Maybe the Moon (9 page)

The hell with it. I need my beauty sleep.

I
WOKE UP THIS MORNING AND FOUND A MOUSE IN A TRAP
R
ENEE
had laid in the kitchen. This might have been manageable had it been a regular trap, but it wasn’t; it was a rectangle of white plastic, covered in a sort of yellow goo, to which the poor thing was stuck, very much alive, twitching horrifically. Even the side of her face was caught in the nasty stuff. In her frantic struggle to escape, she was straining every muscle under her command, but so far all she’d managed to do was shit. I hate to think how long she might have been there.

Renee is the official exterminator at our house, just as Mom once was, but she was out on a morning mall crawl and unlikely to return for hours. I opened the cabinet under the sink and made a frantic search for the mousetrap box, in the dim hope it would tell me what to do next. When I couldn’t find it there, I flung open the cupboard and spotted a likely candidate on the top shelf: a red-and-yellow box with the name E-Z Catch printed on the end. I swatted at it with a broom handle until it tumbled toward me in a pungent avalanche of cleaning rags.

There were instructions, all right, printed in Spanish and English:
Eche raton con trampa. Discard mouse with trap
. There was also
a charming illustration of a mouse caught in the sinister goo, rendered so playfully as to be almost a cartoon, complete with vivid little beads of mouse sweat (or were they tears?) popping from her head.
No Springs, No Snaps, No Hurt Fingers, Disposable, Sanitary, Ready to Use
.

What to do? If I hurled this living creature, ever so conveniently, into the garbage can, as advised, it would lie there for hours in the dark, panic-stricken and exhausted, until its life ebbed away and the ants came to eat it alive. There was no way I could be a party to that, so I filled my low-level kitchen sink with several inches of lukewarm water (thinking that might make it more pleasant) and drowned the little bandit.

It took her the longest time to stop moving; I held her down for a while after that, just to make sure. When I finally raised the tiny, dripping corpse, checking anxiously for signs of life, I flashed perversely on Glenn Close bursting out of the bathwater in
Fatal Attraction
. The mouse was perfectly still, though, so I took the trap outside and dumped it into the sunken garbage can by the street. Then I hurried back to the house, shuddering a little, and took a long, hot shower with a loofah.

I am not, as they say, a born killer. I was wasted for the rest of the morning. You’d think Renee would be the prissy one in this respect, but she’s not at all; she’s held her own mousy My Lai’s before, racking up deaths by the dozen, and it doesn’t faze her one bit. She can be downright cheery about it, in fact, when she’s checking her traps in the morning.

I’m writing this on the beach at Santa Monica. Renee has three more days of vacation left and plans to make the most of them. We’re encamped under a new floral-pattern beach umbrella she bought at K mart yesterday. I’m wearing my latest creation: a pink gingham bathing suit, heavily ruffled, that makes me look like a huge Victorian baby. Renee is in a royal-blue bikini, poring over the latest
People
for the juicy details of Annette Bening’s pregnancy by Warren Beatty. There’s a soft, lulling breeze off the water, and the sky is remarkably clear and blue. Though my housemate doesn’t
seem to have noticed, a Chicano guy two blankets over has been giving her the eye for ages, with a nice boner in his Speedos to prove it. I guess I should tell her—sooner or later.

To catch up:

Jeff called the morning after I left that message on his machine. “OK, Cadence, what is it?”

Since he sounded edgy, I decided not to be coy. “Callum Duff is in town,” I said. “He’s been here for several months.”

He was silent for so long that I wondered if he was mad at me, though I couldn’t think of a reason he should be.

“You’re entitled to gloat,” I added.

“How do you know this?”

“I saw him. We talked.”

“But you don’t know it’s the same person.”

“No, but I’ve got a great way to find out.”

Another pause, and then, furtively: “He’s not there, is he?”

I chuckled. “No, Jeff. I’ve got a photograph. Taken yesterday.”

“Oh.”

“What’s the matter?” I said. “I thought you’d be overjoyed.”

“You didn’t tell him that I…?”

“I didn’t tell him a thing. Your name never came up.”

“Good.”

“The next move is strictly yours.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Well…whatever.” I let my tinder-dry tone convey the message that it was no big deal to me, since I was beginning to feel vaguely pimpish about the whole affair. He could find his own boyfriends, for all I cared.

“He had my number, you know, and he never called back.”

“So?”

“Well, I can’t just call
him
now, out of the blue like that. He never even told me where he lived.”

“Oh, I see.”

“There’s such a thing as pride.”

“Mmm.”

“Where
does
he live?”

“Does it matter?”

“Cadence…”

“The Chateau Marmont.”

He made a little murmur, or maybe a grunt, of recognition.

“That’s where you pictured him, wasn’t it? In a castle?”

“Very funny.”

“He’s a dreamboat, Jeff. I see what you mean.”

“Yeah, well, a fucked-up dreamboat.”

“Why? Because he didn’t call you back?”

No answer.

“Do you wanna see the picture or not?”

He emitted a protracted groan that meant yes, so I told him he knew where he could find me. He said he’d be on his way as soon as he finished his sit-ups. I hung up and went into the living room to fluff the pillows, feeling the glow I always feel when I lure someone I really like into the soul-sucking reaches of Yellow Ribbon Land.

He showed up an hour later, bearing wilted carnations he’d bought from “a Hispanic person at a stoplight.” He tried to stay cool about it, but his muffin-round, sandpapery face wore expectation like rouge. After kneeling briefly to bestow a ritual peck on my cheek, he went straight for the photograph.

“Where was this taken?”

I told him.

“I thought you hated it there.”

“I do. Renee made me go. Is it him, Jeff?”

He nodded.

“Are you surprised?”

“No. Are you?”

I shook my head and gave him a crooked, apologetic smile.

“Did he say anything that made you think he was gay?”

I told him about the girlfriends back in Maine.

“Oh, great.”

“Maybe he was just covering,” I suggested.

“That’s what I mean. He sounds fucked up. And if there really is a girlfriend, forget it.”

“I think he’s just young, Jeff.”

He sighed and dropped into the armchair. “Too young. I don’t feel like being a tutor. If he’s still in the closet, I haven’t got time to wait for him.”

His jaded world-weariness was beginning to annoy me. I settled into my pillow and pointed out that Callum was only ten years his junior.

“Well, yeah,” he said, “but look what happened in those ten years.”

I couldn’t argue with that. A decade of living with death and dying can certainly change the way you look at things. Given Callum’s cloistered New England upbringing and Jeff’s growing militancy, it was entirely possible that the two men weren’t on the same wavelength at all. I just thought they’d look cute together. Jeff thought so too, I know damn well, though he’d done his best to convince me otherwise.

“You know,” I said, after a pause, “people do lose phone numbers.”

He brooded a moment longer. “So if I called him, what would I say?”

I shrugged. “That you’d bumped into me, and that I’d told you about seeing him at Icon, and that had made you realize who he was.”

“At which point he hangs up on me.”

“Maybe not.”

“You don’t mind if I mention you?”

“Of course not.”

“That would at least be a conversation point. What a coincidence it was, and all that.”

“Sure.” I thought about this for a while. “If he told you his name was Bob, will he be freaked out that you know his real name?”

“Probably,” he said.

“Oh, well. Can’t hurt to say hello. You wanna borrow the phone? There’s one in Renee’s room, if you want privacy.”

“She’s not here?”

“Nope.”

He heaved another sigh. “This is going to be irretrievably humiliating.”

“Then don’t do it,” I said. “Or do it, anyway, and write a chapter about it.”

He gave me a sardonic, brotherly smile, then went into Renee’s room and closed the door.

I was making tea for us when Jeff returned to announce that Callum wasn’t in his room at the Chateau Marmont. He said he hadn’t left a message, since as far as Callum was concerned, he, Jeff, was just a one-night stand of several weeks back. How he’d come to discover Callum’s whereabouts, not to mention his true identity, wasn’t the sort of thing to be entrusted to a desk clerk. Even a desk clerk at the Chateau Marmont.

Jeff waved toward the teapot in my hand. “That isn’t for me, is it?”

“Both of us. Yeah.”

“I have to run, Cadence.”

“You dick.”

“I know. I’ll make it up to you.”

I set the teapot down. “Go on. Desert me. Leave me out here with all the wives.”

He laughed. “I’m meeting with an editor. Otherwise…”

“That’s OK. You’ll be sorry. When my video is all the rage on MTV, I’ll remember this.”

“What video?”

“Never mind. You’re in a hurry.”

“You’ve got a video?”

“I’ll tell you about it later. You want the picture of Callum?”

He hesitated for a moment. “To keep, you mean?”

“I’ve got two of ’em.”

“Oh…thanks, then.” He went into the living room and picked up the photo, giving it a once-over. “It’ll be nice to have. Mostly because you’re in it.”

“Right. Kiss my butt, now that you’re leaving.”

He smiled. “How’s Renee, by the way?”

I told him Renee was fine, that she was on vacation this week, that she was just out for a few hours. I didn’t put much into it, because I knew he didn’t really care. Jeff has always thought of Renee as a hopeless mess; especially since Easter, I think, when he caught a glimpse of her here in high Protestant drag, complete with handbag and corsage, on her way to church. They’re not enemies or anything; they’re just not exactly two peas in a pod. Most of my friends are that way; I’m all they have in common.

“Do me a favor,” I said.

“Sure.”

“Find out about his movie.”

“What movie?”

“The one he’s making. What he’s come here for.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t say I asked or anything. Just let it come up. I’m sure it will.”

“OK.” He thought for a moment before giving me a snaky look. “So that’s your stake in this.”

“I have no ‘stake in this,’” I said firmly. “This is just a favor you can do for me.” For a moment it sounded like something Rumpelstiltskin might say, a wicked dwarf’s decree, so I laughed self-mockingly to convince him of my innocence and offered my cheek to be kissed.

“I’ll call you soon,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “About a movie.”

“Oh.” He meant seeing one, I realized. “OK.”

“Did you read about Pee-wee, by the way?” (For a while, Jeff and I used to watch
Pee-wee’s Playhouse
together on Saturday mornings. We’re also serious fans of the movie—the first one, not that embarrassing sequel where they tried so hard to make him look straight.)

“What about him?” I asked.

“He was arrested in Florida for wagging wienie in a porn theater.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “With another man?”

“No. Alone.”

“Can they arrest you for that?”

Jeff was already out the door, heading for his car. “In Florida they can.”

I waved goodbye from the front door, watching until his rusty Civic had rounded the corner, out of sight. Back in the kitchen, as I searched for a vase for his carnations, I wondered if he really had a lunch date with an editor or was on his way to the Chateau Marmont for an all-day stakeout of the lobby. He wasn’t above that sort of thing, and I had noticed a certain gleam in his eye.

The following day, in an empty greenhouse on La Brea, we began shooting the video. It was the second time Neil and I had met with Janet Glidden, his American Film Institute friend. She was a tall, skinny white girl with enormous teeth and a slab of straight black hair, shimmering like spun acrylic, that she continually swatted from her eyes. Her manic, fidgety manner, which hindered her work at every turn, might easily have been mistaken by some for cocaine abuse or plain old tenderfoot jitters, but I knew better.

The greenhouse belonged to a friend of Janet’s, who had lent us the place for two days only. That would be pushing it, to say the least, even for a simple lip-syncing job, so I did my best to keep things moving along. This meant standing still, for the most part, resplendent in pink sequins on a tiny, thrown-together stage, while Janet from Another Planet skittered around the room in a terminal
tizzy, endlessly apologizing. Her fingers were long and ivory-colored and trembled visibly as she adjusted and readjusted the various sources of light.

The lighting was all natural, she said, and she was very proud of it. She had a drop cloth on one slope of the roof, arranged in such a way as to send melodramatic little God-rays streaming down across the stage. From time to time, she would scurry up a ladder outside the greenhouse and poke at the cloth with a bamboo pole. She was building a set with light, she told me, just as Orson Welles had done in
Citizen Kane
; it was the only way to achieve “grandeur” on a limited budget.

Neil watched the grandeur from a distance, leaning against a potting table at the far end of the greenhouse. He was in slacks that day, dark-brown gabardine, and a white cotton sweater that hugged him like skin. While he didn’t talk much, he would catch my eye and wink from time to time, as if in acknowledgment of Janet’s loopy, befuddled nature. I think he’d realized, as early as I had, that she just didn’t have it in her to deliver the goods.