The night after Christmas and all through the house, it was colder than fuck.

The home was new, brand-new, with the various smells of paint, plastic and disinfectant you might expect. Even the carpet I was sitting on, next to a window onto the quiet street, had a chemical odor. No Christmas decorations lingered here, because the split-level four-bedroom affair was as empty as the boxes littering curbsides across America.

And this was America, all right-Iowa City, Iowa, the heartland, the street out front not really a street at all, but a former county road recently renamed Country Vista, which was ironic because the builders who’d invaded this stretch of farmland-bordered real estate had nothing so much in mind as blotting out a country vista.

Two houses sat on corners on either side of a brand-new lane that made a T with Country Vista, and I sat in one of those houses, the beige split-level on the left as you faced the renamed county road. This new lane had no name yet, just as its dozen split-levels (so far) had no inhabitants; the waiting dwellings squatted on sloping future lawns-snow-pocked dirt right now-with room for an entire development to develop beyond.

This must have pissed off the people across the way no end. The houses opposite had plenty of breathing room, big yards for little cottages, no two alike-from log to stone to brick-with only three visible from my window, even if I craned my neck either direction. Country Vista had once been quiet, even secluded, with trees and bushes and privacy. Right now it still was, though any non-evergreen trees and bushes were skeletal with clumps of white from last week’s snowfall.

On the other hand, the people in those varied cottages might not have minded as much as you’d think.