a good one to start with. Suspenseful but not scary.”
“Thanks.” He clears his throat, coughs. “Sorry,” he says, sipping his water. “I’m allergic to cats.”
I stare at him. “Why didn’t you say so?” I glare at the cat.
“He’s so friendly. I didn’t want to offend him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I tell him. “In a nice way.”
He smiles. “I’d better go,” he says. He returns to the coffee table, sets his glass on it, bends to address Punch through the glass. “Not because of you, buddy. Good boy.” He straightens up, shakes his hands over his thighs.
“Do you want a lint roller? For the dander?” I’m not even sure I’ve still got one.
“I’m okay.” He looks around. “Can I use your bathroom?”
I point to the red room. “All yours.”
While he’s in there, I check the sideboard mirror. A shower tonight, for sure. Tomorrow at latest.
I return to the sofa and open my laptop. Thanks for your help, DiscoMickey has written. You’re my hero.
I rattle off a quick reply as the toilet flushes. Ethan emerges from the bathroom a moment later, rubbing his palms on his jeans. “All set,” he informs me. He treads to the door, hands stuffed in pockets, a schoolboy shuffle.
I follow him. “Thanks so much for coming by.”
“See you around,” he says, pulling the door open.
No, you won’t, I think. “I’m sure you will,” I say.
AFTER ETHAN LEAVES, I watch Laura again. It shouldn’t work: Clifton Webb gorging on the scenery, Vincent Price test-driving a southern accent, the oil-and-vinegar leads. But work it does, and oh, that music. “They sent me the script, not the score,” Hedy Lamarr once griped.
I leave the candle lit, the tiny blob of flame pulsing.
And then, humming the Laura theme, I swipe my phone on and take to the Internet in search of my patients. My former patients. Ten months ago I lost them all: I lost Mary, nine years old, struggling with her parents’ divorce; I lost Justin, eight, whose twin brother had died of melanoma; I lost Anne Marie, at age twelve still afraid of the dark. I lost Rasheed (eleven, transgender) and Emily (nine, bullying); I lost a preternaturally depressed little ten-year-old named, of all things, Joy. I lost their tears and their troubles and their rage and their relief. I lost nineteen children all told. Twenty, if you count my daughter.
I know where Olivia is now, of course. The others I’ve been tracking. Not too often—a psychologist isn’t supposed to investigate her patients, past patients included—but every month or so, swollen with longing, I’ll take to the web. I’ve got a few Internet research tools at my disposal: a phantom Facebook account; a stale LinkedIn profile. With young people, though, only Google will do, really.
After reading of Ava’s spelling-bee championship and Theo’s election to the middle school student council, after scanning the Instagram albums of Grace’s mother and scrolling through Ben’s Twitter feed (he really ought to activate some privacy settings), after wiping the tears from my cheeks and sinking three glasses of red, I find myself back in my bedroom, browsing photos on my phone. And then, once more, I talk to Ed.
“Guess who,” I say, the way I always do.
“You’re pretty tipsy, slugger,” he points out.
“It’s been a long day.” I glance at my empty glass, feel a prickle of guilt. “What’s Livvy up to?”
“Getting ready for tomorrow.”
“Oh. What’s her costume?”
“A ghost,” Ed says.
“You got lucky.”
“What do you mean?”
I laugh. “Last year she was a fire truck.”
“Man, that took days.”
“It took me days.”
I can hear him grin.
Across the park, three stories up, through the window and in the depths of a dark room, there’s the glow of a computer screen. Light dawns, an instant sunrise; I see a desk, a table lamp, and then Ethan, shucking his sweater. Affirmative: Our bedrooms do indeed face each other.
He turns around, eyes cast down, and peels off his shirt. I look away.
WEAK MORNING LIGHT STRAINS through my bedroom window. I roll over; my hip cracks against my laptop. A late night playing bad chess. My knights stumbled, my rooks crashed.
I drag myself to and from the shower, mop my hair with a towel, skid deodorant under my arms. Fit for fight, as Sally says. Happy Halloween.
I WON’T be answering any doors this evening, of course. David will head out at seven—downtown, I think he said. I bet that’s fun.
He suggested earlier that we leave a bowl of candy on the stoop. “Any kid would take it within a minute, bowl and all,” I told him.
He seemed miffed. “I wasn’t a child psychologist,” he said.
“You don’t need to have been a child psychologist. You just need to have been a child.”
So I’m going to switch off the lights and pretend no one’s home.
I VISIT my film site. Andrew is online; he posted a link to a Pauline Kael essay on Vertigo—“stupid” and “shallow”—and beneath that, he’s making a list: Best noir to hold hands through? (The Third Man. The last shot alone.)
I read the Kael piece, ping him a message. After five minutes, he logs out.
I can’t remember the last time someone held my hand.
WHAP.
The front door again. This time I’m coiled on the sofa, watching Rififi—the extended heist sequence, half an hour without a syllable of dialogue or a note of music, just diegetic sound and the hum of blood in your ears. Yves
