I wish I could have said it was me, but it was Steven who found the computer disk under the air hockey table. His father had been screaming around the building and searching through papers and cabinets and Steven didn't go with the other children to the kitchen because he felt he could help. When he found the disk I took his hand - a nice gesture, I thought - and we went together to the office.The office door was open and the two of us heard him speaking softly to himself. "David," I said.
David was faced away from me, hunched over the laptop computer with his head in his hands. He spun towards us and jerked his hand over his face when I spoke, but immediately relaxed when he saw me.
"What?" he said. "Did you find it?"
My feet were sweating, a typical sign in my family of nervousness. I reaffirmed my grip on Steven's hand. "Your boy is a genius."
"My boy?"
I glanced at the five-year-old clutching my hand, and David followed my gaze to the white and green disk in the boy's overall pocket.
"Steven," he said, getting down on one knee to look into the child's face. "You saved my life. You saved our lives." He gestured for Steven to come closer but the boy wouldn't move until I walked forward and tugged on his hand a little. Close enough to father and son, I watched a bead of sweat as it slipped down the gold frame of David's big glasses and settled at the lower rim.
David pulled the disk from Steven's pocket, ruffled his son's hair a little with one hand, and smiled.
"Thank you," David said.
"You're welcome," Steven replied, trying to mimic the sincerity.
"Thank you thank you," David said to the both of us, pushing on his knee and grunting as he stood. He patted my shoulder a little awkwardly, the disk pinched between his fingers. "I have to work now, go tell Ruthie that you found it."
Steven and I left the room. We let go of each other's hands.
"We found it," I said, reaching down to muss his hair as his father did. "What do you want to do now, kiddo?"
"I found it," he said.
"You sure did."
"Let's go back to the game room."
The game room - air hockey, ping-pong and a rack of jump ropes - was one of the few rooms with no windows. Steven realized the lack of responsible adults and scrambled onto the surface of the air hockey table.
"Plug it in," he said, rolling to the middle and stretching his legs over the pockmarked center line.
"Plug what in? What are you talking about?"
He pulled himself onto his elbows and looked at me with the combined exasperation and hopelessness best achieved by a pouting five-year-old. "Come on!" he shouted.
I walked to the wall and pushed the table's extension cord into the socket, but nothing happened.
"The one above it," Steven called from the table.
I tried the socket above the broken one and the table hummed to life. Steven closed his eyes and tipped his head back. His hair, thin and too long like his father's, tugged a little at his ears before flipping up into the air.
I watched Steven. His fingers were spread over the tiny holes in the table, and his old purple t-shirt was buffeted only slightly by the soft current of air. "I'm going to go find Ruthie," I said after a while, and left the room.
Ruth was probably in the kitchen but as I walked past David's office I heard a crash and poked my head into the door. David was crouched on the floor with the telephone reciever in his hand.
"Don't throw it," I said. I took a step towards the window.
David pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "I'm not going to throw it," he said, putting the phone down. "Sit down. Chuck?"
"Yes, sir."
"Chuck, I need to talk to someone." David looked at me and I noticed how deep the circles under his eyes had become. "Someone," he gestured to the phone, "who isn't them."
"Shoot, partner."
He cringed. "Do you want to leave this place?"
"No," I said without hesitation. It was the correct answer. David took my hand and held it briefly to his forehead.
"Bless you," he said with the conviction I was used to hearing from him. I was used to it but it still felt warm.
David rocked back on his heels and leaned against a bookshelf. I looked around a little; the dark green carpet, the thin mahogony bookshelves packed with scripture and texts. It was a dark room, a comfortable room for writing. The venetian blinds over the large window were mostly shut, allowing just enough Texas sun in to light the room.
The silence became overbearing. I was listening to far-off noises in the building when David spoke. "Do you know how old I am, Chuck?"
"Thirty-three."
"Do you know the significance of that?"
"I do, sir."
He stood. "It's important that they know," he said, walking to the window, looking out and down without fear. "It is so important that they know."
The phone rang and in a fluid motion he turned and kicked it into the far wall. He set his foot back on a pile of papers and slipped into a bookshelf, steadying himself on the ledge of mahogony.
"They had their chance," I said.
"Who?" He was bearing down on me at once, nearly shouting.
I couldn't breathe, it felt like my heart was beating backwards. "Outside," I croaked.
"Outside-" he said with a start before catching himself. He leaned back, backed into his chair. "Outside," he said.
I exhaled as he sat.
"Times are hard, Chuck," he turned to the computer, "but we're nearly over the worst of it."
"Did you finish that work you were doing?"
"The manuscript?"
I nodded.
"It's done," he said, ejecting the green and white disk from the laptop. "Our test is nearly complete and I'm so happy."
I heard a terrible sound, creaking metal and concrete falling hard enough to shake the floor a little, radiating from the other end of the building. "What's that?" I said, holding the door frame and looking down the hall. I couldn't see anything and I pulled myself back into the room.
David was still seated, facing me now and holding the computer disk up like a little relic. "Get Ruthie in here, she has to take this outside." He placed it at the edge of his desk and watched it.
I turned and walked out of the door, directly into Ruth. I almost laughed. "Ruth!" I said, a little too friendly. "Running into you is the best luck I've had all day. See, I've been.."
"Thanks, Chuck." She avoided my eyes as she hurried in and shut the office door behind her.
I lingered at the door for a while, straining to hear the conversation in the office. There was no shouting or tears and eventually I lost interest.
With nobody left to find, I took the long way back to the game room. Steven was asleep on the air hockey table and I leaned next to him, my hand resting a few inches from his left foot. The air against my skin was cool and dry, and I listened to the child's shallow breaths against the whirring of the machine.
