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But she was doing what she wanted, no doubt of that. In high school she had pla
She wasn’t yet too certain of the specific details. What she saw were spaces, beautiful green spaces, with water flowing through them, and trees. Not big golf-course lawns, though; something more winding, something with sudden turns, private niches, surprising vistas. And no formal flower beds. The houses, or whatever they were, set unobtrusively among the trees, the cars kept… where? And where would people shop, and who would live in these places? This was the problem: she could see the vistas, the trees and the streams or canals, quite clearly, but she could never visualize the people. Her green spaces were always empty.
She didn’t see her next-door neighbour again until February. She was coming back from the small local supermarket where she bought the food for her cheap, carefully balanced meals. He was leaning in the doorway of what, at home, she would have called a vestibule, smoking a cigarette and staring out at the rain, through the glass panes at the side of the front door. He should have moved a little to give A
There was nothing to see through the front of Mrs. Nolan’s door except the traffic, sizzling by the way it did every day. He was depressed, it must be that. This weather would depress anyone. A
As she fumbled in her purse for her key, Mrs. Nolan stumped out of the bathroom. “You see him?” she whispered.
“Who?” A
“Him.” Mrs. Nolan jerked her thumb. “Standing down there, by the door. He does that a lot. He’s bothering me, like. I don’t have such good nerves.”
“He’s not doing anything,” A
“That’s what I mean,” Mrs. Nolan whispered ominously. “He never does nothing. Far as I can tell, he never goes out much. All he does is borrow my vacuum cleaner.”
“Your vacuum cleaner?” A
“That’s what I said.” Mrs. Nolan had a rubber plunger which she was fingering. “And there’s more of them. They come in the other night, up to his room. Two more, with the same marks and everything, on their faces. It’s like some kind of, like, a religion or something. And he never gave the vacuum cleaner back till the next day.”
“Does he pay the rent?” A
“Regular,” Mrs. Nolan said. “Except I don’t like the way he comes down, so quiet like, right into my house. With Fred away so much.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” A
“It’s always that kind,” Mrs. Nolan said.
A
So he was here on scholarship, studying something practical, no doubt, nuclear physics or the construction of dams, and, like herself and the other foreigners, he was expected to go away again as soon as he’d learned what he’d come for. But he never went out of the house; he stood at the front door and watched the brutish flow of cars, the winter rain, while those back in his own country, the ones that had sent him, were confidently expecting him to return some day, crammed with knowledge, ready to solve their lives… He’s lost his nerve, A
A
The aqueduct, now. It would be made of natural brick, an earthy red; it would have low arches, in the shade of which there would be ferns and, perhaps, some delphiniums, in varying tones of blue. She must learn more about plants. Before entering the shopping complex (trust him to assign a shopping complex; before that he had demanded a public housing project), it would flow through her green space, in which, she could now see, there were people walking. Children? But not children like Mrs. Nolan’s. They would turn her grass to mud, they’d nail things to her trees, their mangy dogs would shit on her ferns, they’d throw bottles and pop cans into her aqueduct… And Mrs. Nolan herself, and her Noah’s Ark of seedy, brilliant foreigners, where would she put them? For the houses of the Mrs. Nolans of this world would have to go; that was one of the axioms of Urban Design. She could convert them to small offices, or single-floor apartments; some shrubs and hanging plants and a new coat of paint would do wonders. But she knew this was temporizing. Around her green space, she could see, there was now a high wire fence. Inside it were trees, flowers and grass, outside the dirty snow, the endless rain, the grunting cars and the half-frozen mud of Mrs. Nolan’s drab backyard. That was what exclusive meant, it meant that some people were excluded. Her parents stood in the rain outside the fence, watching with dreary pride while she strolled about in the eternal sunlight. Their one success.