Westlake, Donald E - SSC 02 by Enough (v1.1)

Author:Enough (v1.1) [Enough (v1.1)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Staples had sent a car for me again, which delivered me to a small remodeled brick town house on 46th Street between First and Second Avenues. This entire neighborhood was full of United Nations missions and foreign embassies, each nation putting on as much show as it could afford. At East Side prices, the smaller countries couldn't afford much, and this narrow four-story architectural nonentity was about par for a modest mission like that from Visaria.

If I'd hoped for some insight into the style and culture of Visaria from the interior of the mission I was doomed to disappointment. The building, probably in advanced disrepair when Visaria bought it, had apparently been purchased as a Handyman's Special and furnished out of Sears, Roebuck. The floors, which felt spongy and unreliable underfoot, had all been covered with cheap solid-color wall-to-wall carpeting. Dropped ceilings, those fiberboard rectangles in a white metal grid, screened off the no-doubt-hideous original ceilings with clean new hideousness, and the original walls were covered with pale-tone panelings in simulated wood grain. Light was provided by fluorescent panels in the dropped ceilings. It was like being in a real estate office in a shopping center, with furnishing to match; imitation-wood formica desks, imitation-leather vinyl sofas, and real metal square wastebaskets.

The building was narrow, and not very deep, so there was minimal floor-space. One entered from the street into a vestibule with a staircase leading up; the staircase too was covered with cheap carpeting. A sign hanging over the stairs was neatly hand-printed AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Another sign, waist-height, standing on its own chrome leg in front of the stairs, said INFORMATION, with an arrow pointing to the right.

An interior wall had apparently been removed here, so that the vestibule and the former living room had become one oddly-shaped receptionist's office. It was appropriately furnished, including paintings that might have been views of the forests and lakes of Visaria but that looked to me like the forests and lakes of northern Michigan. A small rack of tourist literature near the entrance had an indefinably scraggy and hopeless air about it, as though even the Visarians could think of no sensible reason for anyone to visit their country.

Several people were now in this room. Two of them were Staples and Bray, several others appeared also to have some sort of official connection with today's event, and the last two were a weepy-eyed heavyset girl sitting at the receptionist's desk and a truculent-looking bruiser hulking on one of the vinyl sofas. He reminded me for some reason of this morning's funeral, probably because he seemed ethnic in much the same way. If Laura's husband had grown up big enough to play professional football he might have looked a lot like this fellow.

Staples, seeing me arrive, came over and said, quietly, "I won't introduce you. We'll just take a little walk through and I'll describe the situation."

"Right."

"You see the girl sitting at the desk?"

"The receptionist?"

"Right. She came back from lunch at one o'clock this afternoon.

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