“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.