Girl in the Moonlight

by Charles Dubow

  They greeted me warmly. “Wylie dear, how nice to see you,” replied Kitty, putting down her book. “What a lovely surprise. You look so grown up.”

  I walked over and gave her a kiss on the cheek and shook Randall’s hand. “How’s your father?” she asked.

  “Very well.”

  “Good,” she said. “We haven’t seen him for so long. He used to practically live here.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And we haven’t seen you for some time either. What brings you around?”

  “I just returned from a trip to Europe. I visited Lio in Barcelona for several days. I thought you’d like to hear about him. He looked very well.”

  “Oh, that’s adorable of you, Wylie. Yes, we’d love to hear all about him. You wait here. I know the rest of the family would like to hear too.”

  Holding up a small bag, I added, “He also gave me little presents to give to everybody.”

  “What fun. Just wait there. I’ll get Cesca, Carmen, and Cosmo. Randall, can you see if Wylie would like something to drink?”

  Putting a wrap over her bathing suit, she walked on her still-good legs to the Playhouse. A few moments later she returned, saying, “Cosmo isn’t here, but Cesca and Carmen will be right out. They’re very excited to see you.”

  A short time later both girls appeared. Cesca, wearing a black bikini, looking brown and lean, walked up and embraced me, a big smile on her face. “Wylie. Oh my God,” she cried. “Look at you. Even handsomer than ever!” She smelled, as always, of jasmine and roses. If anything she was more beautiful, the memory of Aurelio’s painting carried before me like a flag.

  Carmen’s welcome was less emphatic. She stood there, allowing me to kiss her. There were some who thought that she was the lovelier of the two daughters, but I would never agree.

  “So you’ve seen Lio,” said Cesca, sitting on one of the lounges. “Tell us all about him.”

  I proceeded to and began with how well he looked.

  “Is he too thin?” asked Kitty. “I hope he’s eating enough.”

  I told them about his work and his spirits. “I have something for you all from him,” I said. I picked up the small bag. “There is one for each of you.” I removed small paintings the size of postcards, each depicting a different site in Barcelona. For Kitty, Sagrada Familia. For Carmen, Tibidabo. For Cesca, a café. On the back of each card was the person’s name and a message in either English or Catalan. They were charming.

  “Where is that?” Kitty asked Cesca.

  “It’s a little place that Lio and I used to go to on the Ramblas. How sweet.”

  “What does your card say?”

  “‘Qui no s’arrisca no pisca.’”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s Catalan. It basically means, ‘If you don’t take risks in life, you will never succeed.’”

  Kitty laughed. “That’s perfect for you.”

  They passed around the postcards for all of us to inspect, making comments, laughing at the comments he wrote. “I have a few more,” I said. “They’re for Mr. and Mrs. Baum, Cosmo, Roger, and Dot.”

  “Cesca, darling, can you take those from Wylie, please?” Kitty asked.

  “Yes, Mare.”

  I gave Cesca the bag. “It’s so good of you to bring these for us,” she said, squeezing my hands. “And so good to see you again.”

  “It’s good to see you too.”

  “There’s something different about you. You aren’t wearing glasses anymore.”

  “Yes, I switched to contacts.”

  “Molt maco. Very handsome.”

  I blushed and looked down at her hands, still clasping mine. There was a large diamond set in platinum on her left hand. “Congratulations,” I said. “Lio told me the good news.”

  She removed her hand to look at her ring. “Yes.” She smiled. “I’m engaged. Again,” she added with a laugh.

  “The wedding’s going to be held here,” said Kitty. “On the lawn. A big white tent.”

  “You’ll have to come,” said Cesca.

  “Thank you. When is it?”

  “Next June.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “As long as we’re planning ahead, what are you doing tonight?” asked Cesca.

  I had no plans.

  “Mare, is it all right if Wylie stays for dinner?”

  “Of course. I’ll have Rosita set another place.”

  “Good. That’s settled,” said Cesca, excitedly patting my thigh.

  The touch of her hand made me blush. “Should I go home and change?” I asked. I was wearing shorts and a tennis shirt.

  “No need,” answered Cesca. “We’re very casual. Stay, have a swim. You can borrow one of the boys’ trunks. Come with me.”

  She took me inside the house to the room that Lio and Cosmo shared. I had never been upstairs before. There was a hallway with several doors off it. The emptiness of bedrooms in the quiet of midafternoon. Shyly, I stepped into their private lives. The intimacy of seeing pillows where people laid their heads, the drawers where they kept their clothes silenced me, like a novitiate being shown the Holy of Holies. Out of the corner of my eye, I looked into what I took to be Cesca’s room. It was messy, the bed unmade, clothes on the floor. Carmen’s door was closed. I moved with respect, following Cesca, achingly aware of her nearness.

  We were in a masculine room. There were two single beds, one Cosmo’s, the other Lio’s, untouched. Two chests of drawers. Two closets. On the walls, there were posters for a soccer club and a large Miró reproduction. She rummaged through one of the chests and produced a pair of swim trunks. “These should fit,” she said, holding them up against my waist. I looked at her. She smiled at me. We were alone in the house. But the moment slipped by and she walked out the door, saying, “Come down when you’re ready.”

  When I returned to the pool, Cesca was there. Carmen, Kitty, and Randall had gone, and in their place was another woman. She was puffy, with reddish hair and pale skin, the kind that burns easily. She wore a white sundress and a broad-brimmed straw hat. She was next to Cesca on the chaise where I had hoped to sit.

  “Have you met Wylie?” Cesca asked her as I approached.

  I introduced myself. Her name was Caro, and she was an old friend of Cesca’s from New York. She was in her first year at Harvard Law School. She had just popped by. She would be staying for dinner too. Immediately I resented her. Not only because she would deny me the chance to be the sole focus of Cesca’s attention, but also because her presence made mine appear foolish.

  Unsure of where to sit or what to do, I dove into the pool. The water was salt, clean, cold. I swam several laps hard, showing off a little. When I emerged, I felt less angry and walked over and sat on the ground.

  Cesca turned to me. “So tell us about what you’ve been up to, Wylie. How long has it been since I saw you last? Two years? Three?”

  I knew how long it had been. That day in the café in Greenwich Village. But I said nothing. As if I would ever forget.

  For her part, Caro also said nothing and just smiled.

  So I told them about myself. About college, my trip to Europe. I tried to make it as entertaining as possible, encapsulating the past several years of my life into a series of anecdotes.

  “Where did you stay in Paris?” Caro asked.

  I told her we’d stayed at a little hotel near Saint-Germain-des-Prés that one of my friends knew. We’d shared a room. The toilet was down the hall. The Deux Magots around the corner.

  She shrugged and looked away, unimpressed. “I don’t know it.” Either she had sensed my resentment of her or she was as unhappy at my presence as I was at hers.

  “It sounds like a lovely trip, Wylie,” commented Cesca.

  “And you, Cesca?” I asked. “How are you? What are you up to these days?”

  She shifted on the chaise and lit a Marlboro, deflecting my question easily. “I’m good. Really good.” She never did like personal questions.
/>   “Where are you living?”

  “In New York and here, for now. Until my marriage.”

  The conversation lagged. I asked Caro about herself. Where was she from? How long had she known Cesca? They had met in school. Later I would find out that they had much in common. Each came from a family of mixed backgrounds. Her father was American. A banker. Her mother, a famous beauty, Georgian but raised in London. A princess of some kind, according to Cesca. At one point there had been vast estates, serfs. All Caro had inherited from her was disappointment. It must be hard to be a plain girl. It must be harder still to be plain and have a mother who was beautiful. It is the same for short men who have tall fathers. There is something cosmically unfair about it. It is difficult not to be bitter.

  After dinner I was in the kitchen, helping to clean up, scraping uneaten food into the garbage, washing dishes, happy to have a distraction, to feel useful. It was late. The family lingered long after the meal ended, finishing the wine and talking. We were in Kitty’s house. The rooms large and airy, filled with big stuffed sofas, paintings, African fetishes, Mexican mirrors. The dining room looked out over a potato field, which was now too dark to see. Everyone else had gathered around to hear Cosmo play.

  Cesca entered the kitchen carrying empty wine bottles. She had changed before dinner and was now wearing a long, green, light cotton dress embroidered around the neck with a pattern of tiny red beads. It was the first time we had been alone since the Playhouse. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Sure. Thanks again for inviting me for dinner.”

  “I’m sorry about Caro,” she said. “I didn’t know she was coming over.”

  “That’s okay,” I replied disingenuously, intent on the pot I was scrubbing. “No reason to apologize.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” I meant it.

  “I know I promised we’d go for a walk.”

  “It’s okay. Next time.”

  “God knows when that will be,” she said with a laugh. “At the rate we’re going it could be years.”

  I laughed too.

  “Caro will be leaving soon,” she said, touching my arm.

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “Yes, that would be nice.” She was about to leave but stopped and said, “Meet me outside in fifteen minutes. By the stairs to the beach. Caro should be gone by then.”

  As I waited in the darkness, I heard the sound of feet crunching on gravel and the cough of a car engine as it ignited. Several moments later, faintly illuminated by the lights from the house, I saw Cesca walking toward me.

  “Hello you,” she said, slipping her arm through mine, leaning slightly into me. It was as if she had been doing it every day for our entire lives.

  We walked down to the beach. It had been years since I had first come here with her on the night of her grandfather’s birthday party. As if reading my thoughts, she said, “You know, even back then there was something I couldn’t resist about you. You were so handsome. But there was something more. I felt an instant connection with you.”

  I said nothing. Holding my breath. Waiting to see what she would say next.

  “Were you very angry with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now?”

  “Now? Less angry. But still you might say confused.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wylie, what do you want me to say?”

  “An apology would be nice. An explanation.”

  “Sorry, I don’t do either. And if I did, you’d have to get in line behind all the other people.” She let out a little laugh.

  “So what do I get?”

  “What do you want?”

  “You.”

  “I’m not available.”

  “Because you’re engaged?”

  “Yes. That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the other part? What did I do wrong?”

  “Poor Wylie. Don’t you see? You did nothing wrong. Quite the opposite.”

  We walked on a few steps in silence. “I was in love with you, you know,” I said.

  “I know. And it was lovely. But we were both so young. What did we know about love? My God. I’m not sure I even know now.”

  “So why are you engaged?”

  She laughed. “That’s a good question.”

  “Do you love him? Gavin, I mean. That’s his name, right?”

  “Yes, that’s his name. And yes, I suppose I love him in a way.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Geneva, but he has apartments in New York and Paris.”

  “Will you move to Geneva?”

  “Probably.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Lots of things, I suppose.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as how do you know? How do you know you can love just one person for the rest of your life? And is it madness to even pretend to try?”

  “Can you?”

  “I don’t know if I can. I mean, all I’m thinking about now is how much I want you to kiss me.”

  I stopped and looked at her, taking her hands in mine. “Do you want me to?”

  She laughed. “Of course I do.”

  Stepping forward, she raised her lips to mine. Her breath was sweet, her tongue soft. It was all as I remembered. Better. Her hands went under my shirt. My hand reached for her breast. She was not wearing anything under her dress. Through the cotton I massaged her, feeling the hardness of her nipple.

  “Cesca,” I said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  She stepped back. “Stop,” she said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I shouldn’t . . .”

  “Shouldn’t?”

  “You know.”

  “Why?”

  “Too many reasons,” she said, shaking her head but clutching my shirt, holding me away.

  “Do you want to go back inside?”

  She nodded her head. “Yes.”

  “You know, I still love you,” I said. “I never stopped.”

  “Don’t, Wylie. Please.”

  “No. You told me that I would forget you, but I haven’t. I don’t care if you’re getting married. I will always love you.”

  She stepped forward and kissed me passionately, quickly.

  “Good night, Wylie,” she said. “Thank you.”

  I stood there watching her walk away. My disregarded words still hanging in the air, the taste of her still on my lips.

  15

  ON THE SCALE BETWEEN LOVE AND LUST, THERE ARE MANY stops. It is nearly impossible to define love, in English at least, because its definition, not to mention its place within our culture, is so broad. Unlike the Eskimo’s famous fifty words for snow, in English the word love means everything from how a person may feel about chocolate cake to the devotion a couple may feel after many years of marriage.

  Then there is maternal love, sexual love, patriotic love, aesthetic love, and much, much more besides. When John Lennon sang “All you need is love,” he was playing it safe. Love can mean just about anything. It is a word of infinite nuance, but for that very reason also has a stunning inadequacy. The ancient Greeks had four words for love: eros, for physical love; agape, for spiritual love; philia, for social love, and storge, for familial love. Even that doesn’t seem like enough though.

  Lust, however, is love’s younger sibling. It is uncomplicated, straightforward. It relies on only one thing: egotistical desire. Lusting after something means wanting to possess it whether or not it wants to be possessed. Certainly, it is possible to desire an inanimate object, such as a car or a painting, but mostly lust is physical. The hunger one human feels for another.

  As with all desire, there are gradations of intensity. There are the thousand small lusts we feel every day. A man may spot a pretty girl sitting by herself at a bar, and, for a moment, he lusts after her, wonders what she would
be like naked, what size her nipples are, what her smell would be like. And then he loses interest as the conversation turns to a different topic. These lusts are easily forgotten. There are also grander lusts. Lusts that upend civilizations, destroy marriages and lives. Zeus’s lust for Europa, Paris’s lust for Helen. Later, Lancelot and Guinevere. Tristan and Iseult. Abelard and Héloïse. Invariably lust that is fulfilled seems to end badly. After all, there is a reason it is considered a sin.

  The feelings I had for Cesca lay between lust and love. There is no question I lusted after her. For days after I would see her I could think of nothing else. I would lay awake at night and masturbate with her image in my head, wishing she were with me. I did not do this with every pretty girl I knew. There were girls, and later women, who were extremely attractive, some even beautiful, but none of them affected me in quite the same way Cesca did.

  Why the brain fixates on one person instead of another is a mystery. Our synapses fire, our hormones surge, our hearts beat faster. Granted, Cesca was exceptionally beautiful, but that wasn’t it entirely. There was something else about her that drew me to her as much as her beauty did. From the very first minute I saw her before I fell out of the tree, something inside me knew that in some indiscernible way she would be inextricably tied to my life. It was like tasting a food for the first time and not only liking it but recognizing it, as though in a past life it had been your favorite dish. That was how I felt about Cesca: As though I had already known her and loved her for many years.

  What I didn’t know, of course, was whether she felt the same way about me. There were times when I thought it might be possible, that maybe she loved me too. Other times I felt that loving Cesca as I did indicated that there was something flawed about me. What was it that attracted me so deeply to her? Why was I so willing to love someone who caused me such pain? Someone who was willful, stubborn, selfish—but also capable of great warmth, loyalty, and vivacity. By fixating on her, did I render myself emotionally unavailable to other potential relationships? Or was I simply like the stubborn gambler who believes that by always betting on the same number, one day I will hit the jackpot?

  It was in December during my sophomore year. Returning after dinner one evening, I found a piece of paper slipped under my door. We had a communal telephone on the floor and took messages for each other. “Call Cesca,” the note read, followed by a Manhattan phone number.