Girl in the Moonlight

by Charles Dubow

  “Engaged?”

  “No.”

  “Then there is still hope.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe.”

  “Does she know how you feel about her?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed lightly. “There is nothing that makes a woman happier than knowing a handsome young man is in love with her. But, remember, she doesn’t have to do anything else but be beloved. It is up to the handsome young man if he decides he wants more.”

  A few nights later, I walked into Big Al’s bar. As usual, I had been agitated by seeing Cesca and was in no mood for reading about barrel and groin vaults and their place in Romanesque architecture. I was craving companionship, even if I spoke to no one. The thought of spending another evening alone was unbearable. Seated at the bar were several regulars, most of them former baymen, who were silently nursing their beers or shot glasses. I nodded to them. Big Al, a stout octogenarian who was blind in one eye and spoke in a gruff squawk, greeted me with a “Hey kid,” and opened a beer for me. It took me coming there for several months before he deigned to recognize me, to know what I liked to drink. He had never bothered to learn my name, but I was grateful simply to be treated as a regular. I sat there, watching a game show on the television above the bar, lost in my thoughts. I had another beer and was about to go when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I turned around, and there was Cesca.

  “I was hoping to find you here,” she said.

  Big Al immediately brightened, hustled over as quickly as his girth would let him, and said, “Hey, beautiful, what can I get you?” I had never seen him move so fast or be so animated.

  She smiled at him and said, “Stoli rocks.”

  “Ain’t got no Stoli. Sorry.”

  “Absolut?”

  “Coming right up.”

  Then to me she said, “All right if I sit down?”

  I was too astonished to see her to say anything more than “What are you doing here?” Then, realizing that might have sounded rude, I added, “I mean, hello. I’m surprised to see you.”

  She laughed. “I’m sure you are. I remember you said this was one of your hangouts.”

  “Here you go, beautiful,” said Al. “On the house.”

  “Aren’t you sweet?” she replied. “Thank you.”

  “You want something else, kid?”

  “Another Bud.” Al limped off to the cooler, lifted the lid, fished around for a while, removed a bottle, opened it, and set it down in front of me.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked. The rest of the bar had gone quiet. All the men were staring at Cesca.

  “Cesca.” She put out her right hand.

  “I’m Al,” he said, taking her hand in his.

  “Pleased to meet you, Al.”

  “You a friend of his?”

  “An old friend.”

  “Hope you don’t feel you gotta come in only when he’s here.” He winked.

  “Why, thank you, Al. I can’t believe I’ve never been in here. I must have passed it hundreds of times.”

  “Well, nothing wrong in making up for lost time,” he chortled.

  “I’ll do that. How long have you been here for exactly, Al?”

  “Almost sixty years. I’ve seen a lot of pretty girls walk in through that door, but you got ’em all beat, you know that?”

  “That’s so sweet of you to say.”

  “Sweet, hell. You’re just lucky I ain’t twenty years younger.”

  “You married, Al?”

  “Yeah, but what she don’t know won’t hurt her,” he said with a wink to the rest of the bar, drawing an appreciative laugh from the other patrons.

  “Well, we’ll just keep this our little secret then, won’t we?” she said and, leaning over the bar, kissed him on the forehead.

  Big Al beamed and turned red. The others whistled and clapped. “Big Al’s in love,” shouted someone.

  “Aw, get out of here,” he responded, obviously pleased.

  “Al, I hate to love you and leave you, but Wylie here and I have to get going. I’ll see you next time.”

  “I’ll be waiting, darlin’.”

  I held the door for Cesca and followed her outside. The night was cold and brisk. Through the bare branches of the trees on the sidewalk, stars twinkled against a deep blue sky.

  “I can see why you like that place,” she said. “You want to get something to eat? I’m famished.”

  “Cesca, why are you here?”

  “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  “Of course I am. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I might not have been there.”

  “Guess I just got lucky.”

  “What if I wasn’t there?”

  “Well, I’d have tried those other places. What were they called? The Sand Bar and Murf’s, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And if you weren’t there, I’d’ve just driven to your house. I’ve never been there before, but I figured I could find it okay. So, if you’re done questioning, what do you say to dinner?”

  We drove separately to a little Mexican place in town. Cesca spoke in Spanish to the busboys, who grinned and blushed.

  “Where’s Gianni?” I asked.

  “He flew home. He has a seminar to prepare for.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “The seminar? I have no idea.”

  “Not that. You know what I mean. Between Gianni and you.”

  She shrugged. “It could be better. The sex is good but . . .”

  “You can spare me the details.”

  “Embarrassed or jealous?” She grinned.

  I leaned back in my chair and grinned. “Maybe a little of both.”

  “But let’s just say I don’t see myself spending the rest of my life being a faculty wife in some small New England town where they roll up the streets at ten o’clock.”

  “So why me?”

  “Why you? I’d thought you’d be happy ‘why you.’”

  “I am. I’m very happy to see you. I hope you know that. It just gets a little confusing sometimes, you know?”

  She reached out her hand and grasped mine, rubbing her thumb along my palm. “Ooh, calluses,” she said, leering at me. “That’s a real turn-on.” Then, “Poor Tricky Wylie. I can be a real pain in the ass, can’t I?”

  I left my hand where it was. “Honestly?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It should but it doesn’t.”

  “So why do you put up with me?”

  “You know why.”

  She played with my hand in silence for a few moments. “You are too sweet, Wylie. I’m very flattered.”

  “I’m not trying to flatter you,” I said, taking my hand back. “I’m trying to prove to you that you don’t have to keep playing these games with me. We aren’t teenagers anymore. Damn it, I love you and I think you should start loving yourself too.”

  “I’d like that. Do you think it’s possible?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you always were the more optimistic one.”

  I signaled for the check and paid. Outside, Cesca didn’t say a word but came right up and kissed me. “I’ve wanted to do that all night,” she said. “Come on. I’ll follow you in my car. Take me to your place.”

  I AWOKE IN THE COLD AND DARK AFTER ONLY A FEW HOURS’ sleep. She stirred and asked groggily, “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve got to go to work,” I whispered. “You sleep some more. Sorry if I woke you. I was going to leave you a note.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling the warmth of her skin. I stroked her hair and kissed her on the cheek softly. She purred and pulled the covers around her. “Will I see you later?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Would you like to?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then maybe—but would you forgive me if I didn’t?”

  I stood up and sighed. “Probably n
ot, but it would be about what I’d expect.”

  I walked to the door and opened it.

  “Wylie?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just want you to know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re the longest relationship I’ve ever had in my life. I hope that counts for something.”

  I closed the door behind me.

  When I returned to the pool house that afternoon in the fading light, I found the bed unmade, an empty coffee cup in the sink, and a few cigarette butts ground into a plate. But otherwise there was no sign of her. I tried calling her at the Playhouse and then at the main house. The only person who answered was the nurse who looked after old Mrs. Baum. When I asked for Cesca, she said, “I have no idea. Sorry.”

  I even got back into my pickup truck still wearing my work clothes and drove to the compound. Except for a light in the main house where the nurse was keeping her vigil over a television set, the rest of the houses were dark, idle as children’s toys on a shelf. There was no sign of Cesca’s car. Once again she had vanished from my life.

  18

  IN THE SPRING I WAS ACCEPTED TO THE HARVARD GRADUATE School of Design. My father and Patty took me out to dinner to celebrate. The restaurant on East Fiftieth Street was French. My father had told me to invite a date if I wanted, but I didn’t have anyone to ask.

  That night I stayed in the unfamiliar guest room of my father’s new apartment. Even though I’d had plenty to drink, I wasn’t tired. I stared at the phone. It was late. I picked it up and dialed Cesca’s number. It rang four times, five. I was about to hang up when I heard a sleepy voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Cesca?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Wylie.”

  “Wylie? What are you doing? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Sorry. I just wanted to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I got into Harvard architectural school.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. “That’s great, Wylie.” Then the sound of another voice.

  “Are you alone?”

  “No.”

  “No, of course not. Look, I’m sorry I bothered you. I just wanted you to know.”

  “Good night, Wylie. I’m very happy for you.” Before I could ask her anything else, she had hung up.

  I moved to Cambridge in May to take summer courses to prepare myself. My father was more than happy to pay my rent and give me a stipend on which to live. I found an apartment on the top floor of a house on Craigie Street owned by a retired music professor. In the afternoons, she would play Chopin.

  For the next three years, Cambridge would be home, but I would come whenever Cesca beckoned. There was a pattern to our reunions. She would be incommunicado for several months, or more, and then I’d receive a phone call or letter telling me to join her wherever she was. Gianni was by now a memory, not even the latest in a long line of men who had tried, and failed, to win her for themselves. At least, I remained a constant, probably because I was always ready to drop whatever I was doing and hasten to her side. Mostly I was summoned to New York. A few times it was to Amagansett in the dead of winter, when we were the only ones there. The snow deep on the ground, the refrigerator empty. Logs blazing in the fire. Once I met her on Cape Cod in the off-season in a large, gray modern house overlooking Cotuit Bay. There were vintage cars parked in the garage, expensive paintings on the walls, personal photographs on the shelves. An extensive wine cellar to which we liberally helped ourselves. We were all alone.

  “What are we doing here? Whose house is this?” I asked.

  “Shhhhh,” she said. “Come to bed.”

  Wherever we went, she was always mysterious about her recent activity. While there were certain subjects that were off-limits, she was happy to bring me up to date on her family. She told me about Cosmo’s continued success and Carmen’s rapid progress through medical school. Lio’s disillusionment with the art world. He had been in a group show in Barcelona and had sold a few of his paintings. That he had not sold them all came as a surprise and disappointment to him.

  Sometimes when we lay in bed, I could get Cesca to tell me about herself, her life. She told me about Freddie, the boy in Cadaqués. Others whose names I have forgotten. Why do you want to know all this stuff? she would ask. I don’t know. I just do, I would respond, believing, falsely, that such knowledge could be to my advantage. It was like Scheherazade in reverse. I figured that if I knew her better than anyone, she would prefer me over anyone. It was just a matter of patience. Eventually she would be ready.

  But each time I was wrong. There were mornings when I would wake up and be surprised to find she was still there sleeping next to me. I would hope for this day at least that she wasn’t leaving. A few mornings, I even awoke to an empty bed but then found her making coffee. She told me once with regal insouciance that it was the only thing she could make. Like her mother, she abhorred domestic chores. After a day or two, whichever room we were staying in would be covered in her clothes. Underwear draped over a chair. Stockings balled up in the corner. Once I asked if she wanted some help cleaning up, and she looked at me quizzically. “Why would you want to do that?” She seemed genuinely perplexed. Hers was a life where people picked up after her or not at all. Chaos was preferable to order. She was a dropper of rocks in still water, the reflections in the ripples more interesting than a placid surface.

  And then, inevitably, without warning, just as I was beginning to get used to her, and was even thinking this time she would stay, like a cat rescued during a rainstorm she would be gone. We could have been having dinner one evening, talking about how much fun it might be to live in, say, Amsterdam or Rio, or at what moments we were happiest—and I would always tell her truthfully they were the times I was with her—and there would be no hint from her that her bags were already mentally packed and she would be leaving the next day. Maybe she didn’t even know herself. Maybe she was adhering to her own internal timetable, the circadian rhythms that ordered her life. Her disappearances, however, became more bearable over time. I grew to accept them as part of a natural order, like a bird’s migration or the peregrination of the stars. After she had left, my life resumed its normal course, like a town after a hurricane. Slowly, I would rehang the signs, repair the windows, pump out the basement.

  If I was overcurious about Cesca’s life, there was no corresponding interest from her about mine. Rarely did she ask me a personal question. She didn’t want to know how I felt about my mother or why I had quit painting. When she first reappeared, she would inquire in a desultory way about how my studies were progressing, but she rarely listened long enough to hear what I said. Nor would she have been interested if I went into detail about the differences between Brutalism and Futurism, who my favorite professor was, or whether I felt that my thesis adviser should have more flexible office hours. I was not offended by her attitude because I knew how solipsistic she was. We learn to make allowances for those we love most. In Cesca’s case, she asked nothing from me she did not ask from herself.

  After three years I graduated and, through a connection of my father’s, found work at the Paris office of a New York firm. When I told Cesca of my move, her response was “Paris! I love Paris.”

  “Will you visit?”

  “Of course, darling. Just try to keep me away.”

  Through a friend of my mother’s, I rented a small, furnished apartment on the top floor of a house on the Île Saint-Louis that was a short walk from my office. It was charming, if cramped, and I had a view of Notre Dame. I went to work, struggling to adapt to my new job and my new culture. I had studied French in school and had a passable accent, but I was not a natural linguist, and it took me several months to get used to the speed with which the average Parisian spoke.

  One night I returned home to find a message on my answering machine. Cesca’s voice saying: “Wylie, it’s me. I’ll be passing through Paris in
a week or so. I’ll let you know. Big kiss. Adéu.”

  I tried to call her back, but, as usual, there was no answer.

  For the next week, I worked distractedly, rushing home from the office, wondering if that night there would be another message from Cesca, telling me to meet her at such-and-such a hotel on the Rue Whatever. Or to say her flight was arriving in the morning and to meet her. Or to just stay where I was—she’d be right over. In preparation for any and all such exigencies, I laid in a store of champagne, pâté, good coffee, even a small, enormously expensive tin of Russian beluga, all of which put a sizable dent in my meager weekly take-home pay.

  But then there was the night I returned home to find another message. “Hi, it’s me. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll be able to see you. I’ve got to go. They’re calling my flight. Next time, okay? Big kiss.”

  So, I drank the champagne and ate the caviar by myself and tried not to be angry or disappointed. I consoled myself with the belief that there would be another call, another promise of a meeting, and that, at some point, I would see her.

  Like so many before me, I soon found myself seduced by Paris’s charms. I was willing to overlook the challenges the city presented—the washer and dryers that don’t really work, the inadequacy of the toilet paper, the bureaucracy, the perennial strikes, the inefficiencies, the dog waste on the streets, and the expense. As I settled in I made friends with colleagues, expats, a few old college friends who, like me, were temporary émigrés. I was doing well at the office. My projects included a Spanish bank, a Swiss shopping mall, even a hotel in Tokyo, where I was sent to visit several times. While I wasn’t lead architect on any, my work on them had gotten me noticed.

  And then I met Selene. It was at a party one night at an apartment in the First Arrondissement. The ceilings were fourteen feet high. Gilded boiseries. Ancient herringbone floors polished from years of use. The host was American, from Texas. Another classmate of my father’s, which was why I was invited. He had married a Frenchwoman, now in her fifties. Her tanned arms were like sticks, and she wore a chain of expensive-looking emeralds around her neck.

  “Enchanté, Monsieur Rose,” she said graciously. “Bienvenue chez nous. Please have a drink.”