Leisureville (28 page)

Half an hour and many miles later, I pull into the driveway with the Playboy bunny ears. Mr. Midnight shows me to my room, a tiny but pleasant sunporch with a leaky inflatable mattress. His friend Harry is also visiting this week, he tells me; otherwise, I'd be staying in the formal guest room. He hands me several clean towels and tells me I can use the bathroom in the hallway.

On the bathroom counter are all sorts of hotel-sized soaps and shampoos as well as a sign that instructs guests to ring the front desk if they have any additional requests. Like Betsy, Mr. Midnight also has Mardi Gras beads on display; his hang from the showerhead. When I ask him how the celebration compares with the real thing, Mr. Midnight says there's one distinct difference: “Here we give the ladies beads for
not
showing us their breasts.”

When Mr. Midnight sees my golf cart, he asks me how it runs. “I don't think the rentals go too fast,” he says, putting on his sunglasses and adjusting his flip-flops. I challenge him to a drag race. We line up at the edge of the driveway and Mr. Midnight counts to three. Sensing trouble, I lead-foot it on “two.”

My cart accelerates smoothly at first, but then the engine hesitates
as if to say, “Hey, not so fast, buddy.” As we careen around the block, Mr. Midnight keeps gaining on me. I gun the engine, swerve to and fro, and try to cut him off on a tight turn. But it's hopeless; Mr. Midnight wins by more than three cart-lengths.

“Don't worry about it,” he says. “I must have had the wind on my back.”

I hop into his cart, and we drive to a nearby pool. Along the way we see an ambulance speed by with lights flashing. “Looks like another tee time has opened up,” Mr. Midnight says.

We make a quick pit stop at the neighborhood mailbox gazebo. “I have to pick up my Viagra,” he says, and soon returns with a brown package. “It's not that I need it, mind you. It's an enhancement, like whipped cream and nuts on a sundae. If it's a special night, I might take 100 milligrams. If it's one of my regular honeys, I'll probably pop a fifty. Friendship only goes so far.”

When we arrive at the pool, Mr. Midnight pauses and carefully scans the crowd, which is mostly female. “Not bad,” he says. “Not bad at all.” Despite copious warnings, Mr. Midnight is addicted to sunbathing. He sprawls out on a lounge chair and scoffs at the mention of sunscreen. He then glances through his mail, which contains his financial statements.

“I'm not greedy,” he says, putting his mail away. “All I care about is getting my money's worth. I mean, look at all we have here.” He points to a collection of shapely younger visitors sitting along the pool's edge, their long legs dangling lazily in the water. He sighs, and readjusts himself on the lounge chair.

I ask him if he wants to read the newspaper after I'm finished with it. “Nah,” he says. “The news doesn't really interest me. I guess I wish the world was a better place, but I somehow feel distant from it.”

Early in the evening, we head to the Bistro in Spanish Springs and sidle up to the bar. I spot an older couple dancing slowly in a tight embrace. “That's ‘the Prosecutor' with his new girl, Holly,”
Mr. Midnight explains. “He's in love. I've never seen the guy so happy. It's like he's a new man. You can't pry those two apart. It's truly sad, but it's a fact: for some people life is better when they're in love.”

An hour or so later, I head out back, behind the bar's small patio, where all the guys go to pee. The bar has only one toilet for men, and few can hold their bladder long enough for the wait. Frankly, after a few beers, I can't either.

When I emerge from the bushes a few moments later, I'm embarrassed to find a couple sitting down at a nearby table and toasting themselves with glasses of wine. It's the ebullient Prosecutor and his attractive new girlfriend.

When he sees my notebook, he waves me over and introduces me to Holly. His smile is so genial, and his red Hawaiian shirt so casual, that I wonder how he got such a belligerent nickname. “This is the most remarkable woman I've met in the six decades of my life,” he tells me warmly. “I never thought I'd find someone like her. You can write that down!”

He points to Holly's lantern-lit shadow on the outdoor wall. “Look at that profile. Isn't it the most stunning thing you've ever seen?” Holly blushes and takes another sip of wine. “I thought it was too late for me,” the Prosecutor continues. “But something continues to burn within the human breast.”

A man walks outside and catches the tail end of the Prosecutor's pleasing homily. He lights up a cigarette, and then flashes a kindly smile at the doting couple. “Ain't love swell?” he says.

“You're a smoker,” the Prosecutor snaps back. “Obviously you don't have any love; at least not for yourself.”

I look at Holly, and then at the man with the cigarette. We're all too stunned to say much. The man awkwardly extinguishes his cigarette and hastily walks back inside.

“You see, we know what love is,” the Prosecutor continues. “We're
in
love.” He takes a sip of wine and slowly savors it. “This
place can be a real meat market, but Holly is different from the rest. She understands that real love is different, and that women must be subservient to men, because that's the way God intended it to be. That should be the first question a man asks in any relationship: ‘Will you respect me as your leader?' Every ship needs a captain.”

Holly looks at me and clears her throat. “I think there can be more than one approach,” she manages.

“Sounds a bit like a dictatorship,” I blurt out.

“That's because it is,” the Prosecutor responds. “Men are meant to lead and women are meant to follow. That's what it says in the Bible. Or haven't you read it?” He takes another sip of wine. “Are you married? If you are, your marriage won't survive. I can guarantee that. But I'm here to tell you that you can find love again, even at my age.”

I excuse myself and walk back inside, where I recount my bizarre encounter to Mr. Midnight. “Why don't you ask the Prosecutor whether he goes down on Holly,” he advises. “Tell him you're writing a book and you're looking for the one guy in The Villages who refused to pleasure a woman. That son of a bitch is one squemish lover. As for Holly, I could help her get over the heartbreak.”

I leave the bar early, and hurry down to Sumter Landing in my golf cart to catch the last showing of the remake of
King Kong
. The theater, despite its enormous screen and stadium seating, is crowded, so I pick a seat high up in the back row. After the movie, I stick around for the screen credits to gather my thoughts, and ponder the sad fate of the colossal gorilla. When I finally stand up to leave, the lights are on and theater is empty.

As I exit the row, I'm surprised to see that the wall behind me isn't really the curtained panel I distinctly remember when I first sat down, but rather a two-way mirror concealing a luxury skybox. The lights are on inside and I spot an older man with white hair
surrounded by what I assume to be grandchildren. For a short moment our eyes lock and I feel goose bumps form on the back of my neck: I'm staring at the elusive Gary Morse and he's staring right back at me through half an inch of soundproof glass.

Can this really be happening? I stand there like an idiot, my face close enough to the glass for my breath to leave a circle of moisture. Should I knock on the window and wave hello? I've fantasized for weeks about interviewing Morse, but not like this. This is too weird. Frankly, I'd given up on ever meeting him. I had located Morse's private home, his eating club, and even his airplane hanger, but I never caught a glimpse of him.

Did he know I was digging around in his business? Was he keeping tabs on me? Given his abundant wealth, did he even care? Apparently not: Morse quickly loses interest in my gaze and exits through a door leading to a hidden corridor, trailed by a small coterie of rambunctious children.

I rush outside. It's after 11 PM, and Sumter Landing is deserted. The only sound I hear is Frank Sinatra's “Fly Me to the Moon” merrily wafting from the lampposts to an audience of one—me. I figure that Morse must have a hidden exit, so I run to the back of the building where the dumpsters are located. I find nothing but unmarked doors, all of which are locked. I wait a few moments and run back to the marquee. Ten minutes later, there is still no sign of Morse.

I jog down the street and look for signs of life at Morse's private eating club, which, unbeknownst to residents, is hidden above a popular Italian restaurant. I run up an unmarked staircase at the back, only to find the club door locked and its windows dark. Resigned, I walk back to my golf cart, but I soon notice, across the parking lot, a lone SUV with its lights on, idling. Curious, I walk toward it. The driver puts the car in gear and slowly drives off. I watch the red taillights grow smaller as the SUV heads toward the big white spot in middle of the map.

I'm left wondering what I might have asked him, if given the chance. In some ways, Lester is right—the story of The Villages' is really about the residents: why they've chosen to live here, and what they make of it. But Morse is the one who created this kingdom of leisure that will one day be home to 110,000 retirees. Is the wizard pleased with his creation? Does he have second thoughts about his impact on the region, let alone the end result of the lifestyle he is selling? And why does he keep such a tight rein over his residents and the region as a whole? Does he consider such measures necessary to protect his investment? Or is he simply monopolizing local politics and the media because he can? After all, The Villages isn't a charity; it's a business. If there's one thing I feel reasonably certain about Morse, it's this: he has an uncanny ability to provide people with what they want, and make a fortune doing so.

I toss on a sweater and drive my cart back to the house with the bunny ears. Mr. Midnight is still out, most likely at Crazy Gringos with the usual suspects. I sit down at his computer to check my e-mail, but I'm distracted by an instant message query in the form of a purple and pink cat with long lashes winking repeatedly in the middle of the screen. “Hey, Mr. Midnight. Are you there? My kitty's purring for you.”

A few days later, the ground collapses beneath a house in the Andersons' village, while a utility company is digging in the area. The collapse causes the house to shift dramatically, and a gas line springs a leak. There's no explosion, but the place looks like a disaster zone. The flashing emergency lights and yellow crime scene tape look acutely out of place. Neighbors do their best to simply ignore the mess as they go about their daily business. When I ask Dave about the sinkhole, he expresses little concern. “I'm sure they'll patch it up soon enough,” he says.

The lead story in the next day's
Daily Sun
is decidedly upbeat: “Study Reveals People Living Longer.” Farther down the page is a short article addressing the neighborhood calamity. The reporter extensively quotes a utility foreman on the job, who explains in excruciatingly technical detail how his crew executed the dig to exacting standards consistent with industry regulations.

I read the story two more times, but still can't figure out what happened. Nowhere in the article is it explained how or why the ground collapsed. I recognize the byline; it's by Kim, the reporter I met at The Villages' government orientation class. I call her cell phone.

“It was a spontaneous sinkhole,” Kim tells me flatly. “It had nothing to do with the digging. I tried putting it in the story, but my editor deleted it. When I complained, he told me to stop bulldogging the story. The Villages doesn't want to admit sinkholes exist, because they're related to the aquifer, and that scares them. So, we're not allowed to mention them.”

By now, my own “Village vision” dims my concern over the incident and its outrageous yet predictable manipulation. I'll be leaving shortly, and after weeks of hustling around from morning to night, I want to relax and try
living
like a Villager.

And so here I am. The sun is shining, the gentle breeze smells sweet, and I have a golf cart to tool around in. If the sinkhole doesn't affect me directly, then why should I care? I have my own concerns back home to worry about. Sinkholes aside, life in The Villages is relaxing, pleasant, and comfortably predictable. I spend my last days lounging at the pool with Mr. Midnight, going to the movies with Sassy, and lingering over lunches at outdoor tables in sun-splashed Spanish Springs.

Waking up on the little sunporch, I face few bigger decisions than which friend to visit during the day and where to go out at night. Sometimes, the decision isn't even that difficult—friends
often come calling at Mr. Midnight's. It's not unusual to wake up from a lunchtime nap and see a caravan of golf carts turning into the driveway.

“Hey, is Midnight around?” a friend named Danny shouts across the yard one day. He's wearing an open shirt, a big floppy straw hat, and a stripe of zinc oxide down his sunburned nose. His attractive young wife sits beside him and waves pleasantly. Another three friends pop open beers and wait in a second golf cart decked out to look like a fire engine—it even has miniature ladders. I squint into the sunlight and explain to Danny that Mr. Midnight's probably at the pool scouting bikinis and popping Viagra.

I hear a shuffling behind me and turn around to see Harry, Mr. Midnight's best friend from back home, who is visiting for several days. To his credit—as I mentioned earlier—he has been assigned the coveted formal guest room reserved for non-female A-list visitors. Harry, like me, is hungover. He reminds me of a college freshman the morning after a blowout party, but half a century older. His beer belly is sagging over a pair of polka-dot boxers and his skinny legs.

“Hey, Harry!” Danny calls out. “Some night, eh? Welcome to ‘the lifestyle'! Sure beats shoveling snow, don't you think?” Harry belches and nods.