Page 28

28

Scary Discoveries

If his favorite songwriter hadn’t been upstairs, lying in the wall behind the foldaway bed, Bobby the Sham would seriously have considered setting the living room draperies on fire to clear the visiting neighbors from the house. However, he didn’t know how long it would take to get the crowd out of the place or how fast flames might spread from the draperies to the structure itself. When you started a fire to break up a party, you couldn’t be certain you would then be able to extinguish it quickly in the wake of the last departing guest. If this had been a novel he was writing, he could have done a lot of research on the subject, but this was not one of his novels; this was real life, a true story currently unfolding, involving real people in extraordinary circumstances. He couldn’t simply stop the action, save the document, copy it onto his Seagate Backup Plus hard drive, and go off to educate himself about arson.

By several sly maneuvers, he extricated himself from the crowd and retreated to the laundry room, where he could be alone behind a closed door. He needed to engage in some deep-breathing exercises that were said to lower blood pressure and improve brain function.

The space might have inspired mild claustrophobia if Spencer hadn’t sold the washer and dryer in his junior year of high school.

Bobby breathed so deeply that his nasal septum and various cartilages attached to his nasal bones vibrated with a sound like thrumming insect wings, as if he had inhaled a bee. However, he had not inhaled a bee, because if he had inhaled a bee, he would have been sneezing violently.

Bobby was alone such a short time that he neither lowered his blood pressure nor improved brain function before the door opened. A man entered. He nervously glanced back into the short hallway off the kitchen, closed the door, and stood with his back against it. He was in his forties, muscular, with bangs that suggested his barber must be operating under a forged license.

“I’m Warren Weber. You’re Robert Shamrock.”

“I might be.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not here to sell you an idea for a novel. I saw you slide out of the room, and while they’re all distracted, I followed.”

“Distracted?”

“Fred Sanford is arm wrestling Spencer, like he used to do when your friend was a teenager.”

“What is Fred—seventy-five?”

“Seventy-seven, but he keeps winning.”

“Spencer was afraid of Fred,” Bobby said. “He never wanted to arm wrestle the guy, but he was never given a choice.”

“He wasn’t given one this time, either. Did I tell you my name is Warren Weber?”

“You did indeed. Is that true?”

“Yeah. My wife, Mary Kate, and I moved to town a year ago.”

“You’re young for the neighborhood.”

“We don’t live on this block. We’re the last house in the block before this one.”

“So you’re not a Nelsoneer.”

“That’s just it. The Nelsoneers want to expand the club into the next block, our block.”

“It’s a club?”

“It’s something.” Warren Weber seemed as if he were walking a ledge. When the audience for the arm-wrestling contest let out a cheer, he startled, pressed his back harder against the door, and grimaced at the floor as though gazing into a city street from the twentieth story of a high-rise. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you, bothering you.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m interested.”

Weber shifted his stare from the abyss to Bobby. “I mean—do I understand right that you’re not a Nelsoneer?”

“I grew up on the other side of town.”

“But you became friends with Spencer.”

“We had a lot in common. It’s a small town. The other side of it isn’t that far away.”

“Yeah, but he was a Nelsoneer. You had a lot in common with a Nelsoneer?”

“There weren’t Nelsoneers back then. The first time I’ve heard about them is today.”

“Okay, all right, but Spencer’s family lived on this street. He grew up here.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Bobby assured him. “Anyway, he left a long time ago, and he doesn’t want to be here.”

Weber nodded and chewed his lower lip and flinched when the crowd again cheered the geriatric athletic prowess of Fred Sanford. “Do you think ...”

“Yes, even though it’s painful.” When Weber gave him a blank look, Bobby said, “Sorry. I can be a smart-ass. Do I think what?”

“Isn’t there such a thing as too much neighborliness?”

“This has always been a close neighborhood.”

“It’s something more than close,” Weber said. The wide-flexed irises of his blue eyes presented dark pupils too large for the circumstances, as if some inner darkness prevented him from seeing the light of the room in its fullness. “It’s stifling, suffocating. They’re always asking what errand can they do for you, whether you need anything from the store, would you like to join some of the guys and paint a house free for a Nelsoneer. They have these get-togethers at one house or another every Friday evening, sometimes two nights a week, plus on holidays, and everyone brings food. They have Nelsoneer bridge nights and softball games and flag football—and of course that damn pickleball.”

Bobby said, “I don’t think it was that close back then. If you don’t want to be a Nelsoneer, just tell them so.”

“We’ve told them a hundred times. They won’t take no for an answer. If you turn down an invitation, they send you flowers or candy or homemade cookies. These people are persistent, insistent, unrelenting . I thought you might know ...”

“Know what?”

“How to deal with them.”

“If it bothers you, maybe you should move.”

“We would if we could. But we have a mortgage two points below the current rate. We can’t afford a house at the current interest.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I code. My wife codes. The company lets us work from home because we write great code and meet deadlines. We used to think working from home was so cool. But the Nelsoneers know we’re here.” He clasped his head in both hands, as if his skull might crack open from the pressure he was under. “We’re home, always home, and they know it .”

Bobby wondered if the Nelsoneers were really as intolerable as Weber made them out to be or if he was a drama queen. “I don’t know what to tell you, Warren. I suppose, if I were as distressed as you are, I might sell the house even at a loss and move, maybe get out of town altogether, go someplace where property values are lower.”

Weber lowered his hands from his head and turned them palms up, as if to say, You don’t understand, it’s not that easy, I need some help here. “But we love Maple Grove. It’s so pretty, so clean. We’ve never seen a town so clean, nothing in disrepair. There’s no crime. It’s the safest place in the world.”

“There’s always crime,” Bobby said.

“Not here. I know it sounds crazy, but not here. There hasn’t been a murder in fourteen years, no robbery in almost thirteen. No burglaries. No shoplifting. No speeding. No driving drunk. Not even littering, for God’s sake. The police department is down to four officers, and they don’t carry weapons anymore. They drive around helping people with flat tires and vehicles that won’t start. Help old ladies load groceries in their cars. They spend hours searching for a stray dog. I lost my wallet six months ago. This guy found it and thought it was badly worn. So he bought a new wallet and brought both of them to me. He refused to be reimbursed.”

Bobby had first pegged Warren Weber as quasi-neurotic, for the most part harmless unless overstimulated. Now he realized that the man was something else entirely. Weber was one of those walk-on characters with the limited purpose of providing important information to the lead character. (Bobby was not so egotistical as to think he was the one and only protagonist of this Maple Grove story. However, he was sufficiently self-aware to realize that he was one of the leads in an ensemble cast; being remarkably modest for an author of his accomplishments, that role was enough for him.)

“Even if everyone in town has suddenly become saintly,” Bobby said, “criminals must come in from outside, try to peddle drugs, pull a stickup.”

“Yeah, but some feel remorseful before they’ve done anything. Eleven years ago, this guy named Ned Sacker drove in from upstate with thugs named Turpin and Nevison to rob the First National Bank. Ned was, by his own admission, ‘a tough little weasel,’ a young man on his way to a life of crime. Three hours after they checked into a motel using false ID, Ned walked into police headquarters in tears and confessed to their intentions. Turpin and Nevison were long-time professional thieves with outstanding warrants. They were sent to the jurisdictions where they committed crimes, were prosecuted and sent to prison. Ned was put into a diversion program and remained here in Maple Grove. He got a job. Was promoted. Married a local girl. Got into real-estate sales. Bought a house. He sold one to Kate and me. He can’t explain why he did what he did, the confession and all. There’s a lot of that in this town.”

“If this is all true,” Bobby said, “it’s strange.”

Weber agreed. “Strange but, I’ve got to admit, in some ways wonderful. The downside of all this wonderfulness is the Nelsoneers. The problem is that too much wonderfulness can get on your nerves.”

“What does your wife think about all this?”

Warren Weber’s face fell, not completely off his head, but the gravity of his dismay drew his features into a dour expression that suggested he might be close to losing all hope. “At first Katie was creeped out by it, but gradually she’s come around. She plays bridge with the ladies one afternoon a week. She’s joined their book club. She talks about ‘our special neighborhood, our special town, our special life,’ talks that way all the time.” Unshed tears welled in his eyes, and his mouth grew soft. “I’m afraid ... afraid my Kate, my Katie ... I’m afraid she’s changed, lost, gone .”

Bobby said, “Well, I don’t know, but it sounds like she’s just happy.”

“Does it? Is that what it sounds like? I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m the one with a problem. Then there’s a moment when Katie seems ... not happy, not just content. She seems dazed, robotic.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

“She seems drugged . She’s not. I’ve looked everywhere in the house for illegal drugs. There aren’t any. Eventually I stopped looking because I got embarrassed about snooping on her as if she were some teenager who fell in with a bad crowd. Recently, some days, I don’t think about it that much. It’s too exhausting. There are days the Nelsoneers invite me to make a foursome for golf, and the guys are fun. It all seems so natural. Today, when I heard how Spencer was coming back, I ran out to the bakery, bought two dozen eclairs for the welcome-home party.” He fell silent, blinking in perplexity, as if he only now realized what he had done. “I’d never met Spencer, but I wanted to let him know how happy we all were to have him back. Then Katie and I went across the street with the eclairs, and I saw you. I saw how you were looking at everyone.”

“How was that?”

“Like you thought the whole scene was somewhere between absurd and disturbing. And watching you, I sort of ... began to wake up. I realized I was becoming part of it. Don’t you think this is a lot more than merely strange? Don’t you? Don’t you think so?”

“‘More’ in what sense?”

“Weird, frightening, dangerous. Don’t you think what seems to be happening here has a threatening quality?”

Something had changed about Warren Weber. Being in a walk-on role, he had no obligation to evolve logically, yet his confusion was gone as though it had been pretense. The warm, beseeching quality of his eyes had settled into a hard stare. He no longer projected a nervous and uncertain demeanor but seemed poised to take action of some kind.

“‘Threatening’ is a pretty strong word, Warren.”

Weber said, “Yeah, well, there are times I feel threatened. If that’s how I feel, don’t you think I should go to the authorities? Not here in Maple Grove. Maybe go to the state police?”

A chill creped the skin on the nape of Bobby’s neck. He became convinced that he was being interrogated and that if he endorsed the state police idea, there would be a terrible cost. “Frankly, Warren, I think you’ve got a case of midlife crisis.”

“Really? A midlife crisis?”

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. They say that all men get there eventually. And you misread me if you believe I think this impromptu party is absurd or disturbing. I’m charmed by it,” Bobby lied without remorse.

“You are? Charmed?”

“Very much so. When the day comes that I stop traveling for research and inspiration, I’ll come home to Maple Grove and settle down here. Everything so pretty, little or no crime, neighbors so affectionate and caring—what could be more appealing?”

Weber put on a look of suspicion. “When you slipped out of the party—”

“I hadn’t been here in twenty years. I misremembered the layout of the house and thought this was the powder bath.”

“You thought it was the powder bath?”

“Absolutely.”

“So you don’t find anything off-putting about the people out there?”

“Good heavens, no. They’re delightful. You must be under too much stress with those code-writing deadlines, Warren.”

“I guess maybe I am. Sometimes I’m at it seven days a week.”

“All work and no play makes Jack a little neurotic. What’re we doing, dawdling here like this? Come on, let’s get out there where the fun is.”

As gullible as required by his limited function in this quirky story, Warren Weber smiled. The tension went out of him. His irises contracted, and his pupils became smaller, as they should have been in the bright lights of the laundry room.

In the rest of the ground floor of the house, the celebration was raging. The Nelsoneers received Bobby as if they had seen him and enjoyed his company every day of their lives and perhaps even before. They clapped him on the back and hugged him and pinched his cheeks and offered him ice tea as he made his way through the crowd in search of his amigos.

In the living room, encircled by ebullient onlookers, Spencer and Rebecca were sitting in folding chairs at a small round table, arm wrestling.