Cheating at Solitaire(140)

“Then we turned the entire country into a high school,” Carl said out loud, “and nominated our own popular crowd.”

He felt better after he’d heard the sound of his own voice. He wished there was somebody around here, even though it meant he would have to be more careful doing what he had to do. It was true, what he’d said, about high school. First they made the stories the most important things, and then they made the people who acted out the stories the most important things, because those people would have to be. The paparazzi didn’t chase Arrow Normand and Marcey Mandret because they were idiots or because the editors of the tabloids were terrible human beings or even because the public was stupid. The paparazzi chased and the editors published and the public paid attention because these were the people who defined the stories that defined their lives. And defined was the right word, Carl thought, picking his way carefully over a little mound of snow and ice that cut across the road with no way to go around it. Stories were how people defined themselves as well as each other and the world they lived in. Identity was a story. In very traditional societies, the stories were myths and legends. In very religious societies, the stories were religious ones. In this society, the stories were at the movies, and on television, and in music videos, and without those stories the whole damned thing would fall apart. He’d spent a lot of his time in college rolling his eyes,wondering how anybody could spend his time worrying about this kind of bullshit, but now he saw that it wasn’t bullshit at all. It was the most important thing. “Identity narratives,” his professors had called them, and that was what he had spent his life doing. He had spent his life in the care and maintenance of the only identity narratives most Americans would ever know.

“Probably most people in the world,” he said, aloud again. His voice echoed slightly, and the street felt uncomfortably still. Here was a narrative for you: a man alone on a strangely deserted street, where things seem to be moving just out of sight, in the shadows, a man destined to meet evil face-toface before he even knows what hits him. It was not a terribly inventive narrative. Some version of it had probably existed forever, since long before human beings knew how to write things down. Maybe all narratives had existed forever. That was why people couldn’t walk through cemeteries without getting the creeps, and couldn’t stay long in an empty house without putting on some music or the tele vision. Maybe all narratives started in raw emotion, the kind of raw emotion people were helpless to control. Maybe they started in the conviction that being alone was so awful a thing, it was better to deny that it could ever be true.

He found the mailbox that said “Bullard” and looked up and down the street again. He might as well not have bothered. There was nobody here. He wondered where all the people were. They couldn’t be off on vacation, or at jobs in Boston. In either case, their houses would be better than these were. Besides, it was obvious that the houses on this street were not shut up for the winter. He looked around yet again. Maybe there were people here, but out of sight, behind curtains, lurking at windows. If anyone was here, he would know that Carl Frank did not belong, that he had no right to be trying the door at one of these houses. Would it matter? There was only the one town policeman. The state police had other things on their minds.

Carl walked up onto the front porch. It was a wide front porch, but the wood was old. Something would have to be done about the porch floor soon or Jack Bullard would find himself falling through it. There were planters hanging from hooks in the porch ceiling. The plants inside them were dead. There was an old glider up against the porch wall just outside a row of small windows. The glider was broken, and the fabric that had been used to cushion it was torn.

“He doesn’t take care of his place,” Carl said, out loud again, because he really couldn’t help it. He tried the door and found it locked, but not locked in any serious way. He jiggled the handle a couple of times and felt the door rattle in its frame. He gave it one good push with the side of his hip and it popped. He wondered if there was a problem with theft in this neighborhood. Idiotic as it had always seemed to him, theft was a big problem in poor neighborhoods. There were thieves—apparently, thieves who couldn’t count—who preferred to steal from poor people rather than rich ones. Maybe it was laziness. Maybe poor people’s houses were just easier to break into than rich people’s houses. Maybe fewer people cared.

He stepped into the living room and looked around. The house was full of stuff. There were things piled everywhere, not important, not expensive, but plentiful, as if Jack Bullard spent money for the sake of spending money. Maybe he did. Carl knew very little about him, except that he wanted to be a celebrity photographer and he’d spent a lot of time following Kendra Rhode and Arrow Normand around. Well, a lot of people did that. That wasn’t unusual.