Flynn had bought candy for sixty kids and gotten eleven, and three of the eleven were the Okafor boys coming back around in different masks. By eight-thirty Mia was asleep on the stairs in her jellyfish costume, the clear umbrella still open over her head, its ribbons pooled on the step below. He carried her up, folded the umbrella, and came back down to a mixing bowl that was more than half full.
On Monday he brought the bowl to work.
He set it on the corner of his desk nearest the aisle, where the walkway bent toward the kitchen, and wrote FREE on a yellow sticky note and pressed it to the rim. Then he sat and took the earbud case out of his pocket. It was a white plastic clamshell whose hinge snapped hard enough to hear across the pod, and he opened and closed it while his laptop woke up. For six years the buds had gone in before the first email loaded, and the floor went away with them: the printer, the speakerphone in the corner office, Linda’s Monday report on her son’s lacrosse team.
He opened the case. He looked at the bowl. The sticky note had already started to curl.
On Thursday, at the bus stop, Mia had asked the girl from two houses down what she was going to be. The girl said a cheetah. Mia said a jellyfish. They held hands the whole ride to school and Flynn had watched them through the bus window with his coffee going cold.
He snapped the case shut and put it back in his pocket.
The morning went the way Mondays went. Linda took a Kit Kat and called him a saint. A man from finance took two without breaking stride. Somebody balled up a wrapper and left it on the sticky note, and Flynn moved it to the trash and smoothed the note flat with his thumb.
At ten-forty, Jonathan came down the aisle with his mug.
He wore his reading glasses pushed up into his gray hair, where they rode all day like a second pair of eyes he never remembered he had. Flynn knew him the way he knew the elevator. They had shaken hands at orientation the spring Flynn started, traded names and departments, and since then had passed each other with a nod at roughly ten-forty and three-fifteen every weekday. Flynn knew he drank his coffee black. He knew his last name from email signatures.
Jonathan slowed at the bowl and read the note the way people read a sign they suspect is a trap.
“These actually free?”
“Please. Otherwise I eat them in the car.”
Jonathan dug past the Smarties and came up with a peanut butter cup. He held it up to the light. “Somebody gave these out on purpose? We had a house on our street give out pencils.”
“I bought the good stuff so the leftovers would be good. Then I only had eleven kids show up.”
“Eleven.” Jonathan winced on his behalf. “We’re on a cul-de-sac. We did forty-something. Cul-de-sac people go hard.” He peeled the wrapper halfway down. “My daughter made me carry a second bag so she could keep the bad candy separate. She has a system.”
“How old is she?”
“Five. Six in January.”
Flynn felt his hand go to his pocket and find the earbud case and stay there, closed. “Mine’s five too. She was a jellyfish. Clear umbrella, ribbons all around the edge. She fell asleep in it on the stairs.”
“Mine was a garbage truck.” Jonathan finally pulled the glasses down onto his nose. “Cardboard box, arm holes, the whole thing. She wanted the lid to open so people could put the candy in the back. I couldn’t get the hinge to work. She’s still mad about it.”
“Where does she go to school.”
“Garfield. Kindergarten, Ms. Ortiz.”
“Mia’s at Hollister. Other side of the parkway.”
They stood there for a while longer than either of them had planned. Jonathan’s daughter liked the swings and was afraid of slides with tunnels. Mia liked tunnels and had never in her life been afraid of anything. Jonathan said the playground by the library had a rope bridge, and Flynn said Mia had been asking to go back there since August.
“Saturday morning?” Jonathan said. “She’s at her best before lunch. After lunch she’s a negotiator.”
“Ten?”
“Ten.” Jonathan pulled out his phone. “Give me your number. I’ve had your email for six years.”
Flynn laughed and gave it to him. Jonathan typed it in, took a second peanut butter cup for the road, raised it like a toast, and went on down the aisle toward the kitchen with his mug.
Flynn reached over and pushed the bowl another inch toward the walkway, until the sticky note hung out past the edge of the desk.