I had him in the back room and I wanted to know what he was up to.

“Did you see me steal anything?” he asked me. “You might as well call the police if so.”

I said he and I were just having a conversation. “I’m just curious as to what your plans might be for my store. You’ve piqued my interest. When I see a man come into a furniture store every night at around a half hour before closing, and I watch him walk around the store leaving bags of Cheetos and Ritz Bitz in the show room before walking out without buying anything, I’m compelled to chat with that man.”

“I’m just forgetful,” he said. “I misplace things. And I like to look at furniture.”
I nodded. “Say, you bought that Southport Storage Cube a while back. How’d that work out for you?”

He bristled when I mentioned the cube. He knew that I knew the children communicated with outsiders. I knew about the note he found inside the cube, telling him that by day Crate and Barrel might be a showroom for not very affordable furniture, but by night it’s a safehouse for children who’ve run away from their parents because their parents are too religious and wouldn’t let the children have crushes on boys and girls they were crushing on, so the children ran away in couples, to experience the highs and lows of puppy love without interference from their God-fearing parents. According to the note, the children found a way to sneak into the Crate and Barrel and they get to sleep in the same beds with the boys and girls they’re crushing on, and it’s just about the greatest thing in the world. The only problem is they get hungry at night.

Can you bring us some treats? the note asked of him.

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing,” he said to me. “I’m honoring the heart of the little boy I used to be. The boy who fell for a pretty girl when he was twelve, and then his parents had to move to Chicago because his dad got a new job. That boy could have run away and lived his young love but he didn’t. He was scared. And he’s regretted it ever since. Some boys aren’t so scared as me. And they deserve to be cared for.”

I grabbed him by the lapels.

“You listen to me, pal. This is my store. Now I may not have been able to capture those little kids yet, but I captured you, you understand? Now you’re gonna stop bringing food in here because those little kids might be able to elude my traps and my cameras and my alarm systems when they’re healthy and full of grub. But if they get hungry, they’ll get weak. They’ll get tired. And I’ll catch ‘em. Stay out of my store, you hear?”

“Arrest me!” he dared me. It’s wasn’t him talking when he said that. It was the twelve-year-old he longed to be again.

“Stay out of my store,” I repeated.

“It’s a public store,” he told me. “It’s just an Ikea with high price tags and it’s open to every man, woman, and child who wants to come in here. You want to keep me out; you file a police report saying I’m trying to feed a group of lovesick little kids that you can’t catch. I’m sure everyone’ll get a kick out of reading that.”

I let go of his lapels.

“As long as there’s a little kid trying to hold onto love in your store, I’m bringing him some Cheetos, you hear?”

I stepped away from him. He walked out the door. His heart was beating so hard in his chest I could hear it. It was 8:50, almost closing time. As he walked to the door I swear I saw a pair of eyes peeking out from underneath one of the bedroom sets. Those little eyes looked like they were smiling.