“We painted a cake with icing, and Andy insisted that it was art because I had created it. It wasn’t a matter of mechanics, it was a matter of origin.

“Andy was a soft, decent guy—at least to me. My dad called him the bitch but he made me feel pretty good for a few hours.” He paused, and felt his smile turn a little brittle. “My old man called the cake tasty crap art.” He shrugged. “Which was kind of a compliment coming from him.”

“See, Jake? That’s a fucking cool story. Remember what we learned in AA? Take the good out of a situation—not the bad.” She kissed his neck, then moved around so her mouth was inches from his. “Was that so hard?”

And all at once he remembered why he loved her so much; she pulled the good out of him, helped him reach in and find the stuff he thought was lost for ever. “Stop pissing me off,” he said, then laughed. “No, it wasn’t. Fuck. Thanks.”

Kay laughed, too, and pushed her breasts together, forming a deep crease in her wife-beater. “Here, you can stare at my cans. I know it gives you some kind of a perverse thrill. Go ahead, pay your respects.”

Jake eyed Jeremy out of the corner of his eye, zooming his fire truck through the air like a red machine of destruction, and when he was sure the boy wasn’t looking, kissed each of her breasts, making a loud MWAH! sound as he did. “Lady, if you had a dollar for all the respect I have heaped on these, you’d be a rich woman,” he said.

“Um, first off, it wasn’t exactly your respect that you were heaping on them.”

“All right…all right…Mrs. Potty Mouth, there’s no winning with you.”

“Hey, I thought letting you heap your…um, respect, on my cans was letting you win. Evidently I have been using the wrong philosophy.” She smiled, leaned over, and kissed him. “Are you going to help me get that rolling barricade away from the door upstairs or do I call Ready Demolition from Tucson?”

Jake thought about Dr. Sobel’s questions at the hospital. Anything out of the ordinary at your father’s house, Mr. Cole? Hell, no. Except for maybe the Alamo barricade. Oh, and the trash piled up to the rafters. Other than that, the place is as normal as a Seth Morgan novel. “Why not?” He began to push her off.

She searched his face. “Did your father always drink like this?” she asked, sweeping her hand around the room, her raised arm lifting her breast.

“Pretty much.” Jake closed his eyes, dropped his head back on the sofa. “When I was a kid, it just seemed to be fuel for work. He’d booze and play music and people would always be swinging by and he’d work and the paintings just seemed to magically roll out of the studio. Sometimes he slept out there. Sometimes I’d go in at bedtime to say goodnight and he’d be starting something, just lines and maybe a background layout penciled onto a big canvas. The next day, when I went in to say good morning, it would be done, some great big sweeping allegorical tragedy, only the tragedy turned out to be him, and the paintings were just incidental.”

“Don’t say that.” She punched his arm. “I don’t know your father, Jake—you barely talk about him—but he gave me the best thing in my life.” She leaned over, planted her cool lips on his forehead and kissed him. “You don’t have to babysit us, you know. If you need to be at the police station, I think we can handle it. What kind of trouble could me and Jeremy get into at a beach house?”

“I only have you for one more day and I want to make it count.” And with that his Spidey sense started tingling. He turned to the porch. “Where’s Jeremy?”

Kay turned with him, following the concern in Jake’s voice. “He’s right—”

But he wasn’t.

He was gone.

Jake sprang to his feet, spilling Kay in a tangle of arms and legs. “Where the fuck is he?”

Jake ran for the deck.

23

Jake’s head automatically swiveled to the pool as he ran across the deck. The algae was undisturbed and still, the line of sludge that rimmed the concrete a straight demarcation around the perimeter.

Jake saw Jeremy from the top of the steps to the beach. He was at the water’s edge, staring out at the ocean. His arms were crossed over his chest as if pondering some important moral question, his body unmoving.

Jake thudded down the ancient weathered planks and raced across the sand. He scooped Jeremy up. “What are you doing out here, Moriarty?” He tried not to sound angry but what he really wanted to keep buried was the panic.

Jeremy tried to squirm out of Jake’s grip with the guttural grunts he reserved for times when language was just too civil for the things he needed to say.

“What is it?” Jake swung his son around. “You’re not supposed to leave our sight. You know that, kiddo.”

Kay came down the steps and ran over. “What the hell is he doing down here?”

Jake shrugged. “He’s being pissy. You ask him.”

Jeremy gave a final squirm and fell limp. When he seemed to be in control of himself, Jake lowered him to the sand.

“What’s wrong?” Kay asked, squatting down on her boots.

Jeremy pointed off into the distance, to the horizon, to the edge of the world.

“What?” Kay asked.

Jake turned to the horizon, scoured the skyline. Then back to Jeremy, examining his face for clues. Then out at the ocean again. “What is it?”

“Elmo!” Jeremy screeched, a voice filled with rage.

And then Jake saw it. Rolling lazily on the deep swell, the red-orange figure of Elmo, face down, spread-eagled in the water. The tide was coming in, not going out, and Elmo was a good 150 feet from shore. Jake held up his hand and felt the steady wind that was pushing straight in at the shore.

Watching Elmo spin lazily in the swell, Kay asked, “How the hell did he—?” And she stopped, because she realized that there was no answer to the question.

The Sesame Street critter bobbed on the waves for a few seconds like a drowning victim. He inched closer, but it would take time for him to close the distance to shore and he’d be lucky if he wasn’t pulled under by the waves breaking on the beach. It didn’t take a physicist to understand that Jeremy could not have gotten him out there; Jake knew even he couldn’t throw him that far, headwind or not.

“How did Elmo get out there, Moriarty?”

Jeremy pretended not to hear for a few seconds. Then he realized that his parents were smart enough to know that Elmo hadn’t swum out there on his own. “He took him.” The boy stood on his toes, his eyes searching for his little red friend. “Carried him into the water, Daddy.”

Jake felt the skin tighten around his bones. “Who did, son?”

“The man.” He looked up, smiled brightly. “Your friend.”

Jake looked into his son’s face, searching for…what? “My friend? Which friend?”

Jeremy looked like he realized that he might be in trouble. He lifted his face to Kay, searching for a cue. Kay nodded. “It’s okay, son. Tell Daddy.”

“He said he was your friend, Daddy. He said he played games with you and your mommy when you were little. And that now he wants to play games with me. He wants to be my friend, too.”

Kay’s features were white now, brittle. “What is he talking about?”

Jake was frozen in place. He tried to shrug, to shake his head—all that came out was a single sentence. “What was his name?”

Jeremy stared out at Elmo lolling on the waves like an orange patch of carpet, well beyond the heft of human strength. “The man. He lives in the floor.” The boy kept his eyes locked on Elmo, waiting for him to come in from his swim. He shrugged and his little T-shirt rose up, exposing a big white tummy with a perfect dent of a bellybutton, like a well-grown albino grapefruit. “You know, the man in the floor—he’s your buddy. He said so. He said he’s your Buddy-Man.”