Lunar City

by Samantha Cross

  “We’re just sitting here. Call her.”

  “You mean right now?”

  “No, I mean 10,000 B.C.”

  “No need to get catty,” I said and then accessed my phone. Before we left, I programmed Dana’s phone number into my cell just in case I would forget by the end of the night. But really, who was I kidding? There was no way I was going to forget something like this. I would need to be clocked in the head with an actual grandfather clock in order to forget this.

  After I hit send and the first ring went off, I could feel my leg involuntarily bouncing up and down from nerves, and even though my right ear had only been pressed to my phone for a few seconds, it was already sweating. Ring, ring, ring, and no answer. I feared the worst. Suddenly, I heard a click like someone was picking up on the other end, and I held my breath. A robotic voice came through, instructing me that the person I was trying to reach was currently unavailable. It wasn’t Dana. It was just some lame ass automatic response. It was like a kick to the gut. Disappointed, I hung up.

  “No answer,” I told Priscilla, and then flung the phone into my purse. “It was just some bot.”

  “Should have known better than to get your hopes up.”

  I wouldn’t be detoured no matter what. “At least it was acknowledging that it was an actual phone number, meaning that she didn’t cancel it. Maybe she just didn’t record her own voice for the voicemail because she’s lying low, and maybe she didn’t answer because she didn’t recognize the number.”

  “That’s a whole lot of maybes,” Priscilla said and then sipped her beer. “Fuck me, this beer is awful.”

  “Why are you still drinking it then?”

  “It’s free,” she explained.

  I heard a loud bang and saw Melanie fumbling out of her chair as her two admirers offered a helping hand to get her back to her feet.

  “You could just leave her here, you know,” Priscilla cynically said.

  “I can’t abandon her while she’s drunk.”

  “Who cares? Let Beavis and Butt-Head take her home.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, and then I’ll slip the roofie in her drink for them,” I responded sardonically. Melanie and I weren’t close, but in no universe was I going to let her be rape bait for a bunch of drunken guys.

  Melanie went dancing up to the jukebox, one arm raised in the air with her glass in hand while the other arm did some odd snake movement which I think was supposed to pass as dancing. She looked like a cross between Stevie Wonder and Axel Rose.

  “Let’s turn this party the eff up!” Melanie hit a few buttons on the machine and when her song didn’t start playing immediately she began to bang her fist against the side of it. “Come on you turd, mama needs some dancing!” She kicked the jukebox, and although it was a pathetic kick, I didn’t want her making a scene and getting us thrown out or fined for any damages.

  “Don’t hit the jukebox! That’s an expensive piece of equipment,” I yelled to her from across the room.

  “You’re an expensive piece of equipment,” she countered, drunkenly slurring her words and then laughing and nearly falling into the jukebox.

  Priscilla shook her head. “Oh, the witty banter of the obnoxiously intoxicated,” she drearily remarked, completely unimpressed.

  “Don’t judge, that’s the nicest thing she’s ever said to me.”

  The jukebox kicked on and Come On Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners began playing. It was one of those ridiculous, but addicting songs from the early eighties—the only time a group of grown men could get away with wearing overalls in a music video and not have their asses kicked.

  Melanie started doing this weird dance that looked a lot like a frog bouncing up and down, and with a big, stupid drunken grin asked me, “Cora, you remember this?”

  The memories came flooding in and my shoulders slumped forward in embarrassment. “Oh, God…” I groaned.

  “What?” Priscilla asked, suddenly perking up. “This your song or something?”

  “Tell her the story!” Melanie urged as she ran to our table.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be drunk? Why are you remembering things from my childhood?”

  “Childhood?” Priscilla asked with a cocked eyebrow. “Please do tell.”

  “It’s nothing,” I told her with a dismissive wave of my hand. “I was just in a local commercial when I was twelve, that’s all.”

  “That sounds horrible. Make sure to go into detail.”

  I squinted my eyes at Priscilla in a vicious manner. She just sat there waiting for me to speak, because she knew the story was coming out one way or another. Fine, I’d tell it. “I thought I was going to be famous by being in this commercial for a dry cleaning place not far from my house.”

  “Please tell me you were a horrible, dry actress.”

  “I didn’t think I was too bad.”

  “Tell her about the singing,” Melanie butted in. I closed my eyes and counted to five. I was about to slap the drink right out of her hand if she didn’t shut up.

  “Singing?” I could tell from the tone of her voice that Priscilla was on the verge of laughter.

  “Yes, there was a little singing… and dancing,” I admitted.

  “Tell her what the slogan was,” Melanie continued.

  I rolled my eyes so hard they were practically in the back of my head. “It was a play on the song. You know, use the tune. It was… I had to sing, Come On Dry Clean.”

  I expected Priscilla to explode into laughter, but all I got was a long wide eyed stare like I had told a repulsive joke. “You’re for real?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  In the most serious tone possible she said, “Please tell me you have a recording of it still.”

  “We used to watch it every Thanksgiving,” Melanie laughed and then chugged down the rest of her drink. “I can send you a copy if you’d like.”

  “You know what?” I stood straight up, getting out of my chair and scooting it across the floor dramatically. I had both of their attention as I peered down at them in their seats. Now was my moment to really tell them off. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I proclaimed and then stormed off. Boy, do I know how to kill them.

  Good thing I have a weak bladder because I was able to pee when I got to the bathroom, despite me making up that excuse. After I washed my hands, I grabbed my phone from my purse and tried to call Dana once more. Again, it went straight to voicemail. Texting would have to suffice. I waited and I waited and still there was no reply. Maybe she did switch phones and I was texting a stranger.

  The bathroom doors opened and the first thing I saw was a cloud of black clothing and hair. I turned to see Priscilla dreadfully burning holes through my head. “You’ve been in here too long,” she declared. “I’m becoming dumber by osmosis.”

  “I was calling Dana again. What has Melanie done now?”

  “Other than drinking another guy’s beer and sitting on his wife’s lap, not much. Normally, I’d pay to see someone humiliate themselves to this level, but I couldn’t quite appreciate it, since I think those people thought her and I were actually friends, which just puts me into a humiliating state.”

  Five minutes in the bathroom and already, Melanie had managed to make a scene.

  “Great,” I groaned, and then pushed through the bathroom doors in search of my out of control cousin. When we came back into the entrance hall, I instantly noticed the calm, quiet vibe throughout the entire room. I knew what that meant; Melanie was gone.

  “Where the heck is she?” I asked Priscilla, not exactly expecting a response and not really waiting for one, either. I scanned the room and found the two jocks Melanie had been ogling earlier in the night and stormed right toward them (something teenage me would have pissed her pants over, so, yay for growth).

  I walked right up to Beavis and asked, “Where’s my cousin?”

  “Who?”

  “The idiot that’s drunk enough to sleep with you,” Priscilla so delicately said.


  They didn’t have much of a comeback for Priscilla’s insult, and instead pointed to the large glass window by the entrance of the bar. Both Priscilla and I looked, and we could see outside of the building, standing in the (thankfully) empty sidewalk area was Melanie, attempting to climb up one of the large street lights.

  “It’s like she wants me to think low of her,” I said, agitated, and then raced out of the bar after grabbing my purse.

  There were wall-to-wall cars parked on the side of the street, and lucky for all of us, there weren’t any people walking around to see the scene. It was just Priscilla and I gazing up as Melanie shimmied up the slender, green street lamp.

  “Melanie, please come down.”

  Unable to get to the top, she settled for the middle and wrapped her legs around it like she was some kind of sloth. With one fist raised in the air she shouted, “Rock and roll, San Francisco!”

  “We’re not even in San Francisco.”

  “Rock and roll… wherever we are!”

  I put my face in my hand, utterly embarrassed, even without a crowd of people to witness this.

  “I need a cigarette,” Priscilla declared, lighting one up and then walking several feet away from us to create some distance. I knew she wasn’t really concerned about our secondhand smoke, but more her secondhand embarrassment.

  “Melanie, you’re going to get arrested. In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, get down.”

  Melanie unwrapped her legs and came sliding down like a fireman on a pole. “Whee!” her high-pitched voice rang. Funny, it was just as unpleasant to the ears as an actual fire alarm.

  Despite agreeing to come down from the street lamp, Melanie continued to behave like an infant hopped up on sugar. She twirled around and straddled the street light, using it like it were a stripper pole, practically making love to it.

  “Do you think if I licked this street light I’d get electrocuted?” she asked, her words slurring and her tongue hanging out like she was ready to pose for some really trashy picture.

  At that point, I had enough of the show and joined up with Priscilla a ways down the sidewalk. Priscilla was more or less gawking at her like she was a train wreck she couldn’t look away from.

  As soon as I was by her side, Priscilla peeked at me from the corner of her eye and said, “I’m really beginning to see the family resemblance.”

  Not that again. “Shoot me.”

  “Cora, come on over and have a taste!” Melanie shouted, waving to me.

  “Oh, no, that’s quite all right, I’ll maintain my sanity over here,” I responded and gave her a salute.

  “To be a fly on the wall during family Christmas parties,” Priscilla said with an amused smirk on her face and a headshake.

  “I can tell you exactly how Christmas went with our family—eighteen presents for Melanie, while I was stuck getting dental hygiene tips. Oh, Cora, you’re still here? Enjoy your shiny new toothbrush. We would have went all out and bought you an electric one, but knew you were afraid of loud noises.”

  “Tell me that didn’t really happen.”

  “They reminded me of bumblebees, okay? I was afraid it was going to, like, fly up my nose or something.”

  “A toothbrush?”

  “A toothbrush that hums like a bee,” I corrected her. Sometimes, I needed to remind myself to just quit speaking.

  “Is your family mentally unstable or something?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, what kind of family has a favorite child like this?”

  In unison, we looked back at Melanie, only to find her now slow dancing with a stop sign.

  With that sight in front of us, I gritted my teeth and said, “We’re a bizarre unit, I won’t lie.”

  “Did your grandparents do a lot of drugs or something?”

  “You know, I’ve often had that thought as well.” I checked my phone again. No Dana missed call, but I did see it was close to 10:30 P.M. I clapped my hands together at Melanie like she was a batch of chickens I needed to hurdle back into a cage. “It’s time to wrap this up, Melanie. I’m tired and there’s only so much I can handle.”

  “Oh, come on, guys, we can’t leave yet. The night is still young!” Her words came tumbling out of her mouth, barely resembling a cohesive sentence. She put both hands on her hips and hiccupped, “You two are a couple sticks in the mud, you know that?”

  ***

  Five minutes later, she was passed out in her mug of beer.

  Melanie was in such an alcohol induced coma that Priscilla and I had to literally haul her to the car, throw her into the backseat, and then carry her out once we arrived back at the hotel. I had her feet, Priscilla had her arms, and as we struggled to back in through the entrance doors of the hotel the receptionist watched us as like we were a couple of serial killers trying to drag a body to a shallow grave.

  “Please tell me you’re staying on the first floor,” Priscilla strained to say.

  “Sorry. The pool’s on the first floor, though. We could always toss her in. That’d wake her up.”

  “Your cousin brings out the bitch side in you. I like it.”

  I grinned.

  When we finally got up the elevator and to my hotel room, the two of us launched Melanie onto the bed like we were throwing a huge log into a fire. I took off her shoes, readied a glass of water for the night stand because I knew she’d be dehydrated and hung over in the morning, and then tucked her drunk behind into bed.

  “I really should get the hell out of here,” Priscilla announced.

  “Heading home so soon?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know if I can handle much more excitement.”

  “Well, hey, what else were you going to do tonight?”

  “Sleep, watch TV, enjoy the silence.”

  “You weren’t supposed to actually make a list,” I responded sourly.

  “With me gone and happy pants asleep, you’ll have more time to stalk Dana. It has been a whole ten minutes since you last checked your phone.”

  “It’s not like I’m trying to be a pest.”

  “But it comes naturally to you?”

  I shot her a stink face. “No. I think she has the right to know there are people searching for her, and considering what she is, it would be in her best interest. If it’s really bad, I could give her a head start so she can get out of town.”

  “If you think you know what you’re doing.”

  “Actually, I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’m winging it.”

  Priscilla smirked at me with her virgin blood lipstick. I don’t know how she had so many drinks and yet it remained stained to her lips.

  “You’re thinking about your phone, aren’t you?” she spoke.

  “What?”

  “How you haven’t checked it. It’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

  “Uh, no. I had completely forgotten about it.”

  “Sure.”

  We stared at each other in silence for a full ten seconds, and, suddenly, it felt like my phone was burning a hole through my jeans. “I might as well take a look,” I said, and Priscilla shook her head in an amused fashion. It was her own fault for planting the idea in my brain. I dug into the pocket of my pants and retrieved my cell. It lit up from touch, and immediately, I noticed I had one text message. From Dana. Oh, my God, she responded.

  My eyes must have gone wild in response, because without even turning the phone for her to see, Priscilla knew. “She responded?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I guess I better leave you to your business then,” she said, and I was surprised to see her turn to walk away.

  “The gossip queen herself isn’t going to ask what she wrote?”

  “This is werewolf business. I want none of that world.” It never stopped surprising me that she was so willing to be cut off from all of this. “Losing Henry really messed you up, didn’t it?”

  Her blue eyes danced away from me, looking startled that I brought him up withou
t warning, and she very quietly sighed. “I may be a bitch, but I’m not a robot.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and said, “Happy hunting. Try not to get yourself killed.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I watched her walk away, hoping that another several months wouldn’t pass before I saw her again.

  My eyes trailed down to the phone in my hand, and I opened the text message. It read: I’ll meet you. Tonight.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I felt like a thief in the night, putting on my black hoodie, slamming the door twice to see if it would wake Melanie up (it didn’t), and then creeping out of the hotel and to my car in the parking lot. I knew it was too late at night for me to be meeting up with a werewolf in her apartment alone, but the moon was crescent and I figured it was safe enough to get the answers that I needed. My fear would have to take a backseat.

  I turned the ignition and when the car started, the stereo blasted so high I practically felt it create wind against my hair. Somehow, it hadn’t felt this loud earlier in the night when I was trying to drown out Melanie’s drunken singing on our way to the bar. Christ, Come On Eileen was going to be stuck in my head again.

  Maybe I was surpassing the speed limit or maybe her place wasn’t as far as I initially thought, but I was there in about fifteen minutes. Her apartment building looked like something ripped out of the darkest corner of Detroit. It appeared abandoned, falling apart, almost unlivable. When I walked up the steps to the second floor where she lived, I heard a creak and a squeak with every imprint I made. I felt like the stairs were actually speaking to me as I came closer to her apartment.

  Apartment B52, it read on the outside door. Great, now Love Shack would be in my head as well. I knocked once, but her door was so poorly constructed that it rattled violently to the point where I didn’t even need to knock twice. I heard movement inside, a bit manic, but still quiet, and I knew she must have been getting closer to the door. A second later, it popped open.

  A pair of light eyes peered up at me, with deep, dark circles beneath them, and her faded blonde hair looked like greasy strings framing her face. It was Dana all right, but she looked much different than I remembered. The Dana I met last year came off a bit shy and reserved, yes, but her hair was a platinum blonde and her skin had a perfect sun-kissed look to it, like she was still a vibrant and active girl despite her guarded demeanor. Now, she just looked pale and like she hadn’t bathed or touched up her hair in months.