The Moonlight

by Nicholas Guild

  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.”

  Chapter 23

  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?”

  “Not now.”

  “And why not?”

  “Uncle George bought this place sometime back in the Thirties. . .”

  “1936—yeah, that’s right.”

  Phil swallowed dark and nerved himself up to speak the words.

  “That was a long time ago,” he said. “Either you don’t show your age much, or it figures I’m sitting here talking to a ghost.”

  The guy never even blinked.

  “Don’t be corny, Phil,” he said finally. “You think I go around wearin’ a bedsheet?”

  No, he didn’t look like a ghost. But what does a ghost look like—really? You couldn’t see through him, but he wasn’t like a living person.

  “Am I going crazy?” Phil thought. “Is this what it’s like to crack up? Maybe I’m talking to a dead guy, and maybe I’m not.” He just didn’t know.

  He didn’t even know if he was afraid.

  “Are you dead?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Dead.”

  Charlie Brush seemed to think about that for a minute. He closed his eyes and then opened them again, but either way he looked just as dead.

  “Depends how you figure it,” he said finally. And then he flashed his grin and looked like the devil himself. “Sal Grazzi, now that’s dead.”

  The laughter came echoing forth again, the same hollow sound, as if it began in some airless space where no human voice had ever been heard.

  “What’s the matter, pal? Didn’t you think that was funny. Didn’t you just love shootin’ that stupid guinea’s pills off?”

  The trace of blood on his right ear lobe was now a line that reached halfway down his neck. The moonlight caught it in a funny way, so that it looked almost black, as if it had long since dried and was only a scaling crust.

  Phil sat very quietly, because he had the impression that if he tried to speak, or even move, he might begin sobbing uncontrollably. Yes, he was afraid, but his fear took the almost unrecognizable form of a deep mistrust of himself. Charlie Brush, the spectral presence, the upright, talking, laughing corpse, frightened him less that the gathering impulse to surrender himself to this ghastly visitor. If Charlie Brush was dead, then he feared not death so much as the longing for it.

  Charlie Brush, whispered some voice inside himself, was his fate, almost his own reflected image. Charlie Brush was his only friend.

  “You got any plans for the money?” Charlie asked abruptly, making it sound like an accusation, turning his head slowly until his merciless, dead eyes were on Phil, who, after a moment to gather his self control, was able to answer.

  “I called a guy about having the driveway resurfaced.”

  “Good.” Charlie looked at his cigarette, which had burned down almost to his fingers, and pitched it away. He seemed pleased. “Get the place back to what it was. Great.”

  He lit another cigarette, and again the light from the flame played eerily across his face.

  “But no businesses,” he went on. “No restaurants, no motels, no whorehouses. I’ve had it with that shit. You want to live here, you live here—but alone.”

  He took a drag and seemed to relax, and then he waved his hand in a gesture of easy dismissal.

  “And don’t worry about money, ‘cause there’s plenty more where that come from.”

  Was that the deal? You sold your soul to Charlie Brush, and he fixed it so you could stay in the Moonlight forever?

  He could still walk, Phil thought. He could go upstairs and wake up Beth, and they could get out of here tonight. Then they might have a life together—couldn’t he live without this house?

  No. He couldn’t. He had already made his deal, it seemed. Charlie Brush already owned him.

  And he was full of despair, like a damned soul staring into the mouth of hell. He wanted to weep, for Beth, for himself, for his lost chance at life. But the one thing he did not want to do was to recant.

  So instead of that, he asked a question.

  “Why did you kill that guy?”

  “Who? Sal?” Charlie shrugged, as if the matter didn’t interest him very much. “You don’t think he needed killin’? Is that all you worry about, why I do stuff like that? If it bothers you so much, just tell yourself Charlie Brush is ve
ry civic minded. Trust me, the world can’t help but be a better place without Sal Grazzi.”

  That seemed to be all the answer anyone was going to get. Charlie turned his head away so that the streak of blood showed, down all the way to his collar now.

  “But it happened?”

  “Sure it happened, pal. Don’t be a chump.” Charlie was still looking away, as if he were there alone in the darkness. “You were there—you saw.”

  “I don’t know, I wasn’t . . . I thought maybe. . .”

  “You dreamed it?” Without turning his head, Charlie Brush smiled his demon’s smile. “Fat chance.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Phil could hear his voice beginning to break as a ball of emotion rose in his throat as if to choke him. “Why me?”

  This, at least brought those dead eyes back to him.

  “Because I like you, sport. You’re my pal.” He leaned forward and patted Phil twice on the face, not hard but with just a shade of menace. “Your uncle Georgie was my pal too. God, we were partners for years, real tight. You’re like one of the family, Phil Boy I can’t do enough for you.”

  Phil wiped his cheek and then looked at the palm of his hand in the moonlight. There were traces of pale gray dust.

  Up close Charlie Brush even smelled like a corpse.

  “I don’t much like strangers,” he said, the edge in his voice a little harder. “I like the Moonlight just the way it is now, nice and quiet.

  “Let me tell you a story. You see, once there was this dumb jerk name of Harve Wickham, thought he’d rent the place to live in and run a garage. George ’d been in the nursing home a long time by then and I guess, after all the fuss with the motel, the rental guys didn’t have people lining up to share space with the blood stains upstairs. So they let Harve in. The gas pumps out front are his.

  “He was a good mechanic, I guess, but he was a twit. His wife quit him, with a little push from behind”—Charlie grinned, to show what he meant, and the skin around the edges of his face seemed to crinkle like old paper—”and then he was in here by himself. I tried to help him, to let him be a little useful, but oh no. He couldn’t stand that. I guess he couldn’t stand much of anything, because he ended up hanging himself from the awning over his gas pumps. He seemed to think he was going out of his head.”