Loonglow

by Helen Eisenbach

  “Loved your letters,” she said, breaking away and getting off the bed. Mia gave her a child’s truant grin as Louey went to her closet to change her clothes. (The only piece of mail Louey had received had been a gaudy postcard with Mia’s uncontrolled scrawl explaining that the baby was fine but that Louey should send money for braces or risk having her child a marked woman for life.) Louey had tried to call, but Mia never seemed to be at school. Even at midterm she had had to learn from Mia’s distantly contemptuous mother that her daughter had gone traveling with several friends.

  “I notice you took advantage of your own ample opportunity to write,” Mia said.

  “I wrote you four letters, if you’ll pardon my mentioning it. For all I know, you burned them.”

  “Sold ’em.” Mia came up behind Louey, toying with her neck and sliding an arm around her waist. Louey shivered. “Made a tidy sum, by the way. You should just see the frilly little thing I bought with the money.”

  “Fetched a good price, did they?” But Mia didn’t seem to want to talk, biting Louey’s bare skin gently, cupping her shoulders. Louey cleared her throat.

  “Porn’s in great demand,” Mia went on.

  “You must have gotten the letter I meant for Mom.”

  At this Mia put both arms around her waist. Louey leaned back, unable to concentrate on anything but the sensation of Mia against her. She started to say something, but Mia’s hands were moving across the front of her, making it difficult to think. “Uh, come here often?” she managed.

  “Try to.” Mia nibbled a trail down her back. “Wouldn’t want you to get bored with all those coeds.”

  “You’re so thoughtful,” Louey said. “In fact, I’ve always felt—” But before she could finish, Mia was turning her around and soon it was all Louey could do to remain standing.

  The next day Mia loaded Louey into the car she’d borrowed from Louey’s brother. (The young man had been a complete fiction, as Louey should have suspected.) Once they hit the highway, Mia mentioned that she had discussed summer plans with Louey’s family, who had casually let slip that they had never really liked Louey much anyway.

  “That’s a relief,” Louey said.

  “Which leaves the coast clear,” Mia mentioned, weaving in and out between cars in breakneck fashion.

  As they drove across the country, Mia became effervescent, almost childlike, filled with energy. She seemed barely able to contain herself, tugging Louey from one spot to the next, showing off her favorite sights as if they didn’t exist until Louey saw them. Was being alone with someone always like this? Louey wondered. Did other people share this special, private heaven?

  It was as if the blue of the sky, the friendliness of strangers, the mysteries of passion had been invented just for them. She couldn’t believe how elated she was all the time, as if she’d never feel any emotion besides joy. She couldn’t believe Mia could make her feel this way—that Mia could feel this way because of her.

  If only the summer didn’t have to end.

  The day after the Fall, Louey came into work and started clearing out her office, piling books and papers, calendars and folders into boxes she had brought from home. As people started drifting into the office—first assistants, then their bosses—they soon formed a crowd around her door, watching her pack. She smiled ruefully at each of them, unaccustomed to her sudden notoriety. Around her, conversation was hushed, as if no one could fathom how things had abruptly come to such an end.

  “Hello,” the mournful voice of her now-former boss issued behind the mob. The crowd dispersed and she was left alone with him.

  “Hi, Burt,” she answered cheerfully, clearing the plants off her windowsill. Her boss sat down in the chair across from her, his silence heavy, fraught with accusation.

  Louey gave in to the pressure of his gaze upon her back at last, sitting down.

  “Well,” he said, rubbing his hands down gray-clad legs. “You gave us quite a surprise yesterday.”

  “You and me both,” she started, then reconsidered her next words. “I assume you’ll want me to help break in my replacement—and I’ll try to ease the transitional period for my authors over the next two weeks.”

  He averted his eyes. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “What?” She frowned. He studied a corner of her office, silent. “I have to tell my authors and their agents what to expect. It’s hard enough to leave them dangling, with sales conference just around the corner.” (You should have thought of that, she could hear him thinking.) “I’m sorry I don’t have more time to wrap things up.”

  He seemed intent on memorizing a spot slightly to the left of her shoulder. “They want you out by five.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Today?” He nodded, still not looking at her. “But that leaves everyone just—” She stopped. His tone was too flat; it was useless. How did he manage to be so cool so abruptly—when just the other day he’d laughed with her about an author and even grudgingly expressed approval of her work? “Are you sure you can find someone to help rip my books to shreds on such short notice?” He looked at her with mournful eyes. “Burt”—she bit her lip. “You can’t pull the rug out from under so many people. Even if I could reach most of them today—” He was barely listening. “But they’re the ones who are going to suffer,” she trailed on, helpless.

  “You knew it was a tough business when you took this job.”

  So she wasn’t tough enough for it, she thought, was that the problem? “Did you ask Daisy for more time to make things easier for my authors?” He picked at the fabric of his suit jacket. “Have you been dissatisfied with my work?”

  He rose. “Taking an attitude like that is counterproductive, Louey. There’s no point in dwelling on side issues.”

  Before she could reply, he’d turned and left her office. Louey looked down at a half-packed box, her head filled with cotton. After a moment, she shook herself, reaching for the phone.

  Once Louey had been walking, late at night, home from a party, when she’d found herself in sudden danger. Both she and Mia were just slightly drunk; when Mia stopped to buy some flowers, Louey went to buy some milk the next block up. She saw a young girl come out of the market just as she did, casually slipping something into her bag. An old woman standing nearby shouted, “Put that back!” and the girl broke into a run, putting the stolen package on the ground under a car. The store’s two owners started after her, but without thinking Louey picked the package up and put it back. “She put it back,” she said, and then the two men stopped, and the girl went free. Mia caught up with her and they began to walk, when Louey heard a noise. She turned and saw the girl, who had been joined by several boys.

  “Why don’t you mind your business?” the girl yelled, and Louey realized the girl was much more shabbily dressed than she’d first thought.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you ever think that might have been my dinner?”

  “I put it back,” she said, “so they wouldn’t chase you.” Mia glanced at her, surprised.

  “All those guys would have found was what I bought,” the girl said. “They’d look in the bag and wouldn’t find it.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t realized that the girl had never meant to give the package back; she’d been planning this, to put it down if she’d been caught, then come and get it later. “Sorry,” she said, shrugging. Mia took her arm.

  The two of them had walked half a block when someone started throwing cans at them. Louey turned: it was the girl, enraged, as if she blamed Louey for what had happened. Instinctively Louey started walking faster, but the cans still came, landing around their feet.

  Without thinking, Louey turned. “Are you going to throw cans at us all the way up Broadway?”

  The girl was at her side instantly, a bottle in her hand. Louey’s eyes grew wide. “Don’t you talk to me that way!” the girl shouted. “Are you crazy?” She waved the bottle right in Louey’s face, then tapped the back of Louey’s head with it as if just b
arely holding back from smashing it against her skull.

  “Hey!” Mia said, grabbing the girl’s arm violently. The muscles strained in both their arms; Louey could barely breathe. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid, couldn’t imagine how the night had come to this. The girl glared at Mia, her arm still poised, then turned to Louey.

  “Don’t you ever do a thing like that again,” she spat out. Louey saw the bottle, thinking, All she had to do was shatter it against me, one two three. She felt her mind go numb. The girl said, “Meet you at that corner,” and Louey felt the blood drain from her face.

  “There’s a cop right there,” said Mia, steely. “Want me to go get him?” The girl gave Mia a cold stare, then jerked her arm away and walked on with her friends.

  Around them, people stared at Louey as if she’d made a drunken scene; before she knew it, tears were streaming down her face. “Sweetheart.” Mia took her in her arms.

  “Do you like it?” Two days later Mia stood framed in the doorway of a new apartment as far away from their now tainted neighborhood as she could find. No one did that, Louey wanted to explain, just walked around New York as if it were a friendly five-and-dime and found a closet, much less a sunny, big apartment in a lovely neighborhood. No one but someone for whom “Sorry, we can’t help you” was as alien a phrase as “Face reality, why don’t you?”

  “Well?” Mia prodded. Louey walked several timid steps inside and looked around; her heart felt as if it might fly out of her chest. And Mia hadn’t even let on what she’d planned. How had she ever found someone so wonderful? “No, no, no, miss,” the narrator’s disdainful voice was sure to break in any minute. “That was Mr. Kennedy’s order. Yours is over here.”

  “Love what you’ve done with the place.” She turned from the window, where a view of trees and grass soothed her eyes. “When do we move in?”

  “Today. It’s ours.” Mia looked at her with such affection Louey wondered how she’d come to deserve this happiness. “There’s even room for the children.”

  “Honey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  “Can it wait until I’ve reduced you to a helpless wreck?” Mia flung her arms around her, collapsing them both on the floor.

  “You’re insane,” said Louey as Mia kissed her: bullet-fast kisses that weakened her until she lay back, out of breath and wanting more. Yet she was obviously the one who was crazy, taking all this as a matter of course. “I can’t believe you did this just for me.”

  “Heavens! Did I say you? I don’t know what I could have been thinking.” Mia bent and kissed her, not coming up for air. “The property values are certain to go up, of course,” she added, reaching to undo Louey’s dress. “Once the neighbors see what I’ve got, they’ll all want one.”

  The day after she’d brought the pile of boxes back to her apartment, Louey walked around the city, looking at tall buildings as if she’d never seen Fifth Avenue before, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Plaza Hotel. At Forty-second Street she walked east to the public library, sitting on the steps among the crowd of people. After an existential juggler tried to draw her out, she rose and made her way back home.

  In the evening, she walked all the way across town to a quiet, winding street she hadn’t visited in years. “I’m telling you she’ll do it,” warned a woman standing at the door as Louey reached her destination.

  “She’s always doing that,” said Louey, entering the bar.

  “See?” the woman told her friend, whose face went slack, surprised at Louey’s boldness. “It’s hopeless. Tell her.” She nudged Louey, who smiled faintly, moving toward the bartender.

  A feline woman sang on monitors up near the ceiling in the inner room, and Louey watched her, mesmerized. The bar was just as she remembered, light wood with tall stools, although the video jukebox was new. “What do you need, sugar?” asked a Nordic woman sitting at the bar. Louey told her, putting down a minor fortune for her drink.

  “Amazing,” she said, half to herself. The seated woman, who was angular but pretty, glanced at her questioningly. “I remember when it used to take about a month to get a drink.”

  “Depends on who you know.” The woman lightly stroked her arm. My, that was fast, thought Louey, moving to the inner room.

  “Any chance that I can steal this stool?” she asked a pretty blond girl, who turned out to be a boy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a male in a women’s bar; what, she thought, was the world coming to?

  “You can borrow it until my boyfriend tears himself out of the bathroom.” She must have looked uncertain, because the boy added, “Co ahead, it usually takes hours.”

  Louey sat and glanced around the noisy room. There seemed to be a wealth of boys, she noticed, absorbed in animated conversation with women who were far prettier than she remembered women in bars being. Designer lesbians: for once she was in the minority not wearing makeup. The blond man smiled at her. “Are they nice to boys here?” she said.

  He shrugged. “Depends.” One of the people in his group, a black woman with a lilting accent, glanced at Louey.

  “I’ve brought male friends here,” she said, “and they’ve been asked to leave as soon as they don’t have a drink in their hands.” She shrugged; the woman to her left, a sweet-faced girl with shoulder-length fine hair, leaned to her, whispering something in her ear. The first girl nodded, patting her friend on the back, then turned to Louey. “Need another drink?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” Louey toasted with her half-full glass. The black woman left for the bar.

  “I’m Belle,” the second girl said. “That was Leo.”

  “As in—?”

  “Leonie.” Even the names had taken on character since she’d last been here.

  Leonie came back a moment later, muttering. “This town’s filled with heartless women, break you into pieces much as look at you.”

  “Leo likes to talk like dime-store novels when she’s had too much to drink,” her friend explained.

  “Since when is nine drinks too many?”

  “Nine?” Louey stared.

  “Lying through her teeth,” Belle mentioned.

  When Louey had partaken of as much alcohol, smoke and conversation as she could manage, she rose, staggering.

  “Need a ride?” Belle asked. “Wait till you see my car—it’s gorgeous.”

  “You have a car?”

  Belle laughed at Louey’s tone and put an arm around her. “I’ll drive you home,” she said.

  They walked out into the night air, Louey incredulous that she was in this sudden fix. At her building, an open parking space brazenly awaited them, gleaming malevolently. “Shame to let this go to waste,” Belle murmured.

  “Come on up.” Louey’s blood was pounding in her ears; how could she have said that? Her hands shook slightly as she fit the key into the lock; she laughed, embarrassed. “Have a seat”—she let them in and motioned to the couch. “Do you want a drink? Coffee?”

  “Whatever.” Belle looked around the apartment, turned as Louey crossed the room to get their drinks and kissed her easily, as if she’d done it countless times before. Smiling, she let Louey go and sat down on the couch.

  Louey’s head was whirling. The kiss had been unhurried, skilled. (“Baby,” she heard Mia’s voice asking, “was that something you made up yourself?”) She sat back on the couch, setting their drinks beside them. Belle ran a hand through Louey’s hair, then bent to kiss her; Louey lay flat against the couch, swallowing. (“Run that by me one more time?” said Mia.)

  Why was she even thinking about Mia? She closed her eyes, fighting back tears. (“Keep them open,” Mia whispered.) Louey’s heart battered her chest. The walls of her apartment seemed to close in on her; she felt as if her mind were somewhere far above her, looking down. Who was this lying numbly on the couch, her body smarting?

  Some hours later, the phrase “I have no job” came wafting through her head. She pictured Kevin standing in her office, loo
king as if he were about to cry. “But what about Clay, Louey?” she could hear his plaintive voice as they went over what to do with all her authors. What about Clay, she thought. (Mia didn’t answer.)

  She doesn’t love you anymore, Louey thought why can’t you face it? Soft, unfamiliar breathing filled the room, and tears stung Louey’s eyes. What am I going to do? she wondered. A strange hand lay across her stomach: carefully she lifted it off and placed it on the mattress. She lay looking out the window until the sun crept over the horizon, greeting a new day.

  The only reason Clay agreed over the telephone to meet Charlene was the distress he heard in her voice. Yet when he arrived at the appointed meeting place, there was no sign of her. Charlene would pick an overpriced pretentious joint like this, he thought, glancing around the restaurant. White plastic gleamed as far as he could see; electric-colored toys and bright-eyed waiters cluttered the horizon. His drink, when it arrived at last, was ninety percent water. Next time, he’d force her to a dive he favored, just to see the look on her face. If there ever was a next time.

  After thirty minutes, he called for the waiter, thinking he would get himself another drink. Then he changed his mind—he could do better than these feeble cocktails—and asked the future Oscar-winning actor for his check. His pseudo-drink came to $5.70 plus tax; he left the money on the table, rising in disgust.

  Just as he reached the door, Charlene breezed in. “Where are you going?” she demanded. He could barely bring himself to answer, waving her outside. She trailed behind him, exasperated. “Clayton Lee. If you don’t stop this instant, I won’t take another step.”

  He paused, turning to her. “I can’t stay here, Charlene. You should know too much good breeding makes me dizzy.”

  “Where do you suggest we go?”

  “I don’t care.” He started walking; then a cool hand on his shoulder stopped him.

  “Must we walk for miles?” she asked.