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I open the energy efficient dishwasher and take out the bottle of scotch. Children are knocking on the door, and I can hear their parents telling them to stand back. I take a gulp and spin the cap back on before pulling the mask down over my face. The liquor fumes help annex the pungent plastic chemical smell of the factory in China where the mask comes from. I shuffle to the door, pick up my scythe on the way, and nearly trip on the black gown that flows past my sneakers. I pull the door open on two five-year-old girls, identical twins, Snow White and Cinderella. They both let out little shrieks and run behind their mother’s legs. Snow White drops her pumpkin basket and candy spills out all over the fake cedar porch.
“Oh no, wait,” I say, flipping the mask so that it sits on top of my head like a hat. “I won’t hurt you. I have candy.” I crawfish into the house and retrieve the basket of candy, but when I get back to the door the girls and their mother have moved on. The father is on one knee scooping up the spilled candy. He looks up at me and shakes his head, throwing a tootsie roll into the pumpkin with a thwack.
“Jesus, buddy. This is a family sort of thing, not the fucking thirteenth gate.”
I gather up the gown at my waist and let it drop. “I didn’t mean to scare them. This was all I could find.”
The man holds on to the railing to pull himself up and I hold my breath waiting for it to come loose in his hand. He dusts his jeans and walks off to the next manufactured home where Jane, the secretary of Good As Homes, will answer the door dressed as a fat cat in black spandex with mascara-etched whiskers fanned out across her cheeks.
I close the door and go back to the dishwasher.
Sweeping the curtain on the kitchen window aside with the bottle, I watch Samantha. She’s greeting a family outside the office, handing them a flyer for Good As Homes that lists the prices, as well as the energy efficient perks of all seven models on the lot. She’s dressed like a friendly witch, a sombrero perched on her head, only nobody knows it’s a sombrero except me. She’s into crafting even though she could afford a Gucci witch hat if she wanted. She sat on the couch of the house I’m occupying just three days ago, talking me into helping them do their Halloween event while pinning black fabric over the sombrero she bought at the goodwill, and then shaping a paper cone over the top. Harvey, one of the salesmen, had recently quit because he was broke trying to sell manufactured homes, and they needed someone to pass out candy in one of the units. What else do I have to do? Only thing is, she said, is that her husband will be showing up with their two children to make the rounds. “You can handle that, right?” she asked, turning the sombrero in front of her face with her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth and then setting it on top her head. “How do I look?”
The doorbell rings and I go on over. This time I pick up the candy before pulling the mask down.
“Oh my,” the lady says when I open the door.
I hold the candy out, but her little Dracula won’t approach. “Happy Halloween,” I say.
“Go on, honey,” she says, trying to usher him forward, but he won’t move. I rattle the basket in front of him and finally the mother digs in and takes a handful, drops it in his basket. As they move off the mother gives me the stink eye, and I shut the door.
I go and stand in front of the bedroom mirror, see the grim reaper holding a basket of candy. My roommate wore it to some college party, and he passed it along to me. It’s depressing to be closing in on forty and have a roommate in college. He’s an engineering student, and he mostly keeps to himself, plays video games with his headphones on, but still.
Samantha gave me a set of keys to this unit so I can get away when I need to, which has been nearly every night for more than six months. It feels like home. This is where Samantha and I have been playing house for the last year. We used some of the other homes at first, but this is the one I like best. It doesn’t have a TV or anything, but mine is the only unit with a fireplace. You press a button and the little blue flames shoot out from under the fake logs, and although it doesn’t give off much heat, it looks good with all the lights off. Sam and I will sit on the couch in front of it together until late at night when she has to go home. After, I’ll stretch out and stare into the fire, let myself be warmed by it.
The door opens and Samantha is calling me. “Hey,” she says when she finds me in the bedroom. “I guess it’s scarier than we anticipated.”
“It’s only the little ones,” I say.
“Still. Jane’s got a Donald Duck mask that she brought, maybe you could just wear that, huh?”
“You want me to answer the door as Donald the Reaper.”
She grins at me, puts her hands on my shoulders. “How are you?” she says. “Oof, you need some gum.”
“Have they come yet?”
She takes her hands away, adjusts her hat. “Soon. You sure you’re ok?”
“I’m good,” I say.
She hugs me tight, presses her cheek to mine and holds it there for many seconds like she does, like she can scan my feelings or pass certain ones along to me. “I just wanted to check on you.” She walks back to the door, lights a candle on the coffee table. Blueberry muffin. “Hey,” she calls out. “Try to get the parents to come inside, encourage them to look around if you can.”
My wife died last year from a brain aneurism. I was under the sink at the time, trying to fix a leak, when Leslie said she had a headache. I told her to take some aspirin, and ignored it. Even when she started crying, I did. I hollered for her to lie down and when she didn’t answer and I finally crawled out from under the sink, she had fainted by the front door. She was dead by the time we got to the ER. The doctors said there was nothing I could have done, that it was a ticking time bomb, but I’m not so sure. It didn’t even matter that the plumbing was fucked because after Leslie died, I couldn’t afford the rent anymore anyway, which is how I ended up sharing an apartment with a twenty year old. Leslie was only thirty-five. We never had any children, but we did have three miscarriages.
Standing back at the dishwasher I look out the window to see if Sam’s family has come yet. She’s passing out flyers and dropping candy into plastic pumpkin baskets. I see a few kids and their parents milling around the lot and I can’t help but imagine them as mine. I don’t know if I’m glad about the miscarriages. I guess if we had had kids then they’d be motherless anyway. I feel guilty to think I’m lucky in a way. Them too. The doorbell rings and I pull the mask down.
I open the door on two teenagers. They’ve both got brown paper bags held out in front of them that are three fourths of the way full. “Trick or treat,” they say in squeaky unison. They’re not even dressed up. They both have makeup around their eyes, but it seems more like a fashion statement. I can see the white top of a pack of cigarettes tucked into the big one’s shirt pocket, the black letters that say Marlboro.
“Let me have one of those cigarettes,” I say. My voice behind the plastic sounds like it’s being spoken inside of a PVC pipe.
“Aw man,” he protests. “I only got a few left.”
I hold the candy out to them and as he leans forward to peer into my basket I pluck them from his pocket. He’s got almost a full pack, one of the cigarettes is turned upside down, his lucky one. I take that one, plus another and stuff it back into his pocket.
“Hey, not cool bro,” he says, releasing his claw full of candy into his bag.
“Get outta here,” I say. “Y’all are too old to be doing this.”
I put the lucky smoke in a drawer next to the dishwasher and take the other one to the bathroom, crack a window. The house smells like blueberry muffins already. Sam’s got candles in some of the other homes that smell of pancakes and chocolate chip cookies. It’s a nice touch, but business is slow. The only reason that she’s able to keep managing it is because her husband is rich. He’s a financial advisor. I’ve joked to Sam that I should hire him. She doesn’t find it funny.
I’ve been unemployed for a while. I was a field rep for Energy Save, which is how I met Samantha. I used to come here to certify the homes and make sure they had all the incentive paperwork. This was only a couple months after Leslie died and I kept coming, even after I got laid off, pretending that the stimulus dough hadn’t run out. I guess Sam felt sorry for me, and I liked how she would follow me from home to home, talking. She was lonely too, and it didn’t take long before we realized the opportunity all around us.
I hear the front door open. I flush the smoke down the toilet and spray some Lysol in the air, shut the door. There’s a big man in overalls standing near the couch holding my plastic scythe, inspecting it like it’s a rifle he might buy. He’s got a full beard and a toothpick crammed all the way in the corner of his mouth. He sets the scythe down, takes out the toothpick and waves it like a wand.
“You mind if I look around?”
“Go right ahead,” I say.
He goes straight to the kitchen, starts opening cabinets. He turns on the faucet. He swipes his hand under the stream, pushes his hair back. The door opens again and a yellow power ranger comes running in.
“You work here?” the man says to me.
“Mister Larry,” the power ranger shouts. “This one! Let’s get this one!”
“I’m talking!” he says to the boy. “Go do something.”
The kid runs off to the bedroom and the man asks me again do I work here.
“Sort of.”
“How many bedrooms does this thing have?”
“One,” I say.
He waddles past me, and I follow him back to the bedroom, stand behind him as he walks in. The power ranger is jumping on the bed.
“Get your ass off there,” the man says. “Go find your Momma.”
The kid jumps down and dashes out of the house, leaving the door wide open. I turn back in, and the man is sitting on the edge of the bed, bouncing slightly, testing it out. I don’t like it one bit. This is the bed that I usually sleep in, where Samantha and I lie. I want him gone from my house. I start to tell him this one is just a model, and that it’s not for sale and I hear voices on the porch.
“Hello. Hello.”
A woman is standing in the door, a ladybug clutching her leg. I arrange the mask as I bring the candy over.
“You’re not scary,” the little girl says. “Mommy, he’s not real,” she says pointing up at me. “I saw you put the mask on.”
“That’s right,” the lady says. “It’s just dress up, honey.”
I want to scare the hell out of everyone, but I just stand, hold out the candy. My scythe is lying on the carpet by the door where the fellow dropped it.
“Happy Halloween,” she says and darts away, followed by her mother.
The man comes walking by me again, holds his hand up and I can’t tell if he’s acknowledging me or trying to balance himself. He waddles out the door and I shut it behind him, slide the mask up. I slap the porch light off. I don’t think I can deal with anyone else tonight. I go stand by the kitchen window, fill a coffee cup with scotch.
I don’t see Samantha, just the few folks that have already bothered me, wandering around, hitting up the other homes. I’m looking forward to everybody leaving, to the other employees going home. Sam will stay late, and we’ll sit on the couch together and have a drink. Maybe I’ll sprint to China Garden across the street, and we’ll sit at the kitchen table and eat, talk about our day. I’ll get a bottle of wine, and then we’ll go to the bedroom. I go back there and smooth the covers where the fat man sat and bounced himself. I can smell him slightly, something faint like motor oil, and I fish out a brownies candle and light it in there.
When I peek out of the window again the lot is thinning out. I start to feel relieved, but then Samantha comes walking out of the office with her husband and two children, an eight and ten year old, both of them dressed as mummies. Brad, her athletic, financial advisor husband, has his arm around her waist. She’s got a hand full of flyers and then the fat man in the overalls walks up to them. They all speak for a couple minutes, and Brad takes his hand away and kisses her on the cheek. He walks away, a mummy child hand in each of his, and disappears around the office toward unit #2, where Felicity, the worst sales person on the lot, will answer the door as Barbie. Brad will like that, as I know he has stepped outside of their marriage several times, and although he has promised Samantha that he’s done, he most likely can’t help himself. Brad really does love Samantha though, she says. He’s also very wealthy and has no idea that the grim reaper in unit #7 knows all about him, about his premature ejaculations and how his wife sleeps on her side with her hands folded like she’s praying under her cheek, and that when she comes, she sometimes brings blood to her lips. Samantha points toward our home, sees me in the window and waves. The man plucks his toothpick, points it at the unit, and I let the curtain fall.
I turn on the radio that I brought over from my apartment, press play on a mixed CD I made for our nights together. In a few minutes my phone starts vibrating. I dig it out from under my gown. It’s Sam calling from the office.
“Guess what?” she says.
I can tell she’s excited by the way her voice is sing-songy. “Tell me.”
“I have to thank you,” she says. “You know the big fellow in the overalls, looks like country Jerry Garcia?”
I already know what’s coming.
“Well, he’s interested in # 7. He said you showed him around.”
“He showed himself around.”
“Yeah, well, his father just died and he has some land in Arkansas, and it just so happens that this fellow is retiring and wants to move out there. He seems to be in a hurry.”
“He didn’t really look too much,” I say. “Does he know about the porch rails or the shower head?”
“I’ll tell him about it tomorrow. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed easy. He seems set. By the way, make yourself scarce tomorrow night. He’s coming back with his girlfriend and her kid to look over everything, hopefully sign some papers.”
I don’t say anything.
“Listen,” Sam says. “I told Brad I’m staying late to do paperwork. I’ll bring some champagne and we’ll have a little celebration, just you and me.”
“Ok,” I say, jarred by a sudden uneasy shift, like standing up too quickly in a canoe, and then I feel myself being drawn out by powerful currents, the cord that keeps me moored to land stretched taut, as far as it will go, the other end of it held loosely in Samantha’s hand.
“I knew this would happen sooner or later if I just kept at it,” she says. “Ok. I’ll see you in a bit,” she sings and hangs up.
That’s what the doctors said about Leslie, that what happened to her was bound to happen sooner or later. They said it came down to faulty wiring, that it couldn’t be helped, and that’s the way I’ve come to believe about my own life. It’s a hard thing to swallow, to feel like you don’t have control over what happens to you. I take my lucky cigarette out to the porch and stand in the darkness and I think about being under that sink. How the whole time I was pulling and twisting those pipes with nothing but a flashlight to see, an artery in Leslie’s brain was slowly ballooning out, stuttering in the dark, building to a simple, brief moment that would end everything, and maybe all I had to do was to climb out from under there sooner.
Off to my right, walking out of unit # 6 is Brad and the kids. They’re saying hello and goodbye to Wendy, Jane’s partner who has agreed to help, and who has simply covered herself in a sheet and called herself a ghost. I hear him tell her to have a great night, and then Brad and the children are walking toward my unit, the last one on the lot. I tuck the lucky smoke in my front pocket, save it for later, and step back inside.
I turn the porch light back on and punch the button on the wall that gets the fireplace going. Bob Dylan is on the CD singing about a simple twist of fate. It’s a good mix, and it hasn’t gotten old for either one of us. I stretch the mask away from my face until the string pops in back and toss it in the garbage can. I bring my coffee mug over and sit on the couch with my sneakers up on the coffee table and wait to show them in.