After narrowly escaping the lair of the Nickelmans and camping well off the road to pass the night, it took them another full day on the poor roads to reach their destination. Fan drove the entire way, whatever substance Loreen and Quig had been given still affecting their systems. Fan had to stop several times for each of them to vomit on the side of the road, Quig especially pale and sweaty and hardly able to support himself. Fan had to come around the car and help him, using all the strength in her legs to buttress and lift him up from his sickly crouch and push him into the rear seat, where Loreen lay back against her window. At the few service stations along the way, Fan had to buy criminally expensive water to slake their extreme thirst, and if they tried to eat anything, they soon felt sick again. At one point Loreen soiled herself and Fan helped clean her and get fresh clothes from her backpack, after which Loreen mumbled that she was sorry for what she had said, after which Fan simply nodded. She’d hardly registered the slur, given the extremity of the moment, though while driving she did note the epithet. She’d known only B-Mor and so had all the preceding generations of her clan, New China a most distant notion that was hardly ever mentioned, and if so, somewhat disparagingly, say, to point out someone’s haughty airs, such as That’s some N-C style! Yet in bloodlines it was where she came from, it was what she looked like, and when she mused about it now, she wondered whether the legacy should mean more to her, especially as she was carrying a child. It was a talisman that was hers but which she kept solely on a shelf, an object that might indeed be powerful but only if she brought it down and pressed it to her brow and asked something significant of it. But what was that? And how would she ever come to know?
Before they got onto the stretch of well-kept toll road that would take them to the Charter village, Quig took the wheel. They didn’t want to be turned away as diseased so he tried to clean himself up but he still looked ghoulish, his eyes weary and bloodshot, his hair greasy-looking and matted in a lopsided fashion. Loreen appeared no better, crystals of sweat and dried spit clinging to the corners of her mouth. But when he pulled up to the guardhouse of the Charter village, he gave their names and the guard checked them against his screen and scanned their eyes, not bothering with Fan at all, assuming she was either theirs or on offer.
The village sign read Seneca, simply Seneca, and it was the first Charter village Fan had ever visited in person. Was it the same? It was not exactly the name she had looked up, but it was familiar. The village didn’t look totally strange to her, perhaps for the viewing she’d done of other villages, many of which were similarly laid out by one of the two major construction firms. From a satellite view, everything looks crisp and tailored, the curves of the streets and sidewalks arcing out in equal increments from a central open space, like ripples in a lake. Whenever she browsed, and it was not often, she liked to peer in close with the ultrazoom, inspecting the waxed finishes on the cars and ruler-straight joints of the sidewalks (never any renegade cracks) and the tiles of the roofs, which were not plastic or asphalt shingles like those of our free-standing houses but made, incredibly, from a piece of natural stone, each one with a distinct pattern and hand and its own earthy or flinty shade.
But this Charter was even better. In fact, it was hard to believe. It was the last gasp of the afternoon as they slowly drove, the sunlight angling through the voluminous hardwood trees, their broad leaves tittering and waving with a coolish breeze, the stately houses and sleek, jazzy condos set well back from the road rather than built right on top of it like our airless, chockablock row houses. There were tallish, attractive people of various races and ethnicities going about (no pets, of course), some striding quickly in fancy exercise clothing, arms a-rowing, some smartly dressed for office work, others carrying little shopping bags full of goodies one couldn’t see. There were nannies, generally darker skinned and squatter, either pushing prams or leading a pack of colorfully jumpsuited toddlers, but they, too, seemed somehow light of heart and tender and happy enough in their mobile sphere of cry and babble. Where the shops were more concentrated it was busier but no less tidy, the windows of the businesses sparkling enough that you had to look twice to see the exquisite displays of women’s bags and dresses or elaborately iced cakes or the mock-up of a luxurious bathroom festooned with speckled soaps looking good enough to eat and towels so fluffed and white they made you want to bathe. It was still too early for dinner but the all-black-clad waiters of the restaurants were setting the outdoor tables with splendid burnished cutlery and massive wine goblets and tastefully spare bouquets of tiny wildflowers, the plush-lined bars within already mirthful with the cocktail hour. She saw the same around every curve, this unbroken continuum of soft, prosperous light and richly textural detail and the unerring sensation that this would be a moment lovely and eternal.
In a word, it was beautiful. A bit unusual, yes, with the living and shopping so fully integrated, but beautiful nonetheless. She hadn’t been hoping for it to be any particular way but she hadn’t been expecting this. It almost made her feel nauseous, but it wasn’t illness so much as an upending awe, neither exactly good nor bad, a state of being she realized she had never experienced back in B-Mor, where routine is the method, and the reason, and the reward.
If Quig and Loreen did not appear to be impressed — they’d seen plenty of Charters before — their lackadaisical attitude was likely due more to their still miserable condition; Quig was driving tentatively enough that he was attracting attention, people on the sidewalk staring at the dusty old-model car with a mismatched wheel that squeaked at low speed, one of them, Fan was certain, now making a dour-faced call to village security. Quig soon turned off the main street and drove through a clearly special neighborhood of single-family homes, all very large but in differing styles (if perhaps designed in the same way behind the façades, with prominent center halls and matching wings for bedrooms and vehicles) and with front lawns completely cleared of trees to afford the fullest view of the homes from the street. There were no fences or walls or gates, everything wide open save for the side yards between the properties, which were left densely wooded.
They found the right house number on the mailbox and went up the driveway, Quig parking before the triple garage doors. It was a Mediterranean-style villa, beige-stuccoed and topped not by stone but terra-cotta tiles, and as they stood before the front door, they realized music was being faintly broadcast from speakers hidden in the eaves — a famous aria from an ancient Italian opera, Quig noted. When the door opened, a petite middle-aged woman in a light gray service uniform greeted them. She was clearly expecting them and led them to a suite of bedrooms on the second floor. Quig and Loreen took one room and Fan, to her surprise, was given the other, equally large, which was furnished with a king-sized bed and an overstuffed reading chair and antique writing desk and a bathroom with two washbasins and both a shower and a tub. The soaps and shampoos were arrayed just like in the shop displays, along with cotton balls and swabs and a packaged toothbrush on the vanity, and the thick towels on the tub surround were stacked three high, a child-sized robe splayed out beside them. The helper, named Mala, invited them to wash up and rest before having dinner with Mister Leo and Miss Cathy at eight o’clock.