A couple of weeks later Luna met another promising guy named Barry. He was a fifty-year-old contributor to a humor magazine. A writer! Wow!
When she told Trip how excited she was, he said, “Fifty? That’s kind of old. He won’t be able to keep up with you in bed.”
Luna stared at him. “Do you know how old you are?”
He said, “I’m an exception. You’ll see.” Then he fucked her superbly.
Despite Trip’s warning, Luna continued communicating with Barry. They wrote back and forth, sharing their backstories.
Here are some of the things Luna learned about Barry:
Name: Barry Black
Ethnic Background: Cornish.
Marital Status: Single, though he’d lived with a woman for over ten years.
Children: None.
Body: Hard to say from the picture. He told her he carried “a few extra pounds.”
Hair: He had a bit of a bouffant, but Luna could look past that. It was his face that was off-putting, because Barry sort of resembled a llama.
Occupation: Humorist/satirist.
Favorite Physical Activities: Strolling to the theatre or a restaurant.
Other likes: Jokes such as: A giraffe walks into a bar and says,“The highballs are on me.”
Dislikes: Being left in the lurch. He ended every email with “Let me know…” even if he hadn’t posed a question.
Religion: In the tradition of his ancestors, he called himself Celtic polytheistic, which he found amusing because it confused people.
Favorite Writers: Chuck Palahniuk, George Orwell, Gary Larson.
Favorite Dessert: Anything with wet walnuts.
Favorite Expression: “Welcome to Hell. Here’s your accordion.”
Soon they started talking on the phone. It was great, speaking with someone literary.
But for all of Luna’s good intentions, the subject of sex slipped in fast.
Barry brought it up. “We need to talk.”
Swell. “I’m listening,”she said, because it was clear that when someone said “we need to talk” there was never any room for discussion.
He told her he had this problem: He couldn’t always “perform.”
“Have you tried Viagra?” Luna asked, trying not to sound as tense as she felt.
He said he hadn’t.
“Why don’t you?”
Luna silently prayed that he’d take the not-so-subtle hint and get some.
She’d gone through too much in her life to deal with problems easily solved by medication.
Time for their big date!
Barry picked Luna up at six, arriving at her door bearing flowers and flan. Grinning widely, he looked even more like a llama. His teeth were quite broad.
“How sweet!” she exclaimed¸ giving him a hug and accepting the dozen white roses and the plastic container. She was more excited by the flan—the roses were going to be a lot of work.
He said, “Let’s have the flan together, when we get back from dinner.”
“Okay.” She didn’t really want to share, but she couldn’t tell him that.
She showed him into the living room and excused herself to care for the roses. Trimming each stem on a slant under running water, filling the vase with the right temperature water – not too warm or too cold, searching for aspirin to drop into the water. All this to preserve things already on their way out – snipped from their roots in the name of affection. How ironic, killing something as a way to show you care.
The petals already had a brown hue to them.
Men apparently bought flowers without examining their condition.
She knew this because Sunny had frequently gotten wilted bouquets after Sal had fucked up. The Coconut also bestowed some iffy-looking bunches.
Nick had always given Luna extremely perky flowers in lavish displays, but he’d never picked them out.
No, he’d ordered them from a fancy florist, using Luna’s credit cards.
Trip had never brought her flowers.
She finally got the roses settled in their vase. She put them on her nightstand upstairs and came back down.
“Ready?” he asked. There was that llama smile again.
“Yes.” Up close, the llama thing was hard to ignore. But she was a trooper.
Once committed to something, she followed through.
And she’d committed to this evening with Barry.
She might find a way to be attracted to him, somehow. If only he would take her advice and some Viagra.
But Barry had not taken her advice.
“At this stage in my life, I just like to give pleasure,” he told her as they climbed under the covers, having partaken in Japanese food and then flan. Outside, high winds beat at the house relentlessly. It sounded like the house—or at least the billowing plastic—was going to be ripped apart.
I guess we’re at different stages of our lives, she thought. But she was too polite to say it. What was the point of saying anything, anyway? She’d already tried, and he hadn’t listened.
So he gave her pleasure, and she enjoyed it, but there was no mutual energy exchange. She might as well have been alone.
She also didn’t feel right unless she reciprocated.
Her mouth ached from her long attempt to bring Barry to completion—to no avail.
She was still trying when there was a loud banging against the house.
The wind had broken something.
The noise was a distraction. Bad in most situations, but in this case it was good. It gave her something rhythmic to focus on, like a meditation.
After forty minutes, fearing jaw dislocation, Luna finally gave up. She rose and wiped drool from her face. Then she looked at Barry and willed him to get out.
Suddenly she felt creeped out by the way he wrote “let me know” at the end of each e-mail, and it really bothered her that he resembled a llama.
She liked llamas, but not as dates.
“It’s fine. I told you I like giving pleasure,” he said. “But thanks for trying.”
Leave, leave. She nodded numbly.
Finally, he got up. “I guess I’d better go. It’s a long drive home.”
“Ba-bye…”
“Unless you want me to stay…”
“That’s okay.”
The banging outside continued. “Want me to check that out for you?”
“No.”
“Will you be able to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Okey dokey…”
Once she closed the door behind the still-talking Barry, she went to check on the noise. It was loudest in the bathroom. She opened the window and saw the problem: the gutter had been separated from the house.
“Shit.” She didn’t have any tools.
Her phone dinged from the bedroom, a text from Trip, who of course knew that she was seeing Barry tonight.
It said: So?
She wrote back: He was attentive.
Damned if she was going to tell him he’d been right about the age thing.
Trip wrote back: Better than me?
She didn’t feel like soothing his ego at the moment—the banging was getting to her.
She wrote: Oh just come fuck me, and bring something that slices metal.
Trip was there in fifteen minutes and walked in silently.
He gave her a wounded look.
“You did this!” she exclaimed. “I would’ve been faithful forever.” Still nothing from him.
“Oh, relax. We didn’t have any chemistry.” She wanted to make him feel better, but still didn’t feel like revealing the entire truth. She didn’t want to relive it.
He remained mute.
“For God’s sake, I thought you’d be the last person I ever had sex with,” Luna said.
He finally spoke. “I might be the last person you have good sex with.” They stared at each other. Upstairs, the gutter banged.
She asked, “Did you bring the slicer?”
He handed her what looked
like malformed, criminally insane pliers.
“They’re called ‘snips,’ actually.”
What a thing to care about. Metal-cutting semantics. “Whatever.”
She took them and headed up the stairs.
“You’re gonna handle this?” he called.
“I am,” she replied. “I told you, I don’t need your help for things, Trip.”
“You know, it would be nice if you would at least take me up on the things I’m good at.” He squinted his eyes at her. “And I’m good at fixing things.
“Go fix yourself a snack.”
Determined to be independent and take care of this herself, Luna crawled out of the small bathroom window onto the ledge and clipped the jagged metal.
She tried not to think about being on a ledge. At least the wind had slowed.
It didn’t take long to do the job. Trip’s snips were effective.
She turned to climb back inside, but it was way more daunting than going out had been. The sink was so close… she didn’t want to smash her head on its ceramic tiles.
“Trip!”
No answer.
“Trip!”
Nothing.
“TRIPPPPPPPP!”
He finally creaked up the stairs, appearing in the bathroom doorway with a two-thirds eaten banana split in hand. “You called?”
She looked at the bowl. “You ate my last banana?”
“I left you half.” He ate a spoonful of split. “What’s up?”
“I need your help. I can’t get back in.”
“Oh. Now you need my help? I should leave you there.”
“But you won’t.”
“How do you know? If I’m such a bad guy.”
She rolled her eyes and put her arms out. He didn’t put his banana split down. “I might just go,” he said.
“You wouldn’t…”
“That’s right, I wouldn’t. But how about an apology?”
“For what?”
“For refusing my help.”
She was tired on being on the edge. “Okay, I’m sorry I wouldn’t let you help me.”
“That’s better.” He put his sundae down, took hold of her and lifted her gently to the floor.
After their marathon session in bed, Luna and Trip were both breathless and sweaty.
“Would you open the window?” Trip asked her.
She cracked it, up to the safety lock. It wasn’t much, maybe an inch.
“Do it more,” he said. “Do it all the way.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m afraid to leave it up all night.”
“You don’t have to be scared,” he said. “I’m here.”
Are you? She thought. Are you here?
But she didn’t say it out loud.
He said, “I hope you know that I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. But God, she wanted to. “Some-times you seem like an angel with your soothing words and those wings on your back, but other times I could swear you’re the devil, Trip. Which is it?”
“Damned if I know.”
She resisted the urge to turn over and face him. What would be the point? Instead, she counted petals on her roses. By the time she hit ten, Trip was snoring.
Pretty loud, said Jiminy. Can you stand the noise?
“Trip’s snoring is the least of the problems.”
What are the other problems?
She stared at the roses. “He doesn’t bring me flowers.”
Flowers die.
True. She’d thought that herself. But still…
“He doesn’t bring me flan.”
There’s a Mexican restaurant down the block. You can get your own flan any time you want.
True. But it wasn’t the same when she got it herself. Was it? “So you’re saying there are no problems?”
I’m saying, decide what you want the most. You’re not getting everything; this isn’t a Julia Roberts movie. But for now, go to sleep.
So she did.
FIFTY-TWO
Two days later, the ringing of Luna’s cell phone shocked her from sleep at 2:13 am. She knew without looking that it was Trip. Unless someone had died, no one else would call at this hour.
“Hi,” she answered. She liked it when he called late, even though it wrecked her sleep. There was an added intimacy in the dark. With Trip, she had to take closeness where she could get it.
“Hey,” he said. His voice was low and guarded. He sounded like maybe someone had died.
“What is it?” she asked, knowing he wasn’t all right.
“I just left the emergency room. I was there all night,” he said.
“Why?”
“I was having these stabbing pains. They still don’t know what it was. They think maybe a kidney stone.”
“How are you now?”
“Better… exhausted.”
His car engine hummed in the background. Then he sucked in some air, so loud she could hear that too. “I thought I was going to die,” he said.
Then he said, “I thought I was going to die there, alone.”
“Oh, God.”
“Yup.”
“Come over.”
“I can’t have sex now.”
“We don’t have to have sex.”
“But that’s all I’m good for, remember?”
“I didn’t say it exactly like that,” she said. When had she turned into the bad guy? “We can cuddle. I care about you.”
Silence. Then, “No thanks. But the caring part’s good to know.”
She said, “You just had a terrible experience. Don’t you want someone to hold you?”
“Not on your terms.”
He’s a mess, Jiminy told Luna after Trip hung up.
“You think so?”
You obviously do. So why don’t you get away from him?
“What’s your deal anyway? Why are you fucking with my head? You’re supposed to be helping me, and all you do is contradict yourself. You pushed me to write that note, and then two nights ago you seemed to want me to be with him. Remember all that talk about flowers and flan? And now you say he’s a mess and I should be done with him...What do you want me to do?”
I’m merely reflecting the turmoil in your mind, Luna. It’s you who can’t decide, not me. This is all up to you.
Whoa. That was heavy.
Jiminy continued, If you’re not going to be done with him, at least stop this destructive dating path you’re on. Deal with Trip and try to make it work.
“That’s hard.”
What you’re doing is harder. This isn’t working for you, Luna.
“I know. I’ll stop seeing other people, but I’ll tell him I still am.”
Jiminy said, So much for honesty…
“Where did honesty get me?”
That’s also for you to decide, he answered. But remember that Gandhi quote you love? If you’re truly interested in being the change you wish to see in the world, I would imagine that honesty is a big part of that. Wasn’t that what you wrote in your ad when you met Trip? If you want more honesty in the world, put it out there yourself. Be that change.
“I am so sick of all this responsibility. Maybe I don’t want to be the change any more. Maybe I don’t believe there can be a change; the world’s gone too far toward hell… Maybe I just give up.”
Up to you. I’m basically just a sounding board. But I’ll tell you this. Bottom line: Trip is utterly beside the point, Luna. He’s just a means to an end.
She had to chew on that one alone.
Luna couldn’t bear to think about her last conversation with Jiminy. She concentrated on finishing NWaN.
Except, she still couldn’t.
Something was missing.
Every day she sat, staring at the computer screen, trying to figure out what that something was.
In the dark again with Trip a week later, Luna made up a story about Gabe, a twenty-nine-year-old male friend. “I’m thinking about hooking
up with him,” she lied.
He said, “Why? He’s too young to know anything.”
She said, “I had a younger boyfriend once. He was good in bed.”
“A fluke.”
“Whatever. I don’t even care if Gabe is good. I just want to look at his body on top of me.”
Trip’s body went rigid. After a few moments he asked, “Don’t I turn you on?”
Luna answered, “Of course you do.” She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Or had she?
Trip said, “Then why don’t you open your eyes when you’re with me?”
“I got tired of staring at your closed ones,” she said, wondering what had made him open his at last.
But she asked a different question. “What are you worried about? You’re the best lover, always.”
He turned away from her, towards the flowers on the nightstand. They were looking kind of crispy. He said, “I’d rather be the only one.”
Tell him the truth, Jiminy said.
And part of her wanted to…but she couldn’t.
Or at least, she didn’t.
I have the upper hand now, she told Jiminy.
Is that what’s important here?
She didn’t answer. She didn’t actually have the answer. Part of her felt bad for Trip, and that was the part that wanted to tell him. But part of her felt good.
Part of her wanted to make him suffer, like she’d suffered.
I didn’t peg you as an eye-for-an-eye type of girl.
Me, neither, she answered. Shows you what we know.
“You should throw those flowers out,” Trip said. “They’re dead.”
FIFTY-THREE
Luna interlocked her hands behind her head, as Dr. Gold instructed. He stood behind her, his arms around her waist.
“Melt,” he said.
She tried to relax.
“Melt more.”
Again she tried, but she was still so stiff.“And more...”
He must’ve been satisfied this time because he pressed his arms tight against her middle like he was doing the Heimlich. Her back went ccrrraaacckk!
“Good,” he said. “Lie on your back.”
She complied.
“I’m mad at Trip,” she told Dr. Gold. “I’m still angry that he changed from that guy on the beach.”
Dr. Gold said, “He’s a substitute for who you’re really angry with—yourself.”
Luna Rising Page 33