Everybody Has Everything (29 page)

“You know what? I can’t talk right now—”

“Don’t you want to hear what it’s about? You’ll love this—”

James stopped him. “I’m picking up my—I’m picking up Finn right now. It’s Halloween. So can I call you back tomorrow? Is that cool?” The shrieking got louder. “Doug, you know what? You’re going out on me. This phone is shit. I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks for thinking of me, man.”

Finn had his coat over his panda suit. He was waiting at the door for him, vibrating with excitement.

“Camera!” he called, pointing at the camera. James took his hand. They walked along the street quietly.

After a block, James said: “You know, I used to have a job. That’s a little factoid about me that you may not know.” He cautioned Finn to look both ways at the crosswalk. They continued on.

“I don’t know if I really want that job anymore. But today I was thinking: A camera is a very useful thing. Beautiful even. And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather make a movie with. Do you want to make a movie?”

Finn looked up at him and nodded.

“Let’s make a movie,” said James.

All the way home, James took footage of Finn. Finn ran up staircases. Finn sat on a manhole. Finn kicked at leaves. He stopped every few minutes to look at James’s footage, entranced by his own image in the camera’s small window.

But when they got to the park, Finn stopped suddenly.

“What now?” he said.

James put the camera down on a picnic table and stood next to Finn, both caught in the camera’s square eye.

“Now this!” And James beat his chest and began yelling up to the sky. “RARARRARA!” A few trick-or-treaters ran
past, giggling, trailed by a mother who glanced at James nervously. James jumped up and down. “RARARARARRR!” he screamed. He made gorilla sounds, scratching his armpits and leaping in the air. Finn looked up at him, grinning. “RARARA!” said Finn. He beat his own small hands against his panda chest and ran around James in circles. “RARARRAR!” he called, too, circling and circling and circling.

I
T HAPPENED BECAUSE
the door was open. The sun had just set and the trick-or-treaters arrived immediately, released with the darkness. A baby butterfly in the arms of her father. A trio of Chinese kids on the verge of adolescence who hadn’t bothered with costumes.

“Do a trick,” James demanded. The kids looked at him blankly. Finally, the tallest one began singing “Happy Birthday” in a thick accent. James cut him off.

“Never mind. Forget it.” James handed each of them two miniature chocolate bars from a blue glass bowl.

The doorbell kept ringing. James decided to prop it open with a chair, leaving the bowl of candy on top.

“Ready!” said Finn. It was true. He stood in front of James, arms at his side, grinning broadly, his face shrunken by the fluffiness of the panda hood. The legs hung over the boots, raggedy and odd.

“I’ve got to take a leak. I’ll be right back,” said James.

Finn hopped on the couch and stared out the window at the creatures on parade in the falling dark. James was gone for less than a minute—forty seconds? Thirty seconds? He would be asked for the exact number of seconds several times. He zipped up his fly as he emerged from the bathroom below the stairwell. No, he had not washed his hands, because he was rushing, because he was aware of the boy alone.

“Ready, Freddy? Let’s get some loot!” He emerged into the living room to find the white leather couch empty.

“Finny?” called James. He moved quickly through the rooms, his eyes landing on the open front door. A Spider-Man appeared in the space, his finger on the bell.

James shoved past him and onto the porch.

“Trick—”

“Just take it,” said James. He looked down at a mother on the sidewalk.

“Did you see a panda? I can’t find my—there’s a boy—he’s two—” The woman shook her head.

“Your son?”

James didn’t answer. “He’s in a panda costume—” James said this as he walked backward into the house. “Finn! Finny!” He began opening cupboards, closets. Without hesitating, the woman followed James inside.

“When did you last see him?” she called to James, who had sprinted up the staircase. The woman crouched down, checking under the couch. Spider-Man, a few years older than Finn, opened closets and cupboards, too, following James’s lead.

“I’ll check the basement. Is your wife here?” the woman called up the stairs. James peered down at her, a stranger with a kind, unyielding look, the firmness of a beloved librarian.

“She’s on her way home from work. Yes, yes, check the basement.”

She did that, too—How long? How long these footsteps?—and returned to the main floor.

“Upstairs again,” said James. He led her up to the long, dark floors of the hall, into the white bedroom.

The woman said: “You have a beautiful home. It’s so clean!”
Then she put her hands to her mouth. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.”

“It’s fine.” James had a sensation in his stomach of bread leavening, something expanding, moving up into his chest.

Spider-Man followed, homing in on the guest bedroom that was only half transformed into a child’s room. He picked up Finn’s Moo blanket, twirling it around by the head. Quickly, his mother pulled it from his hand and laid it across the quilt.

“I’m calling my husband,” she said, pulling a cell phone from her jacket.

James nodded. Finn could not be found. The house was stuffed with his absence. James could smell him, peppery and sweet; he could hear him howling outside to come back in, straining at the windows. He put his hands out for his hair, his warm skin—and then dropped them to his sides.

James ran outside, jogged up the street calling: “Finn! Finn!” Small children moved aside, and he leaned down, walking crouched, trying to see their faces, to see through the masks and hoods. None was Finn. James went the other way, south, weeding through the bodies. He was out of breath, sweating in the cold. None was Finn.

James ran back to his porch, certain Finn would be there, waiting, but there was only a man on the front steps, hulking and peering through the open door. Chuckles. Spider-Man clung to his leg.

“My wife called me,” he said.

A stream of fairies and princesses moved up the stairs. The sun had set now; the sky was black. The trick-or-treaters wore bright armbands on their wrists and ankles. Some waved glow sticks, artifacts from parties James had once attended. Spider-Man passed out candy from Ana’s bowl.

James could not meet Chuckles’s eyes. He began to speak, tumbling: “He was here. I went to the bathroom—”

“Do you have a picture?”

James nodded. He floated up to the guest room and took the photo of Finn with Marcus and Sarah that rested on the bedside table, a boy being hugged on both sides by his mother and father. He glanced at it, at the breadth of Finn’s smile. He went into the bedroom and grabbed his camera, too, with the footage from the afternoon.

Chuckles said nothing about the parents in the picture.

“My buddy’s a cop. Hang on.” He dialed his cell phone, speaking into the earpiece that was permanently clipped to his skull like a hearing aid.

On the street, Sandra Pereira, whom James now knew to be Chuckles’s wife, was standing at the center of a circle of adults. Chuckles handed her the photo. They glanced back at James, fear bouncing back and forth between them. They looked focused, ready, as if they had been practicing for this. Sandra returned to James on the porch and drilled him:
What was Finn wearing? How tall? How heavy? Where did he like to go?

James pressed a button on his camera, and they watched Finn on the small screen, jumping and yelling in his panda suit, bouncing in the leaves. Chuckles appeared and watched, too. Sandra put a hand on James’s shoulder and squeezed.

James turned off the camera and went through Sandra’s questions, one by one. He knew every answer.

The buzzer was broken. Ana knocked loudly. No one came to the door. She stood on the porch, glancing at the stained seats
from the car, wondered if there was a key hidden inside one of the tears. Then she tried the handle of the door, and with a turn, it opened.

The shoes remained in their jumble. Today the hallway smelled of vinegar. She moved up the staircase, hand on the loose rail. She could hear the explosions, the sound of gunfire and battle. She knocked.

“Come in!” a voice called. Ana opened the door. Charlie’s roommate was on the couch, console in hand, thumbs flying. Charlie sat next to him, attached by a cord to his own plastic box. He glanced at her once, blankly, then again with recognition. Startled, he dropped the box.

“Ana!” He stood.

“No! Chuck! Keep going!” shouted Russell, grabbing for Charlie’s box, trying to work two of them, one in each hand.

“What are you doing here? I mean, it’s fine, it’s great—”

“I wanted to give you something,” said Ana.

“NOOOO!” Russell shouted. “NOOOO!” His forehead was slick with sweat.

“Okay, this is—the kitchen’s a mess—” said Charlie.

“Should we go to your room?” He opened his eyes wide, nodded. Ana followed him down a corridor.

“Sit down,” he said. The bed, tidily made, filled almost the entire room, so Ana sat on the edge of it. A white curtain covered the window. Charlie grabbed a wadded T-shirt and tossed it into the old armoire.

“You don’t have much stuff,” said Ana.

“Really? I always feel like I have too much.”

He stood in front of her and then sat down. They were shoulder to shoulder, as if sitting on a bus. Ana reached into her purse and pulled out a brown paper bag.

“Here,” she said. Charlie removed a black notebook. He flipped through its empty lined pages.

“Thank you. I’m not sure—what made you—”

“I saw it. I don’t think you should get a BlackBerry. I think this is better.”

Charlie laughed. “A one-woman campaign against technology.”

“It’s also a bribe,” said Ana. “I might be going away for a little while. I’m not sure. I want you to take care of my mother. Will you do that for me? Will you just keep an eye on her until I get back?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m always looking out for her, Ana. Even if you didn’t ask me, I would.” He tried to catch her eye, but she was gazing at the curtain. “Where are you going?”

Ana saw upon the white canvas of the curtain faint lines like rivers, crossing and cutting.

“I don’t know,” she said. She could feel Charlie’s arm near hers, the fraction of space between them. She could imagine her hands on his neck, the roughness of his jaw. She could feel it without doing it, even the aftershocks, the mess. And then she thought:
No, it’s not true: In fact, you don’t know how this will turn out
. She had always tried so hard to anticipate every step before it landed, but now she didn’t even know who would be in her home, or where that home would be. And that thought set her freight-free.

Ana stood.

“Thank you,” she said, turning for the door.

“Ana, wait—” But she was gone, through the battle and the electronic bloodshed, past the man on the couch who was wailing now as if he were injured.

Outside, she moved fast through the trick-or-treaters. The
sounds of fireworks had begun, explosions in the distance, some nearby, but untraceable, popping from alleys and behind cars. The sky, far away, was streaked hot red.

James knew Finn’s height, his weight, the color of his socks. He repeated these things.

Ana turned onto their block. She watched a man and woman walking quickly, knocking on one door and the next, like urgent trick-or-treaters without a child. Then she saw the crowd on the sidewalk in front of the house, James in the center. She sped up and then slowed down. Should she rush toward this dark thing in front of her?
Yes
, she decided. Finally, yes, and she broke into a jog.

Ana was next to James. He looked at her blurrily.

“You’re the mother?” asked Sandra.

“What?” asked Ana.

“Yes. Basically,” interrupted James. “Finn is—I can’t find him.”

Ana blinked, took in this information. “When—”

“About forty-five minutes ago. I don’t know. An hour. They’re looking.”

“Who? Who are these people?” asked Ana.

“Neighbors, I guess,” said James.

Ana went inside the living room and saw a man in construction overalls on the phone. Chuckles looked even browner against the white furniture. He held out a hand. “Mario Pereira,” he said. His hand was gentle in Ana’s. “Pleased to meet you. My buddy’s a cop. They’re on their way.”

“Cop,” Ana repeated, letting the blunt magnitude of the word settle. “When are they coming? Did you look everywhere?”
But Mario had turned, was speaking into the Bluetooth, passing on the color of Finn’s boots.

James followed Ana as she moved through the house, bending to peer below tables, into cupboards.

“He’s probably hiding in the basement,” she said, trying to coax the words out normally.

“People are looking,” said James. He corrected himself: “We have looked.”

Outside the kitchen, the porch lights flooded the yard. Ana and James saw it as if for the first time. The workers had finished. The limestone pieces fit together like the jagged countries on a map. The knee-high grasses around the perimeter swayed.

But there were two people in the backyard, strangers, a young couple in their twenties.

Ana opened the French doors.

The girl, wearing a loosely knit hat topped by a large pink flower, rushed to Ana, grabbed her hand.

“We’ll find him, don’t worry,” she said. “I’m Erica. That’s David. We rent the apartment next door.”

“Yes,” said Ana. “I’ve seen you. Thank you.” David was shaking James’s hand. James was looking over his shoulder, eyes on the tall grasses swaying.

“We looked in every inch of this yard,” said Erica quietly. “Several times.”

James walked around them, off the limestone and into the garden.

“Dude, he’s not here,” said David. The bored, rock star voice struck James as untrustworthy and he kept moving, pushing apart the grasses, squatting in the shadows. Nothing.

He sprung up and left the two of them, rushing inside. All
the doors were open in the house, front, back. A chill had entered the house.