The Face

seriousness, Fric said, “That’s the plan.”
        The boy pressed the button to call the elevator. The machinery hummed into motion, the noise only partly muffled by the shaft walls.
        “I’ve been hiding out from the decorating crew,” Fric revealed. “They’re still putting up trees and stuff all over the house. This is your first Christmas here, so you don’t know, but they all wear these stupid Santa hats, and every time they see you, they shout, ‘Merry Christmas,’ grinning like lunatics, and they want to give you these sucky little candy canes. They don’t just decorate, they like make a performance out of it, which I guess most people want, otherwise they wouldn’t have a business, but it’s enough to turn you into an atheist.”
        [251] “Sounds like a memorable holiday tradition.”
        “It’s better than the paid carolers, on Christmas Eve. They dress like characters out of Dickens, and between songs they talk to you about Queen Victoria and Mr. Scrooge and whether you’re going to have goose and suet pudding for Christmas dinner, and they call you ‘m’lord’ and ‘young master,’ and you’ve got to be there because Ghost… because my father thinks it’s all so cool. After about half an hour, you’re sure you’re either going to shit or go blind, and there’s another half-hour to get through. But then it’s okay, because after the carolers is the magician who does this act with dwarfs dressed up like Santa’s elves, and he’s radically hilarious.”
        Aelfric seemed to be concealing a nervous and urgent concern that he unintentionally expressed in a flood of words set loose with a quality akin to babble. He wasn’t a tight-lipped boy by nature, but neither was he a nonstop talker.
        The elevator arrived and the doors opened.
        Ethan followed the boy into the wood-paneled cab.
        After pushing the button for the ground floor, Fric said, “In your experience, are phone perverts really dangerous or are they just all talk?”
        “Phone perverts?”
        To this point, the boy had made eye contact. Now he watched the light on the floor-indicator board and didn’t even glance at Ethan. “Guys that call up and breathe at you. Do they mainly get their kicks from just that, or do they sometimes actually come around and want to grope you and stuff?”
        “Has someone called you, Fric?”
        “Yeah. This freak.” The boy made heavy, ragged panting sounds, as if Ethan might be able to identify the pervert from the unique signature of his breathing patterns.
        “When did this start?”
        “Just today. First when I was in the train room. Then he called again when I was in the wine cellar, eating dinner.”
        [252] “He called on your private line?”
        “Yeah.”
        On the board, the indicator light blinked from the lower garage to the higher garage. The elevator moved slowly upward.
        “What did this guy say to you?”
        Fric hesitated, shuffling his feet slightly on the inlaid-marble floor. Then: “He just breathed. And made some… some almost like animal sounds.”
        “That’s all?”
        “Yeah. Animal sounds, but I don’t know what they were supposed to be, ’cause he wasn’t like talented at it or anything.”
        “You’re sure he didn’t say something to you? Didn’t even use your name?”
        Remaining focused on the indicator board, Fric said, “Just that stupid breathing. I star sixty-nined him, figuring maybe the pervert still lives with his mother, see, and she’d answer, and I could tell her what her precious sicko son was up to, but then I just got him breathing at me.”
        They arrived at the ground floor. The doors opened.
        Ethan stepped into the hall, but Fric remained in the elevator.
        Blocking the doors with one arm, Ethan said, “Calling him back-that wasn’t a good idea, Fric. When someone’s trying to harass you, what gives them a kick is knowing they got under your skin. The best thing to do is hang up as soon as you realize who it is, and if the phone rings again right away, don’t answer it.”
        Looking at his wristwatch, adjusting the time with the stem, busying himself, Fric said, “I thought you’d have a way to find out who he is.”
        “I’ll give it a try. And Fric?”
        The boy continued to fiddle with the watch. “Yeah?”
        “It’s important that you tell me everything about