He glanced once over his shoulder at the row of rooms, the doors all closed, windows dark save slivers of electric blue from television screens sliding through the blinds.
Too dark to tell if the man was watching.
Mitchell stepped into the alcove as the boy pressed his selection on the drink machine.
The can banged into the open compartment, and the boy reached down and claimed the Sprite.
“Hi, Joel.”
The boy looked up at him, then lowered his head like a scolded dog, as though he’d been caught vandalizing the drink machine.
“No, it’s all right. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Mitchell squatted down on the concrete.
“Look at me, son. Who’s that man you’re with?”
The voice so soft and high: “Daddy.”
A voice boomed across the parking lot. “Joel? It don’t take this long to buy a can of pop! Make a decision and get back here.”
The door slammed.
“Joel, do you want to come with me?”
“You’re a stranger.”
“No, my name’s Mitch. I’m a police officer actually. Why don’t you come with me.”
“No.”
“I think you probably should.” Mitchell figuring he had maybe thirty seconds before the father stormed out.
“Where’s your badge?”
“I’m undercover right now. Come on, we don’t have much time. You need to come with me.”
“I’ll get in trouble.”
“No, only way you’ll get in trouble is by not obeying a police officer when he tells you to do something.” Mitchell noticed the boy’s hands trembling. His were, too. “Come on, son.”
He put his hand on the boy’s small shoulder and guided him out of the alcove toward his car, where he opened the front passenger door and motioned for Joel to get in.
Mitchell brushed the snow off the windows and the windshield, and as he climbed in and started the engine, he saw the door to 113 swing open in the rearview mirror.
“You eaten yet?”
“No.”
Main Street empty and the newly-scraped pavement already frosting again, the reflection of the high beams blinding against the wall of pouring snow.
“Are you hungry?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned right off Main, drove slow down a snow-packed side street that sloped past little Victorians, inns, and motels, Joel buckled into the passenger seat, the can of Sprite still unopened between his legs, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Mitchell unlocked the door and opened it.
“Go on in, Joel.”
The boy entered and Mitchell hit the light, closing and locking the door after them, wondering if Joel could reach the brass chain near the top.
It wasn’t much of a room—single bed, table, cabinet housing a refrigerator on one side, hangers on the other. He’d lived out of it for the last month and it smelled like stale pizza crust and cardboard and clothes soured with sweat.
Mitchell closed the blinds.
“You wanna watch TV?”
The boy shrugged.
Mitchell picked the remote control off the bedside table and turned it on.
“Come sit on the bed, Joel.”
As the boy climbed onto the bed, Mitchell started flipping.
“You tell me to stop when you see something you wanna watch.”
Mitchell surfed through all thirty stations twice and the boy said nothing.
He settled on the Discovery Channel, set the remote control down.
“I want my Dad,” the boy said, trying not to cry.
“Calm down, Joel.”
Mitchell sat on the bed and unlaced his sneakers. His socks were damp and cold. He balled them up and tossed them into the open bathroom, staring now at his pale feet, toes shriveled with moisture.
Joel had settled back into one of the pillows, momentarily entranced by the television program where a man caked in mud wrestled with a crocodile.
Mitchell turned up the volume.
“You like crocodiles?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You aren’t scared of them?”
The boy shook his head. “I got a snake.”
“Nuh uh.”
The boy looked up. “Uh huh.”
“What kind?”
“It’s black and scaly and it lives in a glass box.”
“A terrarium?”
“Yeah. Daddy catches mice for it.”
“It eats them?”
“Uh huh. Slinky’s belly gets real big.”
Mitchell smiled. “I bet that’s something to see.”
They sat watching the Discovery Channel for twenty minutes, Joel engrossed now, Mitchell with his head tilted back against the headboard, eyes closed, a half grin where none had been for twelve months.
At 8:24 p.m., the cell vibrated against Mitchell’s hip. He opened the case and pulled out the phone.
“Hi, Lisa.”
“Mitch.”
“Listen, I want you to call me back in five minutes and do exactly what I say.”
“Okay.”
Mitchell closed the phone and slid off the bed.
The boy looked up, still half-watching the program on the world’s deadliest spiders.
He said, “I’m hungry.”
“I know, sport. I know. Give me just a minute here and I’ll order a pizza.”
Mitchell crossed the carpet, tracking through dirty clothes he should’ve taken to the laundry a week ago.
His suitcase lay open in the space between the dresser and the baseboard heater. He knelt down, searching through wrinkled oxfords and blue jeans, khakis that had long since lost their creases.
It was a tiny, wool sweater—ice-blue with a magnified snowflake stitched across the front.
“Hey, Joel,” he said, “it’s getting cold in here. I want you to put this on.” He tossed the sweater onto the bed.
“I’m not cold.”
“You do like I tell you now.”
As the boy reached for the sweater, Mitchell undid the buttons on his plaid shirt and worked his arms out of the sleeves. He dropped the shirt on the carpet and rifled his suitcase again until he found the badly faded T-shirt he’d bought fifteen years ago at a U2 concert.
On the way back to the bed, he stopped at the television and lifted the videotape from the top of the VCR, pushed it in.
“No, I wanna watch the—”
“We’ll turn it back on in a minute.”
He climbed under the covers beside the boy and stared at the bedside table, waiting for the phone to buzz.