City of Night

grimacing in disgust when confronted with a piece of tomato that needed a knife. “Squishy, squishy.”
    Many other autistics had more rules than did Arnie. Because the boy spoke so little, Vicky knew him more by his eccentricities than by his words, and tended to find them more endearing than frustrating.
    In an effort to socialize Arnie whenever possible, she insisted as best she could that he eat his meals with her, and always with his sister when Carson was home. Sometimes Vicky’s insistence didn’t move him, and she had to allow him to eat in his room, near his Lego-block castle.
    When the table was set, she opened the freezer to get a box of Tater Tots—and discovered that the chocolate mint ice cream had not been put away properly. The lid was half off; a spoon had been left in the container.
    Arnie had never done anything like this before. Usually he waited for food to be placed before him; he rarely served himself. He had an appetite but not much of an active interest in when and what he ate.
    On those occasions when he raided the pantry or refrigerator, Arnie was neat. He never left spills or crumbs.
    The boy’s high standards of culinary hygiene bordered on the obsessive. He would never take a taste of anything from another person’s plate, not even from his sister’s, nor from any fork or spoon but his own.
    Vicky could not imagine that he would eat from a container. And if he had done so in the past without her knowledge, he had never before left his spoon behind.
    She was inclined to think that Carson had indulged a sudden craving just before hurriedly leaving the house.
    When Vicky took a closer look, however, she discovered that the ice cream on the surface was soft and glistening with melt. The container had been out of the freezer for a while—and had been put away only a few minutes ago.
    She closed the lid as it should have been, shut the freezer door, and took the spoon to the sink, where she rinsed it.
    Putting the spoon in the dishwasher, she called, “Arnie? Where are you, sweetie?”
    The back door was double locked, as she had left it, but she was nevertheless worried. The boy had never before wandered out of the house, but neither had he ever previously left a spoon in an ice-cream container.
    From the kitchen, she followed a short hall to the living room. The blinds and curtains indulged shadows. She switched on a lamp.
    “Arnie? Are you downstairs, Arnie?”
    The house boasted nothing as grand as a foyer, only an entry alcove at one end of the living room. The front door, too, remained double locked.
    Sometimes, when Carson was on a demanding case and Arnie was missing his sister, the boy liked to sit quietly in the armchair in her room, among her things.
    He was not there now.
    Vicky went upstairs and was relieved to find him safely in his room. He did not react to her entrance.
    “Honey,” she said, “you shouldn’t eat ice cream so close to dinnertime.”
    Arnie did not reply, but clicked a Lego block into place in the castle ramparts, which he was modifying.
    Considering the severe limitations with which the boy lived, Vicky was reluctant to scold him. She didn’t press the issue of the ice cream, but instead said, “I should have dinner ready in forty-five minutes. It’s one of your favorites. Will you come downstairs then?”
    As his only answer, Arnie glanced toward the digital clock on his nightstand.
    “Good. We’ll have a nice dinner together, and afterward I’ll read you a few more chapters of Podkayne of Mars , if you’d like.”
    “Heinlein,” the boy said softly, almost reverently, naming the author of the novel.
    “That’s right. When we left poor Podkayne, she was in a lot of trouble.”
    “Heinlein,” Arnie repeated, and then continued to work on the castle.
    Downstairs again, following the hallway to the kitchen, Vicky pushed shut the coat-closet door, which was ajar.
    She had reached the kitchen threshold when she realized that in the hall she detected the same moldy scent that she had smelled in the laundry room. She turned, looked back the way she had come, and sniffed.
    Although the house stood on pilings, the air circulating under the structure did not prevent colonies of fungi, mostly molds, from scheming to invade these elevated rooms. They flourished in the damp dark crawl space. The concrete pilings drew water from the ground by osmosis, and the molds crept up those damp surfaces, spooring their way toward the house.
    In the morning,