“Nothing,” I said. We walked a few paces apart down the center of Saxony Boulevard. Some of the buildings had been marked with graffiti, but surprisingly few for this part of the country. To our left, down Bohemia Way, more ghostly shop fronts made old, phony promises.
We stood under a flaking golden kringle marking a Danish bakery. This shop had not been boarded, but the windows were long gone, and the interior was a dark, dusty ruin of bare shelves, exposed pipes, and electrical conduits poking out bare, dead wire.
Inside the display case lay a rain-wrinkled model of the town, all the color gone from the warped cardboard buildings. Next to a ripped-out void on the north side of the model, a curled paper label read, THURINGIA BADEN BADEN: MINERAL SPRINGS AND SPA, Natural Healing Waters From Deep in the Earth.
“Hot baths,” Lissa said. “Bubbling death by fumes of mercury.”
“Not funny,” I said.
Two doors down, delaminating plywood covered a real-estate office window. Ye Olde Alpine Village Realty, announced quaint chiseled letters above the plywood. Blue-and-red trim, gingerbread with edelweiss cutouts. White America, with so shallow a history, was always looking for affirmation from more rooted cultures. Anywhere else it would have been simply ludicrous. Here, it made me grit my teeth.
“Had enough?” Lissa asked.
“Four or five more streets,” I said.
For the next fifteen minutes, we walked through all the sad, desiccated dreams of a small and unsuccessful tourist town, reduced to bankruptcy and memories as bleached as the posters.
A bandstand stood in a small village square. It didn’t take much to imagine oompah and polka music rising in the long summer nights.
The quiet was absolute. Not even a breeze blew through the old buildings. We passed a warehouse, doors yawning open, the concrete floor covered with broken pallets and mildewing heaps of burlap. In a narrow alley between two picturesque and thoroughly broken-down chalets lay an abandoned Ford sedan, stripped to body and frame. It had keeled over on a jack that had finally let go, after who knew how many decades.
Near the back of the town, separated from the other buildings, we found an office for the Thuringia Courier-Journal, a pretentious name for what I presumed was a one-sheet devoted to small-town flackery. Still, the door had not been boarded, and I thought it might be worth a look inside.
“Think the sheriff will mind?” I asked. I prepared to make a run at it with my shoulder.
“That’s stupid,” Lissa said. “You’ll break something.”
I flexed my muscles. “Man of steel,” I said.
The wood was old and weak, and the door gave with one slam. Dust flew everywhere. Pulling down a triumphant fist, I stepped into the darkness. As my eyes adjusted, I stared at stacks of posters, boxes filled with handouts, and a small gray desk.
I carried a poster and pamphlet into the sunlight.
“’Thuringia Farms, We ship everywhere,’” I read. “’Christmas, Thanksgiving, Any Holiday Occasion! World Famous Fruitcake, Walnut and Almond Baskets, Dried Fruit Samplers. Candified Oranges, Pineapple’—”
“’Candified’?” Lissa smirked.
“That’s what it says. ‘Dates and Olives, Deluxe Pitted Prunes from California’s Golden Hills. Satisfaction Guaranteed.’”
“Keeps you regular,” Lissa said.
“’Copyright 1950.’”
I held up the poster:
WELCOME TO PARADISE THURINGIA!
SUN AND SPA, THERMAL SPRINGS
HEALTHY LIVING
AMERICA’S NEW VIGOR CAPITAL
Female bathers in polite Esther Williams suits posed on rock walls and dipped their feet into a steaming pool. All smiles. Vigor and white teeth and fifties-style pillar thighs everywhere.
“Let’s find the bathhouse,” I suggested. “Looks sociable.”
“Let’s not and say we did,” Lissa said. But the light words did not cover her pallor. She didn’t like the place one bit. To me, it seemed sad and stupid but, so far, no cause for alarm.
The spa was a brick-and-stone blockhouse on the east end of town. Another run of chain link surrounded it, this time with a locked gate, and an even larger sign announced, NATURAL POLLUTION SITE. There was more detail in fine print:
WARNING.
DO NOT BATHE OR DRINK FROM SPRINGS.
CALIFORNIA STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
And below that, in heavy block letters,
BACTERIAL CONTAMINATION.
“Curious?” I asked.
“No,” Lissa said.
I took the rock and whacked at the lock on the gate. It broke after three tries, and the gate opened with a shrill whine. Lissa followed a few steps behind.
The main entrance had been bricked up, but around the side, a service door sported another latch and lock. That one took five whacks. I grabbed the hanging lock and pulled the door wide, then peered into the darkness.
