Spark Read Free Page A

he found himself surprised he’d seen it, almost wondering if it had been real. He said, “Not much goes on around here, does it, Hattie?”
    “Not out where it can be seen, anyway. This is a retirement community, so the people who run it don’t encourage children or any kind of raucous behavior. A buyer has to be at least fifty-five years old to become a home or condo owner in Solartown, and the presence of children is definitely discouraged, even as guests.”
    “You sound as if you disagree with that policy,” Carver said.
    Hattie smiled sadly. “I wouldn’t mind it if some nice young couple with children moved in next door. On the other hand, I understand why some residents want their hard-earned peace to remain undisturbed.”
    Until it merges with the peace of the grave, Carver thought, then chastised himself for being morbid.
    “Contrary to what some people might believe,” Hattie said, “retired schoolteachers miss children.”
    Carver shifted his weight more heavily over his cane and nodded. He’d have thought otherwise.
    “I’ve forgotten my manners,” Hattie said, as if surprised. “Please sit down, Mr. Carver, and I’ll prepare some cool drinks. We—I have orange juice, grapefruit juice. Pepsi-Cola if you don’t mind diet.”
    “Nothing, thanks,” Carver said, not moving to sit down. “What I’d really like is for you to come with me in my car and show me around Solartown.”
    “If you’re going to continue standing there leaving a dent in the carpet from the tip of your cane, then let’s go.”
    She was already moving toward the door, a woman of decision and action.
    Properly chastised, Carver followed.
    “What exactly do you want to see?” she asked, pausing at a closet near the door to get a navy-blue pillbox hat and plunk it on her head. Carver wondered if she wore hats because her hair was thinning.
    “Oh, I just want a general view of things. So I can get a feel for the place.”
    “Very good, Mr. Carver.” Her tone suggested she was voicing approval of his preparation for a test.
    Maybe that was how she meant it exactly.
    Hattie sat on the passenger side of the Olds’s wide front seat while Carver drove. She directed him along streets with names like Reward Lane, Restful Avenue, Pension Drive. They were the north-south streets. The streets that ran east and west were lettered alphabetically.
    After weaving among side streets with their middle-class, attractive but monotonous pastel houses, navigator Hattie directed Carver south on Golden Drive. They rolled past Z Street and beyond A South, B South, all the way past M South, where Golden was divided by a grassy median and widened to run toward a complex of low beige brick buildings.
    “That’s the community center,” Hattie said. “Want to stop and look it over?”
    Carver parked in front of a clean beige structure with RECREATION CENTER lettered in gold on a dark-brown sign. “Lead on,” he said, turning off the engine.
    She did.
    He limped behind Hattie into the cool rec center. A few feet inside the glazed-glass double doors was a bulletin board with notices pinned to it announcing schedules for weaving, flower arrangement, exercise classes, literary discussion groups, swimming parties, a golf and tennis tournament. There was also a smattering of 3 × 5 cards advertising cars, golf carts, and household items for sale.
    Hattie smiled and nodded hello to several gray-haired women as she led Carver along a wide, cool central corridor, past a small and busy bowling alley, past windows overlooking an Olympic-size pool where half a dozen older men and women were splashing about like kids, beyond rooms where various arts and crafts classes were in progress. Near the back of the center they stood at a floor-to-ceiling window and looked out at tennis courts, and beyond them a well-tended eighteen-hole golf course. Two golfers were jouncing on a yellow golf cart toward a distant green. On the third green, not far from where