Invasion of Privacy

“Just past the bluff on the left, you’ll hang a right and go down maybe another mile and a half to the Willows sign on your left.”
    “Sounds easy enough.”
    “You miss the turn and keep going straight, you’ll get to the gore.”
    “What’s the gore?”
    “It’s a blip on the survey maps that... somebody did for all the development down here in the eighties. The gore’s like a bog with swampy water around it.”
    Another customer called out her name. To me, Edie said, “Sorry, but I’m going to be kind of busy here.” She didn’t sound sorry.
    I nursed the ale, and Edie circulated, studiously avoiding my end of the bar until a lighted bell chimed above the liquor bottles, causing her to go back into the kitchen and reappear with a hamburger plate.
    As she set it in front of me, I lowered my voice. “Did I push the wrong button or something?”
    “No,” a little too quickly. “I’m just busy, like I said.”
    “You wouldn’t happen to know anybody who lives at Plymouth Willows, would you?”
    Edie looked up, guarded. “You mean, like for you to talk to?”
    “Yes.”
    “Maybe Andy Dees. He runs the photocopy up the street.”
    Perfect. “Thanks, I’ll try him.”
    I thought she wanted to say something else, but another customer got her attention, and I finished my drink and meal without speaking to her again.

    The southern tip of downtown ended at the bridge Edie mentioned, which arced over a dry riverbed and a stagnant f harbor. Fishing and lobster boats were beached at peculiar i angles on the sandbars by the low tide. No one was on the docks, and I had the feeling that the boats hadn’t been anywhere recently, even when the water level was more cooperative.
    I drove over the bridge and south another mile or so, the road curving left to create a “scenic overlook.” I pulled the Prelude into the small parking area but left the engine running. Getting out and walking to the railing, I looked down a bluff perhaps forty feet high onto rocks the size of Buicks. Given the tide, most of the rocks were exposed, — scumlines around their middles. There was a freshening sea breeze, the smell of salt heavy and bracing in the air. A couple of long-haul barges were sloughing toward Boston , but no pleasure craft, motor or sail, despite the nice weather.
    Back in the car, I left the lot and continued south. Taking the next right, I measured off two miles before realizing I must have missed the Plymouth Willows sign that should have been on my left. I came instead to the “gore,” as Edie had called it, a deep swamp surrounded by cattails and reeds, the road hooking left over an old wooden bridge spanning it. There were tire tracks at the edge of the mocha water, cars probably parking there at night as boys with new driver’s licenses tried to practice their manhood on girls like the pair back at The Tides. Following the road left and over the bridge, I wasn’t sorry to see the gore fade in the rearview mirror.
    The macadam rose to climb a bowl-like hill, and I entered Plymouth Willows from what was functionally its back door, near the tennis courts (nets up) and pool (water drained). The hill I’d climbed provided a postcard back-drop to the complex, the trees mostly hardwoods, here and there a pine or two. A small prefab house sat between the courts and the pool, but otherwise Plymouth Willows seemed to be laid out like a giant shamrock. The roads were looping cul-de-sacs with clusters of townhouse units distributed around each leaf of the shamrock. I counted four townhouses per cluster, four clusters per leaf. Symmetry über alles.
    The architecture was all gray, weathered shingles, striving also for that Nantucket motif. The only variations were the color of the doors and window trim, which went from red to yellow to blue to white, depending on which cluster in the leaf you were passing. I drove around all the cul-de-sacs, spotting the address Olga Evorova had given me in one of the yellow-trimmed clusters with a nice view of the opposite hillside. There were only a few ornamental willows on the grounds, but everything looked well kept, shrubbery trimmed and grass mowed. While I realized Hendrix Management should most likely be thanked for that, what struck me was how few of the units seemed to be occupied. There were no garages, yet only a handful of cars. Most people might be at work, but many windows had no drapes or curtains in them. And no FOR SALE signs on the front lawns,