It was on a perfectly ordinary day that Denver first heard the voice. He was standing at a busy intersection with his children, walking back to their apartment from the elementary school down the street. Denver’s son Sebastian pulled at his arm, asking to be carried. Grace, two years older, stood a little distance away, and watched a man pick through the contents of a trash can. All around them was the flow of a city in the afternoon; people commuting, people shopping, people jogging and biking and cutting through the crowds on electric scooters, mothers and fathers and grandparents holding fast to children or strollers, couriers with stacks of packages and bags of food, pigeons mewling in the shadows, the light reflecting from a thousand windows, and this all created for Denver a hum that felt warm and exciting and secure, the sound of his life at this time, a father in the city. It was at this very moment that without warning all the lights of the intersection turned red, and a horrible klaxon blared, and a voice came louder than the engines of the cars, and the voice said, “Freeze.”
And the voice came again, Denver realized, from speakers hidden on the poles and wires that stitched across the busy street, and the voice said, “Freeze! This is an emergency. Do not move until you are told.”
Denver bent to pick up his young son, but was interrupted by a second voice just over his shoulder, which said, “Sir, don’t move. Stay where you are.”
There was a man with a cloth mask over his mouth and nose, and the rest of his face obscured by sunglasses and a baseball cap with a small American flag pinned to it. The man walked past Denver, and his stride was purposeful and direct, so much so that Denver had no doubt that this man, unlike himself and his children and all those on the city street, was supposed to be moving. Denver’s back hurt from his half-crouch, but he watched the man and tried to will a feeling of safety to his children. Sebastian had turned his eyes to the man as well, and he had not moved his body. Grace was also still, and the man she’d been watching was frozen with his arm in the trash can, and his eyes in his rust-colored face were closed. Everyone was stopped. Some people who had been looking at their cell phones when the voice commanded them to freeze still did so, and Denver could see them scrolling or taking video with subtle movements of their thumbs. Other people were stopped midstep, or leaning against a wall, or holding open a door for a stranger, and they all remained like this, as did Denver and his children. Even the escalators rising up from the subway terminals had stopped, and there were people with just their heads poking up to the street, like melons on a vine. The red lights had stopped the cars, and the people within were frozen as well, staring straight ahead and their cars idling. No one spoke, and even the children on the sidewalk were quiet. There was another burst from the hidden speakers.
“Freeze. Freeze! This is an emergency. Do not move until you are told.”
Now a few other men in ballcaps and masks were moving. They cut through the crowds and the cars, and they suddenly sprang upon a woman who was frozen outside the door of her own small car. She gave out a scream and two of the men pulled her arms behind her back and handcuffed her. Two other men grabbed her shoulders and dragged her a short distance into the open back door of a van. The men hopped in after and when the doors were shut, Denver saw a government license plate. The van drove swiftly between the idling cars and down the middle of the street between the lanes of traffic.
Then the voice from the speakers said, “Thank you for your patience. It is now safe to move.”
The stoplights turned green, and the crowds on the sidewalk moved like a deep breath finally released. Denver lifted his son into his arms, and pulled Grace closer, away from the man who was now muttering incomprehensible things and rummaging once more through the trash. Denver’s heart was beating very quickly.
“That was cool!” Sebastian said. He looked down at Grace. “Everyone froze!”
“Was that woman bad?” Grace asked.
The light had changed and now they were crossing the street. It was amazing, to Denver, just how soon all the sounds and movement of the city had returned after the woman’s arrest. The silence of that event so thoroughly erased. Like waking and feeling the images of a dream slipping from memory.
Denver hurried his children home. It would be a few more hours before his husband, Marco, returned from work, but Denver felt a twist of nausea when considering their normal routines; a smoothie at the corner diner, the air-conditioned library. Denver keenly and suddenly missed the small coastal town he’d grown up in, how he could escape to the quiet noise of the waves, how their susurrations matched the pace of his own breathing, and how the fog and tides erased all the messiness of a day and left the landscape smooth and featureless in the morning.
“Say ‘Thank You,’” Denver said as he and the children passed the doorman at the white marble apartment building in which they lived. It was in a somewhat residential neighborhood, yet close enough to the subway for Marco to commute to work. At the apartment, Denver told the children to go play. Grace and Sebastian dropped their backpacks and ran into the living room, where Denver could hear them laughing and shouting, “Freeze!”
It was a very nice apartment. They lived on the sixth floor, and they had a view over the rooftops across the street to some hills in the distance. The children each had their own bedroom, and Denver had his office where he worked as a consultant for companies attempting a very specific and arcane financial gambit. Denver was very good at this job, and much sought after, but he rarely worked eight hours a day. He used the other hours to keep house; he ordered new furniture, planned weekend adventures, and made playdates with other families from the private school. Marco, Denver would often say, had the “real” job, cutting into hearts at a large hospital uptown.
Denver now retreated to his office. He closed the door and chose a playlist on his phone called “Calm Jazz.” A little later, when he could breathe again, he found the apartment strangely silent. He walked down the hall to the large living room where he sometimes sat beneath the bright windows and read. Suddenly Grace and Sebastian sprung at him from behind. “Freeze!” they shouted. Sebastian grabbed Denver’s hand and Grace slipped over it an inflatable doughnut they often brought to a friend’s pool.
“Come with us,” Grace said. She led Denver to the couch, which was covered in stuffed animals. Denver was made to sit between a large stuffed tiger and a felted avocado with googly eyes.
“We got the bad guy!” Sebastian said and he did a sort of dance with his hands and hips. Grace took back the inflatable doughnut and turned it to her brother.
“Freeze!” she said.
Sebastian screamed and ran.
“Freeze! Freeze! Freeze!” Grace cried, following him down the hall. “Dad, he’s not freezing!”
Denver laughed. He put the tiger in his lap and watched his kids run back and forth. Outside, the late summer sun was still high in the sky, but there was a feeling of a long day done. Denver could hear their neighbors closing doors in the hall. There were footsteps on the floor above.
Soon Marco was home, and together they set out cartons of Chinese food on the table and Denver listened to the events of Marco’s day. As he talked, Marco set out chopsticks, and Denver watched his marvelous hands and his heart was filled with desire.
When the children went to wash up before dinner, Denver wrapped his arms around Marco’s chest and nuzzled his neck. Marco laughed. “Did you miss me?”
“Weird day,” Denver said.
As Denver considered how to explain what had occurred at the intersection, Sebastian ran into the dining room and slapped Marco’s calf with an open hand. “Papa, freeze!” he said.
Marco cried out in surprise. “That hurt!” he said. “That wasn’t nice.”
Sebastian’s eyes went wide and filled with tears. He ran and they could hear him crying among the stuffed animals of the couch. Marco turned to Denver. “What was that?” he asked.
But Grace, pulling herself into her seat and reaching for a carton of chow mein, described what had happened. “We were almost hurt by a bad woman,” she said. “But the police told everyone to freeze and took her away.”
Marco again looked to Denver, but no matter what words he used, Denver could not bring to life the strangeness of that moment, his muteness. He shook his head.
“And everyone just stopped?” Marco asked.
“It was like a game!” Grace said.
Marco went to comfort Sebastian and Denver sat down at the table. He picked up a potsticker but put it down on his plate. He looked at his daughter, small for her age. “Was that a little scary today?” he asked.
“No Daddy,” Grace said. “I’m glad the police were there. I felt really safe.”
Soon Marco and Sebastian were back. Marco was telling another story about Dr. Gorilla, the imaginary ape who helped Marco in the operating room. Dr. Gorilla was always dropping food into peoples’ hearts, and they’d wake up hungry for bananas or a slice of mushroom pizza.
“One time, when I was little,” Sebastian said as Marco put him in his seat, “Dr. Gorilla put a noodle in my heart.”
That night, in bed, Denver looked online for videos of what had happened that day. He found dozens of videos from all across the country, at intersections, on a university campus, at the airport. The videos started with everyone already frozen, except for the four or five men in street clothes with their faces covered. One video was over twenty minutes long, as a crowd stood silent on a train platform. Denver swiped forward and saw an old man in handcuffs being lead up the steps. “It is now safe to move,” came the familiar voice. The camera turned to the owner’s face, a woman who said with great relief, “That was close!”
A few weeks later, Denver heard the voice again. Marco was working over the weekend, so Denver had asked his mother, Patti, to babysit while he ran errands. As soon as Patti passed through the door, Grace and Sebastian leapt out at her. “Freeze!” they said. Grace tried to tie a piece of yarn around her grandmother’s wrist, but Patti shook her off.
“Oh no no no, I don’t play that game,” Patti said. Denver had told her about the strange incident in the intersection.
Sebastian jumped into Patti’s arms and Grace pulled her down the hall. Patti smiled at Denver and said, “Go take your time, get a coffee. I’m good here.”
Out on the street, Denver checked his phone for his list of errands. He would start at the pharmacy a few blocks away, then cross over to the hardware store for new lightbulbs. His barber was closer to the apartment, though he still had over an hour before his appointment. Denver idly brushed his hands down his sweater, an olive green pullover Marco always said made him look handsome.
The city was busy on this Sunday. Denver passed groups of laughing women and a family all dressed in the same colors. Skateboarders filmed each other in an empty lot. There were lines outside the brunch spots and all the stores had their doors open despite the chill in the air. Denver stopped at a bookstore with a coffee counter. He ordered his usual and spent some time listening with pleasure to other customers talk about the books on the sale rack. When his order was ready, Denver walked back onto the busy street. There was a large group of people talking in joyful chorus on the steps outside a church. A bus had stopped and a line waited while the driver lowered the wheelchair ramp. The wind lifted some bags and receipts.
Then the streets rang with a loud siren and a voice cut through all the city noise.
“Freeze. Freeze! This is an emergency. Do not move until you are told.”
Denver held his coffee with the steam rising to his face. He looked to the line of people waiting at the kneeling bus. He looked to the well-dressed crowd standing at the steps of the tall, stone church. Teenagers leaned against scaffolding. A man had paused while pushing a dolly stacked with microwaves; he trembled under its frozen weight. Denver watched as pigeons, emboldened, hopped onto outdoor tables and pulled at the food with their beaks.
Denver saw the eyes of everyone searching. They waited for the churn of the men, for the boiling motion of their movements in the stillness of the crowd.
And there they were. Five, no six men crossing the street between the stilled cars. Denver traced their movements. He imagined lines of intention and followed them across the street. And like a sigh the knowledge seemed to pass through everyone frozen. It was the teenagers to which the men were drawn, the target of their attention. And Denver saw how young they were, barely teenagers. He thought of them being allowed to spend time away from their families on this weekend, given this privilege because of the safety of this street, its wide sidewalks and open businesses, the bookstore, the church, the light streaming down from the late morning sky. The men drew closer.
Denver dropped his coffee and ran.
One of the men shouted, “Hey! Stop! You need to stop moving!”
“I’m on him,” said another.
“Me too.”
Denver ran past shoppers staring with frozen eyes into store windows. He ran past a woman with a bottle stuck to her writhing baby’s mouth. He heard the footsteps of the men close behind. Denver turned at a street where the cars were moving and the people were walking and he kept running even as all the lights turned red and the voice blared.
“Freeze. Freeze! This is an emergency. Do not move until you are told.”
Denver ran into the back of someone who had stopped just before him. He fell hard against a newsstand but pushed himself back up. He considered running into the street but instead ducked down an alleyway. He pulled trash cans down behind him as he ran, and their clatter echoed loudly in the silence of the city.
The alleyway opened to a street that bordered a park. Denver charged across and up a hill and through a copse of trees, where he came to a broad slope dotted with picnic blankets. Children were chasing bubbles blown from a little plastic machine. Someone played violin, and the melody mingled pleasantly with the sounds of conversations.
Then the voice came from the trees and the light poles and even the metal trash cans along the walkways.
“Freeze. Freeze! This is an emergency. Do not move until you are told.”
The conversations froze and the children froze in their play and the stream of violin music froze and there was only the whirring of the small plastic bubble machine and the now strange and fairy-like movement of the bubbles.
Denver ran down the slope. He passed the families frozen on their picnic blankets. He passed the children with their smiles and screams stuck to their faces and only their bright eyes following him. He ran down a path past joggers swaying on one leg, past bicyclists crouched low over their handlebars, past dogs whining and straining at their leashes.
Denver left the park and he ran and he ran. His lungs burned. Sweat stung his eyes and he wished he could pause to strip away the olive sweater. He turned at streets and at each he was like a pebble unthrown into water, the ripples of city life stilled around him, a trail of cold silence that he dragged along with his footsteps. And then suddenly he was free. Denver crossed one street and then another and neither block froze. He heard the sounds of the city, the backing of a truck, the peal of construction. Denver slowed and laid his forehead against the cool stones of a building. He could not pull enough air into his lungs.
Denver made his way home. He resisted looking over his shoulders, he tried not to pull attention to himself as he traced a circuitous route to his apartment building. He waited at all times for the voice. He felt himself walking on the very edge of danger, he felt himself a finger’s width from the hands of the men. He expected every car door to open and to fall into the darkness within. The doorman had a funny expression on his face, and Denver took the stairs to his floor, thinking the men would be waiting outside the elevator doors, but his hallway was empty.
Denver took some time to compose himself outside the apartment. He pulled off his sweater and wiped his face with it. He opened the door and stepped inside.
He found his children sitting on the couch with rulers in their hands, looking out the window. When Grace saw Denver, she pointed with her ruler and said, “There’s the bad guy!”
And Sebastian shouted, “Freeze! Freeze!”
They both tumbled from the couch and started hitting Denver’s legs with the ruler.
“Stop!” Denver said. “Where’s Grandma?”
“Go to jail!” Sebastian shouted.
Denver sat heavily on the couch. There were no stuffed animals anymore.
“Where’s Grandma?” Denver asked again. There was a sound on the street outside, a heavy truck or boots on the sidewalk. There was the kind of silence in his apartment that preceded a knock at the door. Denver’s legs were tired from running, but the muscles of his calves twitched, and he drummed his heels on the floor.
When Sebastian swung his ruler again at Denver, he grabbed the young boy’s arm. “Those rulers aren’t toys,” Denver said. “Go put them back in the office.”
“Bad guys can’t tell us what to do,” Grace said. But she led Sebastian marching down the hall.
Denver’s mom entered from the other side of the living room. She was carrying the stuffed tiger and had smaller animals peering from her pockets.
“Sorry, I liberated all the animals from jail and then the kids didn’t want to play with me anymore.”
Patti looked closely at Denver. She touched his clammy forehead. “You didn’t get your hair cut?”
“It was closed,” Denver said absently. He stood and looked down to the street.
“You look sick, honey,” Patti said. “Why don’t you lay down? I’ll keep playing with the little fascists until Marco gets home.”
Denver fell asleep immediately, lying on top of the comforter in his bed. He dreamed of the chase, of the hands of the men. He dreamed of the kids outside the bookstore, and in his dream they climbed the scaffolding they’d been leaning against and they climbed to the rooftops and there they leaned against the cold morning wind and let it lift them high up into the blue, far past the reach of the men in ballcaps. For a moment they were like little black crosses up there in the sky, and then they were gone.
Denver woke as Marco came home. He heard a hushed conversation in the living room, and then Marco was tenderly opening the door. He sat by Denver and stroked his hair.
“I think you should grow it out,” Marco said. “You’d look great with a manbun.”
Patti stayed for dinner and they ordered pizza. Marco had declared a moratorium on games of Freeze. Over dinner Grace kept asking her grandma what is was like growing up near the beach. Sebastian took all the toppings off his slice and arranged them into a face on his plate. Denver looked to his mother, who had her arms out as she told a story of when she’d almost drowned surfing. Marco was pouring hot sauce onto his pizza. Outside, the street was thick with early evening sunlight.
‘How lucky I am,’ Denver suddenly thought. How close he had come to losing all of this. And for what? What had he accomplished today?
Denver took a deep breath. He remembered the salt smell of the air as he sat on the beach, watching his mom surf. Seeing her fall into the waves, over and over again. He felt for the young, closeted man, too scared to go into the water. You will have a family, he wanted to tell him, you will have children, you will have a really nice apartment.
After dinner they put on a movie for Grace and Sebastian. Marco mixed drinks and they sat with Patti in the dining room swirling their ice and laughing.
Later they all hugged at the door as Patti left. Marco and Denver scooped the sleeping children from the couch and tucked them into bed. And soon Marco was asleep as well, in their large comfortable bed, holding Denver’s hand beneath the covers.
Denver could not sleep. He kept thinking of the teenagers leaning into the wind, swept along the sky to safety. He listened to Marco breathing. He heard something else in the night, and he freed his hand and rose from the bed to check. Denver followed the noise to the living room. He opened the window and the cool air of night rushed in. He could hear, somewhere not too far away, a klaxon blaring. He could hear a male voice commanding people to freeze.
Denver stood at the window for a long while. He heard the voice over and over again. As soon as it quieted down in one neighborhood he would hear it borne on the wind from another. He found himself breathing very quickly.
In Denver’s mind was tomorrow, and the next day, and the days that would follow. He knew he would hear the voice again. He would be told to freeze. He would see the men hiding behind their sunglasses and their ballcaps and their masks, rushing fast through the sea of frozen people.
Denver let a long, controlled breath out into the night.
“Next time,” he said, as if testing the words held there in his breath, “next time I will run again.”
And in his large, beautiful apartment, Denver’s beautiful husband, and his beautiful children slept. But Denver stayed awake, listening for a voice that would tell him what to do.