Free Model Home by Eric Puchner

Camille talked to her son about his language but did not know how to address thelarger problems he faced as an eleven-year-old atheist in orange pants. She had suspicions about the afterlife herself. Also, she felt in some troubling way responsible for his friendlessness. He was her last child, the least miraculous-seeming, and Camille sometimes wondered if she’d been a more devoted mother to Dustin and Lyle. Even as a toddler, Jonas hadn’t been particularly needy or affectionate, more interested in playing by himself than in winning her love. Camille had more or less obliged. Not that she loved Jonas less than his siblings: it was only that he made it easier to remember those parts of the world that demanded her attention. Sometimes she’d catch herself at one of his fencing meets, startled by the clamor of white-jacketed children finding their parents, and discover that she had no idea whether he had won or lost.
    She wanted a cigarette. Something about the Pop-Tarts. She hadn’t smoked one for years—but suddenly she wanted to feel the dark, feathery warmth in her lungs.
    The feeling persisted at work. There was something about the PV County public schools office—the bare walls, maybe, yolk-yellow and studded here and there with thumbtacks—that made the craving more pronounced. She found Mikolaj, her cameraman, sitting by himself in the recording studio, blond hair hanging in a ponytail down his back. She hoped it was damp from the shower and not greasy. Mikolaj had been a filmmaker in communist Poland; Camille didn’t understand the details, except that he’d been involved in the Solidarity movement somehow and had fled the country when a warrant went out for his arrest. His dream was to make an allegorical zombie film about Polish history. Instead, to support himself, he was making videos about family planning and the PVCPS payroll system. Camille would have liked to find him an inspirational figure.
    â€œHello, Camille,” he said. His right eye was bloodshot, a nebula of red spreading from one corner. He had the weedy arms and bedtime squint that Camille associated with hitchhikers. She always felt nervous around him, shy and staticky, as though she were tuned between stations. “Today’s the big day for presentation.”
    â€œI’m sure everything will be fine.”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said bitterly. “These parents are worse than communist. They want to make law against sex.”
    â€œIt’s understandable. McMartin Preschool and everything, and now Mandy Rogers.”
    â€œMandy Rogers?”
    â€œThe girl who was abducted.”
    â€œOh, yes. Very sad. Boo-hoo.” She smelled something on his breath, a whiff of mouthwash. “On every news show, this one girl.”
    â€œDid you go over the new script?” she asked, to change the subject.
    â€œThis is your important news. A girl with no brains, the whole world should pray for her!” Mikolaj leaned forward in his seat. “I can ask you a question, Camille? About my film?”
    â€œWell, honestly, I don’t have much time right now.”
    â€œDo you think this is good title?” he said. “ Hunt the Mists Slowly ?”
    Camille glanced at his untucked shirt, one tail of which was stained with a ring of coffee. She wondered if he’d used it for a coaster. “I think maybe just one ‘mist’ is better. Hunt the Mist. ”
    He looked at her for a moment. “Yes, of course,” he said gratefully. “They hunt for one mist only, the mist of freedom. The big mist that is never in touching distance.”
    Camille walked back to her office. Perhaps he wasn’t drunk, as she suspected, but demented with homesickness. Or—the most likely explanation—he was both. Last week, searching for a slide, Camille had rummaged through a box under the light table and come across a suspicious-looking bottle, empty except for a