“The point is, you have a garage, and we don’t. Why don’t you use it?” His squeak grew fuller, if not deeper, and the little French girl in him whined: “Show some respect for your neighbors! Show it! Show it!” The last words sputtered and landed on a face, one that was suddenly up against James’s, a large hamburger face attached to a larger neck and a body that had exited the car so swiftly, James had barely seen it happen. Chuckles was wearing steel-toed work boots as tall as downhill ski boots, and one of them was on James’s right argyle foot, grinding down.
“Respect this, cocksucker,” said Chuckles, not living up to his nickname, grinding James’s right foot like it was an un-snuffable cigarette butt. James closed his eyes and let the heat pour over his toes, smelling Chuckles’s meaty breath, waiting it out.
His work done, Chuckles stepped back and slammed his door shut. He leaned against the car, crossing his arms as James limped slowly into the road, backing away.
“It’s”—he squeaked—“about … courtesy!”
Chuckles barked a laugh and shouted: “This is what you have to worry about? Don’t you have a fucking family, cocksucker? Go worry about your family!”
“The social contract!” called James, limping toward the island of his porch, where he leaned on a post to straighten up, trying to keep his crippled foot tucked beneath him. Something moved in the picture window, a blur of blond hair. Finn had not been sleeping, then. James shut his eyes against that reality.
“Have a nice day, cocksucker!” yelled Chuckles as James opened his door, suggesting that he, James, had earned his own nickname. Cocksucker and Chuckles: the sitcom no one wanted to see.
The orange tin bird that Ana had hung in the center of the door swung on its discreet nail.
Inside, James turned the lock and inserted the chain. He hobbled to the living room and immediately saw Finn, rigid and upright on the couch, staring at him.
“Who that guy?” said Finn, pointing out the window, a look of grave concern on his face. “Who?”
James sank down next to Finn, his foot throbbing. “It’s no one. It’s a guy. A neighbor,” he said. Finn looked down at James’s foot and made a sound like a lion tearing meat. “Grrr!” he said. James tried to smile, but pain shot through his leg. At his wince, Finn returned to his look of fear.
“It’s okay, Finn,” he said. And he tried to conjure up some of the anger that had taken him over there in the first place, but he couldn’t touch it. “I did a stupid thing.”
Finn looked at him. “Why?”
In lieu of answering that particular question, James echoed something he’d seen a large purple puppet utter during a children’s show on the same public television station that had fired him: “ ‘It’s not right to fight. It’s better to use your words.’ ” Finn had a look of incredulousness on his face that struck James as extremely mature.
James picked up the remote control and found an attractive young Asian woman in a cape and bodysuit singing a song about recycling. The effect was instant; Finn turned to stone, mouth slack in the television’s glow.
Grasping the handrail, James pulled himself to the bedroom, opening the door to the strange midday darkness of the ill. Ana rattled in her chest as she slept. The room smelled of sick breath and orange juice.
James clumped past the bed to the bathroom. He turned on the light and shut the door, perching on the edge of the bathtub. He pulled his sock from his foot. The sole of the sock was thick with dirt, specks of mysterious gelatin and baby stones. His toes, as they emerged, were grotesque, red and swelling before his eyes like sea anemones. Only the little one looked undamaged and pale up against its expanding siblings.
“Ana,” he whimpered. She would know what to do: ice and peroxide and bandages. But she remained in her bed, burdened by her own illness. She was dreaming of the Max Klinger painting on Mike’s coffee table; she could hear the crunching of the grass as the man stole away, baby in arms. She could feel the mother breathing, but not waking. She tried to rouse her, to step into the painting from the outside and shake the mother awake: Tend to your disaster! she wanted to scream, but she could not make a sound, and she could not wake herself, either. She was trapped in the four borders of the gray and white idyll.
“Ana,” called James, but softly, too, wanting her to sleep and wanting her to wake and care for him, wanting it both ways, always, again.
Halloween Day
ON HALLOWEEN MORNING, Ana left for an early meeting while the house still slept.
James awoke to Finn next to him in bed, wide-eyed.
“Hey, man,” said James, reaching for him. “How long have you been there?”
“Long.”
After breakfast, James wedged Finn into his panda suit, slipping black rain boots over the paws. The suit was too fluffy and the boots too small, and Finn looked like an inflated toy from the knees up.
“Too tight!” said Finn.
James went to the kitchen for scissors. He removed Finn’s boots, and the boy sat on his bottom with his legs in James’s lap expectantly.
“This will be better. You can just put the legs on the outside of the boots.…” James strained as he cut open the bottom of the panda suit, aware of the blades slicing close to the small toes in their bright red socks.
James put a ski jacket over the top of Finn’s panda suit. At every house, the boy stopped, running up strangers’ staircases to examine pumpkins on stoops. James dragged his injured foot, trying to keep up.
A paper skeleton attached to a door made him scream: “Dead!” And then he laughed. James called Finn back, calming him, then watching him sprint away again.
Finally at the door of the daycare room, James released Finn, and the boy ran as if unhooked from a leash. Colored pictures of bats lined one wall; white paper ghosts made of tissue paper balls hung from the ceiling. Across the room, Bruce, two silver hoops replacing the gold ones, smiled his mournful, supportive smile and waved at James.
As he waved back, James’s BlackBerry beeped. The sound had become less and less frequent over the past weeks. Exiting the daycare, James looked at it: Fun night. Going to The Ossington @ 10. Halloweeeeeen. Em.
He walked to the row of cafés, selecting the one with the unflattering mirror above his bald spot. James left his hat on and ordered a coffee and sank into a chair at the window. With his laptop open, he became one of several men gently clicking away. Then he pulled out Finn’s picture, the mouthless boy floating in space. He stared at it for a long time. He wanted to hold Finn, wanted his body close to him.
Then he began to write. It made no sense, what he was writing. There was no money in it. There was barely a story. But he felt clear. He was writing at last. And he continued to write and, in doing so, forgot about Emma and the green door that held her in, just across the street from where he was writing his confession.
Leaving the café, he deleted her text.
On the walk home, James, tingling with accomplishment, stopped in a small CD store, a place where he had spent a few hours a week only a decade ago. He didn’t recognize the name of one single band in the window. It had happened, then; he was not just outside the loop, the loop was unrecognizable to him, a new shape entirely.
The girl behind the counter was difficult to take in all at once. She had a metal stud in her chin, another in her lip. Black eyeliner seeped into her acne. She wore black leather cycling gloves.
To this, James posed the question: “Do you have any children’s music?” She smiled, then, not bored, not angry, but young, very young and pretty under the armor.
“Sure. Follow me.” The children’s section was small, a single row underneath CONSIGNMENT.