Finn charged up the stairs first, skidding down the hall in his socks. On his tiptoes, he opened the door.
“Wait for me, Finn! Did you forget something?” said James, confronted again with the young man in the yellow courier suit.
“No,” he said quickly, reddening. “I have another package, that’s all.”
As James signed, the courier muttered: “Our computers were down. I just got flagged.”
He handed James another box, smaller, the size of a paint tin.
BASIC CREMATION SERVICES, said the invoice.
James shut the door.
“I see box?” asked Finn.
“Not now,” said James. He tried to walk past Finn.
“Box?”
James thought of the $1,600 charge on his credit card and reminded himself to invoice Marcus’s insurer quickly.
James knew that he was focusing on his credit card because he could not think about what would befall this little boy were he to learn that the box contained the answer to every question he would ever have, and that the box would never speak of these things, and the box was filled with dust, and the dust was the father he would never know. This is his childhood. It’s happening right now, thought James. And he has no father to take him through.
Finn looked up at James, holding the drawing. He had his mouth in the O shape, puzzling over the world again.
James rubbed at his eyes and managed a smile. He walked back down to the basement, to the shelf containing Marcus’s business detritus. He put the box on top of the larger one so it resembled the world’s brownest, most depressing wedding cake. He gave the small box a gentle pat.
Finn, who had crushed the picture to the size of a walnut, was now kicking it across the basement floor.
“Hey, wait a second,” said James, rescuing the balled-up picture. He smoothed it out against the wall. “Now, this is a really good picture. I think it should have a place of honor, don’t you agree, Sir Finn?”
In the kitchen, James put it on the fridge. It was a blank stainless steel canvas. They didn’t even have a magnet, and James had to root around for tape.
“Fantastico,” he told Finn, who pointed at the picture. “Mine,” he said cheerfully.
Hours later, James put Finn down for a late afternoon nap. Finn crawled in like it was his duty, holding his cow blanket and squeezing his eyes shut. James kissed his soft hair.
The door to James’s office was closed. He hesitated, then went inside.
He hadn’t been in there since Finn had arrived a month ago.
James felt instantly soothed by the chaos of the room, the papers and teetering books. He removed the hockey helmet from his guitar and plugged in the amp. He turned it high and began to play. How long had it been? His fingers on the strings were too silky, uncallused, but the pain felt good. He went back and forth through the chords, closing his eyes, trying not to see Marcus when he did. He breathed hard, letting the sound get bigger and bigger.
When he opened his eyes, Ana and Finn were in front of him.
“Finn try!” cried Finn, jumping up and down.
“You smell good,” said James. Ana was wearing a fitted black dress, her breasts flattened in a way that was incongruously boyish and sexy at once. Her eyes were painted gray, her lips red.
“Where are you going?”
“Me? We. We’re going out, remember? This is the great sitter experiment.”
James had forgotten. He could see instantly in his mind’s eye the firm party, the new restaurant at the top of an office building overlooking the harbor, the grim black lighting and reflective surfaces that ensured you could never escape anyone’s face. The room would be filled with Ana’s colleagues, men growing fatter and louder in their pressed suits; the women thinner and meaner, denying themselves hors d’oeuvres.
“Let me shower,” he said.
“Finn try!”
“We need to get going,” said Ana.
“I can’t not let him try it.” James squatted and held the guitar across his knees. Finn made a few swipes and laughed.
“Don’t be Paul McCartney,” said James. “Be Mick Jagger. People will tell you to be Paul McCartney, but don’t.”
In the shower, James looked at his hands and his buttery belly. He had put on weight; he was becoming immovable.
James’s dress shirts hung in a dry-cleaned bundle, twist-tied at the neck of the hangers, bagged in plastic. Ana must have taken them in for him. He had not worn one in months, not since his final meeting with HR.
As he slid his torso into a blue shirt, the crease along his elbow like a margin, he remembered a party a decade ago in a different bar in a different tower. Ana was a new associate, and James showed up wearing a concert T-shirt—Jesus Lizard—under a black blazer. He was lighter then. He walked fast and everywhere, never taking buses or taxis or driving, held to the ground only by army boots under his black jeans. It was only when he set foot in the bar, glanced around at the feet of the guests, all high heels and dad shoes, buffed and barely worn, that he realized how badly he had misjudged. It was one of the first times his youth had been revealed to him as crass, rather than a badge of honor. In the cool, crisp spaces between people, placed in elegant groups of two and three, James recognized new worlds that required other currencies, worlds in which his father moved back and forth with ease. He thought of his father, standing outside James’s bedroom door, his diagonally striped, navy blue tie in a full Windsor, his overcoat on, glancing bewildered at the posters on the wall, the guitar amp humming. And James in his white underwear on the carpet, having fallen asleep, deeply stoned and sixteen.
Finn appeared, holding Moo.
“Where you go?” he asked.
James scooped him up, pulled him close on the bed, breathing in his limbs, his small pumping chest, the worn comfort of the blanket.
“We’re going to a party. There’s a babysitter coming. She’s really nice. You guys will play and you’ll go to sleep, and when you’re asleep, we’ll come home and kiss you on the cheek,” said James. Finn looked unconvinced.
“Ana!” called James. She appeared quickly, as though she had been lingering in the hall.
“We better get going. Ethel’s here,” she said.
“Ethel?” said James, incredulous, and then, to Finn: “The babysitter’s name is Ethel.”
“She’s from the Philippines.”
“Oh, God. This is someone’s nanny?” He spoke in a hushed voice.
“Elspeth, from work. I told you that,” said Ana. “She’s her night nanny.”
“Her night nanny? How many are there? Is there a dusk nanny? A dawn nanny? A midafternoon snack nanny?”
It was quite likely true that Ana did tell him about the evening, and he couldn’t remember or hadn’t found it worth noting. But now, suddenly, the thought of this Ethel alone with Finn—
“What do we know about her? Did you check her references?” Again, his career backed up on him: He recalled interviews with police officers, macho men of the law who appeared before him red-eyed and destroyed, choking out stories about child slavery rings; pedophiles masquerading as caregivers. All the experts he had sat across from, dumbly and humbled, and now all James could remember from those conversations was: Don’t trust anyone.
“I just told you. She lives with Elspeth and her family. She’s been here for almost two years. She has a whole family back there. It’s quite sad.”
James took Finn by the hand and walked toward the living room. Unexpectedly, Ethel turned out to be a boyish young woman with short hair. James wondered if the hair was a nod to her new modern life, if such a cut would fly back home.