Freak City

  Chapter Five

  Jolene Marsh had stayed up late, baking way past midnight, so she slept in in the morning, not waking up until ten. At that time she had the house to herself. Seth had mosied off to one or another of his parents' apartment buildings, Maribel had loaded up the car with the goods and headed out to make deliveries. Todd and Brian, hungover and grumpy, made their way downtown to their junior white collar gigs. Argus had been the earliest to rise and leave, huddled in the fog at the bus stop wondering if any more strangers were out there watching him.

  The house was divided by a long narrow hallway which ran all the way down the middle. You walked up the front steps and entering could select from bedrooms on the right (Seth and Jolene's) and left (Argus's), then another on the left (Maribel and Todd) across from the bathroom on the right, and then finally the kitchen on the left, utility slash living room on the right. Behind those were the pantry, enclosed sun room slash porch slash Brian's pad, and finally the back yard down the back steps. Jolene had lived there first, with an entirely different set of roommates, and had accumulated the current set beginning with Maribel. She was more or less satisfied with the current situation, although if she was pressed she would admit that she'd rather that Brian in particular was not there, and that they had no financial need for Argus' presence either.

  Brian was the official slob of the house, and otherwise was practically Todd's shadow, following him everywhere, liking everything he liked and doing everything he did. Jolene didn't have much patience for people she called 'clones'. On the other hand, he paid the rent and was rarely actually in the house, so it was not intolerable. Seth thought the pair were 'entertaining' but she knew he was easily amused. He would talk to them as if they were one person, directing the conversation first to one and then to the other no matter which one responded, and they never caught on, which drove Maribel crazy.

  With everyone out of the house, Jolene enjoyed the peace. She wandered up and down the hall, from bathroom to coffee to bedroom to porch, until finally remembering her plan to look at Argus' collection. She entered his room with a little nostalgia - it had been her room on two separate prior occasions. It still contained her old furniture - the bed, the dresser, even the table and chair had been hers. The articles were still spread out on the table as Argus had left them. Sitting down and looking them over, she was struck first by how neatly he'd arranged them. After that, she could make nothing of it. The photographs were from different cameras, from different eras, and pictured either people or buildings, or people in front of buildings. If Argus didn't know what they were about, she certainly knew even less. If they had been people he knew, wouldn't he have said so? But he hadn't really said anything either way.

  The newspaper articles also seemed completely random, and were from different newspapers at different times. Some of the stories themselves also concerned buildings, but others did not. What a mess, she thought, and she wished she had more to go on, that she'd asked Argus more questions about it, that he was there now to ask. She knew he had studied architecture, so there might be some sense in the pictures and articles about buildings. Two of the articles were about buildings that were destroyed. She remembered one of the stories, about the Sea Dragons football stadium, and how it had to be torn down even though it was almost brand new. There had been some odd rumors about it but the newspaper article was only reporting the fact of it, that the stadium had come down on schedule and without incident. There was nothing else about football or stadiums in any of the other stories or photographs.

  She was determined to find a link, or at least a clue. The two toy robots meant nothing to her, and didn't seem in any way related to anything else. The handwritten note was nonsense and nearly impossible to read. She could only make out a few words: elevator, paddle, foreign, averted, quicksand. Nonsense. She set the note aside. The only item she hadn't looked at yet were the two box tops from Bite Size Shredded Wheat. Those were the first genuine clue, for it said on the backs that they could be redeemed for a magic secret decoder ring. Jolene nearly jumped up with excitement and relief, but she looked again and saw that the offer had expired nearly a decade ago.

  "Oh my God,” she said to herself. "I've got nothing. Nothing at all. Back to the newspapers, I guess."

  Besides the two demolition stories there was a book review, an obituary notice, something about some rich kid's birthday party, a story about someone who was kidnapped and held hostage in a secret room in a house, and, lastly, a piece about a corrupt politician going to jail. There was nothing about any one story that seemed to have anything to do with any other story, and nothing that seemed to connect to the photographs either. She had thought at first that maybe the buildings in the stories were matched by buildings in the photos but they clearly weren't. The people in the photos also seemed to have no relation to the stories or each other. There must be something, she thought, something that ties at least two of these things together. Probably the house key. But she knew she was only guessing wildly.

  She was as stumped as she had ever been, more so even. She was someone who could do those word jumbles in record times, someone who could do jigsaw puzzles almost blindfolded. She thought she could see the patterns in anything, but here she was drawing a blank. Among the photos was one of an old woman all dressed in black, walking through a garden. Another was of two young boys playing on a seesaw in a park. There was an old photo of a young family - husband, wife, young boy and girl - posing in front of a rundown ramshackle cottage surrounded by a high cyclone fence. Another photo was of a brand new office building, but the name on the sign in the front, 'Spring River', did not match the one in the newspaper story, a building called 'Fulsom Towers' which had collapsed and was described as being much taller than the one in the photo. Another photo was of an anonymous one story building in an office park somewhere, with two identical red cars parked in front but no indication of where it was. The last were a photo of a crowded corner produce market in the city, and two old men in a park who appeared to be playing cards.

  Still nothing. No matter how hard she looked, she didn't see anything. Dejected, she left the items as they were, and left the room. Several times during the day she returned, but she didn't get any further. She even went as far as to call the cereal company to ask about the secret decoder rings, but that was a conversation that didn't get far. The startled customer service representative could only reply that he didn't know what to tell her. Promotions that old were completely forgotten.