Mack dictated the pumpkin design. We didn't have a real candle, and the Giant had only had cruddy little electric tea lights in a six-pack, which made it seem that five of them would be floating in the Pacific Garbage Gyre before Christmas. So I dug in the drawer and found a big candle in the shape of a 5, left over from a 35th-birthday cake. Once it was lit, he didn't want to leave it till I told him we were going to go around the building and look at apartment numbers.
His costume was either a dragon or a dinosaur. We were going with dragon for sure, till one of his older schoolmates heard us saying so before the costume party on Friday and solemnly pointed out that it didn't have any wings, so it couldn't be a dragon.
"Hey," a guy up on 9 said tonight, as his roommate (dressed as Walter Sobchak) held out a bowl of candy. "That's the numbers kid."
