The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  The Prince’s nightmare was coming true right before his eyes, and Majed had stupidly allowed himself to be brought right into the middle of it. He started for the door, knowing he would have to fight the urge to punch Cameron the Swan as they ran for the nearest fire exit.

  But he couldn’t do it this way. He could hear himself trying to explain that he had simply grabbed the Swan and run. There had to be an extra step to make up for the mistake of returning to the room in the first place.

  He tore open the closet and ripped a plastic laundry bag from one of the hangers. Once he had placed the bundle inside of the laundry bag, he pulled the drawstrings on the bag as if the contents were merely dirty socks. In the hallway, Cameron went rigid when he saw the look on Majed’s face. “What are you—”

  “Do not say a word until we are outside,” Majed said. Perhaps it was the reedy sound of Majed’s voice that frightened the words out of Cameron. For whatever reason, he went pale and silent in the same instant.

  When they reached the housekeeping room, Majed kicked the door open. Who cared who was inside? The police might be there any minute, responding to a call from the same man who had knocked Cameron down on the street and stolen his room key. The large storage room was empty and the laundry chute door was against the back wall. He pulled back the metal door and dropped the bag into the opening.

  In the hallway, he seized Cameron’s right arm and dragged him toward the elevators. The young man didn’t resist. They entered an elevator car crammed with an Australian family arguing about whether or not their bus tour of the New Territories that afternoon had been worth the time, but Majed could feel Cameron’s eyes burning a hole in the side of his face.

  After what felt like an unbearable eternity, the elevator released them into the lobby. Majed seized Cameron’s arm once again and they hurried through a crowd of people who were spilling out of the bar, trying to find their footing while they negotiated the rest of their plans for the evening.

  Cameron’s right arm was as tense as steel in Majed’s grip. Once they passed through the front doors of the hotel, Majed said, “Keep walking. There were drugs in your room. Someone planted them there.”

  “What?”

  There was no time to explain, no time to argue. If the plan was proceeding as Majed assumed it was, a call had been placed to the local authorities, and the purpose of that call was to find the drugs in Cameron’s room so he could be locked away and grilled about his relations with the Prince.

  “You said there were drugs in my room?” Cameron asked.

  When Majed didn’t answer, Cameron pulled his arm free of Majed’s grip. They were several paces from the entrance to the hotel. The Symphony of Lights was over and the crowds were dispersing, some of them filtering back into the Nordham, others hailing taxis along Salisbury Road. A ferryboat had just left the terminal. There was no sign of cops running for the hotel entrance, but perhaps they had decided to take the back way.

  “You’re saying someone planted drugs in my room?” Cameron asked. The insistence with which Cameron repeated the question indicated more than bafflement; he was searching for something in Majed’s responses.

  “Yes. You have some idea who?”

  Instead of speaking, Cameron turned his attention back to the façade of the hotel. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “Lucas …”

  The ground beneath their feet shook with enough force that Cameron reached out for Majed’s shoulder to steady himself. There was a loud crack, loud enough to rattle Majed’s ribs. There were startled cries from people all around them, accompanied by the song of car alarms from side streets. But when Majed scanned the open square and ferry terminal for any evidence of an explosion, he didn’t see any.

  Then he heard the screams. They were coming from inside the lobby of the hotel. A press of panicked people hit the door, knocking one of the doormen off his feet to the pavement. One of the women they had swerved to avoid as they were leaving the lobby just minutes before stumbled out with the crowd. A piece of her right shoulder was missing but she didn’t seem to notice. An Asian woman with thin streams of blood dividing her face held her hands out in front of her as if she were wearing oven mittens. Several of her fingers were missing and she was staring at her own mangled hands with the baffled and angry expression of a woman who has just had her purse snatched. Cameron started for her but Majed seized him by his shoulder and pulled him away from the entrance to the hotel.

  From where they stood, Majed could see through the glass façade. Half of the grand staircase in the lobby was missing, and the entire front desk had been crushed beneath a jumble of shredded railing and what had once been the silver piano resting in the curve of the staircase.

  Lucas. Who was Lucas?

  But before Majed could give voice to the question, there was a blinding flash of light. He thought someone had taken a picture. How did the reporters get there so fast? Reporters. The Prince’s worst fear, and they had surfaced during this terrible string of events. In his blindness, he reached out and grabbed Cameron by the shoulder. Was it Cameron? No way to make sure. Pull and run, he thought. Pull and run before the reporters—

  He felt a sudden blast of air as hot as the deserts of his childhood, but propelled by the energy of a great and ferocious spirit that had the voice of thunder. When his vision returned, he realized he had been blinking madly, as if water had been tossed in his face. One of the gray sofas from the lobby slammed into the façade above their heads; the glass spiderwebbed around its wooden legs. Then he heard a sound that reminded him of the only hailstorm he had been through. But he felt no rain

  Not hail, he realized. Glass. It’s about to rain— He was still trying to run when his feet came off the ground, and Cameron let out a fierce animal cry that belonged to neither known gender. As gravity was stolen from him, Majed wondered what his father was doing at that very moment and how he would respond to the news that his eldest son had been killed in Hong Kong.

  6

  Cathedral Beach

  Lucas was doing forty miles per hour on Sandpiper Avenue. On another morning, Megan might have noticed the old lady walking along the street gutter with her Maltese. But she didn’t find her words in time. The woman lost her footing as she jumped up onto the curb, her mouth a silent O. The hand she wasn’t holding the dog’s leash with pressed the flaps of her orange housecoat to her chest as if she thought the back draft from the Maserati might blow it off her body.

  Lilah’s house was a Cape Cod–style cottage behind a white picket fence laced with rosebushes. The front walk was an artfully curved series of flagstones in inch-high grass. Lucas used his key and they stepped into an empty foyer echoing with the voices of harried-sounding CNN reporters.

  In the living room, the flat-screen television above the gas fireplace broadcast images of fire and carnage to a mute audience of plush floral-print sofas. Megan had managed to avoid the TV all morning; she didn’t want to break the trend now.

  First there had been the phone call from Joe. He had flown to New York to visit friends after helping her move so he was awake when the story broke. She barely managed to say hello when he quietly asked her a question that sent her leaping out of bed. Which hotel does Cameron stay in when he’s in Hong Kong? It wasn’t just the question, but the absence of a perfunctory greeting before it. And the sound of televised sirens in the background.

  She had gone to her laptop first, because her laptop was small and she could turn it off or throw it out the window if it posed a threat to her sanity. The CNN headline screamed, HONG KONG HOTEL BLAST LEAVES CHAOS, FATALITIES ON WATER-FRONT. But the story below was woefully short on details. It had been posted only a half hour earlier.

  The Nordham Hotel? Was that where he stayed? She called him, left a stuttering message on his voice mail. Hey, it’s me. Kinda scary stuff going on. You all right? Not sure what to … Call me. Just call me, please.

  They found her mother in the kitchen. She had pulled on a sand-colored cable-knit sweate
r, not because it was cold outside, but because it was something she could put on quickly. There was a row of expensive scented candles burning along one granite counter. But they were all different fragrances and together they made Megan’s eyes water.

  For about a minute, Megan and Lucas stood in the doorway waiting for Lilah to acknowledge them. Instead, she rummaged through drawers and pulled out various pots and pans. Behind her, the morning sunlight had crested the backyard fence. The white benches beneath the pergola had turned orange, and the morning glory blossoms above were translucent. It was a postcard-perfect scene, save for the mussed hair and wild-eyed look of the woman in the kitchen, who was laying out crockery in a mad pattern that made sense only to her.

  “They’re all going to come,” Lilah said, as if her daughter and nephew had been chatting her up for the past hour. “I mean, they shouldn’t of course, but they’re all going to come anyway. Especially Sue Wimple. I mean, she just eats this kind of stuff up. Her kids call her Florence Nightingale, for Christ’s sake. She’s probably the one who’s going to call everyone else and get them …” She fell silent and studied the counters all around her as if she were looking for her car keys. “Megan, can you see if there’s any pasta in the pantry? If I remember correctly, there should probably be some penne in the—”

  “Mom. Why don’t we—”

  “He hasn’t called you guys, right?” Lilah asked, as if she were merely expecting Cameron to make an appearance at her impromptu meal.

  “No,” Lucas said.

  “All right,” she said, nodding at no one in particular. “What time is it?” Her eyes found the digital clock on the stove. “Pasta at seven in the morning. Jesus. What am I—”

  “Mom,” Megan said. “Can you just—”

  “Is it his hotel?” she asked. She had crossed her arms in front of her chest and she was tugging at her bottom lip. She wasn’t looking into Megan’s eyes but at some spot right above her left shoulder. At least she wasn’t throwing pots and pans around anymore.

  Shouldn’t she be relieved that her mother was about to drop the act? She wasn’t. Even though the display before her had an edge of mania to it, Megan was terrified of what came next.

  “Yes. It’s his hotel.”

  Her mother squinted as if someone had dragged a fork across a chalkboard. She sucked in a deep breath through her nostrils that lifted her upper back. She crossed to one of the windows that looked out over her immaculately kept garden.

  “How long ago?” she asked.

  Lucas touched Megan’s shoulder, a sign that he would take over from here. “The explosion happened three hours ago. It was nine thirty at night there, six thirty in the morning here.”

  “And he hasn’t called,” Lilah asked again, as if she didn’t trust her hearing.

  Lucas opened his mouth but nothing came out. It was an uncharacteristic lack of initiative on his part, and it only served to drive home the weight of what had befallen them. Megan’s vision blurred. She blinked back tears, hoping they were a rogue spurt.

  “The whole world knows what happened and he hasn’t called,” her mother said through clenched teeth. At first, Megan thought her mother’s anger was directed at Cameron for not calling. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. It was anger at the events of the morning, at their speed and their ferocity.

  No one said anything for several minutes, and in the ensuing silence, Megan prayed for the sound of a ringing phone to send them all skittering across the kitchen floor.

  But the silence was broken when Lilah cleared her throat. Her back to them, she said, “I had a moment … when he told me he was gay, I had a moment when I wondered if it would be better if he had never been …”

  Before her mother could complete this confession, she stumbled out the back door and into the yard. Now that they were alone, Lucas turned to her. For the first time she could study his face; he was pale and his eyes were bloodshot. She hadn’t seen him since he had left her on the street yesterday in front of her new office. It looked as if he had spent the night before drinking away the repercussions of whatever had called him back to work so suddenly. Or maybe, like her, he felt like someone had jerked him out of a deep sleep with a noose.

  “Who was it that you talked to?” he asked her.

  “Her name is Amy Smetherman. She worked the same flight. She was on the ferry crossing the harbor when it happened. She said she saw …” The sound of Amy’s sobs, bounced across oceans by unfeeling satellites, returned to her and stole her breath. Her conversation with Amy was the reason she had been sitting on the floor, knees tucked to her chest, rocking back and forth like a homeless person, when Lucas had come to pick her up. Now she tried to recall the cold details Amy had shared with her before they had both come apart.

  “She ran into him in the lobby just a few minutes before it happened. She said he was in a hurry to get up to his room and he didn’t say why and he didn’t say anything about where he was going.”

  “Maybe he’s got a boyfriend in Hong Kong and they’re both in bed together and they have no idea what’s happened.”

  “Then why isn’t he answering his phone, Lucas?”

  “Because he turned it off.”

  “Lucas, she’s right. The whole world knows.”

  Lucas turned away from her. In the yard, her mother stood with her knees slightly bent and her arms folded across her chest. Her back was to them but it was shaking with barely controlled sobs.

  “OK,” Lucas whispered as he approached the glass. “So we don’t tell her he can’t get through because she’ll figure out that’s bullshit. Obviously you could get through to Amy whatever her name is.”

  “Smetherman.”

  Amy Smetherman, Cameron’s closest female friend aside from her. Megan was ashamed of the pang of jealousy she had felt when they were first introduced at one of Cameron’s rowdy birthday dinners in West Hollywood a year ago. So she had acted contrary to her own childish emotions and made a fast friend of the woman. During her last visit to L.A., she and Megan had visited the Century City Mall and spent an hour in the food court, talking over a CliffsNotes version of their mutual issues with the opposite sex. With a candor and self-awareness that had been stolen from her on the phone earlier that morning, Amy had discussed her tendency to manufacture limited long-distance relationships.

  In a stuttering, sob-choked voice, she described to Megan how the ferry had stopped just a short distance away from the explosion, forcing the passengers to watch the orange flames roll through the lower floors of the Nordham Hotel after the initial blast, to listen to the screams coming from the mad dance of shadows along the waterfront. Rage had entered her voice when she described how the ferry had continued on its journey across the water instead of returning to its point of origin, as if she thought she alone could have rescued Cameron from the flames if they had just brought her back to the hotel.

  It became almost unbearable, but Megan couldn’t bring herself to sever her only connection to someone within proximity of Cameron, or the place Cameron had last been seen alive. Mercifully, the man with Amy pulled the phone from her hand and explained that they were at his apartment and they were safe and they needed to go now.

  The memory of the call had returned with such force Megan didn’t realize Lucas had left her alone in the kitchen. Outside, Lilah had wilted into his arms, but her face was turned away from the house, which made them look almost like reunited lovers, except for the tense set to Lucas’s jaw and the squint of his eyes as he stared into the distance.

  Go to her, Megan told herself. You should be comforting her. She was ashamed that Lucas had beaten her to the chase, but he hadn’t spent twenty minutes on the phone with a hysterical woman who had witnessed the blast that might have … She gripped the edge of the nearest counter to stop the fatal flow of thoughts. As she caught her breath, she suddenly became aware of the reporter’s voice from the living room.

  “Several reports now from witnesses seem to confirm that there were i
ndeed not one but two blasts, the first being a loud explosion that was heard by many outside of the hotel and the second being the blast that apparently did the most damage you can see here.”

  Her head bowed as if she were trying to avoid seeing a commercial for a gory horror film, Megan entered the living room and searched for the remote. “Early speculation of course was centered on a terrorist act, but some of that is being complicated by statements from emergency personnel on the scene claiming that the explosion originated in the hotel’s boiler room. Not a lot of decisive answers so early after this terrible, terrible incident. As we discussed earlier, Hong Kong is not exactly tops on the list of potential terrorist targets, but it is certainly a center of global finance and a city of Western influences. The British handed over possession of the territory in 1997 following a—”

  She found the remote and killed the volume, which allowed her to hear the doorbell. Her mother was right. Sue Wimple led the pack through the front door, a Gelson’s grocery bag in one arm. She managed to lean in and kiss Megan on the cheek but she was looking past her to see who else was in the house. She wore designer running sweats and her long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. In the living room, her head pivoted on her neck as she searched for Lilah. Did Sue think Lilah was hiding behind one of the curtains?

  More women followed, women Megan vaguely recognized from the party but couldn’t name. Some had managed to dress as if for church, but the rest looked like Sue Wimple and her mother; they had thrown on whatever their hands first touched when they threw open their closets. When Lucas entered the living room, they all flocked to him as if he were an emergency room doctor with news. Her mother wasn’t in the kitchen.

  The second-floor hallway had soft cotton-colored carpeting. She avoided looking at the framed pictures on the wall; they included shots from her two graduations and her unremarkable performances in high school productions of Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music. But she had a sudden keen awareness of where all the photographs of Cameron were hung, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at them just yet. Outside the door to the half bath was a shot of Cameron standing in the aisle of an empty 737 just prior to boarding for the first flight he had ever worked.