on balding ones like his – and mine. I wondered why such a crummy place needed armed guards.
I found the address, which was on the corner in what appeared to be a double or triple lot. It was a large, rambling two-story, of an architecture that didn’t quite match the surrounding houses. Faced with stone in varying shades of brown and tan instead of the pastel vinyl of the rest, it was just as grimed but in much better condition than most of the other homes I’d passed. There was a large mailbox near the sidewalk made of stones that matched the ones of the house, but Adam said the envelope had to be hand delivered to the resident, so I rang the doorbell and handed it off to the old man with longish white hair who came to the door.
He was wearing glasses with the thickest lenses I’d ever seen, and stared at me with what might’ve been a smile since the corners of his mouth seemed to give an upward twitch. He mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “thank you” and shut the door without further conversation. That didn’t bother me. I didn’t want to talk to him, either.
I headed back to the entrance, and that’s when I discovered how easy it was to get lost in Blue Heaven.
Chapter Sixteen
WHEN I GOT TO THE CORNER AND STARTED UP the street, I thought I must’ve turned the wrong way because the sign displayed a different name than the street I’d come down.
I was irritated but also baffled because I’d never gotten that turned around before. But, since I was pissed at the guards at the time, I figured I’d not paid proper attention to which way I turned. I stood there for a moment trying to remember. Perhaps I’d turned left instead of right.
I reversed directions and went back the other way. Doing that didn’t afford a correction, and I spent the afternoon trying to find my way out.
The place was dingy and depressing. The overhead, ever-present haze didn’t help, but some of this was due to the fact that the year before, major power outages began cropping up everywhere, so some folk had taken to using wood- and coal-burning stoves and fireplaces as a backup means of heating and cooking. The smoke left the buildings covered in a layer of grime and soot.
So far, the outages had been temporary but there was no rhyme or reason for them. In some places, they lasted for days and the fear was that they might become permanent.
That part wasn’t any different from everywhere else, though the place looked dirtier than the rest of the city. There, they attempted to keep things semi-clean and the streets in repair. Or they did where people still lived.
Some of the Blue Heaven structures were already coming apart with fascia falling off, holes appearing in roofs, and siding that sagged. A lot of the lawns were unkempt. It was one of the newer subdivisions, developed only a couple of years before the Event so I thought that was pretty fast deterioration after only seven years and some months. If you didn’t notice the tendrils of smoke coming from an occasional chimney or see a furtive movement at a curtained window, you might’ve supposed that, as in the case of my parents’ neighborhood, you were in one of the sections of the city that had been totally abandoned. Again, I found myself puzzled as to why it was a gated community. It didn’t appear to be the kind of place that usually was.
The first thing I learned was that most of the people were neither friendly nor helpful. There weren’t many out, and the first two I attempted to stop and ask for directions behaved as though they were deaf and wearing blinders. They ignored my friendly “Hello”.
My greeting died on my lips as they swung past me at a fast clip. I didn’t try to catch them. I shrugged and kept going.
I’d gone another couple of blocks when I heard somebody coming up behind me. I turned around to see a woman carrying a shopping bag in one hand. When I spoke and started to ask her for directions, she looked startled then her face tightened and she clutched the bag to her chest. Without saying a word, she swung around and scrambled off in the opposite direction.
Too startled to call after her, I watched her go. She moved fast for a woman of her apparent age of around sixty-five. I didn’t chase after her. Maybe she was simply nervous because I was a stranger and running behind her would likely scare her even more, though, I didn’t consider myself to be all that intimidating.