Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [51]
“Yeah, I guess an astronaut,” he said.
“Okay, that’s cool,” I said. “I think that’s a cool costume.”
I finally noticed the helmet on the bed and the accompanying orange NASA suit hanging on a hook in the closet. “I’ll see you downstairs, bud.”
Robby kept staring at me until I left the room and closed the door behind me. I flinched when I heard it lock. A sconce flickered as I walked past it.
8. halloween
It was sweltering—the warmest October 31 on record—but having grown up in Los Angeles I was used to this weather, even though Jayne and the kids were sweating by the time we reached the end of the block. Robby had already taken off his helmet, his hair matted wet, and hooked up with Ashton Allen, who dissed the idea of going as a famous baseball player once the gay rumors surfaced, and whose parents, Mitchell and Nadine, now joined us along with their younger daughter, Zoe, who was trick-or-treating with Sarah and their guardian for the evening, Marta. (Zoe was Hermione Granger and, yes, Sarah was Posh Spice, complete with a T-shirt that read MY BOYFRIEND THINKS I’M STUDYING.) The two boys would wait on the sidewalk and then inspect their sisters’ treats before deciding to hit that particular house or not. I was drunk.
As we walked through the neighborhood I idly recognized the costumes from various video games (boys dressed as Shadow Phoenix Ninja and Mortal Kombat Scorpion) and movies (Anakin Skywalkers with Jedi hair braids wielding light sabers) while Harry Potters roamed Elsinore Lane everywhere you looked—wearing Quidditch robes, and they held broomsticks and magic wands, and there were green lightning bolt scars on their foreheads that glowed in the darkness as they chatted up a number of bloated ogres that I recognized as Shreks. There were no ballerinas or witches or hobos or ghosts—none of the simple homemade costumes from my childhood—and I was getting old and when I saw Nadine take a swig from the bottle of Fiji water she was carrying I suddenly craved another drink badly. Sarah kept running ahead of everyone, gyrating, while Zoe and Marta tried to keep up, and the four parents kept calling out to their children to stay in sight. There was collective murmuring about why there were so many cars this year—a long, slow-moving stream of them—with costumed kids meekly piling out and running up to the houses and then clambering back into the parade of SUVs that filled the lane. A quiet hesitancy hovered over everything. It was another reminder of the missing boys, and Nadine noted that there were more flashlights than usual and happier-looking jack-o’-lanterns (this was supposed to be an upbeat Halloween). I tried to listen attentively as a zombie pedaled past me on a bike, glaring. Jayne held a digital camera that sometimes she used but mostly didn’t. We ran into Mark and Sheila Huntington, an attractive duo made up of hard edges, as well as Adam and Mimi Gardner—both couples neighbors of ours as well as invitees to the Allens’ dinner on Sunday. As we watched our children move from house to house I noticed how apprehensive everyone seemed, and how lame our attempts at masking it were. People murmured about taking the kids over to North Hill this year, even though none of the missing boys came from our general vicinity. And I noticed how quiet it was, as if no one wanted to attract any unwanted attention from the stranger lurking in the shadows. Someone walked up to Jayne and asked for her autograph.
I couldn’t concentrate on the conversation the various couples were having (the cat that meditated, the healthy multitasking) because I had the feeling that we were being followed