The Humanity Project (27 page)

“Honey, I don’t want him over here when I’m not home, and I’ll be at the party.”

“Did I say we’d be here?” Linnea applied another scallop of peanut butter, as if it was icing, and gave the bagel a critical, appraising look. “You know, I didn’t even have to tell you. But I don’t want you to worry if I don’t get home until real late.”

“All right, but . . .” He tried to climb down from the ledge, decided instead to jump to the next one. “Does Conner smoke pot? Or do anything else?”

“Not really.”

“I didn’t hear a yes or a no in there.”

“He used to. He doesn’t anymore, but it’s not like he took some vow not to. We need more peanut butter.” She threw the empty jar into the trash under the sink. “I have to go, I’ll be late for Zombie Home Room.”

After she’d left, Art poured another cup of coffee and sat on the couch, attempting to sort through his worries. He didn’t know what he could do about the Conner situation except make vague, fatherlike noises of concern. He had to admit, he pretty much allowed Linnea to do as she pleased, as long as she didn’t run entirely off the rails, get herself hurt or arrested. He hadn’t lied to Louise; things were better, if being a typical pain-in-the-ass kid was better. But how could she be all right, really? How could you tell? Her counselor said she was not “forthcoming.” She evaded questions, the counselor said. She gave flip answers. Yes, she did. Art recognized this as self-protection, but of a worrisome kind, as if the girl carried herself through the world like a full glass of water.

And what was he supposed to do about Beata? It had been so pleasant not to have to do anything. Now she wanted him to up his game and be more (or less) of one thing or another. Whatever that was. He wished he knew. The Halloween costume was going to be a tough call. Obviously, some effort was required. It wouldn’t be enough to put on a football jersey, or a funny hat.

He had to teach most of the day, but he managed to get to one of those temporary costume shops that opened in malls. He looked through racks of limp and picked-over outfits: pirates, Frankensteins, Klingon warriors, various ghouls. He could be an alien, a biker, a cowboy, or, somewhat confusingly, a cactus. There were furry suits in fluorescent colors that he guessed were meant to represent Muppets or cartoon figures; they looked unclean and possibly contagious.

Finally he found something he thought would do: a caveman costume, a leopard-print tunic and britches. It came with a foam club, a wild black wig, and a sinister rubber mask. It was newer-looking and there was a reasonable chance he would not contract scabies from it. The tunic left one shoulder bare, but he thought he could wear some kind of shirt underneath if he wanted to. Or maybe just throw the bathroom rug over his exposed arm and pretend it was a fur. The mask was Neanderthal in inspiration, with a huge, jutting forehead and flattened nose. Art thought the idea had possibilities. It showed him to be a man with a sense of humor. And it sent a certain signal—namely, he wasn’t one of those guys who would let himself get pushed too far by girly discontents.

Linnea wasn’t back from school yet when he arrived home with the costume packaged in slippery plastic. The zombie apocalypse might be carrying over into after-school hours, a whole troupe of zombied-up kids fooling around downtown. He hoped that for Christ’s sake she hadn’t gotten too tangled up in what was meant to be a joke, good, clean walking-dead fun, and had freaked out. Somebody would have called, wouldn’t they?

Art hadn’t wanted to change clothes in the store’s makeshift dressing room. He struggled into the short pants, which were just a shade too small, and felt rather like a leopard-print diaper. The tunic was a better fit. He wished his arm was meatier, but he could swing the club around for menacing effect. He settled the black wig on his head and pulled the mask over his face. The eyeholes took some getting used to, but his reflection in the bathroom mirror was rather thrilling, he thought. He practiced walking caveman style, knees bent and shoulders pulled forward. “Guh,” he said, experimentally. “Guh-ugh.”

A knock on the door startled him. “Hello?” It was Christie, peering in through the front window.

He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t there; she would have heard him moving around.

“Just a sec,” he called. He took the mask off and opened the door just enough to poke his head around it. “Hey Christie.”

She stared at him in wonder. Art realized the wig was still on his head. “Oh, ha.”

He pulled it off. “Halloween,” he explained.

“Let me guess. Eighties rock star.”

He scoffed at this. “Naw. Give me a break.” Not wanting to open the door further, he said, “It’s supposed to be a surprise. So, what do you . . .”

“Is Linnea here?”

“She’s not home from school yet.” He waited. “Did she do something?”

“No, she’d asked me a question, that’s all.”

It was an oddity for Linnea to have talked to Christie about anything, but he wasn’t really in a position to be inquisitive at the moment, hiding his caveman self behind a door. “OK, I’ll tell her you were asking for her.” He felt compelled to add a little small talk. “How’s the job going?”

“I’m planning this giant conference from scratch. It’s really a lot of work.”

Art thought she looked tired, though he had learned that women did not welcome hearing this kind of thing. She looked dragged down. Still pretty, sure. Now that Beata was signaling her intention of putting the hammer down on him, he looked at Christie with some of his old interest. Not that she’d ever given him the time of day. He’d better try to mend things with Beata, who was, among many good qualities, a terrific piece of ass.

He said, “Keeps you running, huh? I’m sure you’re doing some great work.” He was getting cold, holding the door open in his flimsy getup. He was going to have to rethink things like coats. “You want me to have Linnea come see you or something?”

“Sure. Happy Halloween, Art.”

Once back inside, he tried to call Linnea and got voice mail. Sometimes she’d text him back, but the phone stayed silent. He changed out of the costume and got dressed and turned on some lights as the sun began to ebb. It wasn’t unheard of for her to be this late getting home, but he felt uneasy, as if he was the one waiting for zombies to attack.

The high school wasn’t that far away—Linnea sometimes walked, taking a winding shortcut—and Art decided to drive over there to see if he could find her. A dreary dank wind was sending stray bits of paper trash skittering over the roads. Lowering clouds covered most of the sky, with the sun leaking through at the western edge. Art watched two buses pull up at the stop across the street, their lighted insides giving them the look of rooms in motion. A few people got off, none of them Linnea.

He followed the road where she might have walked, then doubled back along it. He tried the shopping center where the kids sometimes hung out. He idled in the parking lot for a time, but didn’t spot her going in or out of the Safeway or the drugstore or the smoothie shop. The school was just across the road. Cars were still pulling up and waiting there, an hour after the last classes. He crossed over and joined the end of the line, tried calling her again, no luck.

Kids were standing around talking, or leaning into car windows, or getting into cars and being driven away. Some of them were in full zombie regalia: chalk white faces, torn clothes, blotches he guessed were meant to represent decaying flesh. A couple of them were staggering around, stiff-armed and stiff-legged, while their audience hooted in approval. It looked like the apocalypse had gone well, even if the school was still standing.

Art was about to give up and go home to wait for Linnea when he saw her coming down the school’s front steps, alone. She stopped to hoist her backpack higher. The weight of it made her bend forward, as if she was walking into the wind. He thought she had earbuds attached to her ears. He could have honked, or called to her, but he watched her for another minute. She jammed her hands into her jacket pockets and walked out to the sidewalk, through the crowd of zombies and other kids horsing around under the light from the streetlamps. She didn’t speak to any of them and none of them spoke to her. She reached the bus stop and stood there waiting. Two or three buses were coming up behind him, their lights flaring in his rearview.

He could have reached her before the parade of buses, and he would have done so if she had not seemed so entirely alone, if he would not have embarrassed her by witnessing it.

•   •   •

T
he next day was Halloween and the party. He called Beata around noon to see if she was still determined to go. She was. “You have a costume?” she asked, sounding mistrustful.

“I have a costume.”

“Will I recognize you?” A note of teasing. He was glad to hear it.

“No, I’ll just be the guy who shows up at eight o’clock and ravishes you.”

Some confusion; Beata thought he’d said “radish.” She said she was glad they’d gotten that straightened out. “There will be no radishing beforehand. It will spoil my looks.”

“Afterwards, then,” Art said. “Radish, radish.”

“Such a silly man. I have to go, I have things to do to get ready.”

She hung up. “Ugh,” Art said. He thumped his chest, practicing. “Gromph.” He wondered if he was going to have to stay in character all night, talk nothing but caveman talk.

Before she left to do whatever it was with Conner she wouldn’t tell Art about, Linnea stayed in her room, playing her music. She seemed entirely uninterested in what Art had procured for a costume, and for once he was glad to be ignored. He made her promise she would at least answer texts, and she said Yeah, sure. He made a show of worrying, enough so that Linnea sighed dramatically, but even though he cautioned and harrumphed, Art had come around to appreciating that Conner was a little older. At least he wasn’t a kid with a learner’s permit and the keys to a Lexus.

After she was gone, Art got his caveman ensemble from the closet and climbed into it. He had tried to loosen the elastic waistband of the pants, ripping out a seam and restitching it. Now he had more room, but the elastic had lost some function, and just to be prudent, he pinned the pants to his undershorts. He put the tunic on and struck a muscular pose in the bathroom mirror. He wished he had thought to get body makeup, some kind of bronzer. He looked sort of pasty for an outdoor type.

He was nervous setting out, but it was a fine night. Crossing the great bridge in darkness, its views of ocean and city lights spread out beneath him, he always felt his destination invested with a certain grandeur. The metal plating made his tires thrum, the vast cables soared overhead. He found an old Tom Petty CD and played it loud, a soundtrack to the night’s adventure, singing along gustily, since there was no one there to hear: “And I’m free-ee, free falling.”

He couldn’t drive with the mask on and he pushed it up on his forehead, so that it resembled the head of a vestigial twin. He was cheered when the car in the next lane honked at him, and he looked over to see two people in gorilla masks in the front seat, waving in a companionable fashion. Or maybe they really were two gorillas. What did he know?

At Beata’s he had to park more than a block away. He had a coat but that would spoil the effect. He had decided that his only option was to go for it. What the hell. It was Halloween. He got out of the car and balanced his foam club on his shoulder, and swung his head from side to side as he walked, caveman style. He didn’t see anyone else in costume, well, it wasn’t exactly a party neighborhood. Elderly people with shopping bags veered around him on the sidewalk. His pants took a hitch downward and he had to stop and readjust them.

Beata’s apartment was a third-floor walk-up. He rang the buzzer and the door clicked open.

On the last landing, he paused to get his breath, then bounded up the last stairs and beat on the door with his fist. It opened, and the two of them beheld each other.

Beata gave a little shriek.

She had gotten herself up as a Roaring Twenties vamp. She wore a short red dress with fringe, and a string of pearls. Her hair had been lacquered into tight flat curls and there was a jeweled band across her forehead. Red red lipstick and black-rimmed eyes.

Art spoke first, forgetting to be a caveman. “Wow. That is some fancy getup.”

The mask made his voice come out muffled.

“And you. You are very . . .”

“Very what?” He pushed the mask off his face. It was hot and he could tell there was going to be a sweat issue.

“I don’t suppose you brought a pair of pants. Real pants.”

Art looked down at his bare legs. He couldn’t remember her complaining about his legs before. Beata said, “In case of, what is it, wardrobe malfunction.”

“Pants? Cavemen don’t wear pants.” He waved the club over his head.

“Please be careful with that.”

“Hey, you wouldn’t tell me what you wanted me to wear.” He was sensing a quality of reserve in her attitude that did not augur well.

“We should go, the party is already started.”

“I haven’t had a chance to look at you yet.” Art dropped his club, which bounced. He caught her around the shoulders. “You are one red-hot mamma.”

“Thank you.” She ducked underneath his hands. “Do not mess up the hair. The hair is very nervous-making.”

Things got a little better on the drive to the party. Once they reached Market Street, almost everyone was dressed up. There were nun costumes, long black capes, many tutus. At Guerrero Street, three men dressed as condoms were chasing three girls dressed as Playboy Bunnies. Beata’s mood seemed to lift as she pointed out all the different revelers. Art wished he knew what she didn’t like about his costume, or maybe about him, but decided it was better to leave well enough alone. “So, is this supposed to be a big party?” he asked, just as a way of making conversation.

“It’s a pretty big apartment.”

Art waited, but she didn’t say more. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Susan. Maybe some other old friends will be there too.”

“Old boyfriends,” he said, reduced to ponderous teasing.