Meet Me in the Moon Room

by Ray Vukcevich

  A certain cruel cunning came alive in his eyes, and he questioned me closely, saying, what is that you’ve got there, my cold mad faery father? He took Elizabeth’s arm between a thumb and first finger, very plump, in her slopery slip, my mouseling, little frogchen, touch me with your girlick breath.

  I put Elizabeth behind me.

  Make me one of those, he said. He could look right over the top of my head and I had no doubt what he meant. I want one of those.

  It was easy to see that the experiment had failed. Maybe everything necessary had not been in the book after all, or perhaps my machine had simply failed to extract it all. Or maybe you never know what you’ll get until you get it. In any case, I had created an abomination, and now he wanted me to make him a bride.

  Never, I said.

  Maybe I’ll take that one if you won’t make me one of my own, he said and lowered his chin and looked up at me like a buffalo calculating a charge.

  Leave her alone, I said.

  Mink you, Pop.

  Oh yeah, well you can just read my mind!

  He slapped me to my knees, grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around and got me around the neck in a wrestling hold from which I had little hope of slipping. Help, I shouted to Mucho Poocho. Attack! Kill! Mucho hunkered down on the floor with a whimper and the monster snortled.

  Shall we fiddle with fido?

  Not fido, I told him.

  Tease fido, eh tease fido, eh eh tease fido.

  Mucho put his hands over his eyes, he said, and we all looked at the dog who had been looking back at us over his shoulder but who now looked back out to sea.

  It’s not my job to make you comfortable, the monster said, and we said maybe he’s got a point, lazy poach dogs, the lot of us, and he gave my neck a twist and tossed me to one side.

  Perhaps somewhere in his dark semisubconscious he had some feeling for his creator that constrained the twist and left my neck unbroken. Even so I was sorely stunned and quite unable to help Elizabeth who scooted away from the brute in little fits and sneezes.

  She avoided him until she reached the wall, then he grabbed her, and she crumbled like a dried flower in his fingers and he looked around in surprise like what happened is that all there is how could she be so fragile this is all so embarrassing.

  Birds darkened the skylight and beat the glass with their black wings, thunder sounded, and a cold wind found every crack and stirred my notes, and tossed my hair, and Mr. (call me Cease Co.) Juice blew CEO cigar smoke from his wide nostrils, said we are the Doggymen, and leaped into dance, lifting his knees high happy grape stomping goofy grin, this sad patchwork graveyard doll, celebrating something foul, and dropped to his knees and scrambled bugfast across the room to me, ripping at my clothes, dogcurious nose and doggy lips in the crack of my ass, blew me up justlikethat with smoke and I floated away, a fat macey man balloon belching smoke rings and drifting upright then drifting upside down.

  The skylight shattered and black birds like Brimstoker bats swarmed into the lab and settled everywhere, mostly on Elizabeth.

  May you have a million years in hell to think about what you’ve done, I said.

  It’s the Count who thinks, he said.

  I’ll have my revenge.

  Eat your selfish, he said, it will be cold comfort.

  And then he was gone and I swam down to Elizabeth and shooed away the butcherbirds and read the note written on the bottom of her foot: cheep. When had the monster found time to defile the body?

  Struck by a sudden suspicion, I sat down on the floor and pulled off my boots. Yes. Notes on the bottoms of both feet. On my left foot, most significantly, a quote from the book itself: I am speaking to us in the second person. On the right foot: Direct quotes from the book will henceforth, both forward and backwards in time, be printed in a holy color that only true believers can see.

  So you will agree there was nothing I could have done but hound the monster to the very ends of the earth, and that is what has brought me to these icy wastelands, he said and put his head down on the deck and died like the Easter bunny you’ve hugged too tightly and we said but hold on a moment, we keep getting the monster and the doctor mixed up. Mucho Poocho spoke then, said, so just who do you think rode the moocow into the sea?

  My Mustache

  In lieu of the whiskers which never looked any good anyway—sparse and weedy like someone’s neglected strip of lawn on the wrong side of town during a drought and after a yard fire, Lewis superglued a foot-long garter snake to his smooth upper lip. The snake had some trouble adjusting and nipped his face often that first morning, and Lewis was, for probably the first time in his life, thankful he wore glasses, but after a few hours the two of them, snake and man, came to know and love one another. Lewis called the snake My Mustache. He would fed it bugs and baby mice and bird eggs.

  Considering his bald head, Lewis figured he’d say things like my hair just slipped down onto my face. Maybe wink and wiggle his eyebrows up and down lewdly.

  Ooo la la.

  My Mustache would punctuate his points with its forked tongue.

  He couldn’t wait to show Tess.

  Tess didn’t like it.

  That night, Lewis sat at his kitchen table, absently stroking My Mustache, eating pitted black olives, tempting the snake with one now and then, chasing away Tess’ cigarette smoke with a Queen of England wave, pretending the eruptions in her Spanish eyes didn’t really mean anything, making small talk, talking fast and imagining she gave a rat’s ass about what he was saying. She’d stare at My Mustache like a hypnotized rabbit then jerk herself erect to shoot him an icy look, then her eyes would be drawn back down to the snake.

  “Must you stare, Tess?” Lewis said. “Put out your cigarette and eat your spaghetti. You don’t like my marinara?”

  Tess jerked her eyes away from the snake. “Lewis,” she said. “We have to talk.”

  “I know that line,” Lewis said. “It’s what women say just before they show you the door, just before they tell you to hit the road, Jack, and donchoo come back no more no more, donchoo . . .”

  “Stop it, Lewis. This is serious.”

  “I know. I know.” Lewis put his hands over his eyes. “I get like this whenever someone special just can’t see beyond appearances to the real me.” He opened his fingers to peek out at her. “It’s not how you look that really counts, Tess.”

  “Lewis, you have a snake glued to your face!”

  “You don’t like My Mustache?”

  She grabbed her long raven hair with both hands and pulled it away from her head like a tent. “I can’t stand this, Lewis. It’s always something! This is just one more way you push people away.”

  “By growing a mustache? You’re saying I’m pushing people away by growing a mustache?”

  “Ask yourself, Lewis,” she said and leaned across the table and put her hand on top of his and squeezed. “Who will want to touch you with a snake glued to your face? You don’t want me or anyone else to get too close. That’s what the snake is all about.”

  Lewis looked away, finally pushed into a sulk.

  “Just look,” she said, not ready to let him withdraw altogether. “Look at the way people are staring at us, at you. Don’t you care? Can’t you imagine how I feel?”

  “Concentrate, Tess,” he said. “This is my kitchen. There’s no one else here.” He pushed the wicker basket of garlic bread in its red checked napkin across the table. “Have some bread.”

  Tess bit her lip. He thought she would try to convince him again of the reality of the people who followed her everywhere, but she looked down at her hands, then took a deep breath and said, “If there were other people here, Lewis, they’d likely be thinking unkind thoughts about you. And about me for having anything to do with you.”

  �
��Screw ‘em,” Lewis said, deep proletarian indignation emerging and then exploding in his eyes at last. “What made this country great is the way we’re different, not the way we’re alike.”

  “This isn’t a political question, Lewis.”

  “Everything is a political question, Tess,” he said and snatched up his wine and tossed it at his mouth, splashing Chianti onto My Mustache who hissed and sputtered and spit and fixed Tess with smoldering black snake eyes.

  “What?” Tess cocked her head to the side to listen to a voice Lewis couldn’t hear. “Yes, I suppose you could be right.” She snatched the napkin out of her lap and tossed it onto the table and got to her feet. “We’ve agreed, Lewis. All of us. We can’t have anything more to do with you until you get some help.”

  He watched her walk for the door, watched her long legs, listened to her heels click on his polished hardwood floor, watched the way her red and green checked skirt swayed first this way and then that way, saw the sad look she gave him over one shoulder as she reached for the brass doorknob, saying, “I guess we’ll all just leave you alone, Lewis.”

  “Wait!” Lewis pushed up from the table, trotted across the room, came up behind her, and put his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “Don’t leave, Tess.” He kissed her ear. My Mustache stretched its head around and looked her in the eye.

  Tess screamed and elbowed him in the ribs.

  He couldn’t let her leave. If he let her go now, she’d be out the door and out of his life, probably forever. He tossed her toward the couch and moved in front of the door and spread his legs and opened his arms over his head, transforming himself into a giant X to block her exit.

  “Oh, Lewis.” Her tone was so sad and disappointed.

  He dropped his arms and moved away from the door. He couldn’t force her to stay. Now was the time for innovative action.

  “I’ll shave!” he cried and dashed for the bathroom. “Don’t leave!”

  Tess looked around the room. “Okay,” she said. “Once more. Just one more time.” She straightened her clothes and crossed her legs and settled back on the couch to watch the bathroom door.

  Lewis was a long time in there banging around and running the faucets and finally flushing the toilet. When he emerged, he’d put on a big smile below what might have been mistaken for a milk mustache.

  Tess gasped.

  “It’s the Band-Aid isn’t it?” Lewis touched the white strip under his nose. “Well, it’ll take some time for the ah . . . residue of My Mustache to wear off.”

  Tess couldn’t tear her eyes away from the creature glued to Lewis’ bald head. The turtle clawed at the air, moving all four legs and stretching out its neck as if it were swimming to Bermuda, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  “What?” Lewis said. “What?” He patted the turtle. “My New Hairpiece? You don’t like it. Is there no pleasing you, Tess?”

  We Kill a Bicycle

  We’ve hidden ourselves along the bike path. Everything is so green and wet and restless, rustling with the river breeze. Ants keep getting on my arms, but I flick them off with my fingers and imagine their tiny screams as they shoot through the air and fall and fall into the moldy leaves around my knees. Laura is out there somewhere. I want to put my tongue in her ear. I want to hear her suck in her breath when I do it. I want to make her smile. She’s so serious these days, so far away, somehow.

  What I hear instead is Rodney whispering. I want to tell him to knock it off, but I know it wouldn’t do any good. He’s into one of his stories about the old days, about killing skateboards, easy meat, and I want to say to him, Rodney, I want to say, so if they were such good eating and if they were so silly, like the way you could hear them a long way off trying to get up on some curb or low concrete wall for no reason a person could figure out, and if they were so easy to catch the way you make them sound, what I want to know is why you old farts killed them all. How come you didn’t leave any for us? None of you could have been that hungry. Why didn’t you think of your grandchildren?

  All of us are hungry now. Old folks to babies. I dig through the leaves around my knees and find a slick stone and toss it into the brush from which comes Rodney’s voice, and he says ouch! and then some other nasty stuff, he’s worse than the children, but then we all hear the treetop scout whistle, bicycles coming, and even Rodney gets quiet. I can smell my own excitement, peppery sweat, and I rub my wet palms up and down over the hair on my thighs. We don’t get bikes every day.

  We’ve hidden ourselves just inside a long green corridor of trees and thick brush. There is a small rise in the grassy stretch of ground before the bike path enters the forest, and I now see a bike pull up and stop. No other bikes come up beside her, and I wonder if maybe I should be not believing our luck. Can she really be alone? She puts a hand above her eyes to shade the late afternoon sun. She pulls her shoulders up, and I see her tanned breasts rise, then she lets her shoulders drop. She looks behind, then peers into our leafy corridor again. She’s going to chance it. I know she is. Sometimes I have a feeling for these things.

  She puts her hands on her handlebars and moves back and forth like she’s winding up to make a run for it. Then she’s rolling right at us, pedaling for all she’s worth, white thighs pumping, long gold hair flowing out behind her.

  Once she gets into our corridor, a couple of us, I don’t look to see who, probably Magdalen and Holly, step out to block any retreat she might make. I get ready to jump. Laura has insisted on being the blocker for days now, but this is the first time we’ve had a bike for her to actually block. It’s like she’s got something to prove. She doesn’t know that I always put big Sidney up ahead of her in case the bike gets by her.

  I see Laura step out in front of the bike. No way a bicycle would stop for a person as small and fine-boned as my Laura, Laura with her black tangled hair and her dirty feet, but she jumps up and down and waves her hands in the air and makes a lot of scary noises, and it’s enough to make the bike swerve to the side, and that’s just when I jump out and deliver the soles of my feet to the bike’s upper body and the side of her head, and she goes tumbling, and the rest of our group is on her, everyone with a shout and a stick, everyone whooping and swatting the life out of what will be our lunch and dinner, too, maybe even some left over for tomorrow. Everyone participates. We make no apologies. No one is allowed to be squeamish; if you want to eat it, you’ve got to be willing to kill it. I shoulder my way in for a few licks of my own. It doesn’t take long to kill the bicycle. She doesn’t put up much of a fight.

  I move everyone back, and I pull the bicycle’s legs up over her handlebars and then up to her chest so I can get at her tailbone where the metal parts join the meat parts. I run my fingers up that shaft until I find just the right place where metal becomes bone. I put my hand out for the bolt cutters. Someone takes the bike by the arms and legs and applies light pressure, and I put the bolt cutters on the place I’ve located. I’ve gotten it right. The cutters snip through the shaft easily with a satisfying crunch.

  I carry the bolt cutters over my shoulder as I follow the People dragging the meat back toward camp. I get way down the green corridor before something makes me look back at the metal parts of the bike. What I see freezes me inside. Laura is just standing there looking down at the metal parts, but it’s something about the way she’s standing that frightens me. She nudges the front wheel with her foot, then she bends down and picks up the horrid thing and sets it on its wheels.

  “Laura!” I shout.

  She looks up at me, and I imagine she’s already got the look of a startled bike in her eyes. I run toward her.

  She quickly swings onto the machine, and I groan. I see her tremble from head to toe as the merging happens. She squeezes her eyes closed, and her tongue pokes out of her mouth.

  Just before I can grab her (not that I would know what to do
with her now anyway) she screams and her eyes go wide and she wheels around and pedals for the grasslands. She still hasn’t figured out how to get her tongue back into her mouth. I run after her, but a person can’t outrun a bicycle.

  I run some, following, then I walk. I lose sight of her, then I see her again. This following feels entirely fruitless, but I can’t stop. I know she’s gone, but that fact hasn’t yet hit me down low where I live. Soon though, I see Laura join a herd of bikes congregating on a small grassy hill. The big male wheels up and lightly touches her breasts then nuzzles her ear. They look so good together, like centaurs. I want to kill him. I walk to the foot of the hill.

  The bikes watch me closely, but they don’t move off. They know I am no danger to them out here. In fact, if I keep walking, there is a good chance they could be danger to me. I stop.

  “Laura,” I call. “How can you do this? What about us?”

  She pushes away from the big male and wheels around in a circle then comes down the hill a little until I can see her eyes. He watches her closely but doesn’t try to stop her, poised as he is pointing down the hill at me with one foot on the ground the other on a pedal, his hands on his hips, ready, I guess, to rescue her if I try anything funny. The rest of the herd titters nervously behind him.

  “I want the wind, Desmond,” she says.

  “The wind?”

  Her look destroys me. She doesn’t see me at all. She wheels around, and the bikes make way for her as she moves up the hill. She gives me one last glance back over her shoulder. I don’t follow.

  The wind? I have been abandoned by a woman who wants the wind. What can that mean? It makes me crazy. I want to kill something, and I’m not even hungry.