Evan flew down nine flights of stairs and spilled onto the twelfth-floor hall. At the end the door to Mia’s condo stood open. He ran up the corridor and into 12B.
Mia stood facing the couch, shifting her weight from foot to foot as if she wanted to break into a sprint. Peter was whimpering. Evan couldn’t see him over the back of the couch except for the swirl of blond hair sticking up above the cushions.
Heeling the door closed, Evan went to Mia’s side. “How’d it happen?”
She said, “He dove off the counter playing Batman and hit the coffee table.”
Peter looked tiny on the couch. He was wearing only tighty-whities and a torn bedsheet knotted around his throat. The low-rent cape had been swept aside to reveal the dislocated shoulder. His right arm hung lower, pulled down out of the socket. In place of the deltoid was a divot deep enough to be shadowed. Peter glanced down at the scoop of hollowed skin, crunched up his features, and turned away again. His face looked hot, humid with smeared tears.
Evan said, “Batman doesn’t fly.”
Peter stopped sniffling. “He can glide,” he whimpered.
“Gliding’s trickier than it looks,” Evan said.
“Evidently,” Mia said. “Now I need to move him to the car, but he won’t get up and I can’t carry him—”
Peter broke in. “It hurts too much to move.”
“—and I’ve gotta get him to the hospital.”
“No hospital!”
“Okay.” Evan held up his hands. “He doesn’t have to go to the hospital. I’ll do it.”
“You know how to fix a dislocated shoulder?” Mia asked. “Wait—of course you do. Why would I even…” She shook her head in exasperation. “Okay. How do you do it?”
“There are about two dozen ways,” Evan said. “I prefer the one that’s the least painful. How ’bout you, Bruce Wayne?”
Peter nodded.
“Okay, I’m gonna sit down next to you on the couch. But I’m not gonna touch you at all yet. Okay?”
Another nod.
Evan eased onto the cushion on Peter’s right side. “What would you say the pain’s at on a scale of one to ten?”
Peter blinked through his tears. “What’s one? Like a paper cut?”
“Yes.”
“And what’s ten? Like someone rips your face off and then sets it on fire?”
“Sure,” Evan said. “But maybe they set it on fire first, because once your face is ripped off, you don’t really care if it’s lit on fire after that.”
Peter considered. “I meant they light where your face used to be on fire. Like the underface.”
Since her own face was buried in her hands, Mia’s voice came out muffled. “Boys? Maybe we can get to it?”
“Like a six,” Peter said.
“Okay,” Evan said. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna rub your back right here, okay? This won’t hurt much. I’m just loosening up the muscles, because they’re spasming and pulling your shoulder in the wrong direction. Then I’m gonna rotate your arm. When I do that, the pain’s gonna go to an eleven for a second and then immediately drop to a two. Are you up for that?”
Peter said, “No way.”
Evan kept massaging the knotted muscle at the back of Peter’s shoulder. It was releasing ever so slightly. “Why don’t you tell me a story?”
“To distract me?”
“No,” Evan said. “To distract me .”
“Okay. You know Girl Ryan?”
Evan took the boy’s thin arm very gently. “In Ms. Croftmuffin’s class?”
“Bracegirdle,” Peter said. “Well, last month her dad went to Oswald.”
“Oswald?” Evan held Peter’s forearm parallel to the floor, palm up, elbow in.
“You know,” Peter said. “In Sweden.”
“Or Oslo,” Mia said. “In Norway.”
“Whatever,” Peter said.
Evan stopped rubbing Peter’s back and firmed his palm against the scapula.
“And you know how he always gets her cool travel gifts?” Peter said. “So guess what he brought her back from Oswald?”
Evan tightened his grasp on Peter’s forearm. “Sherry-oak-cask-matured aquavit?”
“Moose socks!”
Evan rotated Peter’s arm out as if opening it for a hug, keeping the elbow pinned to the boy’s ribs. At the same time, he pushed the scapula in to catch the humerus, the bones meeting each other halfway, the shoulder reseating itself with a pleasing click.
Peter opened his mouth to scream but paused before any sound could escape. Mia had covered her eyes, but she peeked between her fingers.
The silence stretched out a beat. Peter closed his mouth.
Then he moved his arm gingerly. “That feels sooo much better.”
Evan said to Mia, “Will you please grab me a pillowcase?”
She nodded and headed up the hall.
Evan looked across at Peter. “Were the socks actually made out of meese?”
Peter grinned. “Mooses. And no. They had cartoons on them.”
Mia reappeared and flipped Evan the pillowcase. “Moose. Moose is the plural of moose. Like fish.”
“Except if you’re talking about species of fish,” Peter said.
Mia said, “Is that what Ms. Dinglepants taught you?”
Peter sighed. “You guys .”
“You should get it looked at by a doc,” Evan said, “but it can wait till the morning.” He triangled the pillowcase and tied it in a loose sling. “He can use this till then.”
“Okay. Thank God, Evan. Hang on … just … lemme get him to bed. Wait a sec for me?”
Evan said, “Okay.”
With his good hand, Peter fist-bumped Evan, then blew it up, then squidded his fingers away, then turned them into a firework, and then Mia said, “Peter,” and he scampered ahead of her into his bedroom.
Evan waited on the couch, taking in the soft colors of the well-loved space. A broken Little League trophy on the mantel next to a picture of Peter in a wooden frame built of Popsicle sticks. A shoe box on the floor transformed into a robot head. A Post-it on the wall by the thermostat with a line from that book Mia was always quoting to Peter: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
This childhood, this upbringing, this life so different from anything Evan had ever known.
And—in countless tiny, commonplace ways—so much better.
Mia reemerged, easing Peter’s door closed. “Sorry. Getting out of there at night is like backing out of a lion cage.” She ran a hand through her already mussed-up hair. “That was amazing. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Evan stood. “I have to go now.”
“Right now? Why?”
Still trying to kill the president.
Evan said, “Work.”
“Okay. Sure you don’t want, like, a Smirnoff Ice Pineapple or something?” She held a straight face for a few seconds but finally laughed at his expression. “I’m kidding.”
“You’re a very bad person.”
“Yes, I am.” She came over and hugged him. “Thank you so much. Seriously. I’m good with cuts and blood and whatever, but dislocations gross me out.”
Her arms stayed wrapped tight around his lower back. He was holding her, pretending not to breathe the scent of her hair. Her cheek was pressed against his chest, her head snugged beneath his chin. He waited for her to let go, but she didn’t, and he suddenly felt less in a rush than he was before.
“Ever notice how when they talk about dreams in movies they always make perfect sense?” she said, keeping her face against his chest. “No one ever says, ‘I was ten years old at my childhood house, but it wasn’t my childhood house, it was a school, and my whole fifth-grade class was there, but they weren’t my classmates, they were all the criminals I’ve put away and they were gonna get me, but then I was an adult all of a sudden, and you came in and you were you but you were also my dear departed husband, and you took me by the hand and we walked outside, but outside was inside and we were in a bedroom, and then you kissed me and said everything was safe.’”
Through his shirt Evan could feel the heat of her cheek.
He said, “Did you have that dream?”
She pulled back and looked at him and then looked away, her mouth crooked with sheepish amusement. “No,” she said.
He laughed.
But then they were serious again, her eyes so large beneath those long, dark lashes, and he kissed her. She tasted faintly like cinnamon toothpaste, and the smell of her, lemongrass mixed with lavender, came off her skin, and they were still kissing, but she was guiding them down the hall, an awkward walk-stumble that kept them together.
In her bedroom they finally broke apart, forehead to forehead, their breath intermingling, and then she lifted his shirt up and off.
“Wait a sec,” she said. “Are these muscles real? Or spray-painted on?” She poked at his abs. “I mean, seriously ? If you think I’m gonna get naked after this—”
But then they were tangled in each other again, moving to the bed, and he was holding her face in his hands, her mouth so soft.
She leaned away, lips parted, breathing hard. “Okay,” she said, “fuck it,” and pulled off her shirt.
The soft mattress felt like an embrace. Throw pillows tumbled. She rolled him on top of her, unbuckling his belt. She kicked out of her jeans and shoved his the rest of the way off with her toes.
The smoothness of her bare belly against his. Her nails digging into his arms. Her teeth pressing into his shoulder.
Not aggressive.
But hungry.
Afterward he lay sunk in a swirl of duvet, spent, as she lay beside him, one leg slung over his hip, their skin meeting in a warm seal.
There was only the sound of their breathing, ragged at first and then slower, slower, yielding to a peaceful silence. She shifted off him, away, and bedded down on her stomach with one knee hitched up so her body formed a lowercase h.
She wasn’t quite snoring, but she made a distinctive snuffle with each inhale that he found unreasonably charming.
He closed his eyes, enjoying the unexpected pleasure of this bed, her body beside his, this moment.
He couldn’t remember ever wanting to not leave, but here he was getting more and more tired, listening to her sleep sounds, his blinks growing longer.
A faint humming noise jarred him back to alertness.
The RoamZone, set to vibrate.
He slipped from the bed and dug it from the pocket of his tangled jeans. Taking quiet steps, he moved to the bathroom so as not to wake Mia.
Caller ID showed a mobile number with a Los Angeles area code. A GPS dot pinned the location downtown near USC.
Evan answered as he always did. “Do you need my help?”
A terrified voice said, “Yes, please, sir. Yes, please.”