The Moonlight (28 page)

“Do you ever wish you were that age again?” Beth asked.

“No.  You’d have to be nuts to want to be that age again.”

She smiled, as if that was the answer she had hoped for.

All the way out, pictures kept flashing across his eyes—pictures of the odd shapes blood made spattering against a wall.  His ears were full of terror-stricken screams and the echoing concussion of shotgun blasts.  The screams were louder even than the kids with their radios, because they were just for him.

They spread their beach towels out on the sand, and Beth promptly fell asleep.  She was like that.  All she had to do was feel the sun on her face and she was out.  Every fifteen or twenty minutes she would wake up for a few seconds and turn over, but for the most part she never stirred.

Phil sat watching people throw frisbees around and considered, with a detachment that astonished him, the idea of death.  He could feel its presence, somewhere just beyond his awareness.

During his one and only year as a college student he had seen a foreign movie put on by the campus film club, all about a medieval knight who returns from the crusades and spends the last part of his journey home playing chess for his life with a man who has a white face and wears a black cloak.  The man is Death, and his victory is inevitable.  No one appears to mind.  Phil hadn’t been able to understand the knight’s seeming indifference to his own fate.

Now he thought perhaps he could, because he had come home and found Death waiting for him, except that Death wore a snazzy brown suit and looked like anybody else.  They weren’t playing chess, but it was some kind of game.  He was curious about the rules but, like the knight, he already knew the outcome.  He was just waiting for the next move.

Last night, Death had shown himself.  For days before he had indicated his presence in countless little ways, and then suddenly there he was.  The game, whatever it was, was almost over.

Phil sat on the beach at Captain’s Island, turning it all over in his mind, immune to both fear and hope, until at sunset the tops of the waves began to show a dull red, as if they had been smeared with blood.

. . . . .

Beth had spent the morning making lasagna, so all she had to do when they got back was put it in the oven.  She had also made garlic bread, and Phil had picked up some pastries and a bottle of red wine.  The lasagna was excellent.

“Most people use too much sauce and not enough meat,” she said, explaining her success.  “It gets watery, and there’s nothing as disgusting as watery lasagna.”

“Where did you learn to cook?” he asked her.

“My mother.”  Beth wrinkled her nose, as if she had found something disagreeable in her last forkful of food, but it was simply her characteristic way when referring to either of her parents.  “She was Italian and blessed with all the domestic virtues.”

“I thought you said she was still alive—or has she just given up on being Italian?”

This struck Beth as so devastatingly funny that she almost strangled.

“No, she’s still Italian.  But I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

“Did you quarrel?  I mean, I don’t mean to stick my nose in. . .”

But Beth shook her head to indicate, while swallowing, that it wasn’t a taboo subject.

“No quarrel.  She didn’t like it much when I got my divorce, but she didn’t throw me out.  I used to call her on the phone once in a while, but after two or three minutes we seemed to run out of things to say.  It’s like that.”

“What about your father?”

“He was good for about thirty seconds.”  She laughed at this too.  “Don’t worry, they don’t need me.  They’re well fixed because I’ve got lots of brothers and sisters.  You?”

“No.  I’m it.”

“That must have been nice.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

He grinned, without feeling particularly merry, and refilled her wine glass.

“What did you get from the bakery?” she asked.

He went to the refrigerator and got out a white cardboard box tied up with a double criss-cross of string, as if there was something in there somebody was afraid might get out.  But the box held nothing except a couple of strawberry tarts, two slices of chocolate mousse cake, an eclair, and a Napoleon.

“I love that place,” Beth murmured, with a kind of awe.  “I go in there and look at all those fat women lined up to get their arteries coated, and I can’t help but think they’re right.  It’s worth it.”

“I didn’t know which of the others you’d like, but the chocolate mousse cake has your name on it.”

“Oh, you are a darling man.”  She reached across the table and kissed him wetly on the mouth.  “I’ll get the coffee.”

He helped her with the dishes and they went upstairs early.  They took a shower together and were having such a good time soaping each other up that they almost exhausted the hot water.  Before they got into bed, Phil closed the window.

“What’s the matter, Champ?  You afraid the neighbors might hear us?”

“Something like that.”

When they made love it was without any sense of hurry, which for them was unusual.  It was sensuousness without greed, like dessert after the lasagna, to be enjoyed in small bites.

Phil didn’t even enter her for close to half an hour, but when he did he came almost at once.  The second time was as leisurely as the preamble, with no urgency until the very last.

“Feel that,” she said, guiding his hand to the inside of her thigh as he lay beside her.  The muscles were trembling in a palsy of ecstasy.  “I’m completely relaxed—they’re doing that all by themselves.”

It seemed to give her a satisfaction like gratified pride, so he kept his hand there until the trembling subsided.

“I wish every day of my life could be just like today,” he said suddenly.

“At the end of a year we’d both be dead.  You want to be a three-hundred-pound cardiac patient?”

“I can think of worse things.”

Apparently she missed the little quaver of fear in his voice, because she didn’t even open her eyes and a few minutes later she was asleep, her breathing slow and measured.

“At the end of a year we’d both be dead.”

As soon as he switched off the light, Phil could feel the panic rising inside his chest.  The darkness surrounded him like a threat.

He could feel his heart beating.  It was almost painful.

A year—if they could be sure of only that much he would be grateful.  A year seemed like eternity, and life was pouring out between his fingers like water.

“Turn on the light, Phil.”

Had he been asleep?  He must have been—he had been dreaming.  But of what?  All he could remember was the voice in the dream.  Just the voice, nothing else.  Not even the words.

He had been having a nightmare.

“Come on, Phil—you heard me.  Turn on the light.”

No.  It wasn’t . . .  Then he said it out loud.  “No.”

But the voice didn’t answer.  Phil rolled on one elbow toward the edge of the bed and turned on the light.

“That’s right, Phil.”

He was half sitting on the chest of drawers, his hands in the pockets of his natty brown suit.  A spare-built man of average height, about Phil’s age and with the cunning face of a street urchin.  His eyes were cold and almost lifeless.  He smiled, as though he alone saw the joke.

Phil discovered he wasn’t even surprised.  It was as if he had been expecting this.  As if he had only been waiting.

“It’s time we got to know each other,” the man said.  “The name’s Charlie Brush.”

So here he was.  It was almost a relief.

“Who are you?” Phil asked, as his tongue seemed to dry up in his mouth.  “What do you want with me?”

Charlie Brush seemed to find him amusing.

“Well, I ain’t your fairy godmother, pal.”

Suddenly Phil remembered that they weren’t alone in the room.  He looked down at Beth’s sleeping form and felt a surge of wild terror.

“Relax,” Charlie Brush said, picking himself up from the chest of drawers.  “She’s out and she’s gonna stay out, until I tell her to wake up.  Here—watch this.”

He walked over to the bed and reached down to grab a handful of the blanket, pulling it away with one smooth motion.  Beth was lying on her stomach, perfectly naked.

Charlie Brush slapped her on the left buttock with the flat of his hand.  She never stirred.  Then he threw the blanket back over her.

“Nice,” he said.  “Not just exactly the best type for me, but she’s got a lot of good stuff.  Get your pants on, sport.”

But Phil could hardly bring himself to move.  The ancient stain on the carpet, which three hours ago had been faded almost to invisibility, was now a dark and garish red.  It picked up the light from the night table lamp and actually seemed to glisten.

“Hasn’t anybody told you how that got there?”  Charlie Brush smiled again, almost wolfishly.  “For a while this place was a motel, did you know that?  The kind of place where they didn’t expect you to bring any luggage—you know what I mean?  Sometimes it got pretty wild.

“One time back in the Sixties, some clown brought his girlfriend up here to drop some acid.  He ended up reaming out her pussy with a broken beer bottle.  It least, that’s the story.  The guy did twenty to life for it.”

“Is that what happened?”  Because, of course, somehow Phil knew that is wasn’t.

Charlie Brush shook his head and laughed.

“Nah.  They were both too stoned.  I did it.

“But don’t worry.  She was so out of her mind on that junk, she thought somebody was screwin’ the holy hell out of her.  Trust me—she died happy.”

“Why?”

“You mean, why did I kill her?” Charlie Brush shrugged his shoulders, as if it were a matter of no importance.  “I felt like it.  Besides, they were making too much noise.  I decided to get rid of the motel, close it down.  The Moonlight belongs to me.  I didn’t choose to be here, but I’m here.  I’m a little fussy about who I share it with.

“But don’t worry, pal—you’re welcome.  I’d get rid of the broad, though.  You never know.  I might find another beer bottle.”

“Are you going to kill Beth?” Phil asked in a pathetic voice.  He suddenly felt a surge of helpless fear wash through him.  He was like a child confronted with an angry and capricious parent.

“Not if she ain’t here.”  Charlie Brush showed his teeth in a cruel grin.  “Get rid of her, pal.  She makes me nervous.  She’s trouble.

“Come on, put your pants on.  We gotta talk.”

They went downstairs, Phil in a tee shirt and the shorts he’d worn since he got back from the lawyer.  His feet were bare against the cold floor.  Charlie Brush had on shoes, but they didn’t make a sound when they touched the floor.  The stairs didn’t creek under his weight.

“We’ll go outside,” Charlie said.  “I could use a smoke.”

They sat in lawn chairs, facing each other, as if this were the most usual kind of conversation in the world.

“Light me, Phil.  I’m outa matches.”

Phil took the cigarette lighter from his pocket and cupped his hands around it as Charlie leaned forward to the flame.  His skin, in the yellowish red light looked almost gray—lifeless, like old leather.

He took the lighter out of Phil’s hand and then savored a drag, falling back in the chair, letting the smoke out in a long sigh.

“That’s better.  Before you came along, I hadn’t had cigarette in five years.”

“You quit?”

“Why should I quit?  I ain’t worried about dyin’ young.”

He threw back his head and laughed—a peculiar, hollow sound.  He turned his head just a little, and there was what looked like a drop of blood on his ear lobe.

There was a moon to divide the patio with its pale, silver, slanting light into little clusters of shadow.  Nothing seemed quite real, as if the whole world were merely some sort of conjuring trick.

“Did you really kill that girl?”

Charlie looked surprised, and then a little offended, and then he laughed again.

“Sure I did.”

“Why?  I mean, like that?”

“Because it matters how you kill people, sport.  It’s how people die, not
that
they die.  I wanted to make a mess.”

“Why?”

“I told you.  To close the motel.  I was tired of it.”

“You
live
here?”

“Not exactly.”  Charlie smiled his wolfish smile again.  “But I’m here.  I’m around.”

Phil wanted to ask how he managed—where he slept, how he kept himself hidden.  But he had the terrible feeling he already knew, so he didn’t open his mouth.

“George was an idiot to buy this place,” Charlie said, looking around at the outside of the building as if he’d never seen it before.  “He thought that if you owned a place like this you were one of the swells.  I couldn’t talk him out of it.  But, what the hell, he had a good time for a while.”

His dead eyes found their way back to Phil.

“You havin’ a good time, pal?”