The cape stayed on the hook

Levi had arranged the photograph before anybody was in it.

Two paper bats high on the wall. A place for him beside the cabinet. A place for Otis at his feet. The phone stood on the table, angled slightly upward because the little stand wouldn't go any lower.

Otis walked through the space reserved for him and continued toward the sofa.

"He went too far," Levi said.

Mae glanced at the screen. "You haven't pressed anything yet."

"I'm checking."

He moved the stand back an inch. Now the cabinet appeared crooked. He moved it forward again.

Mae had cut out the paper bats the night before while Levi held one up and told her the wings were uneven. He had been right. The second bat was better, but they had put both on the wall anyway. From the phone's angle, the uneven one looked as if it were turning.

Levi liked that.

He didn't like the large space where the cat was supposed to be.

On the sofa, Otis was washing his shoulder. One amber eye remained visible above the movement of his black foreleg.

The part with the cape

The cape was black and small, with a square fastening instead of ties. Levi had found it among the things Mae brought home for their Halloween decorations. It lay folded on the cabinet beside a larger piece of red fabric intended for his own outfit.

He held the little cape against his knee.

"It would fit him."

Mae looked at Otis, who had stopped washing and was following the moving fabric with his eyes.

"Maybe. But we don't know if he'd want to wear it."

"Just for the picture?"

"He doesn't know how long a picture takes."

Levi considered this. The phone had already been standing there for quite a while.

Mae took the cape when he handed it to her. She folded its fastening inward and put it on a high hook beside the closed cupboard, well away from the sofa. Otis came down and stopped beneath it, looking up.

"He can still be in it," she said.

Levi looked down at his red sweatshirt. He hadn't put on his own outfit either.

"We're not very Halloween yet."

"We've got two bats."

"One and a half good ones."

Otis crossed the rug when Mae sat on the floor. He passed in front of her knees, paused beside Levi, and sniffed the edge of his shoe.

Levi stayed very still.

"Now?" he whispered.

"I'm not near the phone," Mae said.

Levi looked from her to the table. His photo plan had put everyone on the wrong side of the button.

Mae got up, moved the phone off the stand, and sat back down a little farther away. Otis walked under the table while she moved. When she returned to the floor, he was beside the cabinet.

Levi went to his marked place.

"Is he in it?"

"His back is."

Levi bent forward to look. Otis turned. Mae pressed the button. The photograph contained one child bent at the waist and a black blur leaving the bottom corner.

She showed Levi.

"That's mostly my hair," he said.

Mae put the phone down for a moment.

They could hear someone wheeling a bin along the pavement outside. Otis looked toward the sound, then back at Levi's shoe.

One they hadn't planned

Levi sat on the rug. He had a crease across one sleeve from leaning against the cabinet and a small sock-shaped space between his jeans and his shoe.

Otis sniffed that space.

Levi's mouth closed very tightly.

Mae saw him trying not to move.

"You can breathe," she said.

"I am."

Otis's whiskers touched the top of the sock. Levi let out the laugh he had been holding in. His hand flew toward his mouth; his elbow missed the cabinet; he laughed harder because he had nearly knocked the cabinet and hadn't.

Mae picked up the phone.

In the next photograph, the cat was clear and the child wasn't. Levi's face had moved as the picture was taken. The uneven paper bat appeared above one shoulder.

"I look strange," he said when Mae showed him.

"You were laughing."

He enlarged the photograph with two fingers. Otis's nose was almost touching his shoe. A few of the black whiskers caught the window light.

Levi made the picture smaller again so he could see the whole thing.

"Keep that one."

They tried one more photograph. Levi smiled on purpose. Otis looked toward the kitchen. It was a perfectly usable picture, and Mae kept it too.

By dinner, she had printed both on a sheet of ordinary paper. Levi carried the sheet back to the room where they had taken them. The phone stand was still on the table. The two bats were still on the wall.

"This one," he said, touching the photograph with the blurred face.

Mae held the paper while he found a pencil to make a small mark underneath it.

Otis walked past their feet. Above him, the folded cape hung from its hook, one corner catching the light.

Levi, Mae and Otis are invented for this narrative composite.