"Why not call us urban explorers or urban adventurers?" Cora said.
Balenger kept writing.
"City speleologists," the professor suggested. "Metaphoric cave investigators descending into the past."
"We'd better set some rules," Rick said abruptly. "You work for-"
"The New York Times Sunday Magazine. They brought me on board to write features about interesting cultural trends. Movements on the fringe."
"On the fringe is exactly where we'd like to stay," Cora said. "You can't identify us in your article."
"All I have are your first names," Balenger lied.
"Even so. This is especially important for the professor. He's got tenure, but that doesn't mean his dean won't try to take it away if the university finds out what he's doing."
Balenger shrugged. "Actually I'm way ahead of you on that point. I have no intention of using your names or specific details of your backgrounds. It'll add to the supposed danger if I make it sound like you're members of a secret group."
Vinnie leaned forward. "There's no 'supposed' danger about this. Some creepers have been seriously injured. Some have even died."
"If you identify us," Rick emphasized, "we can go to jail and pay heavy fines. Do we have your word that you won't compromise us?"
"I guarantee none of you will be damaged because of what I write."
They glanced at each other, uncertain.
"The professor explained to me why he thought the article deserved to be written," Balenger assured them. "He and I think the same. We've got a throwaway culture. People, plastic, pop bottles, principles. Everything's disposable. The nation's suffering from memory disorder. Two hundred years ago? Impossible to imagine. A hundred years ago? Too hard to think about. Fifty years ago? Ancient history. A movie made ten years ago is considered old. A TV series made five years ago is a classic. Most books have a three-month shelf life. Sports organizations no sooner build stadiums than they blow them up so they can replace them with newer, uglier ones. The grade school I went to was torn down and replaced by a strip mall.
Our culture's so obsessed with what's new, we destroy the past and pretend it never happened. I want to write an essay that convinces people the past is important. I want to make my readers feel it and smell it and appreciate it."
The room became quiet. Balenger heard the clang clang clang outside and the waves crashing on the beach.
"I'm beginning to like this guy," Vinnie said.
3
Balenger's muscles relaxed. Knowing there'd be other tests, he watched the creepers fill their knapsacks. "What time are you going in?"
"Shortly after ten." Conklin hooked a walkie-talkie to his belt. "The building's only two blocks away, and I've already done the reconnaissance work, so we don't have to waste time figuring how to infiltrate. Why are you smiling?"
"I just wonder if you realize how much your vocabulary is like the military's."
"A special-ops mission." Vinnie clipped a folded knife to the inside of a jeans pocket. "That's what this is."
Balenger sat on a cigarette-burned chair next to the door and took more notes. "I found a lot of material on the professor's website and the other major ones on the Net, like
"Yahoo and Google list thousands of sites," Rick answered. "Australia, Russia, France, England. Here in the U.S., they're all over the country. San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis. To urban explorers, that city's famous for its maze of utility tunnels known as the Labyrinth. Then there's Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, Detroit-"
"Buffalo," Balenger said.
"Our old stomping grounds," Vinnie agreed.
"The groups often flourish in areas with decaying inner cities," Conklin said. "Buffalo and Detroit are typical. People flee to the suburbs, leaving grand old buildings without occupants. Hotels. Offices. Department stores. In many cases, the owners simply walk away. In lieu of taxes, the city assumes ownership. But often the bureaucrats can't decide whether to demolish or renovate. If we're lucky, the abandoned buildings get boarded up and preserved. In downtown Buffalo, we sometimes infiltrated places that were built around 1900 and abandoned in 1985 or even earlier. As the world moves on, they stay the same. Damaged, yes. The decay is inevitable. But their essence doesn't change. With each structure we infiltrate, it's as if a time machine takes us back through the decades."
Balenger lowered his pen. His look of interest encouraged the professor to continue.
"When I was a child, I used to sneak into old buildings," Conklin explained. "It was better than staying home and listening to my parents argue. Once, in a boarded-up apartment complex, I found a stack of phonograph records that were released in the 1930s. Not long-playing vinyl, what used to be called LPs, with a half-dozen songs on each side. I'm talking about discs made of thick, brittle plastic, easily breakable, with only one song on each side. When my parents weren't home, I enjoyed putting the records on my father's turntable and playing them again and again, scratchy old music that made me imagine the primitive recording studio and the old-fashioned clothes the performers wore. For me, the past was better than the present. If you consider the news these days-elevated threat levels and terrorist attacks-it makes a lot of sense to hide in the past."
"When we were undergraduates in a class the professor taught, he asked us to go with him to an old department store," Vinnie said.
Conklin looked amused. "It involved some risk. If any of them had been injured, or if the university found out I was encouraging my students to commit a crime, I could have been dismissed." His pleasure made his face look younger. "I guess I'm still marching against the rules, wanting to raise hell while I'm still able."
"The experience was eerie," Vinnie said. "The department store's counters were still there. And a few pieces of merchandise. Moth-eaten sweaters. Shirts that mice had chewed on. Old cash registers. The building was like a battery that stored the energy of everything that happened inside it. Then it leaked that energy, and I could almost feel long-dead shoppers drifting around me."
"Maybe you belong in the University of Iowa's creative-writing department," Rick kidded him.
"Okay, okay, but each of you knows what I mean."
Cora nodded. "I felt it, too. That's why we asked the professor to keep us in mind for other expeditions, even after we graduated."
"Each year, I choose a building that I feel has unusual merit," the professor told Balenger.
"Once we infiltrated an almost-forgotten sanitarium in Arizona," Rick said.
"Another time, we got into a Texas prison that was abandoned for fifty years," Vinnie added.
Cora grinned. "The next time, we snuck onto an abandoned oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Always excitement. So what building did you choose this year, Professor? Why did you bring us to Asbury Park?"
"A sad story."
4
Asbury Park was founded in 1871 by James Bradley, a New York manufacturer, who named the community after Francis Asbury, the bishop who established Methodism in America. Bradley chose the ocean resort's location because it was convenient to get to from New York to the north and Philadelphia to the west. Methodists established summer homes there, attracted by the shaded streets and the grand churches. The city's three lakes and numerous parks were ideal places for strolls and family picnics.
By the early 1900s, the mile-long boardwalk was the pride of the Jersey shore. When thousands of vacationers weren't lying on the beach or splashing in the water, they ate salt-water taffy and visited the copper-and-glass carousel house or else the Palace Amusements building, where they rode the Scooter, the Twister, the Tunnel-of-Love boat, a merry-go-round, and a Ferris wheel. Ignoring the Methodist foundations of the community, many also went to the ornate casino that now occupied the southern end of the boardwalk.