The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  How tactful of him not to tease me, Aabid thought. But who is he reserved for, if not for me?

  The wheelhouse and his stateroom were separated by the landing for the central staircase, which he took all the way down to the lower deck. Cameron had been put up in one of the guest suites, just down the hall from the crew bunks and in front of the engine room; his father had installed special soundproofing in the guest-bedroom walls to ensure that guests would not be disturbed by their mechanical neighbors.

  Aabid stepped inside Cameron’s room and drew the door shut behind him. The porthole was just above water level and covered by a translucent Roman shade. The bed was on a right angle with the door to make the most use of the tiny space. And there, sitting on the floor next to the foot of the bed, was Cameron’s flight bag, carry-on size, scuffed and tattered by a thousand long-distance journeys. Even the crew tag for Peninsula Airlines looked as if it had been subjected to several sandstorms.

  What was he looking for? Evidence of a lover? A husband? A wife? Is that what he expected to find among Cameron’s pairs of white underwear, which he handled carefully and precisely, as if they were expensive silk scarves? Pills, perhaps? Would he discover medicine for some kind of terrible infection Cameron was afraid of giving him?

  At first, he missed the zipper for the inner pocket; it was buried under the clothes and he would have to take all of them out to open it, but when he pressed his hands down against the bottom of the suitcase, he felt something inside. Papers of some kind. And with papers came information. Aabid unpacked the suitcase, unzipped the inside compartment, and removed a brown letter-sized envelope that had no label.

  There were two pictures inside. They were large, but the edges were tattered and they were slightly yellowed with age. The date was printed at the bottom right corner of both images. 5–12–92. He couldn’t see the woman’s face in either one, but she had a long mane of curly blond hair. The man she was entwined with appeared to be quite younger than she. He had straw-colored hair and a sharp, upturned nose that revealed his nostrils. They were on the back porch of what looked like a small American house, and the light above the back door bathed them in its glow. In the first picture, the man’s mouth was against the woman’s neck, and his hand cupped her breast underneath her shirt. In the second picture, the man was pressed up against the wall of the house, his head thrown back, his mouth open wide, as the woman pleasured him on her knees.

  Who were these people? And why did Cameron carry photographic evidence of their long-ago coupling in his suitcase? There were footsteps outside. But they headed in the direction of the crew bunks. He put the suitcase back exactly the way it was, then he hurried from the suite.

  When Cameron asked if they could visit Koh Paynee, Majed offered to take them. It was too shallow around the island for the yacht, so the three of them loaded into the Zodiac for a short journey that took them on a winding path through the massive rock formations they had only seen from a distance. Most of them were carpeted with foliage, which parted now and then to reveal faces of chipped limestone. Grottoes had been carved through some of their bases by the perpetual tides, and tour groups in canoes nosed through the stalagmite-adorned openings, their voices echoing as they shouted instructions to their companions in a variety of languages.

  Soon they were joined on the water by groaning long-tail boats loaded with more tourists. They were all headed in the same direction, toward an island of stilted houses hugging the base of a massive, fin-shaped tower of limestone. Majed followed the long tails to the row of wooden docks that ran along one side of the island, and within minutes, Cameron had leapt from the Zodiac and was giving Aabid a hand up onto the dock. Majed did not ask them them when they would return.

  When they were hit by the twin stench of brine and sewage, both men raised their hands to their noses, but this didn’t stop them from wandering past the gift stands, with their piles of cheap T-shirts and their seashell curtains, and deeper into the warren of tin-roofed shacks, where barefoot children ran in between the other wandering tourists and a little girl bravely attempted to ride her tricycle through the fray.

  Out of nowhere it seemed, a sea gypsy appeared and placed a capuchin monkey in Aabid’s arms. Cameron erupted with laughter as the monkey twined its fingers in Aabid’s hair.

  Finally, when it seemed Aabid could take no more, Cameron pulled the monkey off him and returned it to its owner, slipping her fifty baht in the process. Grateful, the woman shuffled off in search of her next victim.

  “It was a filthy animal,” Aabid said.

  “We’re all animals. Some of us are just cleaner than others.”

  “Then perhaps I shall buy it for you and you can return home and tell everyone your new Arab friend bought you a beautiful, filthy monkey.”

  Cameron’s laugh sounded genuine and relaxed. They moved down an alleyway past more shacks with glassless windows where entire families sat in front of television sets surrounded by piles of laundry. Signs denoting a tsunami evacuation route were posted along their walk, a strangely orderly addition to the largely chaotic ramble of plywood walls, tin roofs, and sprays of barnacle.

  “If you do not want to fly with your monkey, I can get you your own plane.”

  “You don’t have do that, Aabid. Or anything like it, OK?”

  “I know I do not have to. It would be my pleasure. Because you are my friend.”

  “How about we just kill the monkey idea altogether and call it a day?”

  “You Americans are all the same.”

  “How’s that, Little Prince?”

  “Killing monkeys. Calling it a day. These kinds of things.”

  “Right. That’s my name. Good ol’ Cameron Monkey Killer.”

  “Well, I am not a prince.”

  “Right. You just dress like one.”

  Suddenly they were standing in open sunlight on a concrete playground that belonged to some sort of school. Inside one of the empty classrooms, beneath a painted sign that read WELCOME TO THE KOH PAYNEE VISITOR CENTER, several rows of shelves were lined with jars containing small squid and fish and on a nearby display table sat the shell of a small sea turtle and several crabs inside plastic cases. Cameron took his time studying each one.

  “What is your last name?” Aabid asked him, wondering why this seemed like an intimate question.

  “Reynolds,” he answered.

  “And you are the only one?”

  This got his attention. “The only what?”

  “The only child in your family.”

  “God, no. If I had been the only one, I might have gone insane.”

  “So you have brothers?”

  “No, a sister,” Cameron answered. He seemed offended that Aabid had not considered this possibility.

  “You are close to her?”

  “More than that,” he said. “She’s, like, a part of me.”

  “Why?” Aabid asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why is she a part of you?”

  Cameron thought about this for a while, long enough for the shadows of several clouds to cross the blue-painted concrete. “Some people …” he started, then stopped. He bowed his head and cleared his throat. The subject of his sister had stolen his confidence from him. But Aabid found this version of Cameron, this halting, somewhat anxious version, to be just as desirable as the magazine version, if not more so.

  “Some people,” he finally said, “always make the easy choice. Megan never does.”

  When he felt Aabid’s eyes on him, he met his gaze and said, “She’s going through a hard time right now. I’m worried about her. But she’ll come out OK.”

  “You are like her,” Aabid said. “You do not make easy choices.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You would not take my money.”

  Cameron smiled. Then the high, warbling voice of a muezzin cut the stillness. An adhan in this place? These people, these sea gypsies, were Muslim? He backed up into the courtyard and sure en
ough, the small minarets of a tiny mosque came into view, poking above the sea of peaked roofs and tangles of electrical lines. Against his will, his hand had gone to his chest. Had his heart stopped? He could not feel it beating, and his breath felt thin and reedy, as if he were trying to inhale through a straw.

  “Are you all right?” Cameron asked. The man’s face was a mask of concern, but he didn’t take a step toward him, as if he thought Aabid had turned to ash that would crumble under his touch. The transformation that had taken place inside Aabid felt almost as extreme as this crazed image. To hear this familiar cry with the memories of last night’s spectacle so fresh in his mind was dizzying. It was as if he had been spotted by the mutawwa’, but with ample room to evade them.

  “It is a call to prayer,” Aabid said.

  “I know what it is,” Cameron said. “Well … you’re not going to pray, are you?”

  The look of disgust on Cameron’s face was undeniable.

  “For you this is a problem.”

  “No, I just … So you consider yourself a devout Muslim, I guess.”

  “Lecture me on third genders, if you will. Do not speak of my beliefs.”

  “Is that what they are? Beliefs?”

  “What else would they be?”

  “Fine, then. But just be real damn sure you believe them, Aabid. Don’t just pretend to so you can get your hands on Daddy’s money. Because by the time you realize how big a price you’ve paid, you might be too far into it to ever get out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. It means you shouldn’t pretend to—”

  “I am not pretending!” he shouted. He was immediately satisfied by the resonance of his response; it was as if the shock of hearing the adhan had rolled back a boulder covering some well that dove deep into his soul. “You are pretending to know things of Islam that you do not.”

  “I’m not talking about Islam, for Christ’s sake. I’m talking about you.”

  “No, you are talking to someone who is not here! You have to be because you do not know me well enough to say these things to me. Or perhaps it is yourself you are speaking to. Perhaps there is some rich American man who got to you before I did and that is why you can refuse my money so easily.”

  For a few seconds, he thought Cameron might strike him. His cheeks were aflame, and anger had tensed his lower lip so tightly he couldn’t seem to close his mouth. But then he turned away from Aabid and started walking back the way they had come, as if they had done no more than conclude a conversation on where to eat lunch.

  Aabid followed him from a distance that felt safe. He was sure Cameron’s sudden bad temper had something to do with the photographs he was keeping in his suitcase. How much of him was there that did not have to do with this secret? Was it to blame for his anger the night before as well?

  They reached the gift stands again, passing through a sea of empty wooden tables belonging to the closed seafood restaurant. Cameron started down the long wooden staircase that led to the docks below. But halfway down the steps, Cameron came to an abrupt halt and sat down on the steps with a heavy thud, leaving Aabid standing awkwardly several steps behind him.

  Was he crying? Is that why Cameron had hunched forward over his bent knees and placed his hands over his mouth? Or was he so filled with rage that he was trying to contain it with the force of a single posture?

  “You have not read the Koran,” Aabid finally said. “If you had, you would know that there are no rules against two men lying together in a way that is sexual.” Cameron didn’t respond. “When you have read the Koran, then you may come to me and lecture me on—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Aabid was stunned silent. Cameron’s voice sounded calm and controlled. He could hear no trace of tears in it.

  “I had no right to speak to you that way,” Cameron said. Finally, he rose to his feet, but instead of turning to Aabid, he continued down the stairs, to where the floating dock rose and fell on the swells from the departing long-tail boats.

  Aabid followed him to the end of the dock, until they were both standing at the very tip. “You’re right,” Cameron said. “I was talking to someone who wasn’t here.”

  “Who?”

  “My sister.”

  Aabid waited for further explanation, but Cameron didn’t offer one. “Maybe it would be helpful for you to say to me what you want to say to her.”

  “Helpful,” Cameron said, but there was hesitancy in his voice and he was looking down at the water as if it were drab carpet in a drab room.

  “Yes.”

  “OK. So should I pretend you’re her?”

  “Whatever will work.”

  “In America, we’d call this a therapeutic exercise.”

  “Fine.”

  Cameron laughed and shook his head, then he turned to face Aabid, cleared his throat, and held the man by both shoulders. “Megan, please, whatever happens with your job, don’t move back to Cathedral Beach and don’t take anything from Lucas. ’Cause the thing is, Lucas is the one who ruined our parents’ marriage. Lucas is the reason our father walked out on us. And if you don’t believe me, I’ve got the pictures to prove it.” Then, like something out of some old American movie about gangsters, Cameron tapped a fist against Aabid’s cheek and returned his attention to the parade of boats.

  “How was that?” Cameron asked.

  “Would she know who Lucas is?”

  “She sure fucking would,” Cameron whispered. “He’s our cousin. His father basically took care of us after our dad walked out, and then when his father died he took over the job. But a few months ago I was taking care of my mom after she had some surgery done and she had this crazy drug reaction. Anyway … she was babbling and at first, I thought she was hallucinating. But she kept saying things about Lucas. About things they had done together. About how she would have to make them right.

  “When she came out of it, she didn’t remember anything she had said. Turns out she’d been completely out of her head. And for a few weeks, I just … dismissed it. Like maybe it was some kind of fever dream or … I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. I didn’t want to believe it. That’s the thing. I tried to put it away and it wasn’t like I could just ask her about it. Because if it was the truth, what was to stop her from lying again?”

  “And the pictures …” Aabid said. Startled, Cameron looked at him. “You said you had found pictures,” Aabid added quickly, hoping the speed of his response did not betray his trespass.

  “I called my father,” Cameron said.

  “And he told you the truth?”

  “God, no. I didn’t even ask him. But I’d gone for so many years thinking he had just walked out on us ’cause he was chickenshit. But now … now, I thought, maybe …”

  “What? What did you think?”

  “That he had a reason,” Cameron said quietly. Now the tears came, but they were quiet and controlled, and when Cameron spoke again, his voice was unaffected by them. “That someone … that two people had given him a reason. See, the thing is, my dad counted on our uncle Neal, on Lucas’s father, to do things for us that he could never do. Neal promised the day Megan was born that he would send all of us to the best schools we could get into. If my dad came forward and told Neal that his own son, his precious golden boy, had slept with his wife … Well, that would have been it. It would have been over.”

  After what felt like a respectful amount of time, Aabid said, “Your father told you all this?”

  “He doesn’t need to. I found the pictures.”

  “How?”

  “Dad and I started hanging out, going to dinner. That kind of thing. Then I lied and I told him my roommate had gotten laid off and moved out on me. That way I could move in with him and start looking through his house for … anything, any proof of what had happened. He would go off to work all day and I would pretend to be sleeping off jet lag but really I was going through everything. All of his papers. Old photographs. Anything I coul
d get my hands on.

  “I went for a couple weeks like that before I found anything, and I was about to give up, until he mentioned some storage facility he had in Culver City. I asked him if I could move some things in there. He gave me a key, and that’s where I found them.”

  “The photographs,” Aabid said.

  Cameron nodded.

  “And you cannot tell her this?”

  “She’s broke, Aabid. She’s probably going to be fired. And she deserves a second chance, but I don’t know who else can give it to her besides Lucas. And if I tell her what he did …”

  “And so it is only I who gets the truth from you,” Aabid said. “And not your sister. Who is a part of you.”

  Aabid steeled himself for another blast of the man’s anger. But Cameron shook his head, frowned, and stared down at the water. He wiped his tears with the back of his hands and sucked in a deep, wet breath through his nostrils.

  “I’ll tell her,” he said. “I have to. It won’t be perfect. But I’ll find a way.”

  21

  South China Sea

  All Megan could hear was a dull roar. Why had Aabid stopped his story? Was it because she had bent forward over her knees and placed her forehead in her palms? Was it because her breaths were barely making it past her throat, and she sounded like an asthmatic child?

  I made a mistake. She heard these words again and again, only, in her mind, Lucas was sputtering them at the very moment the splintered bone and bloodied skin tore away from the right side of his face. I made a mistake. Only Cameron can tell me if I was wrong. How many times had he said this to her during the course of their last moments together? She assumed he was speaking of sin and atonement. She hadn’t stopped for a minute to consider that her cousin had acted on the wrong information.

  Tell her everything or I will. I have proof.

  Cameron had kept his promise to his new friend. He had found a way to tell his sister what he had discovered about their family. Or he had found a way to begin. But Lucas had made a mistake, and here they were. Because of a phone call. Not a secret plot. Not a strange series of events that had turned her fun-loving, globe-trotting brother into some ridiculous covert operative. A goddamn phone call.