Fletch Reflected

8

“You all right?” Jack asked.

“Allergies,” the woman managed to say in a strangled voice. “You have to show me your I.D.”

Jack took his laminated pink Vindemia identification out of his pocket and showed it to her.

“I guess I’d better look around.” Jack put his shopping list in his pocket.

She handed him back his identification tag. “Help yourself.”

Through the window of the Vindemia General Store Jack saw a white hearse park against the curb. Two men dressed in black slacks and white shirts were getting out of its front doors.

While riding the bike from the airport/office complex, silently a race car had drawn alongside Jack. It was going not much faster than Jack’s bicycle. It oozed by him. Jack stood astraddle his bike on the road and looked after it. Almost every bit of the car, from hubcaps to windows, appeared to be mirrors. The sun reflecting from it stabbed his eyes painfully a half dozen times before it turned a corner and disappeared into an impeccably planted tree forest. He never heard the engine.

At the edge of the village, there was an intersection. The road to his left went one block, and, at a right angle, turned right. The road to his right went one block, and, at a right angle, turned left. The houses on both sides of the road, each in its own lot, were not identical, but very similar white cottages with blue roofs and trim, a bit of garden, a bit of lawn. Some of the cottages, like his own near the main house, appeared to be duplexes. None of the cottages had a driveway or garage. Crossing the road into the village, Jack figured these residences were built in a perfect square around the village’s center.

The center of the village of Vindemia was only a block long. Landscaping made it look bigger. The buildings were placed precisely on their sites, in relation to each other, more as if a child had placed them for his toys rather than as if there had ever been any sort of human, evolutionary growth to the place, response to the location, the land itself.

The road was a smooth black; the sidewalks glaring white.

Besides the trimmed lawns, bushes, cultivated flowers, everything in the village, including the several fire hydrants, was glossy, eye-stabbing white in the sunlight, with blue roofs and trim.

There were metal bicycle racks everywhere.

“A pound of baloney, please.”

“Oh, honey, we don’t have baloney.” The woman behind the counter of the Vindemia Village General Store coughed until her eyes ran. “Sliced ham. We have sliced ham.”

“Isn’t that a lot more expensive?”

She sneezed. “Of course.” Her brown hair was thin on her scalp. The bags under her eyes complemented the general puffiness of her face. Her skin was gray. “Just healthy food,” she coughed. “Health food.”

“I like baloney.” Jack looked at his short shopping list. “You have canned tuna fish? I like tuna puffs.”

“No canned anything.” She was choking.

There were no cars in the village.

At the end of the main street nearest the only gate to the estate (perhaps a mile away) was a fire station. Its doors were open. One large, one small fire truck had passed Jack on the road. They were headed for the laboratory, at thirty miles an hour. Next to the fire station was the General Store, with gasoline, diesel, and three air pumps, a phone booth, and three electric charging outlets neatly arranged outside. Beyond that was the church. It had a short steeple, a belfry, but otherwise was unadorned by any religious symbol, signboard, name. Next to it in its own bed of rhododendrons snuggled the library, low, with a low slanting roof and leaded windows. Then there was the school. Its windows were tinted glass. None was open. No sound emanated from the school. The side yard of the school nearest the library had picnic tables and instructional areas under pine trees. The further side of the school had seesaws, swings, and jungle gyms. Behind the school was a football field surrounded by a cinder running track, and a baseball diamond. The lawns appeared unscuffed.

Across the road from these buildings was a recreation area. Handball courts along the sidewalk did not conceal an Olympic-sized swimming pool behind them. Behind the swimming pool, behind low hedges, were four tennis courts. There were drinking fountains enough, Jack noticed, but no soft drink machines. A large recreation hall was placed sideways to the road. Overlooking these activity areas was the recreation building’s wide, deep veranda, dotted with blue rocking chairs. The recreation building itself, Jack could see from the road, obviously had a large main room behind the veranda. On one end of the building, lower than the main hall, was a locker, shower, changing room for women; at the other end, one for men. Jack saw no evidence of a snack bar or other food service. The entrance to the recreation hall was on the other side of the building, canopied, facing a small parking lot. At two o’clock on Friday afternoon, the place was empty.

Across the parking lot from the recreation hall was a small clinic. Next to it, the ambulance garage doors were also open.

At the end of the road (it was a dead end) was a tower, taller than anything else in the village. In the tower, facing the village, was a huge digital clock showing the hour, the minute, the second, and the millisecond. Even in the shaded bright sunlight the frantic whirring of the milliseconds dial provided the otherwise still village with an impression of activity.

Riding back to the General Store, Jack decided this would be called a designed community. Designed on a board in a brightly lit, air conditioned office, with pencil and ruler, or maybe on a computer screen. Designed with all the engineering essentials in place, not all of the human essentials, places for people to neck, fight, laugh, scream, cry, hide. There were birds in the trees, and a few tanned children idling about, but there were no dogs, cats, squirrels visible in the village. Except for the whipping of the big blue and white flag atop the clock tower, the place was as quiet as ice on a December pond.

As he pushed his shopping cart toward the produce section, he heard the two men from the hearse enter the store. “Hi, Marie.”

“Frank.” A sneeze. “Junior.”

“How’re the allergies doin’?”

“They’re gettin’ healthier.” The woman behind the counter blew her nose. “They’re gettin’ healthier, and I’m gettin’ sicker.”

“Came out to pick up Doctor Wilson. Got gassed to death.”

“I heard.” Marie sniffled. “Didn’t know there was such a thing as lethal gas on this place.”

“In the laboratory,” one of the undertakers said. “In the lab.”

“What was it?” Marie asked. “The gas, I mean.”

“Damned if I know. Enough to set fire to the place. Blow it up.”

“Was that the big noise I heard?”

“The lab. building blew up.”

“I guess some thought ol’ Radliegh was in the building when it blew,” the other man from the hearse said. “He wasn’t.”

“Too bad,” Marie said.

The store’s fresh produce, Jack realized, clearly was untouched by any beautifying chemicals. Tangerines and oranges were spotted yellow and black; the tomatoes, even in that season, were more yellow and green than red; the bananas more green or black than yellow; the apples yellow and green, none shiny red. The carrots looked like carrots.

“You got Wilson in the hearse?” Marie asked.

“Yeah.”

The shelves indeed stocked no canned foods, not even soups or boxes of cereal. There were bags of potato chips, tins of dry mustard, but no ketchup; olives, but no pickles; peanut butter but no marshmallow.

There was no candy counter.

“So what did you stop for?” Marie asked. “If we had chawin’ tobacco or beer, which we surely don’t, you know I couldn’t sell it to you any which way.”

The only toothpaste available had a baking soda base. There were soaps available, but no sprays.

“I was wonderin’ if I could buy some of your roast beef,” one of the undertakers said.

“You know I can’t sell it to you, Frank.”

“I married your sister, Marie.”

“Thank you, but I can only sell to employees and guests of the estate, Frank. You know that.”

The jars of instant coffee were all decaffeinated except the acid free Kava. The teas were all herbal.

“I’m a relative of an employee, Marie,” Frank said: “You.”

“Doesn’t count.” Marie sneezed.

“Marie doesn’t count,” Junior said.

“Frank doesn’t count,” Marie said.

The only patent medicine available was Bayer’s aspirin. There were shelves and shelves of generic vitamins and herbal goods, fresh, whole, dried cranberry juice concentrated extract tablets, lycopodium, echinacea, et cetera, round containers of protein powders. Printed lists along these shelves described the uses and benefits of each selection offered.

“Pretend you’re buyin’ it for yourself,” Frank said.

Marie coughed. “Can’t do that. These walls have ears.”

White bread was not available in that store.

“Sure,” Frank said. “We’re allowed on the estate when a body needs pickin’ up, a gassed body, but rules say I can’t go home to a supper of the best beef for a hundred miles around here?”

“Rules say.” Marie blew her nose. “Employees only.”

The meat counter offered 91-percent-lean hamburger only, ground beefalo meat, especially lean-looking steaks, other cuts of beef, chops. All the chicken offered was in packets, and was skinless. The prices for these meats were lower than usual. The only fish was pond-bred catfish. There were no sausage, bacon, hot dogs or pressed meats available.

A telephone rang.

Marie said, “Hello? … Yes, he’s here. I’ll tell him.” She said, “That was Nancy Dunbar.”

“The bitch,” Frank said.

“‘I’ll take care of it,’” Junior mimicked in a falsetto. “‘I’ll take care of every-thing.’”

He sounded more like a parrot than he did Nancy Dunbar.

So Jack collected his groceries: lettuce, carrots, celery, 100 percent Real Mayonnaise, a gallon of mixed vegetable juices, oranges, apples, bananas, pumpernickel, mustard, sliced ham, ground beefalo meat, a steak, a small packet of boneless, skinless chicken, 2 percent skim milk, butter, eggs, some cheese. He did not take a bag of potato chips.

“Marie,” Frank said, “when you croak, who do you suppose is going to come along and carry off your moral demains?”

“Not you, I hope. You stop on your way back to the shop leavin’ a corpse sweatin’ in the back of your wagon.”

“None other but me,” Frank said.

“I’ll outlive you by a hundred years.”

“Not the way you cough and sneeze. You don’t ever sound like you’ll make it to next payday, Marie, I do declare. How do you go on?”

“I’m developin’ life-savin’ muscles,” Marie said.

“For sure, you’re the sickest thing I ever saw in a health store.”

“Life-savin’ respiratory muscles,” Marie coughed.

The hardware section of the General Store had the simplest tools neatly arranged, none electrical.

Jack dropped a blue knapsack into his shopping cart.

Frank said, “Don’t come to my house Sunday for spaghetti.”

Marie said, “It’s my sister who invites me. Not you.”

The men returned to the hearse.

The magazines arrayed were as genuine as news magazines get, some science fiction but no tabloids, purely gossip, romance, horoscopes or other kinds of comic books. The paperbound books offered were all classics. Even the mysteries were classics.

Marie said to Jack, “You’re funny, or somethin’, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” Jack answered.

She was adding up his bill. “John Funny, or somethin’?”

“Jack Faoni.”

“Yeah.” Marie sneezed. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, which held his beefalo burger. “Ms. Dunbar called for you. You’re to report to the tennis courts up by the main house. Ms. Alixis wants to play with you.”

“Oh, wow,” Jack said. “Who’s Ms. Alixis?”

“Our movie star. You want to play with a movie star?” She grinned.

“I have a choice?”

“Second daughter,” Marie said. “Alixis Radliegh. She was in a movie. Feint at Heart, spelt funny, the French way, or something. In it she wandered around in shorty pajamas singing to something or other in the trees until this hunk named Heathcliff fell out of a tree, nearly beaned her, but he had a broken neck or something so she had to nurse him back to health, if you know what I mean, by singing to him in her cabin by the lake. So they could make beautiful music together. I saw it. It stank.”

“I must have missed that one.”

“It stank. It was shown here on the estate. Terrible movie. But we told her how proud we are of her.”

“This is one of Doctor Radliegh’s daughters? A movie star?” Jack was fitting his groceries into his knapsack.

Marie sneezed. “You think my sneezin’ will get me anything if I do enough of it in shorty pajamas under a tree?”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “Maybe you’ll be beaned by a hungry undertaker.”

Marie said, “I knew you were listening.”

Outside, fitting his new knapsack onto his back, climbing on his bike, Jack noticed a candy bar wrapper next to the curb.