Freak City

  Chapter Ten

  Jolene had her mind made up, and when she had her mind made up, there was nothing that was going to stand in the way. By early the next morning she had cleared out the house, dispatching Maribel on a mission to re-visit former customers in the hopes of drumming up business, and organizing Seth to get going as well. She informed him that she would drive him to his first job, then take his car out and about to follow up on some hunches. Seth, realizing this was part of the deal, reconciled himself to taking the bus between work sites the rest of the day.

  Jolene's plan was simple but inefficient. She had stayed up late with a magnifying glass, minutely inspecting her selected photos for any possible hints of location, and she believed she had found a few. She had her own city map showing all of the parks and playground, and had decided on a route that would take her to the more likely ones first, which meant starting nearer the outskirts and working her way in to the city center. She had not noticed any tall buildings visible in any of the photos, so she had made the assumption they were not near downtown. The city was not the largest, but once she was on the road she realized she was in for a long day, and once she had visited the first few parks, it began to dawn on her that her plan might not be the best after all. It seemed that ever little park had its grassy area with its picnic tables, and every other one had one of those contemporary plastic playgrounds with the sandbox pit and the climbing structure. There was no map of playground details she could look at. One of them was bound to have the seesaw in the picture, unless, of course, the photo was from some other place entirely, in which case the search was even more hopeless. As for the house with the family in front, already she knew this was probably impossible.

  She had found few clues in the photo, no street signs, no giveaway background objects other than a plane perhaps landing at an airport, which would only narrow it down to a pretty large neighborhood. There were areas in the town where cyclone fences surrounding a yard were not uncommon, but from the photo it looked like that one was temporary, being held in place by cinder blocks, so it was probably long gone, considering the photo was dated long since. By noon she had covered a lot of ground and was in no mood for going home empty handed. It occurred to her that maybe she was inconveniencing Seth by taking away his car all day, but she didn't allow herself to dwell on that.

  She had checked off a lot of parks in one entire quadrant of the city, so that could be taken as progress, right? And parking had been easy so far. She had to laugh at that thought. Most of these parks were completely deserted, except for the occasional nanny and charge. She kept plugging away. She had brought along a notebook and was keeping meticulous notes of locations and structures, and had begun to feel like a sort of inspector. This was work that would certainly come in handy, like never, she thought. She could publish Jolene's Handy Guide to City Patches of Grass. Or maybe that wasn't such a terrible idea. It might make for a magazine article, which was something she had always wanted to do.

  She was thinking about that and looking over her notes when she walked by the men playing cards in the park. She jotted down something about tables and seats, considering adding a sort of rating system to judge parks by, when she stopped and turned and stared and nearly dropped everything. It was the same two old men. It was the same two old men in the very same spot wearing the very same clothes doing the very same thing as they were in the photo. The photo that was dated more than twenty years earlier. She pulled out her color copy and checked. Identical. She had to move over just a few feet to get the exact angle as there was in the picture. Fortunately she had brought her own camera, and took several pictures of her own while the men just went on with their game, not noticing her.

  These weren't simply old men. They were very old men. They would have to be at least in their nineties or older by now if the date on the photo was right. Jolene had to find out. She walked over to them and clearing her throat tried to get their attention. They still didn't notice.

  "Excuse me,” Jolene said, in a normal tone of voice, and when that didn't work she repeated herself louder.

  "Excuse me!”, but the men didn't hear or didn't seem to. She put her notebook down in the middle of the table, next to the pile of cards they were drawing from. The old man in blue took a card from the deck, held it up to his hand and discarded it onto the notebook. The other man drew and kept the card drawn, discarding another instead. Jolene was getting annoyed. She grabbed the deck and the notebook and took a step back away from the table. The old man in blue reached his hand out to draw and finding the pile missing, looked up at his partner and quietly drawled,

  "Roy, where's the deck?"

  "It was setting right there,” Roy replied in the same easy manner. "Maybe it fell off to the ground." The old man in blue sort of leaned in his chair and looked around at the ground.

  "It ain't there,” he declared.

  "Well it's got to be somewhere,” Roy said, and he too wagged his head to the side and made a cursory glance before shrugging and saying, "Guess we're done for the day."

  "Guess we are,” said the old man in blue. The two old men struggled to rise up from the chairs but failed to get to their feet. They sat back down again and sighed in unison.

  "Hello?" Jolene bent down and put her face right up in front of the man who was Roy. He still didn't see her. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, half expecting her hand to pass right through as if Roy was a ghost, but he wasn't. He was real but still did not acknowledge her presence.

  "Oh for Christ's sake,” she said, and she put the deck down right back where it was on the table. It was a few moments before the old man in blue said,

  "Oh shoot, there it is. It's right there."

  "What is right there?” Roy asked.

  "The deck, on the table. Right where it was."

  "Oh,” replied Roy, "I thought that you said it was missing."

  "I must have just missed it.”

  "Well, you are getting old,” Roy joked and attempted to laugh, but the effort was painful and nearly took all of his breath. The old man in blue took a card from the deck and brought it up to his hand, inspected it for a minute, then discarded it on to the table.

  "Ain't having no luck,” he declared. Jolene backed away, and took several more photos. Back in the car, she marked down the park on her map. She decided that that was enough for one day and drove off to look for Seth, to tell him the news, and give back the car.