Here are the streets, though they lead only to other streets — and all are sidewalks, if not in purpose then practice. Only the road leads out, and only the adults, the grownups, know the one street of the incomprehensibly infinite streets that are all of them sidewalks that leads to the one road leading out, to somewhere or other. Shalom in peace. O the sidewalks, the sectioned pathways here that lead nowhere, only to other pathways leading to nowhere, then intersecting in crosswalks, crossing streets and lanes and avenues, ways and even boulevards and courts in white lines — and that one road still, where is it, where does it go?
Here it’s safe, but Ima says to look both ways just to make sure.
The one road out is the one road in, into the sanctum, the penetralia — a lot where once the Development had planned to build a pool, but the depths were drowned in committee, rezoned.
Instead, His house had been raised thereupon.
And then out — the one road leading into the one wider world, it’s said, into the Unkempt, the Unmanaged, God knows.
Ima says to be careful, don’t talk to strangers.
And yet here, no one’s a stranger — as you might know where they live, with whom, what they do and even how much money they make at it, though you’ve never met them, they’re yours…
Everything inside is the domain of the Gatekeeper.
In this world there are always brotherhoods, clubs, orders, or organizations, nearly illimitable loyalties each with their own mottos, intricate insignia of the fingers secreted in handshakes, all to prove affirmation for meeting nights, dissolving between resolutions into allegiances of individual necessity — and so verily there are fraternities within fraternities, lodges within lodges, loyalties within loyalties, divided then subdivided again and again to a degree of confusion at which you just can’t, don’t, won’t keep up with them anymore and so go and give it up for mishegas, nonsense, cleaving instead to an overly simplistic interpretation of the world, your loss. Our Gatekeeper here is a member in good standing of the Gatekeeping Lodge, they all are, those of every Development — them sharing intelligence, methods, techniques, these guardians of the protocols of entrance, upholders of the rituals pertaining thereto, their loyalties perpetually divided between the efficient maintenance of the flow of traffic and persons in and out of their respective Developments, and a professional satisfaction to be found in proper inconvenience, the pride they must take in postponement, delay. An expert, this Gatekeeper knows every reason to counter excuse, and will countenance no exceptions, nor explanation. His domain is a heated, insulated lodge nearly the size of a house such as those his position’s foresworn to protect, situated parallel with the road at the landscaped mouth of this luxuriously prefab Joysey Development — this Gatekeeper’s last, most deluxe assignment, almost a retirement, he’s still getting paid. One Thousand Cedars its name, but who’s counting?
Oy, wasn’t his idea.
With a swig of dietetic soda he gulps the last of his medications, a host of attention deficit pills (last prescribed by a Doctor Klockenmeyer at 82 Oak); he’s waiting — a lay member must not be caught lying down; unto the midnight shifts, with static up on the screen and the ominous crackling crush of the dogwalkers, insomniac, tromping puppies through snow and ice, through to the morning shifts, newspaper funnies fixed featureless to forehead — all those passes and identifications to understand and transmit, Developmentwide. Isn’t easy. Vigilance is key. There among the switches, his sustenance; he lives on snackfood, the carbohydrate bounty of the vending machine Management had installed in his Lodge for them to make return on their investment in him: pretzels low salt and no, these sugarless candy bars and saccharine sodas, now empty receptacles for the sorting of his meds. His screens show the lack of activity around the perimeter, the news, a situation comedy set in a Development much like this one, and Misses Herring’s private bathroom: this latter a measure of personal surveillance, undertaken on his own initiative; though more a hobby than an issue of security, it’s lonely, it works.
