11
As I turn my monster truck into the Clear Lake Condo Estate, I notice the dirt road is now paved. There’s a red street sign erected on the corner, dubbed with a new name.
New Farm Road.
Street lamps line the street. Cameras have been mounted on the telephone poles.
I walk into the trailer office to see Bob Rogers, the site manager, sitting at the computer workstation.
Low and discreet, he whispers into the phone, “Hey, X, I got to go. Someone just walked in.”
I pull the lever on the punch card clock.
So Bob says to me, “Lend an ear long?”
“I just walked in,” I say. “I heard nothing.”
“Nothing? You must’ve heard something.”
“I think I heard something about pumpkins,” I lie. “Where to buy pumpkins at the best price.”
“So you heard nothing? Nothing at all?”
“Nothing I would ever repeat.”
“Good. Listen carefully. What you see and hear at this site, it stays between us. It doesn’t leave Kingman Corp. So let’s not make a big story out of this.”
“Sure thing. No problem.”
“It’s just a matter of forgetting things and letting things you notice slip by.”
Trying to convince Bob of my secrecy, I say, “I understand completely. I’m with you one hundred percent. I’m on your side. This conversation never took place.”
Bob starts tapping keys on the keyboard. He says, “So, you wanna be a cop someday?”
When I hear myself huff out loud, saying, “No way,” I swallow with regret. My answer doesn’t sound right for someone in uniform, wearing a badge. Bob spins around with a screwed look on his face.
So I stammer, “I mean, I don’t like criminals. I don’t want to be that close to criminals.”
Bob turns to face the computer screen again.
I ask him, “Did you happen to see all cameras hooked up everywhere on the site?”
“How could I miss it?”
Then he tells me that Frank Benzino will not risk losing his property to those condo burning terrorists again. Then Bob Rogers tells me, “Go do your rounds or something.”
Outside, there are dump trucks moving up and down the road, hauling dirt and gravel. In the midst of all this man labor and mechanical movement, I find my usual stance, hands on hips, to be useless.
A man drives by me on a forklift, and he taunts me by blowing a kiss.
The man shouts, “We should trade jobs.”
I shout back, “Why?”
“Maybe then,” the man says, turning off the engine. “Maybe then, you’d see how work, hard work, gives meaning to real men.”
“No way,” I say. “I’m too pretty. I wouldn’t want to get my uniform dirty.”
The foreman laughs, saying, “Don’t work too hard out here. Believe me, nobody wants to see you strain something tender.”
“Heard that one before.”
“Probably because it’s true,” he says. “We all care.”
“Look at me,” I say. “I’m labor intense. I’m over exerting.”
The foreman just shakes his head as he enters the portable toilet to relieve himself. I walk away.
There are heavy duty machines moving in all directions, reshaping the landscape. I avoid the Excavator, the giant swinging claw. I clear a path for the dump trucks, as they rumble down the road. I must watch out for the Blacktop Roller that goes forward, backs up. I move to the side to let a bulldozer plow ahead. I jump from level ground, over the deep trenches and the pipeline that lay below.
I enter a condo to hide.
On high alert, I very deftly tip-toe down the hallway and out the front door.
Once I’m outside, I walk to the opposite end of the site. I notice white moving vans, all parked near the completed condos. Some men in white overalls carry furniture and lamps, some brown boxes, and a Persian Rug. There’s a couple standing on their front walkway, arm in arm. The walkway has such a fresh white glow, it gives the neighborhood a niceness. A real niceness.
I stand still, watching the young couple, who are, in turn, watching the movers handle their personal belongings, real fragile like.
I’m filled with the notion that I will have to adjust to the presence of people at night. I will have to deal with the influx of cars that will come home to stay or show up to visit. For some odd reason, I view this as a nightly invasion of my privacy.
This nice couple look upon my stance, perhaps wondering to what extent a guard is needed. I feel it necessary to explain my presence.
In uniform, I don’t want to seem too daunting. Going for a stroll, instead of marching, I go toward the couple, lifting my hand to wave.
The husband salutes me with two fingers to the brow, saying, “What a set up. Comes included with a lake and a bobby.”
“Yes, a security guard. You might see me make a round or two. My name is Mike Miller.”
“Hi,” the wife squeals, tugging her man closer. “We’re the Mulrooneys.”
This couple clearly share an accent from England.
I make the remark, “I’m sure you can’t get enough of your new place.”
“Absolute Eden,” the wife comes back. “It’s quite lavish, you know. Our curtains match the color of the foliage that surrounds the lake. So does our bedspread.”
“You little interior decorator you, “ I mock praise the woman and she blushes.
“To be certain,” the husband says. “Good times will be had here. Jolly good.”
Then, to confirm the positive, I add, “Your view of the lake is far superior to the rest, better than anyone else.”
The couple turn to each other, smile, and squeezed lovingly at the hip.
“Hurray to that,” the husband says. “Now, Mike, do you come across much criminal behavior, anything we should know about?”
“Not with me on guard. I see everyone who enters the site.”
“Oh,” the wife says, delighted. “It’s such a safe feeling to know that you’ll be watching over the neighborhood. There’s something very comforting in that idea. I feel so, oh, I don’t know, protected. We’ll sleep better, more soundly, knowing you’re out there. Won’t we, darling?”
Yes, night after night, I will be right outside their doorstep, once they go to sleep, crawling around like a creepazoid, lurching in the shadows, like a prowler. I have pleasured myself before in their garage. I still have the keys to their condo, copied. The influence of a nearby Gary Lee Vickers is growing inside me.
“I hope you enjoy your new home together,” I say, inching away.
“Indeed, we will,” the couple say in unison. The husband raises his thumb in support. “Cheers.”
Once I move past another moving company van, I come across a man smoking a cigar on his front lawn, a patch sprinkled with seed and showing thin blades of green grass.
“Hello” I say, by way of introduction. “Mike Miller, the guard for the night.”
“McDonald,” the man says. “Call me, Mac.”
This short stubby man walks over to me with the cigar clenched in his teeth, his hands free to shake. From the beginning, his English accent is evident.
The man is blunt when he says, “So, what do we need a guard for, anyway? They paying you to twiddle your thumbs?”
I think hard about my reasons for being on site, my actual existence, running through all the theories I’ve concocted over the past year that justify my job, provide a purpose.
“Well, for one, I monitor the main road. And I lock all the condos so that no wandering bums take shelter there, with zero tolerance for any vagrants or nomadic folk—my own personal policy. And I keep a keen eye on all the dump trucks, building supplies, heavy equipment, and all the tools the workers leave behind. Basically, I’m here to preserve the peace. And I just, you know, make sure the main road is monitored.”
“Sounds like a job for a simpleton. You must be lazy in some regard. Ever come across a tough cookie?”
“Excuse me?”
“Some tough cookies? Anyone with an attitude? Anyone looking to raid the place?”
“No, nothing like that. But you’d be surprised. This one time, a drunk guy drove in here asking if he could take some slabs of granite for the stone wall he was building in his backyard.”
“No shite. He asked if he could steal the rocks?”
“It sure sounded that way. He said it was an innocent question, but that it hurt real bad to ask. So I took down his plate number.”
“You never know with some people . . . you know?”
“And I’ve seen my fair share of cars ride through that clearly did not belong here.”
“Oh, really? What happens then?”
“They see the badge and flashlight and they scamper away.”
The man puffs wildly on his cigar, blows shapeless clouds into my face.
I say, “Did I mention that I’ve had the pleasure of locking each condo, and your view of the lake is quite possibly the most excellent?”
“You really think so?”
“Hands down. No contest. You’re the lucky one.”
“Wow, I guess I am. Say, what time do you knock off?”
“Knock off?”
“Yeah—what time are you done with this laborious ordeal?”
I say, “Around midnight, or whenever my partner comes to take over the next shift.” I have perfected this lie, used it many times.
“Sounds like an easy job. I must be in the wrong business.”
“And what business is that?”
“Can’t really go into it. The space agency wouldn’t approve.”
“Oh,” I pause. “NASA?”
“Well, it’s been a chipper chat,” the man says. “But I really should go inside. Make sure those handlers aren’t scratching the hardwood floor.”
“It’s all very understandable,” I say. “Hey, we all have our concerns.”
“Take it easy. I know you will.”
I give him a wide plastic grin. I lock my hands together to show that my thumbs are twiddling at all points of the day.
So then I move forward. The couple I come upon next is much older than the first, married into some gray haired year. They stand inside their garage, testing the remote door opener. This old couple then walks to the end of their driveway to meet me, the young man in uniform.
“So handsome,” the woman says to me. “The first time I saw you on tour, I told my husband, that boy’s handsome. I said, I know handsome, and that boy qualifies.”
I thank her and tell them both my name.
She says, “I’m Dot. And this is my husband, Harris.”
I recognize the English accent once more, and I have to question myself as to whether I woke up in the same country I went to bed in last night. These people must have a strong British connection to Benzino, with top priority to the condos, first rights.
I want to move the conversation along, so I say, “Is your new condo everything you expected?”
Dot raises her hands to the sky as if summonsed by the Lord, and says, “It’s more than we expected.”
I say, “I know I like it. It became my second home.”
And Harris says, “It’s better than the bloody hotel we had to stay in, after we sold our house.”
“Now, Harris,” Dot tries to tame him, reel him in.
So I say, “If I’m not mistaken, your condo is the one with the big window in the roof, right?”
And Dot says, “Yes, that’s us. The skylight. We plan to look at the stars while we snuggle in bed.”
These people see a young man in uniform, the very pillar of safety and security that this neighborhood needs and relies upon. I have pleasured myself before on their deck.
Then Dot says, “And because we love champagne so much, they put a glass cabinet in the wall, custom crafted to store all our crystal flutes and fine China dishware.”
These people see a young man, who, in the line of duty, has trained himself to act with respect, responsibility, strength, and dependable action. These people see a clean young cadet whose job it is to uphold the basic laws and regulate the small time rules.
What they don’t know is, last week I got drunk, broke into my old boarding school, The Academy On The Hill, stormed into where Headmaster Hans Bellamy has an office, flung his family pictures against the wall, tipped the desk over, tossed the potted plants across the room, stole a few records from the file cabinet, burned the rest, smashed the photocopier with an axe, pissed on the computer keyboard, sprayed the fire extinguisher until it ran empty, threw a chair through the trophy case window.
Then Dot says, “They even built us a liquor bar in the basement, made of all glass. The layout is divine. The track lighting above the fireplace makes for the most agreeable atmosphere. We just love it.”
All these people see is a shiny badge, some polished boots, a long flashlight, and a face that is clean shaven to the point of being leader like. I finally begin to understand the inner monologue of a bad cop, how it must poke at him, jab him with guilty reminders that distort his sense of self. Even as the lowly security guard, I’m plagued by the very idea of a squeaky clean identity, mixed with mud.
Dot says the bathroom tile is “impeccable, to the finest point”. She uses the word, “enchanting,” to describe the guest bedroom. She says the voice activated chandelier is a, “marvelous feature”. She says the foyer is, “cathedral in design”. Her favorite things, she tells me, are the French double doors and the rare wooden banister on the second floor. She calls the balcony a mezzanine. The she uses the phrase, “ultimate breath-taker,” to depict their view of the lake, which in her opinion, is much better than her new neighbors. I agree.
Then Harris says, “The Clear Lake is the precise portrait of peace and tranquility, calm and quiet, of harmonic stillness, silence and serenity.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s a picture of a thousand and one words.”
Then Dot places a hand on my forearm, squeezing it, saying, “Well, you just missed tea time, but I can still whip you up a cup, if you’d like to come inside.”
I decline, saying, “I should probably finish my rounds, my daily rounds.”
“Oh,” the woman says, clearly disappointed. “Maybe next time then.”
“Next time,” I say, as politely as possible. “We’ll talk over tea about the state of worldly affairs, next time.”
As quickly as I can, I begin to break away from the elderly couple, tired of the positive spin I had to put on my speech.
The next empty condo I can find, I enter it.
I go up to the second floor of a bare bedroom and stare out the windows.
I must let all my senses dull, decompress.
I’m just not accustomed to so much conversation here. For months this has been a place where I forget the sound of my voice. Those nights when I pleasured myself, nobody was around to find that offensive.
But now, I think I see movement in the window of a condo directly across from me. So I take out my binoculars for a better look.
It’s Vickers.
He’s eyeing the new neighbors, who have just eliminated possible attics for him to sleep in. If this place was a spider web, he’d be that spider.
Today, as these new faces unpack moving company vans, Vickers stalks them from that window, with the fixed stare of a predatory nature. I can’t tell if he senses a threat or wants to seize opportunity.
Those neighbors carry furniture into their newly built condos. But none of them realize a bad man is currently squatting their neighborhood.
I don’t feel good about myself either.
I should have reported Vickers months ago.
I should have reported my Boss to someone, too, or just quit.
It strikes me, that for much longer than any of this, I’ve never thought I was good enough to wear the badge. Have never thought I was worthy of a single blade of grass here. In my defense, I seek to blame my childhood, being raised in the Rockaway Apartments. I start to wonder if my brain will split the good surface from the bad core.
Vickers spots me.
He puts a finger over his lips, and lifts his shoulders.
His body language is a question, will I keep quiet?
I think to put a finger over my lips, to mirror him, or maybe tap the watch on my wrist, to warn that someday all these condos will taken, so he better scout another place to live soon.
Instead, I act like I don’t see him, let my eyes gloss over, like I’m dreaming in that window pane, lost in thought.
I wonder if Vickers knows about the cameras that now watch the site, if he’s smart enough to slink only through backyards.
Then I don’t care.
I feel like a robotic sentry gun, who sees everyone as guilty. I’m one error in computer code away from attacking them all.
I’m about to laser them all dead, then self-destruct.