LIFE AT THE GAMBELL-REED SENIOR CENTER CARRIED ON. THE TREE outside Bob’s window grew to fullness, obscuring the view completely. It was hot that summer, often uncomfortably hot, as there was no central air conditioning in the building. Bob added his voice to the chorus of complaints; Maria told him, “We’re all suffering here, Bob.” Bob pointed out that she was getting paid to suffer, and Maria named the figure of her salary, which effectively ended the conversation. Bob went around in a T-shirt and slept with the window open. In the night, a cool wind rustled the leaves of Bob’s tree and poured over him as he slept. In the morning, the heat returned. Linus switched out his big beret for a mesh-back baseball hat with an electric fan built into its bill. Jill was the only one in favor of the heat. “I should have been a lizard on a rock,” she said. “In a way, though, you are,” Linus told her. The rains arrived, the autumn, and the leaves of Bob’s tree turned impossible colors and dropped away, his sidewalk view returned to him.
It was incredible to think that only one year had passed since he’d made his failed attempt to connect the people of the center with Poe’s “The Black Cat,” but here and it was Halloween again, and there was a Halloween party, and Bob was a subtle vampire. Maria said he would look very dashing if only he would move a little more quickly, that the cape would fly out behind him; but he was moving as fast as he could or cared to, he said. He had a pair of plastic vampire teeth but he wore these only briefly because they hurt his gums. Maria was dressed up as a convict with a plastic ball-and-chain that she twirled above her head to good comic effect. Linus was dressed as a graduate, in a cap and silky black gown, and he had rolled up a piece of paper in his hand with a blue ribbon tied around. Jill sat at her distant table wearing no costume and staring at her slippered feet. She’d not had the money or ingenuity to procure or fabricate a costume for herself and felt bitter about being left out. Maria found some cat ears for her, and Jill put these on, and allowed that Maria could draw whiskers on her face with a mascara pen. Maria was solemn as she held a ruler against Jill’s cheek to ensure a straightness of line. Afterward, Jill was shy in her thankfulness. “Can you tell what I am?” she asked Bob. “I’m a cat.”
At eleven o’clock a bus pulled up outside the center and a stream of costumed children poured in. Maria had organized the visit through a contact at a nearby elementary school; the day before she had described it to Bob as a meeting between two groups at opposite ends of the life spectrum. “There is the youth, their stories unwritten before them, and you all, with your accumulated wisdom, looking back. Isn’t it possible that you’ll all meet in the middle and establish a connection?” Her optimism was true, and sincerely felt; and yet, Bob wasn’t so sure the experiment would yield favorable results.
The seniors were asked to sit side by side in chairs set up in a long row in the center of the Great Room. Each had been supplied with a bag of candy to dole out to the children, who stood in a line and approached the seated seniors one after another, saying “Trick or treat,” and holding out their plastic jack-o’-lanterns. There was very little discourse. The children were frightened by the seniors, the seniors indignant at the fear of the children. Maria stood by anxiously. “Feel free to take time and get to know one another,” she instructed. Linus and Bob and Jill sat together in the middle of the pack. A boy in a colorful plastic costume was standing before Linus. There was a shallowness to his gaze which presented him as one unburdened by intelligence.
“What kind of living nightmare are you supposed to be?” Linus asked.
“Pokémon.”
“What?”
“Pokémon.” He pointed at the rolled-up paper in Linus’s hand and asked, “What’s that?”
“Yes,” Linus said, “you’ll probably never see one of these again. It’s called a diploma. Which is a certificate marking one’s graduation. Because I shall soon matriculate right out of this mortal coil.”
Another child approached, and he wore no costume, just his street clothes, which were not very clean. He looked tired. In a croaking voice, he said, “Trick or treat.”
“Where’s your costume?” asked Linus.
“Don’t have one.”
“Why not?”
“Because my mom ran away with my uncle.”
Linus made a face of impressiveness at Bob. He told the costumeless boy, “That’s unique, if nothing else. And it’s due to that uniqueness that I’m going to give you two candies instead of one.” Linus bowed his head to fish out the candies from his sack. The boy, sensing a potential weakness, asked calmly, “Can I get more than two?”
“Don’t let’s ruin the moment, kid,” Linus said. He dropped the two candies in the jack-o’-lantern and waved the boy on. The boy moved to stand before Bob. “What are you?” he asked.
“Dracula.”
“You suck blood?”
“Sometimes.”
“You going to suck my blood?”
“It depends,” said Bob. “It depends on how I’m feeling.”
The boy stepped down the line to meet Jill.
“Trick or treat,” he said.
“Can you tell what I am?” she asked. “I’m a cat.”
“Trick or treat,” said the costumeless boy.
After the candy was distributed, the children went away into a huddle to discuss and trade and ingest their bounty. Only the costumeless boy lingered; he and Linus had made friends. At one point he asked, “Can I touch your mask?” and Linus said that he could. The boy’s hand was small and fine in contrast to the broad pitted redness of Linus’s immense head. The hand reached up and gently touched Linus’s cheek — the boy gasped and yanked his hand back. He looked confused, amused, frightened. “Go on, kid,” said Linus, “give it a good pull.” The boy again reached up, and now took hold of the flesh of Linus’s cheek and twisted it around. “That’s your face!” the costumeless boy said. He told the other children, “That’s really his face!” Bob winced for Linus, but Linus found it hilarious, and he roared with laughter, and the children all were awestruck. From this point in time and until they left the center, they all watched Linus closely, marveling at his every word and action. He was a potentially magical monster, and they couldn’t get enough of him. Linus wore the adulation naturally: he came alive and made everything into a comedic performance. At one point he pretended to swallow a pencil. “Oh no! I swallowed a pencil!” he announced. Stunned silence, then Linus, patting his stomach, said, “Tastes pretty good, actually.” Shrieks of laughter from the children. And then, he kept “accidentally” knocking his own graduation cap off, six times, seven times, and each time, he’d pretend to get more and more angry, which made for more shrieks, more laughter.