From Tabula Rasa, Volume 1, a collection of his unrealized reporting projects, which was published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
A sprawling ranch on several acres has a short asphalt driveway that pools into a parking area that can accommodate five cars. I often drive by there at night, and have never seen a light. Not only is the house dark and lifeless, but there are no cars. Yet cars collect there in the mornings, soon after nine. Three cars, sometimes five. You don’t have to work for the Washington Post to imagine that people are working in this house. At what? This place, with its daytime cars, is also secluded. Secluding what? How many people show up in the cars? Are they wearing ties?
A sprawling ranch on several acres, market value in seven digits, has been evidently unoccupied for fifteen years, but no realty sign has gone up there, let alone a notice of a tax deed sale. Somebody is keeping the place up, and something is keeping the place closed. Why? There’s a car in the front yard, which probably suggests life and occupancy to most people driving by. From a bicycle, though, you are more than aware that this vehicle’s four tires are flat. This is a scene in search of a story. If I were writing it, I would go up to the house, peer in the windows, and count the skeletons.
On a corner lot, a two-story house went up twenty years ago. Architecturally, it’s a large and simple box with a gable roof and no distinguishing features—or, perhaps closer to purpose, a distinguishing absence of features. I mean, the house has been there twenty years and has no curtains in its windows. It has a lawn, yes, but no additional landscaping, not so much as a bush, let alone a tree. Garage doors are shut. For all the use they get, they could be painted on a wall. There is no sign of children. No sign of adult occupants. Who is doing what at that house? “Living there” is the first thought to vanish. Is it some kind of exchange, known only as such to people who drop in for minutes at a time, something changing hands here who knows when? This is New Jersey, Jimmy. Would it work best as a one-off or a series? In any case, you do it. Better you. I still have miles to go on my ride.
