The Last Romantics

by Tara Conklin

  “I think I know who it is.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I know her pretty well.”

  Silence from Fiona. Joe knew that at this moment his sister was twisting a curl around an index finger. When she was a kid, the hair twist happened in any circumstance of stress or discomfort. Scary movie, fight between Caroline and Noni, studying for a math test. The memories washed over him all at once, a composite picture that made his chest contract. But Fiona was not a kid anymore.

  Joe said, “Fiona, why are you doing this blog?”

  “Me?”

  “I hope you’re being careful.” A surge of his old protective impulse, a need to shield Fiona, to help her, came rushing back. He hadn’t felt it in years.

  A pause. “Who told you?” she asked.

  Joe decided not to give Caroline up; it would hurt Fiona to know. “Those guys don’t know what you’re doing,” he said instead.

  “Of course they don’t. That’s the point.”

  “It seems unfair. They trust you.”

  “Trust? I’m the one at risk! I’m trusting them.” And then she said, “I trusted you. You kept secrets from me. The knee injury, Sierra, Ace. Remember?”

  “Come on, that’s different.”

  “Not really.”

  “Fiona, the whole thing is cheap, taking cheap shots at these guys.” Joe paused. “People make mistakes. It’s not right to punish them like this.”

  “I’m not punishing anybody. I’m just telling the truth.”

  “Well, I think it cheapens you.”

  “You don’t understand the project.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “How’s the coke habit, Joe?” Fiona asked with ice in her voice.

  A hot flush of shame came down on him. He didn’t want to tell Fiona the truth, but he couldn’t lie to her, not anymore.

  “I just want you to find someone you love,” he said.

  “Love? What would you know about it?” Fiona laughed. “I can’t talk about this with you, Joe. Good-bye.” And then she hung up.

  Luna was watching Joe as he spoke on the phone. It was midmorning, a Sunday. Newspapers and sunshine on the bed. She heard the name Fiona, she knew the significance of Joe speaking to his sister after all this time. But his face was opaque.

  “So?” Luna asked.

  “It’s okay,” he answered. “She’s still mad. We’ll work it out later.”

  * * *

  Joe and Luna drive south, following the coast until they reach a new beach, a narrow strip of South Florida sand that isn’t packed with tourists, where no radios ricochet noise, no volleyballs arc skyward. It is high tide, and Luna bends to retrieve a shell, a slice of small white conch that forms a ring. She slips it onto her finger.

  “Joe, look!” she says, and puts out her hand for him to see. With the solemnity of a prince, he bends and kisses it.

  At the far end, they scramble over an outcrop of tall, slippery rock. Here they are alone on the sand. The sun beats down, and Joe builds a tent of sorts from their two towels and a battered fishing pole he finds on the ragged tide line. In the small triangle of shade, Joe traces a finger across Luna’s tan stomach. A circle. A figure eight. A heart. She lies back, and the feeling is of a creature, smooth and cool, looking for a home in her skin.

  * * *

  Somehow Donny and Joe had never crossed paths. Luck, or maybe Donny knew that Luna had a new boyfriend. Luna sometimes believed that Donny was watching her, through the windows of the bar, at her apartment as she walked up the front steps, even at the Betsy as she waited with Joe for the room key. After that night outside Revel, he’d been back only once, perched on the corner stool, not talking to her. Luna wanted to forget about her time with Donny. Back then he had seemed like all she was good for, all she deserved. Donny inhabited a dark place that was familiar to her, and she knew how familiarity could sometimes feel like comfort.

  At 2:00 a.m. on the last night, Joe picked Luna up from work and they went to a nearby bar. They drank shots of tequila, then ordered pints of beer and sipped and talked, their heads close together. “Smile!” the bartender called, and they looked up: he held an old-fashioned Polaroid camera, and thunk, pressed the button. Out slid a photo, the image sticky and white. The bartender pointed to the side wall, which was festooned with Polaroids of smiling customers, but Joe said, “Can we have it?”

  Together Joe and Luna watched as the paper surrendered its image, ghostly and pale until the colors surfaced: their faces, smiles, shoulders touching. Joe held the photo and turned to Luna. He kissed her, and as she disappeared into him, a hand descended on her shoulder.

  “Hey, who’s kissing my girlfriend?” a voice said.

  Luna pulled away from Joe. “Donny,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Luna, fantastic to see you.” Donny spoke only to Luna. “You look beautiful.”

  Joe stood to face him. Joe was taller than Donny by a head, but he had none of the other man’s bulk. Or youth—Donny was closer to Luna’s age than Joe’s.

  “You know him?” Joe asked Luna. She nodded and looked away, embarrassed. Donny wore an idiot’s provocative grin, looking from Joe to Luna and back again. His wide shoulders pulled the T-shirt tight.

  “Leave her alone,” Joe said. He sounded like a heavy in a bad movie, but Joe was no tough guy, and anyone could see that: flip-flops and old jeans, the short-sleeved button-down shirt with tails hanging out, a man trying to dress younger than he was.

  Donny smirked. “Luna, looks like you’ve found a hero.”

  “Donny, go home,” Luna said. “Please just leave me alone.”

  Luna became aware of others at the bar, the bartender who watched Donny steadily, the drinkers paused in their conversations, their attention directed onto the scene: Donny, Luna, Joe. Luna saw Donny begin to falter. He blinked, and the grin faded.

  “Is there a problem here?” the bartender called.

  Donny was losing interest, he was going to leave them, Luna realized with relief. She grabbed Joe’s hand.

  “Come outside, asshole,” Joe said then, and Donny whistled.

  “No,” Luna whispered to Joe. “Don’t.”

  “You better fuck her good. For her, you gotta be a man,” Donny said, and laughed.

  Joe swung, but he was not a fighter. He didn’t gather himself or aim or steady his breathing; he clenched his hand into a fist and directed it with all the force of his six-foot-four frame into Donny’s head. They stood two feet apart, the distance of sparring boxers, and had the fist landed, it would have toppled Donny. But Donny ducked smoothly away from Joe, the smile never leaving his face. Joe’s weight followed his fist, and the momentum turned him fully around and then slammed him down toward the floor, where he sprawled on his back, his arms and legs tangled in fallen barstools.

  “Joe!” Luna screamed, and the entire bar hushed. She crouched to him. “So stupid! You are so stupid!”

  “I’m calling the police,” said the bartender. “Miss, get your boyfriend out of here.”

  Donny was backing away into the crowd. As he did, he locked eyes with Luna and nodded. A sense of futility gripped her then, the idea that she had already lost. Donny knew the truth: he was all she deserved. She was a twenty-five-year-old bartender, alone, her apartment so small, her tip money sucked away by rent and drink and clothes and food. Maybe Luna would return to Donny after all. The familiarity, the comfort, the ease of giving in. Maybe she would disappear just like Mariana.

  Joe pulled himself up to standing, and Luna slapped him across the face and left the bar. When he followed her outside, she slapped him again, first across the face and then against his stomach, his shoulders and chest, not with her full strength but hard enough.

  “Why did you do that? Who do you think you are?” she shouted. Dimly she was aware that a restless Saturday-night street crowd was watching them with the halfway interest of people who are drunk and bored and waiting for something better to happen to t
hem.

  “Stop it, Luna,” said Joe, holding up his hands to shield himself. “I’m sorry. It’s just— The way he looked at you. I couldn’t help it.”

  Luna stopped hitting.

  “Let’s go home,” he said.

  * * *

  The elevator deposited them at the penthouse floor. Wall sconces made of smoky glass and shaped like flaming torches lined the elevator landing. Luna’s heels clicked on pale gray marble, and she wondered why Joe had never brought her here before. Joe took her hand, and she leaned into him. The scene with Donny faded, a reverse Polaroid of an image undone. With the warmth of Joe’s arm around her shoulders, the night seemed to Luna like a hurricane, some natural disaster that neither could be blamed for, that together they had survived.

  Joe opened the door, and they stepped into darkness. He didn’t turn on the lights. The far wall was all window, and the bright gray of night light filled the room, reflecting off the television screen and the glass of photo frames lining a bookshelf, so that for an instant the room seemed full of winking eyes. Luna’s sight adjusted, focused, and there they were: framed photos of Joe’s three sisters, Renee, Caroline, Fiona, and their mother, Antonia, whom they all called Noni for reasons that Luna still did not understand. Photos of children, too, Joe’s nephew, Louis, and two nieces, Beatrix and Lily. Twins, he’d told her.

  It was only then that Luna noticed the piles of clutter crowding the floor and the tabletop, the boxes stacked against the walls. Oh, she thought, so this is what he’s been hiding. She said nothing about the mess and went straight for the photos.

  “Who is who?” she asked. “Tell me.”

  Joe picked a frame off the shelf and angled it for Luna to see. Here Joe was younger, thinner, his hair thick and brown. “This is Renee, the oldest,” he said, pointing to a tall, slim woman with bare shoulders, even teeth, a wry smile. “Caroline, middle sister. She’s the one with kids.” Caroline was pale, with pink cheeks, a bright orange shirt, mouth open as though she was laughing or calling out to the photographer. “And here’s Fiona, the youngest. She writes that blog I told you about.” Fiona’s hair reached to her shoulders, curly and a rich dark brown, and her face was plump, her body easily double the width of Renee’s. “She’s lost a lot of weight since then,” Joe said. “She’s almost a different person now. I haven’t looked at this in a long time.” He said the last almost to himself and tilted the picture more toward the light. “This was Louis’s birthday, I think. Louis, my nephew, Caroline’s son. This was his fifth—no, sixth birthday. The twins were still toddlers. We were all back in Bexley.” He started to place the photo back on the shelf, but Luna stopped him.

  “May I?” she asked and he handed it to her.

  “Sure. Let’s go sit on the balcony. Light’s better out there anyhow.” He took her hand and carefully led her through the mess of the room, out the sliding glass doors, and into the cool, fresh night. “I’ll make us some drinks,” he said, and turned back inside.

  Luna studied the photo in her hands. The sisters. She was younger than them all, though in this photo Fiona seemed about Luna’s age. There was something in Fiona’s stance that interested Luna, a forcefulness, an aggression, and also a sadness in her eyes. The other two—Renee with her confidence and polish, Caroline with her kids and long hair—seemed members of distinct female tribes that Luna had seen before: women with money and careers, women with children and husbands. These two would undoubtedly decide that she was too young or too poor or too something for Joe. Only Fiona seemed like she might accept Luna.

  Joe returned with two gin and tonics.

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he said. “Come to Bexley with me. I want you to meet my family. And it’s time I went back for a visit. It’s Louis’s birthday soon. Caroline always throws a big party at their place in Hamden. He’s turning twelve. Jesus, that means I’m old.”

  Luna sipped her drink and gazed out at the night sea. “Do they know about me?” she asked.

  Joe tilted his head to the side. “Well, not exactly.”

  Luna lifted her eyebrows. When she didn’t respond, Joe said, “Just consider it. I think you’d like them. I really do.”

  “Mmmm,” Luna said, not quite a question, not quite a statement. Joe continued talking, but a vision of her own sister came to her then, from the night before Mariana disappeared. Mariana had been lying on the couch watching TV. A children’s program, some cartoon played out in manic color. “See you for breakfast,” Luna had called, and Mariana’s eyes stayed fixed to the screen as Luna left for her shift at the restaurant. What cartoon had Mariana been watching? Luna realized that she could no longer remember. A vicious ache for her sister and mother overcame her. She put down the drink and closed her eyes.

  “Why don’t you move in here?” Joe asked suddenly.

  The question could not have surprised her more. Luna opened her eyes and looked at Joe. He sat leaning forward, elbows on knees. He took her hands into his. “Move in with me,” he said.

  “But . . . but what would your family think?” Luna said.

  “My family? Oh . . .” He smiled with relief as though the answer to a vexing riddle had just been revealed to him. “Luna, I don’t care what they think. And they’ll love you anyhow. And even if they don’t, we live here, they live there. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t know,” Luna answered slowly. “Are you sure you want a roommate?”

  “I don’t want a roommate.”

  “Are you sure—”

  “Yes,” Joe interrupted. “I’m sure.”

  Luna bit her lip. “But my hours at the bar suck. I’m not back until three, sometimes four a.m.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  “And I snore.”

  “I know.” Joe smiled. “Me, too.”

  “But—”

  “But what?” asked Joe.

  Now Luna went quiet. What if she broke her lease, moved in here, and then Joe decided he wanted someone else? What if he decided to move back to New York? Living alone was easier, safer. She knew where everything was kept, she knew what food to buy. Living alone was the daytime; Joe was the night. Joe was drinking and sex, the clubs, the constant side-to-side motion of the bar and behind her the brilliant glistening bottles lit up like vaudeville girls. During the day Luna tended her plants, she cooked sometimes, and watched her tiny color TV; she sewed the rips in her clothes with a long needle and black thread, the short, fine stitches her mother had taught her how to make.

  The day and the night together, in one place, here, and in this moment Luna wanted it with a raw longing that terrified her.

  Luna smiled. “Okay, roommate,” she said. “Go get us another drink.” Joe leaned in to kiss her, but she pushed him away, and he stood up too quickly and swayed, or maybe Luna’s own head initiated the movement, an unsteady mixing of sky and balcony, city lights and sea, the horizon, the railing, tall Joe, his arms held up to right himself, and then he was gone, opening the glass doors, disappearing inside.

  The dawn was coming, and Luna wondered what it would look like from up here, the first smudge of pink over the ocean streaking into a fiery red and then the glorious sun. Her plants would thrive on this balcony, so much larger than her own. She and Joe would eat fresh tomatoes with basil and dill. Every day she would set her alarm so they could watch the sun rise.

  From inside came the sound of Joe’s footsteps on the kitchen tiles, glasses retrieved from a cabinet, the fridge door, and a scattershot of ice cubes, and then a loud whomp as something heavy and soft fell or dropped to the floor.

  Luna turned her head from the view. “Joe?” she called. “Joe? Are you okay?” There was no answer, no sound from the kitchen, so she stood and walked inside, her sight momentarily gone as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  In the kitchen Joe was lying on the floor, his arms by his sides, his legs open in a V as though he were midway through marking an angel in the snow. Briefly he opened his eyes and issued a tired half
smile, motioned for her to join him on the floor, and then began almost immediately to snore.

  Luna made her way back to the living room, where she found a pillow and a throw blanket on the couch, and returned, crouching to lift Joe’s head and slide the pillow underneath. She curled up beside him, her head on his chest, and spread the blanket over them both. Lulled by the rhythm of his breath, the firm pillow of his rib cage, she almost fell asleep, but the marble floor was cold and hard against her hip, and she remembered that she had to be at work early that afternoon to check stock and she still hadn’t slept since the night before.

  Luna lifted her head and kissed Joe on his open mouth. She thought about waking him to say good-bye, but no, he was tired, he should sleep, and so she stood up, straightened her skirt, and grabbed her purse. She rode the elevator down to Collins Avenue, and now, at last, she saw the first sun, the light rising with each passing moment, washing the street and buildings around her with pinks and yellows. Luna marveled at the beauty available each and every day with a simple dawn.

  Chapter 10

  Three days later Luna stood behind the bar spearing maraschino cherries through colorful little plastic swords. It was 4:00 p.m., still an hour before opening. She looked up as two men walked through the door. They wore plainclothes and showed no badges, but they looked like cops, even with the jeans and, on the shorter one, a sleeve tattoo.

  Luna’s manager, Rodrigo, was sitting at the table closest to the door, working on next week’s schedule. “How can I help you gentlemen?” Rodrigo asked.

  The tall man’s mouth moved, and she recognized the shape rather than the sound: Luna Hernandez. Rodrigo turned, and then they were all looking at her from across the expanse of set, empty tables, the knives and forks gleaming, ready for a feast.

  Rodrigo glanced nervously toward the black curtain that hid the doors to the kitchen. Michel, Dima, Pablo, Tikki, Jorge—were any of them legal? Luna was, though Rodrigo didn’t know that; he’d never asked for a Social Security card—the tips were her pay. But she’d never filed a tax return, and now she remembered with a jolt that a half-smoked joint was zippered inside the internal compartment of her handbag.