I am walking around with Ricky G who is considering buying a place in the area.
“Houses are cheaper across the state line by Silver Brook West,” I tell him. “If you are right across the border you can simply walk back to the shops and restaurants without having to get into your car.”
We are parked on the side with the shops but walk over the state line onto a grassy area used for cars, a makeshift parking lot used precisely for access from the other direction. “See how easy it is?”
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Above us is the concrete overpass of a freeway.
“I don’t know that I want to have to cross over here,” he says, “under a freeway.”
It is not particularly nice I agree to myself, with a number of beat up cars parked on the grass and concrete bollards on the edge of the lot, demarcating the state line. The bollards are close enough together to prevent driving across. Walking through the rough is the only option.
A man weaves around the cars holding a black semi automatic rifle; silhouette of butt, magazine and barrel as he leans against a car. The gun looks half cocked to me, but ready. The man’s finger is on the trigger, he makes me nervous, but Ricky is more accustomed to guns, and goes over to admire it.
“What you got there?” he asks.
I stay a few feet away but can hear the conversation. Further over, another man also with a rifle has his back turned to Ricky. The first is telling him about an encounter that made him get the rifle.
“You see she ran over my legs,” he says. “She was a hooker, see, and was shouting, and I thought she was gone but she came back round with her car and ran me again.”
Later, I see the same man in his apartment, a kitchen old and shabby with yellow cabinetry. He is with his son and the son tastes soup from a lobster pot sized saucepan.
“The soup is tasting funny again,” the son says.
“Yeah?” the man replies, and they become suspicious, look at each other furtively.
In my hiding place, and through a round black peephole both are standing over the saucepan and like a cold mist, it dawns on me; a dread that it may be me who is trying to poison them.
Photo by Republica from Pixabay
