Moon Shadow: The Totally True Love Adventure Series (Volume 1)

by R. L. Fox

  “What about my clothes?” Liz asks animatedly, as she shuffles up the sidewalk after me.

  ***

  With David and Liz close behind, I walk into Madeline’s house on Sarasota Street in OB. I didn’t bother to knock. The inside is brightly lit, and the atmosphere is quiet.

  CJ appears near the end of the dusty hallway, dressed in jeans and a loose shirt, barefoot. Our eyes meet, and he approaches stealthily, at a carefully centered amble. He keeps a hand behind him, hiding something, as he draws up short and grins, shows his rotted teeth. “So you came back, punk,” he says with derision.

  I’m thinking I’ve come back not of my own will, but that I’ve been brought back by the same mysterious force that took me to Afghanistan, where I’d foolishly hoped for the imminent appearance of death. “Where’s Devon?” I ask complaisantly.

  CJ glances over his shoulder, and then says firmly, “She’s in my bed, where I’ve been fucking her. It’s not your concern.” He looks at Liz, his eyes wild and obsessed. “Who’s the sexy babe, punk? I know she’s more than you can handle. Maybe she wants to fuck CJ. I’m hung like a horse, baby. We can get high on some real fine shit.”

  I recall something I’d read in a Catalan novel of chivalry written a hundred years before Don Quixote, a declaration of sorts in vogue with knights of the middle ages: “Death will be equal among us, and we freely pardon any who may harm us, just as we beg the forgiveness of those we may harm.”

  CJ brings his hand around from behind his back. A sharp click produces a five-inch blade. “I think it’s time for you to leave, punk,” he says venomously. “Take your boyfriend with you. The babe can stay.” He spits on the floor and suddenly, inexplicably, doubles up with laughter and slaps his own thigh.

  As David and Liz back away, I stare at CJ without speaking. I stand my ground, my hands at my sides. I will take care of this myself. I notice, too, that Lori is standing at the end of the hallway, behind CJ, watching us from the kitchen.

  I might have considered using Mike’s gun, but that isn’t why I’ve been carrying it, and its cylinder is empty of cartridges. Besides, if I were to pull the trigger of a loaded pistol, I would only be hurting myself and Sarah. I know that if another accident occurs, I couldn’t allow myself to live on. I’ve promised myself that I will do no violence to human life, not to another’s, and not to my own, unless I’m given no choice.

  CJ straightens up and wields the slender knife threateningly, as if to frighten me into leaving. At the same time I move steadily towards him.

  Down the hallway Devon comes out of CJ’s bedroom, wrapped in a white sheet to cover her nakedness. Her hair is disheveled, her face pale with sunken eyes, the look of a speed freak after a six-day binge.

  “David,” she calls. “Ohhh, I miss you.”

  “She doesn’t know what she wants,” says CJ, waving the knife.

  As I get closer to him, I glower repugnantly at CJ, nodding my head to indicate that a moment of dreadful reckoning is at hand.

  CJ whistles mockingly, and then he laughs a two-note laugh of triumph, “Huh-ho, punk! Prepare for a grisly death!”

  I rush forward and kick CJ in the groin with a muddy moccasin. CJ doubles over, groaning and dropping the knife as his hands move to his crotch. I hit him hard across the face with a right hook, but CJ does not go down. Instead, he lunges wildly at me, barking and frothing at the mouth, and I feel a stinging sensation in my shoulder, as if I’ve been bitten by a rabid dog. CJ wraps his arms around my waist, and we plunge to the floor together, CJ on top.

  Liz screams, “Get off, you fuck, get off!”

  I manage to turn over, onto my stomach, trying to pull myself loose from CJ, while CJ tugs at my hair and beats my head with his fist. Liz goes for the knife and I sense a release of pressure as CJ lunges at her. With a glancing uppercut to Liz’s chin, CJ knocks her to the floor, and when she reaches again for the knife he kicks her hard in the ribs. I’m standing now as CJ picks up the knife and turns to face me, the wet light of murder in his wild eyes.

  A spark of rage crackles in my head. No one treats Liz that way! I’ve reached a weariness of spirit that pours adrenaline into my blood and makes me capable of quick, crippling blows. CJ fights like a human flail, every sweep of his knife capable of severing in two any man or boy who obstructs it. But I dance around him, darting in again and again to strike.

  Before long I send a right hook into his face and follow through with a left-handed roundhouse. With the light-footed dexterity of a cage fighter I pummel CJ with punch after lightning-quick punch to the nose and jaw, driving him back down the hallway until CJ staggers and sinks to the kitchen floor with me atop him. The knife is gone and forgotten, and in CJ’s face the anger has been replaced with fear.

  I’m resigned to what has to happen next. As Captain Jack lies on his back, his face bloodied with a split lip and broken nose, his left eye swollen shut, I pull out Mike’s gun and force CJ’s mouth open with the barrel. I shove the metal into CJ’s mouth until he gags, and then I cock the hammer. The weapon clicks in a businesslike manner, as CJ displays his teeth like a frightened pony.

  There is nothing more uplifting than righteous anger, and I’ve never felt so icy and unbreakable, not even at the pinnacle of my hatred of my father, and of myself, just after the accident with Mike, before battling Frank on Rattlesnake Mountain.

  “If you go near Devon again, I’ll kill you,” I say, staring ruthlessly at CJ. “Now, get out of here.”

  CJ nods; his expression is blank. I release him, and he stumbles up the hallway and exits the house by the front door.

  Lori, who is still standing in the kitchen, announces, with good-natured humor, “Oh dear ladies cherish the freedom for your deliverance is at hand.” She smiles. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this. That man is evil.”

  The hunched-up muscles of my arms and legs go limp with relief. I feel close to deliverance. It’s as if I’ve suddenly evolved into Nevada Smith, the hardened killer played by Steve McQueen in the classic film of the same name.

  I wish to attend to Devon, but David is already sitting on the bed with her. She’s nodding in agreement, as a child accepts punishment. I had brought Devon to this evil-scented vaporous pit and allowed CJ to swoop down on her like a vulture. The fact that I’d left her here with CJ now seems unfathomable. I know I’ll never be entirely free of the guilt and sorrow.

  Liz stands nearby, with a hand on her swollen jaw. Lori enters the bedroom and offers to loan Liz and Devon some of her clothes.

  “We’ll go to my apartment,” I say. Rest up, get something to eat, put things back in order.”

  David hands me the keys to his Mustang. “That was sick, dude, that was awesome!”

  27

  Sarah

  Saturday, early morning, August 9

  Coronado Island

  In pink pajamas and fluffy white slippers I walk quietly down the stairs on my way to the kitchen for a midnight snack.

  I am feeling awfully tired, since my mother and I spent more than three hours answering questions and filling out forms in the El Cajon Valley police station. But there’s no way I can sleep. The police are looking for Daniel, and I can’t stop thinking about him.

  I wish I hadn’t lost my diary in the fire. Now I have to use stupid notebook paper to record my thoughts, until tomorrow when my mother will buy me a new diary. I’m trying to recall all the stuff I’d written about Daniel, and then I can write it down again in the new book. Hopefully, I can remember everything. My mother and I are also going to drive to El Cajon Valley and put up the notices about Manny being lost. That is, if Daniel doesn’t show up first so we can do it together.

  It was hard not to tell the police that I killed Frank with the rock, but my mother said it was best for me to do as Daniel had suggested. I didn’t say much at all, just answered a lot of questions, mostly with a “yes” or a “no.” We had an attorney there to represent us. The police told my mother that the firemen had found tw
o bodies and a can of gasoline, empty, in the charred remains of The Gables. I guess that means Julie started the fire and killed herself. That’s sad.

  Surprisingly, I see a light on in the living room. My mother sits on the sofa, still dressed in her tennis outfit, doing some kind of paperwork. Paying bills, most likely.

  “Aren’t you going to bed?” I ask.

  My mother looks up and smiles warmly. “I’m not sleepy.”

  “Because of Frank?”

  My mother puts her head down and starts shuffling through the bills again. “I don’t think so, dear.”

  I shuffle over to the couch and sit next to my mother, resting my head on her shoulder. “Will you still talk to him? In your heart, I mean.”

  “I’ve stopped talking to him.”

  “Why? Didn’t you love him?”

  “Well darling, I don’t know if I loved him. I suppose I did, but as it turns out, he wasn’t such a nice man.”

  “Did Mike tell you about Frank and Julie?”

  My mother seems on the verge of crying again. “No, I learned that from Joan Williams, Julie’s mother,” she says. I went to Joan’s house to look for Mike and Julie when I was out looking for you. I was trying to find out where Dan’s apartment is located.”

  “Is that when you met up with Mike?”

  “Mike phoned while I was there, at Joan’s, and I met him in Pacific Beach. We went to Dan’s apartment and of course you were at The Gables. Mike was awfully upset when I told him about Frank and Julie.”

  As my mother begins to cry quietly, I say, “If I could go back into your womb again, I would. Then you wouldn’t feel lonely anymore, and we could start all over, except I’d miss Daniel a lot.”

  My mother puts an arm around me. “When you were inside, you and I ... we were the same. And then, when you were born ... you became a new person.”

  “Did that make you sad?”

  “At first ... because I didn’t know I might feel even closer to you ... like now.”

  I put my head in my mother’s lap. “I love it when we talk like this.”

  My mother strokes my hair. “So do I, dear.”

  “Mom, I just wish that ... well, that you didn’t have to feel lonely, for a man, I mean. That you didn’t have to think about losing Frank, about not being with him, the way I think about not being with Daniel. Why does it hurt so much?”

  “Sometimes love is the worst thing, darling. You start acting foolish. You don’t look out for yourself.” My mother sighs deeply. “I’m doing everything I can to forget Frank, and you should do the same with Dan Rosen.”

  I sit up. I’m about to tell my mother that I’m not in love with Daniel, but that would be a lie. “I love him, Mom, and he loves me. He’s the one. I feel it.” Then I add quickly, “And anyway, he’s probably ... my brother.” I don’t believe it, of course, but if it will make my mother feel better about my being in love with Daniel, romantically, that’s okay.

  “Half-brother, dear,” my mother says distractedly, as she begins to thumb through the papers again. “You do know that Dan took the gun with him, don’t you? And that he’s hiding from the police?”

  “But he helped me, Mom. Daniel is taking all of the blame because he loves me.”

  My mother looks up at me again. “I know he agreed to shoulder that burden, Sarah. I am thankful for that. But I’m afraid Dan Rosen has trouble written all over his face.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to help him?” I ask.

  “There’s nothing we can do, dear.”

  It upsets me that my mother thinks Daniel is a waste case. She doesn’t even know him like I do.

  28

  Daniel

  Saturday, early morning, August 9

  La Jolla

  A full moon hangs low over the waters of the ocean in a starry sky that seems almost touchable. I make my way, with Liz close behind, down the steep footpath leading to Shell Beach, near La Jolla Cove. When I’d told the others I was going to the beach to chill out, David and Devon had decided to remain at the apartment, with fresh coffee and doughnuts.

  I’d left Mike’s gun, reloaded, in the glove box of David’s car, with the diary. I’m reluctant to read my mother’s diary, to immerse myself in her private thoughts and feelings, for I know I might never emerge from the intimacies that lie hidden in the pages of that red book.

  The weed, in the trunk of David’s car, I will give to Liz, along with the six hundred dollars, before she returns home with Devon. She needs a stake, and she will eagerly take on the task of giving the pot to J-man.

  The tiny beach is covered in a virgin layer of creamy white sand, from the base of the shaley cliff to the tidewaters. A tall section of sandstone jutting out from the cliff creates a second, even more secluded, south-side beach accessible only at low tide from the main beach. The south-side beach cannot be viewed from the main beach.

  Liz, barefoot, is wearing the pink sundress that Lori had provided. I remove my moccasins. We sit in silence on the cool sand for several minutes. Sea foam, afloat on invisible water, glows in the moonlight and moves lifelike in front of us. No one else occupies the beach, as usual, due to the difficulty of access, particularly at night.

  The rhythmic movements of the surf, gently lapping at the sand, soothe my frayed nerves, and I lie back with fingers laced across my belly. The waves bring forth the murmur of silence itself.

  Liz draws close to me and stretches out, her soft feet resting against my ankles. In the pale light her polished nails look like large drops of blood. She gives a warm laugh, touching my ear with the tip of her nose. Her laugh seems to tremble and then fade in the breeze. I know I will miss trying to unravel the secrets of her charms.

  Perhaps, I think, it would be enough to enjoy something pleasurable with her tonight, to set things right before I move on. It would be, essentially, a fitting culmination of past and present. True, I’d once imagined myself in love with Liz, but that was only an evasion of unhappiness. I certainly never loved Liz as I love Sarah. Liz was a sort of goddess I had tried to shape to fit my needs. Any semblance of spiritual love of Liz was obliterated when I met Sarah. I love Sarah with all my heart, even if we are brother and sister. Nothing will alter the way in which I love Sarah—nothing.

  Liz kisses me sweetly on the back of my neck and I feel her quick, hot breath. I move away. I will not become a mouse so frightened it goes to the cat for love. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed, and yet I know that I cannot connect myself with real desire for Liz, because of my love for Sarah.

  Liz seems to be telling me with myopic eyes that she has wanted to see me, naked in the sand with her, for a long time. She lies back and beckons me. “One nice last hurrah,” she says, happily.

  She closes her eyes and utters something into the wind, and I notice that her face, the beautiful face I’ve seen so many times, is no longer beautiful. For me, everything is wrong; but I see it only now, in this moment, as I realize I have no connection any longer with Liz’s soul. I’ve truly had enough of her, am full of her; with a renewed sense of strength, I somehow feel made right, without her.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and I roll away from Liz. She stares fiercely at me. I close her off from my mind as if I’ve snapped a switch.

  I lie alone in the sand and dream of making love with Sarah, never my sister but my lover, and suddenly she appears in my mind’s eye. She’s inside the circle of my being, where our pasts eternally coalesce and our love emerges out of regions infinitely deep and mysterious. As I picture her lovely form I am moved to desire, wild with it.

  In that moment I see in Sarah’s face everything about her, the balance of strength and weakness in the contours of her chin, the honest eyes that confess nothing, the mouth that is eager but isn’t. Her smile tells me everything I need to know about her: that she’s kind and as much without darkness as any human being I will ever encounter. I imagine seeing Sarah lying next to me, nineteen now, perhaps, and we’re on our honeymoon in Canc�
�n, Mexico. I move over her and lie with her unselfishly, moving my hips in perfect harmony with hers, thrusting faster and deeper as I’m not just making love to Sarah, but mingling with her soul. I begin to discover that, as I had once been granted the means by which to see truth without entering Sarah, now I’ve been given a glimpse into that same truth by entering her, if only vicariously.

  I open my eyes and notice that Liz has left the beach, gone back to the car most likely. When we had arrived at the beach it was after midnight. It’s now probably two a.m. or so. I had certainly never intended to speak with Liz about Sarah, and it seems there is no need to speak with Liz at all. She understands there is no renewal of the relationship to consider; this is our final night together.

  I lie back in the sand, isolated, even from God perhaps. As sleep seizes me like a dark claw I give my last waking moments to Sarah, to my mother and to Mike and to sadness, and then I drift into a deep slumber, and a dream arises.

  ... the monstrous fiend, snorting and gasping incessantly, spewing forth deep harsh wheezing noises, focuses its eyes on my goddess. It holds an object in its enormous outstretched hand, and I can see that it’s a red book. Then the fiend stands over my goddess and raises the book high in the air, waving it ominously.

  My goddess begins to sob. “No, don’t let him hurt me again. Stop him! Stop him!”

  Her pleadings resound unmercifully in my head until I think I will go insane, driven there by the searing image of my suffering goddess, and I quickly raise myself up and seize the book from the fiend.

  The monstrosity roars so loudly my room rocks as if with the tremors of an earthquake. But before the fiend can reach me, I jump back and grab my Louisville slugger. I bring the metal club around in a long-armed swing that joins the bat’s sweet spot with the head of the monstrous fiend. The fiend crashes to the floor in a pool of blood. I stand over the monstrosity, club resting on my shoulder, just as Beowulf stood over Grendel.