Loonglow

by Helen Eisenbach

  After the bulk of the day had slipped by, Louey hauled herself out of bed and went to make some tea. On a whim, she added a good helping of the rum she kept for guests. The sting was comforting. A stray memory of the first time she’d ever seen Mia wafted into her head, and she choked on a scalding gulp of her drink. A fit of coughing dissolved into sudden tears.

  Pathetic: sobbing into her tea. Who was responsible for this behavior? No one she knew. Still, she had an idea when it would stop: when Mia called to tell her that seeing Louey had made her realize she’d been insane to toss aside the best thing life had thrown her way. No doubt she would put Louey on retainer just to be her girlfriend, and Louey could quit her job for good. Louey could see it now: Mia would put on a tiny maid’s costume and clean Louey’s house every week. She’d beg to do Louey’s taxes. Who was Louey to say no?

  Pouring another shot, she put on a Billie Holiday album. Billie was such a cheery entertainer, she never failed to provoke hilarity. Perhaps I should take control of my life, she mentioned to Billie. She could always take up smoking, possibly, or learn a few tricks with a syringe. Meanwhile, she had plenty of days and nights to wax nostalgic about Mia before she died of terminal masochism.

  Lunch Wednesday (after a plethora of phoning) was with Thornton Gaddes, an agent whose association with every celebrity with teeth bored him—“unutterably,” he explained (at some length). He was supposed to be intelligent, but Louey couldn’t bring herself to sympathize about his latest stellar obligations, and tried to steer the conversation to business projects. This tactic met with lukewarm success.

  The check came to $89.82 at the restaurant of Thornton’s choice. Louey’s veal had been tasteless, but then she shouldn’t have expected otherwise for a paltry $30, she supposed. Along with a mild case of indigestion, she’d acquired the knowledge that Thornton had four authors she wanted to work with, though he wouldn’t send her two of them and Random House was trying to come up with a few ideas for the other two. Louey started to suggest topics, then realized Random House didn’t need any more bestsellers and held her tongue. She shouldn’t have drunk alcohol at lunch, she berated herself; the afternoon was going to be endless and unproductive. Usually she guzzled Virgin Marys, but with Thornton’s pancake makeup gleaming across the table at her, she’d needed fortification.

  By four-thirty, she’d been complained to by eighty percent of her authors and had given out some uncharacteristically stern edicts along with her customary reassurances. Her willpower was slipping; lately she found herself increasingly unable to reassure her authors, and she’d even come close to hanging up on one of them when he’d interrupted a call from London for the third time.

  “I don’t have to live like this,” she told herself when the catalogue copy for the spring list came around written in Serbo-Croatian. Mia was rich; if Louey had been good, she could have been a kept woman by this time, living off the fat of the D’Allesandro money, happy and overfed. “I don’t want to work any more,” she wailed, buzzing Kevin.

  His cheerful voice over the intercom nearly brought tears to her eyes. “Yes, Louey? Your every whim?”

  “I want to be blissfully happy,” she moaned.

  He paused. “Leave New York,” he said at last. “You can’t get there from here.”

  After a long swim at the Y, Louey walked home, stopping to eye some movies in the window of her favorite video store. She had at least six manuscripts to get through before Friday, but there was no arguing with either The Philadelphia Story or Risky Business. At least this way she wouldn’t have time to think about Mia.

  Katharine Hepburn had nothing on Mia: not with Mia’s smoky-lashed eyes and that full French mouth. Katharine Hepburn barely had breasts, not like Mia’s. Louey’s heart pounded at the memory of the first time she had seen Mia, at the ripe old age of fifteen. She felt barely more than seven now. It was as if not a single day of the past two years had ever taken place.

  Fuck you, she thought as Tom Cruise faced Rebecca De Mornay in an empty train. Fuck you, Mia. She turned off the VCR and took a manuscript with her to bed. Half the pages were single-spaced and the typeface alternated, sometimes every other paragraph. God, Louey groaned. When was she going to stop expecting Mia to walk through the door?

  Louey Mercer had two good qualities she drew upon whenever possible: an inability to tolerate injustice and an ability to see the humor in almost every situation. When she started at the bottom rung of a publishing house nearly everyone had. warned her against, the first quality caused her considerable difficulty, but the second proved invaluable. A fast, tireless worker, she couldn’t help feeling that the people around her had stumbled into such an intensely foolish industry through no fault of their own, just as she had. Her tendency to regard everyone from the company president to the mailroom boy as her accomplices in protracted lunacy soon won her the amiable regard of a sizable percentage of the office.

  Louey’s mother had difficulty understanding why her daughter had chosen to submerge her talents in a job which promised few rewards, monetary or otherwise, but when her rise as an instrument of others’ fame came with precipitous speed, she ceased her protests and congratulated Louey on her decided success. When Louey took a new job as senior editor, her mother sent flowers. (The card read “With love from Keith and Mom,” and though Meredith protested that the florist had misread her scrawled “With love and kisses,” Louey persisted in teasing her mother about her new illicit liaison with the pre-teen who mowed the family lawn.)

  Publishing proved to be surprisingly similar to college life: filled with intelligent, articulate people concerned with books and ideas. Yet while in college Louey the student had been center stage, waiting for the day adulthood granted her complete autonomy, publishing booted her to the wings, giving her a never-ending obligation to the authors whose work she championed.

  In several years’ time she had acquired both a reputation for outspoken, attentive loyalty to writers and a growing impatience for the very job she had once considered so vital. She still saw books as sacred creations (and herself fortunate to be able to develop and occasionally hone unpolished gems when the shaky temperaments of both her charges and her employers permitted). Yet the business was growing less concerned with writers and more interested in those products most easily reproduced on videocassettes or transferred to T-shirts. And as authors’ expectations of creative freedom and support grew sadly remote from practical reality, Louey’s own patience began to thin radically.

  Her personal life provided little relief from her increasingly dissatisfying professional one. Since her one love affair had crumbled, she hadn’t had the stomach to seek another—not that she would have had the remotest notion of how to go about it. For years, Mia had been such a constant in her life that after the end Louey had wandered around in a daze, scarcely able to do anything but work and cry. In the years that followed, tears came less often, but Mia’s absence nevertheless continued to inform her days and nights. It was a mystery to her how anyone survived this. She didn’t think it possible to live year in, year out so constantly aware that her life was never again going to be filled with a presence as essential as air; surely, if there were any mercy in the world, one would swiftly perish from emotional starvation.

  Yet one day Louey discovered that she was once again elated to walk the streets of the city, thrilled to go to a concert, see a movie, eat good food. Perhaps life would go on; could it really be possible not to be forever paralyzed by a sense of inexplicable failure? In a burst of energy she cut off all her hair; the face that greeted her in subway and sidewalk café windows inspired her to risk more dramatic changes. She could live happily, she decided, with new sensitivity to life’s complex truths.

  She had thought she was truly cured at last. Her pleasure had felt genuine, not merely some brief phase she had been passing through. Her friends even remarked with glee, “You see, you can survive a broken heart.” Little did she know how one chance meeting on the subway would affec
t her, sending her into a despondency so severe it rivaled the one that had followed the breakup. Louey saw the period of alleged recovery more clearly now: it had simply refueled her for more intense and prolonged suffering. How could she ever have imagined otherwise?

  Well, she had been stripped of foolish expectations early in life, it seemed, before any serious optimism had a chance to set in and do lasting damage. As she looked out her office window to see cabs barrel into unsuspecting fellow travelers, she supposed she should consider herself lucky.

  “Never!”

  “Come on, you have to.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “You tiny, helpless creature.” Mia shook her head. “I never should have brought you here.”

  “All right, I’ll try it.”

  “You don’t have to, you know.”

  “Oh?” Louey laughed. “You expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “Well …” Mia shrugged. “Far be it from me to make you do anything you secretly don’t crave.”

  “That’s rich.” Louey motioned to the waiter. They were in a small bar close to Louey’s school, furnished in what Mia called “shameless decor.” “It’s getting late, though.”

  “These guys probably would let us stay the night.”

  “Four shots of tequila, please,” Louey told the waiter.

  “For each of us,” Mia added.

  “Mia!” Louey hissed; the waiter took their order as if there were nothing odd in their request. “Let’s not be too cautious.”

  “A dirty word. What’s wrong with going to extremes?”

  “Well …” She had to admit everything she’d done to excess with Mia had turned out wonderfully. “Can we go dancing afterwards?”

  “First we’ll see if you can walk.”

  “Big words, coming from a practiced lush. You won’t be in any shape, yourself. It’ll just be harder for the rest of us to tell the difference.”

  “You’re in sore need of some real-life knockout escapades, sweetcakes.”

  “‘Sweetcakes’?” Louey raised an eyebrow. “Bitch goddess is more like it.”

  “Talking tough, eh?” said Mia. “We’ll see just how the little lady talks four drinks from now.”

  Their shots arrived and they dispatched them, giggling helplessly, though after two it seemed to Louey they were slowing down considerably. Some time passed before they found themselves aboard a bus back to their homes.

  “He knows you’re jailbait,” Mia whispered as a paunchy gentleman in polyester eyed them disapprovingly; Louey let out a snort. “Mm,” said Mia in her ear. “What a hunk. Think you could land him?”

  Louey stifled another burst of laughter. “Challenging, but worth it.”

  “Never know,” Mia murmured. “Some of these guys just pretend to be hard to get.” She leaned her head on Louey’s shoulder.

  Louey smiled. “Is that what college boys are like?”

  Mia rarely went into detail about her college life, no matter how much Louey pressed. “Sure, every woman’s after him,” Mia went on obliquely, “but how many can see how deeply sensitive he is?”

  “He’s not what college boys are like,” Louey gave up. Though they were two scant years apart, sometimes it seemed more like a hundred.

  “See what I mean?” Mia sighed. “Just thirteen and you know so much already.”

  Between Mia’s school terms they’d drive out to the beach; Mia lived for racing into the waves, pulling Louey with her. She didn’t seem to care how far they went; the trick was to lose all vestiges of control, to scream as loud as possible while crashing water overtook you, drenching you completely.

  “I guess this is your version of excitement,” Louey muttered.

  “Cheaper than robbing a bank.” Mia closed her mouth in time to avoid swallowing several gallons of salt water. “More spiritual—and so organic, don’t you think?”

  “A natural woman.” Louey tickled her, then fled before Mia had a chance at retribution.

  Often they lay baking for what seemed like hours, pale skin tightening in the sun, though Mia never seemed to bum, just glow like shades of coffee with varying amounts of cream. Louey put lotion on her shoulders. The skin on Mia’s back was soft as velvet, hot; it made Louey feel odd to sweep her hands across it, perfect body quiet underneath her fingers. All around them the beach revealed human imperfection; what must it be like to be Mia, polished, perfect flesh and muscle? Mia would grow silent, drowsy, sometimes fall asleep under her hands; then Louey would nod off and wake to trickling water on her face or stomach as Mia towered over her, emerging from the water. “Shiftless as the day is long,” said Mia, shaking long, wet hair all over her.

  “I was sleeping.”

  “Tell me why it was I took you from the gutter?” Mia sighed. “I was hoping to make my first million off you by the time you reached sixteen. Why do I make such tenderhearted, dumb investments?”

  “I’ve yielded plenty.” Louey covered her eyes. Mia knelt and brushed a wet palm over her stomach, making Louey jump. “You’ve already saved in entertainment expenses, not to mention upping your class rating.”

  “A lot you know,” Mia grumbled, reaching for more lotion, “high-school trollop. In the eyes of everyone who matters, you have brought me only shame and degradation.”

  “There, you see?” said Louey, smiling. “Exactly what you wanted.”

  Louey slept fitfully, the memories pouring over her like brandy on a willing tongue, lye on an open wound. They would walk down the street, the city glowing so brightly in the afternoon sun it was like being let in on a wondrous secret. Mia would slip a hand into hers, lighting her from within. Louey would start some silly complicated story, only to glance over and find Mia helplessly stifling laughter. “I’m trying to tell you,” she’d say, exasperated, but Mia’s shoulders would be shaking and soon it would be hopeless; they’d be laughing so hard they couldn’t stop—and at what?

  Some nights she dreamt so vividly of Mia that for a second, just before she woke, she was filled with such happiness she thought she might laugh out loud. Then the truth would sink in, agonizing.

  Weekends in the park, people would smile at them, and Louey would grin back, elated. How could people she would never know, how could strangers smiling at her, make her so happy? It was as if she were part of some magical universe, filled with souls who dared to show their feelings no matter what the consequences. And at her side was Mia, her bracing accomplice: able to grasp life by the shoulders with both hands, shock delight out of strangers, shake joy from the simplest pleasures.

  And the world was filled with other women just like them. Louey remembered when she’d first discovered it: when the most unlikely candidates smiled at them in recognition and delight, Louey nearly stared back in amazement. How lucky she was to be shown this secret, to find people she was bound to everywhere she turned.

  I am lucky, Louey thought. By the time sleep finally overtook her, she had nearly managed to remember why that was.

  Clay rose at nine and put on the suit his latest stepmother had given him as a reward for creating what he suspected was the longest book the world had ever known. In two hours he was going to walk down to the office of the latest publisher his father had cleared of libel and plop 512 manuscript pages on the desk of some thin-lipped editor who chain-smoked and had plenty of untouched gray in his long, stringy hair. His father seemed to feel his friendship with the company’s upper management guaranteed acceptance of Clay’s work, but Clay suspected only trouble would result from this connection. No editor worth his stripes could bear to have his projects pushed on him by company counsel, that seemed clear.

  “Finish the damn thing yet?” He should never have told his uncle he’d started writing; that had been his first mistake. Ever since beginning the project, he’d been hounded weekly by a guardian clearly overwhelmed to see Clay focusing on something concrete. Clay had known better than to reveal his book’s subject to his uncle, but obviously he’d been less clear-
sighted in taking Wynn’s word that he wouldn’t mention the project to Clay’s father.

  “What are you waiting for, my old age, boy?” No sooner had Clay sat with the fat pile of manuscript pages in front of him, rifling through it with some bewilderment that all of this had come from him, written and rewritten in the space of two years, than the phone rang and his father’s aggressively complacent voice barged into his ear. Instantly Clay knew Wynn had betrayed him. A moment later he learned that his father had fulfilled his worst fears and arranged for an appointment with a midtown publisher the very next week.

  “So it’s all set, then,” said his father.

  Clay had sat for seven days with the completed manuscript in front of him, unable to form any concrete plans as to his next move. “Wynn,” he’d nearly crowed the night his uncle called, “I finished it!” For days he had to stop himself from going back and tampering with what he’d written; the thought that it was actually done was unfathomable, somehow terrifying. Nor had a life of idleness prepared him for the richness and intensity that a week of freedom from work showed him. Now, after two year of inexplicable literary endeavor, he discovered that leisure was no burden but a precious gift, more wonderful than he’d had any reason to expect. That he could walk onto the street in the middle of the afternoon, letting the sun beat down on his face without a single obligation to meet, filled him with an elation that made him nearly dizzy. No wonder people had envied his liberty—he had scarcely understood why before his project had taken it from him.

  “Maybe this should be my next topic,” he considered: the value of losing one’s freedom in order to appreciate its true worth. He could write a play in which children were sent to camp only to find themselves in a nightmare of deprivation. Forced to use their own resources to escape imprisonment, they could ultimately discover that their parents had created the camp as a means to enrich their appreciation of life’s most precious gifts. (Then they could kill and eat their parents.) At least his father would have no way of promoting a play; that alone was reason enough to consider the idea.