The Right Address

“We’re not doctors. Why are we making house calls?” Drew asked.

Kyle hitched his laptop bag higher and sighed. “Keep your chin up and walk a little faster. Then we won’t get mugged.”

“Mugged?” Drew squeaked.

Kyle rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a wuss.”

“We’re in the ghetto, man. Two white guys in the ghetto - we’re walking targets.”

“We will be if you keep talking like that,” Kyle said. “And this isn’t a ghetto.” At least, North Omaha wasn’t like the ghettos people saw on TV. The streets followed the semi-organized grid-system that the rest of Omaha pretended to follow, but the further north of Dodge the streets got, the more broken-down they became. Kyle and Drew would have been driving if Drew hadn’t blown a tire on a pothole. The cracks in the broken sidewalk seemed to have been timed to match the potholes in the tar, and Drew had almost tripped over his own shoes five times now.

“You told the caller what a house visit costs?” Drew asked.

“It’s not like Holgren would let us out of the office if I hadn’t pinned the caller down to actual payment,” Kyle said. Drew’s skepticism was understandable, though. Most of the houses in these neighborhoods were from the sixties and seventies, and a good number of them hadn’t had paint jobs since then. Lawns were overgrown and choked with weeds, and the scent of grits that wafted from open windows. Drew looked guilty when his stomach growled. Kyle would have paused to admire one of the ma-an-pa corner stores a little longer if the group of teenagers pouting over soda pop bottles weren’t glaring quite so fiercely.

“...Are we still even in the city limits anymore?” Drew asked.

Kyle peered at the GPS on his cell phone, then looked up. They’d reached the end of Maple Street, which had dead-ended here even though it was a main street further west, and there was a single house, ramshackle and made of what looked suspiciously like bamboo. It stood in the middle of a single, grassy field, and Kyle was convinced that a gang of men would emerge, singing songs about picking cotton. The grassy field was huge and dotted with trees, and the rest of the neighborhood seemed to have vanished from around it.

“Well,” Kyle said at last. “It’s the right address.”