The man arrives at Lansdale Cruise’s house. The Cruises are undergoing construction. They are cutting Mrs. Cruise #4 out of their lives as if she’d never been there. The white couches are being loaded into a truck. The glass-topped dining table. The impossible stair-climbing machine that never got her anywhere. Just always climbing.
“Do you know where the missing kids could be?” the man asks Lansdale Cruise.
She plays with her hair. “They’re on a boat,” she says. “With many fishing rods.” She smiles. “Just kidding. They’re on a hunting trip with a rifle.”
“They’re armed?”
“No,” she says. “I was kidding about that, too.”
“Where are they?”
“We think you know more than you say you do.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” she asks. “I have the answers,” she says.
“And?”
“I have them memorized in sentences.”
“And?”
“And bats eat cold dogs after being coy animals during deadly Easter attacks due at any basic daily cat appreciation dance.”
He looks at her, frustrated.
“Those are the answers,” she says. “Just the first twenty-one of them. Do you want more?”
He turns to his cameraman. “Cut it.”
“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Were those not the right answers?”
“We’ll ask your friends. Someone has to know what happened.”
“But the answers were right!” Lansdale argues. “I know it! ABECDABCADDEADAABDCAD. That’s the sequence!”
“Mr. Cruise? Can we ask you a few questions?”
Mr. Cruise is directing the moving men to take a painting off the wall. It’s not a real painting. It is glitter and shiny fabric glued to a canvas. He doesn’t answer.
The man asks again. “It’s about the two missing kids.”
Mr. Cruise answers, “What do I know about kids? Does it look like I know anything about kids?”
Lansdale says, “He’s right. He’s never here. He never met them.”
“Weren’t they your friends?” the man asks.
Lansdale looks sad. “Yes.”
“Do you know they were the ones sending the bomb threats?”
“No, they weren’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know who was sending the bomb threats.”
“And?”
“And it wasn’t them,” Lansdale says. “Now go away.”
The man walks with his cameraman out of the driveway and down the sidewalk. He says, “I swear her hair grew while I was talking to her. Did you see that?”
The cameraman answers, “You weren’t looking at her hair.”
The man says, “I know, right?”
Lansdale hears this and says, “They send two morons like you to ask questions? You don’t even know the answers when you hear them!”
“They left in the helicopter on Tuesday morning,” he says.
“Who did?”
“My boy and his friend. The girl in the white coat.”
“Where’s the helicopter?”
“It was in my garage. Now it’s somewhere else.”
“Why do you seem unworried by this?”
“Because Gustav knows what he’s doing,” he says. “The boy is smarter than all of us put together. He has an IQ of a hundred and seventy-six.”
“The police say there wasn’t any helicopter,” the man says.
“The police don’t believe.”
The man chuckles. “So, you have to believe to see the helicopter?”
“Yes.”
“And did you see them take off?”
“I was at work yesterday morning. I start at seven.”
“So you don’t really know, then. Is that what you’re saying?”
“The helicopter was here. Now it isn’t. And my boy is gone with the girl who sat here and watched him build it. Anyone with a brain can figure that out. Don’t know why you’re all making a big deal. They’re big kids. Smart kids. They’ll be fine.”
“He built the helicopter?”
“Yes.”
“He built a helicopter that no one could see?”
“I could see it.”
“Can you show me any proof of it?”
Gustav’s father points to his empty garage. “There’s your proof right there. Do you see a helicopter?”
“No.”
“Well.”
“But no one could see it before yesterday, either,” the man says.
Gustav’s father says, “Why don’t you have a real job instead of this? I bet your hands are as soft as breasts.”
“Interesting comparison,” the man says.
“Nothing is softer than breasts,” Gustav’s father says.
“We don’t know anything about it,” they say, in unison. They are one voice. They are two-people-in-one. They are an it. They repeat themselves. “We don’t know anything about it.”
“We understand your boy goes to school with them.”
“Does he?”
“He dated her best friend, didn’t he? That’s what we hear.”
“Whose best friend?”
“The missing girl. She wore a lab coat. Her name is ____________.”
It looks at each other. It says, “He dates a lot of girls.”
The man and the cameraman look at each other and shrug.
“Your son has an unusual name,” the man says.
“We named him the day we picked him up,” it says. “He was our peace. That’s what it means, you know.”
“Yes. I know.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Why are you here?” it asks.
“We’re just interviewing kids who knew them. We’re trying to find the truth.”
It looks perplexed and defensive. It’s a perplexed and defensive machine.
“So Irenic was adopted?” the man asks.
“Not like it’s any of your business,” it says.
“As a baby?”
“Not like it’s any of your business,” it says again.
“We heard that he has a reputation,” the man says.
“He does. We’re very proud.”
The man frowns. “I’m not sure you know the exact reputation we’re talking about.”
“Don’t believe rumors you hear,” it says. “Our boy wouldn’t hurt a living thing. Not even a fly.”
“He doesn’t hurt flies?” the man asks.
“Not any living thing,” it says.
“So the rumors aren’t true?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” it says.
“The rumors. About the girls.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” it says.
Stanzi’s parents have left a note on the kitchen table. It says Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights.
China is a glowing red tongue today. When the man approaches, she waves and accidentally licks his arm.
He asks a series of questions, but China hands him a poem.
If we were made of paper
then rain could disintegrate us.
So they are safe.
The man reads the poem and he shows it to the cameraman. They look at China-the-tongue. They do not see from her tongue how well she’s been eating. They can’t see the spinach/apple juice she drank for breakfast. They look away.
The man asks, “Did you see the helicopter?”
China doesn’t answer.
“Do you know anything about where they went?”
China writes a haiku.
They went wherever
They had to go to escape
All the tests and drills
“The bomb threats? Is that right? Is that what you mean?” the man asks.
China writes another haiku.
You think we’re stupid
You cannot divide fractions
Or dissect a frog
The cameraman reads the haiku and says, “I can divide fractions.”
The man says, “I always hated math.”
China hands them another poem and then walks into her house.
If he is naked
adorned with letters
is open
then your dangerous bush man
is probably real.
If he holds the answers
and everyone
avoids the street where
he lives
even though they
want the answers
then your dangerous bush man
is most likely real.
If you find a burrito wrapper
disintegrating under a bush
and a sign for lemonade
and a jar full of
tears—a contained ocean—
then you should stop
and ask your dangerous bush man
if he is okay.
The man tries to ask one of China’s little sisters if she knows where Gustav and Stanzi are. China’s mother comes out, dressed in a neck-to-ankle black latex bodysuit, and says, “Fuck off!”
“Do you have any idea how little time I have for this?” she asks.
“We won’t take much time,” the man says, handing her a release form.
She signs it and sighs. “All I know is that ____________ skipped school on Monday with China Knowles. China was in school today. I don’t know where the others are. The police are looking into it.”
“Where do you think they went?”
“How would I know?”
“Someone told us they left because of the bomb threats,” the man says. “Can you tell us more about these threats?”
“No.”
“Can you confirm that there have been bomb threats?”
“Can’t you read a paper? Or use the Internet?”
The man smiles. “Well, I know and you know that there are bomb threats. But our viewers don’t know,” he says. “We’re national. This is… just a little town.”
“You’ll have to talk to the police. They’re handling it now.”
“Did you get a bomb threat today?” the man asks. “I see all your students standing outside.”
“It’s testing week. We give them a break sometimes.”
The cameraman steps up on a chair and films the hole in her floor—just to the right of her chair. It’s how she gets to work every day. Through the hole. Climbs in. Climbs out.
She looks at them. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
The camera pans wide and shows the principal inside an impossible stack of paperwork from every side. The paperwork is twenty feet high. It’s twenty feet wide. It’s a great white shark and she is its victim, her torso and arms and head the only things left showing.
“Aren’t you the guy on Channel Twelve with the stupid weatherman? What’s his name?” the police chief asks.
“I’m national.”
“But I saw you. You’re on Channel Twelve, right?”
“If Channel Twelve is a CBS affiliate, then yes, maybe that’s me. But I’m national.”
“You’re national? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
The man stands straight. “It means I flew here from LA last night so I could cover this story.”
“What story’s that?”
“The disappearance of two teenagers.”
“And?” the police chief answers. “Kids disappear every damn day, don’t they, Mr. National?”
“Not usually in invisible helicopters, they don’t,” the man says.
“That’s your story?” the police chief says. He laughs. It’s unstoppable laughter. It shakes the whole town like an earthquake.
The man orders a double. The cameraman orders a lemon-lime soda. The cameraman doesn’t usually go to bars.
The wineglasses hanging upside down above the bar counter are clinking into each other and making a noise that has emptied the bar. The hanging light fixtures are swinging.
“Do you get many earthquakes out this way?” the man asks.
The bartender, who is sweeping up broken glasses as each one falls onto the floor of the back bar, says, “Never.”
The man drinks his double quickly. “I’m from LA. We get them there.”
“Do they ever stop?” the bartender asks.
“Of course.” The man sucks on an ice cube and spits it back into the glass. “Do you know anything about the two kids who disappeared on Tuesday?”
The bartender is kneeling on the back bar floor with a dustpan and brush as more and more glasses shake their way off the bar’s shelves. “How the hell should I know?”
The man orders another double to take back to his room. The cameraman slots five quarters into a vending machine and buys a bottle of water. As they head for the elevator, they see the door is stuck open and the alarm light is flashing.
The line for checkout at the Hilton is inexplicably long.