Treat by Daniel Cohen

Wallstrait | Issue 1.11

The doorbell rings, and, yeah, it’s Halloween, but my porch light is off. In this neighborhood, that means you’re out of candy or just tired of chattering with a thousand kids all wearing the same five costumes. What a charming princess. Are you Mario or Luigi, I can never keep them straight. You make a fantastic Randy Rainbow.

I nudge the curtain on the side window away from the frame. The guy on my porch hits the bell again, waiting, shifting from foot to foot. I can either open the door and deal with him, which I guess would be the right thing to do, or I can ignore him and go back to eating dinner in front of the television. I mean, I want to be a good neighbor and all that, but I bet my boss the Celtics can cover a seven-point spread, and the game is tighter than I want it to be.  

It’s after nine. All the little kids have gone home to dump out their sacks and sort the Kit-Kats from the Jolly Ranchers. By now, they’re halfway to a stomachache, begging their parents to let them wear their costumes to bed.

This guy on my porch is no kid, maybe twenty-five, chubby, needs a shave. He’s wearing a flannel shirt and cargo pants like he’s here to install a dishwasher or service the boiler. But I guess the neon pink squid hat on his head (he could use a haircut to go with the shave) constitutes a costume of sorts, and I don’t want to be a hard-ass.

Back when my boy was in high school, I’d leave the porch light on late for the teenagers who were a little old for Halloween. Think about it: you’re fifteen, too big to let your friends see you decked out in Spiderman drag, but you don’t want to let go of childhood completely. It’s a tough age. So maybe you and a couple of friends go for a walk, ring a few doorbells, snag a couple Milky Way bars. After the door closes, you can imagine the adults inside telling each other, “Well, they could be out doing worse things.” Just transgressive enough to be cool, but you still get to be a kid for one more year. I mean, I get it.

And, looking at this guy on my porch, maybe there’s not so much difference between twenty-five and fifteen. Don’t be a cranky old man, I tell myself. I need to get rid of this candy anyhow, or I’ll wind up eating it myself. 

I open the damn door.

“Hi,” he says and raises a small paper bag, a lunch sack, toward me.

I’m about to say something like, “Don’t you mean ‘trick-or-treat,’” but that’s exactly what a cranky old man would say. Instead, I give him a nod and one of those non-committal “Mmmmm” noises therapists make. He doesn’t reach for the bowl of candy I’m holding out, so I grab a Snickers and a Twix and drop them in his little bag.

I’m ready to get back to my meatball sub and the Celtics game, but squid-guy says, “You remember me, don’t you?” Of course I don’t. Why would I remember someone like him? I want to shake the kid off, but his question has a pleading tone to it that keeps me from shutting the door.

I lean in a little, take a good look at his face under the pink hat. Round, puffy-cheeked, a nose that seems half a size too big for the rest of his features. Nothing that triggers recognition for me. His shallow brown eyes have a moist sheen I remember seeing in my own boy’s eyes when he was small.

“Oh, sure,” I hear myself saying. “Good to see you. I hope you’ve been well.”

“You got old,” he says. Jesus. Yeah, he’s right, but no one wants to hear that. I stare the guy down, forcing myself not to blink. Behind me, the crowd noise from the TV tells me that half-time is over, the third quarter has started.

“Sorry,” he says. “That came out wrong, you know? I was thinking about Kevin, what he must look like now.” His mouth stops working, like he’s unexpectedly run out of words, and a pair of lines forms between his eyes, below the bottom edge of the squid hat. He lowers his paper bag and shuffles half a step closer.

Still no clue who this guy is, but I guess he must have known Kevin in school. He’s about the right age. Probably one of the boys who used to stop by the house for a couple rounds of Mario Kart on the way home. Now I do feel a bit bad for not remembering him. I’m also relieved that he’s not some random nutcase.

“Ricky,” he says. “It’s okay if you forgot. It’s one of those names that slips out of people’s heads. I’m used to it.”

“Well, good to see you, Ricky.” God, I’m repeating myself now. I put my hand on the door like I’m about to close it, but Ricky doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere yet. He’s peeking over my shoulder, down the hallway and into the kitchen. The TV in the living room is loud enough that I can hear the announcers filling time while someone shoots free throws.  

“Can I ask you a favor?” Ricky’s standing close enough that I can smell him, and part of me is disappointed not to catch the pong of alcohol on his breath, something that would let me brush him off and shut the door guiltlessly.

“What’s that, Ricky?” No. Whatever the favor is, I’m going to say no.

“Can I use your bathroom?” He shifts his weight. Do that once, it’s contrapposto. Do it a couple more times, and it means you have to pee. “It’s sort of an emergency.”

 I mean, what are you going to do? If I were just shuffling an awkward stranger off my porch, no one would blame me for that. But chasing away a guy who’s about to burst and just wants to use your john, I know people who would call that a human rights violation. So I close the door, which was the plan, but with Ricky on the inside, which was not.

“I remember where it is,” he says, but I make like I don’t hear him and usher him through the kitchen toward the back of the house. For a guy on the verge of popping a kidney, Ricky isn’t in much of a hurry. He takes his time, checking out the dishes in the sink (yesterday’s spaghetti pot, a red melamine plate I swiped from a Chinese restaurant), the bills I’ve stuck to the fridge door (the light bill is overdue, but I know for a fact they won’t cut your power off after the weather turns cold).

Once Ricky shuts the bathroom door, I go back to the living room. The Celtics have come out of the locker room flat, and they’re in the process of blowing the nine-point lead they had at the half. I feel weird eating my sandwich, like I’m having dinner in front of company, but I didn’t exactly invite Ricky, and he’s in the crapper anyway.

And he’s in there long enough that I start to wonder. I mean, there are only so many things you can do in a bathroom, right? But to hell with him. He comes out when he comes out. Even if he’s one of those freaks who goes through your medicine cabinet, hey, he’s welcome to all the dental floss he can handle.

So I shove him to the back of my head. The point guard for the Suns lays the ball up after an obvious travel. I mean, he practically does an Irish jig from center court to the rim without dribbling once. No whistle, they just let the punk get away with it. I’m shouting at the idiot refs like they can actually hear me, and that’s when I get that creepy feeling somebody’s eyeing me, you know? I turn my head and there’s Ricky in the doorway, watching the game with me. Except he’s not looking at the television, he’s looking at me sitting on the couch, shouting at the refs.

I’m embarrassed because I’m acting like every brain-dead sports fan on the planet, and also because I’m sitting there in front of the ruins of my sandwich, like people aren’t supposed to know I eat. I grab the remote and turn the volume down some, because the TV is up pretty loud, and that embarrasses me, too. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m losing my hearing.

Ricky is still standing there looking at me, grinning like it’s Christmas morning and I’m the tree. I try to shake loose some small talk, but nothing comes, so I settle for a simple nod. I mean, there’s not a lot you can say to a near-stranger who just finished a feature-length visit to your bathroom.

“Who’s playing?” he asks, and I don’t answer because it’s right there on the damn screen, isn’t it? Instead, I push the plate over to the far edge of the coffee table, like someone else left a sandwich there and I’m surprised to find it sitting in front of me. I get to my feet. Ricky has overstayed his welcome, and I want to watch the end of the game without an audience.

I’m about to start my Sorry-you-have-to-go-so-soon routine when I spot the reason Ricky was in the back of the house for so long. He’s carrying a book in his left hand, one of those crazy Japanese manga that you have to read back-to-front. Kevin’s room is stacked with them. Looks like Ricky took a detour on his way to the living room.

This pisses me off. What makes this guy think he can wander around my house, poke into Kevin’s bedroom, mess with his stuff? I mean, it’s not like I’m one of those parents who can’t move on, who keeps their kid’s room like it’s a museum exhibit, but, even if I were, that’s none of Ricky’s damn business. My face gets hot and my pulse starts thumping in my ears, but I catch myself before I let loose. Take a deep breath, count to seven while I hold it.

My temper is, as Kevin puts it, a thing. I’m working on it. After he took off, I went to a therapist in Brookline for a while. She told me that when something sets me off, I need to imagine whatever happened as being well-intentioned, like they didn’t mean it or something. Maybe she helped me some, but she didn’t take insurance, and Brookline is way the hell over there anyhow.

So I do what the doctor told me to do, I run this movie in my head, where Kevin and Ricky are hanging out in his room, reading manga. Ricky doesn’t finish his book before he has to take off to do his homework, so he puts it back on the stack. I picture him today, coming out of my bathroom. Ricky passes Kev’s room, sees the manga right where he left it, right there on top. He just wants to finish the book, right?

Some of the heat comes out of my face, but I can still feel my pulse in my ears.   

“You got rid of the fish tank,” Ricky says, nodding at the spot where the aquarium used to be, and now he drops into place. He used to go by Derrick, hung out with Kevin for his senior year of high school. I can see a younger version of him, sitting on the same couch I just stood up from, game controller in his sweaty hands, Kevin beside him, their stinking feet on the coffee table, laughing and cursing the way kids do while their cartoon avatars race around a track, pelting each other with bananas and tennis shoes and generally mocking the laws of physics. That Ricky was a little pudgier, with a strip of peach fuzz on his upper lip and hair that stuck straight out from his head like a life-sized Chia Pet.

“The fish tank was a lousy idea,” I say. “I have a lot of those.” Kevin’s mom took half the living room with her when she left, so I got this big aquarium to fill some of the empty space. But I picked fish that were pretty instead of ones that could coexist, and half the tank kept eating the other half until all I had left was this solitary loach hugging the bottom of the tank, sucking algae out of the gravel. 

I take a step toward the front door, gesturing like a flight attendant pointing out an emergency exit, but Ricky still doesn’t take the hint, keeps leaning on the doorframe. He hasn’t grown much since high school, but he was tall for his age back then, half a head taller than Kevin. He’s not my size, anyway. If it came down to it, I could move him, but I’m not that particular kind of nut.

The guy wants something. Maybe if I give it to him, he’ll go home and let me watch the game in peace.

“Is there something I can do for you, Ricky?” I try to sound friendly, like a server in a coffee shop looking to pour you a second cup, but the question comes out more like I’m a clerk at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

“As long as I’m here, do you, like, know how I can get in touch with Kevin?” He stops looking for the fish tank that isn’t there and focuses on me. His eyes have that moist look again. “Like, a phone number or an email?”

So now I’m wondering what he’s heard. It’s not like it was a secret that Kevin and I had some problems after he dropped out of Merrimack. Didn’t talk to us about it or anything, just packed his dorm stuff and drove home. He told us he was “over school,” whatever that means, then sat around the living room for six months, pretending to be looking for a job. Or maybe he really was looking, I don’t know. He could have been sitting on the couch filling out applications on his laptop, or he could have been playing Half-Life. Would have looked the same to me either way.

“Hard to say, Ricky. Kev calls me, birthdays and holidays, that sort of thing, but his number keeps changing.” Truth is, the last time was two Thanksgivings ago, from a Dunkin’ Donuts in Brockton. When I called him back for Christmas, I got a disconnect message from T-Mobile. “His mother says she talks to him on Discord sometimes. That’s probably the best way to catch him.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” Ricky is maybe three steps from the front door, but he’s taking his time getting there. “I guess when you talk to him, you can tell him hi for me.” We both know that isn’t going to happen.

The front door’s been sticking the last couple of years, and it doesn’t come open when Ricky tugs at it. “Old house,” I say. “It’s settling.” I lean across him, give the door a hard yank, and it scrapes open. “See ya, Ricky.” I reach out to shake his hand, but I’m standing too close, and these days people don’t shake anyway, so my hand just hangs there.

Ricky steps in past my handshake and wraps his arms around me. It’s not like the half-assed hug you give your grandma, but it’s not a bear hug, either. It’s gentle, searching, like he’s trying to teach me how to dance. He presses his cheek against mine, and I haven’t shaved, and while I’m asking myself why the hell that matters, he whispers something into my ear. It’s my bad ear, the left one, and I can’t make out what Ricky is saying, and then he’s turning to go, it’s too late.

 The storm door slaps shut behind him, and I watch Ricky clomp down the wooden porch stairs, that ridiculous squid hat still on his head. In the living room, the game has given way to a commercial for a hair transplant clinic.

For no reason, I leave the porch light on.

—

Daniel Cohen is from Boston and swears the rest of the country has an accent. He’s earned his living fixing telephones, washing pots, and teaching at UMass Amherst, Tufts, and Bentley. Most of his output is short fiction, which suits both his temperament and his stature.