The Starry Sphinx

by V X Lloyd

  “Baby,” she called for Moony.

  “Sweetie?” He approached, beer in hand. He watched himself grow larger in the bathroom mirror as he got nearer. Celia put out her hand. Like a movie so trite neither of them could watch without feeling dirty, he took her hand and spun her. He ignored knocking his elbow on the wall. They kissed.

  Out of her half-closed eyelids she looked at a photo on the wall she had not noticed before. In it, Kitty wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and an Old West-style dress. It was taken at a carnival, though it was weathered to look antique. She leaned on a horse-hitching post, squinting at the camera as if it were difficult to read.

  Celia motioned at the photograph. “Is this new?”

  “She sent a big one to Perry and Mom as an early wedding present. She said it was good luck that I had one too.”

  “I love you,” she whispered into his ear. She meant it.

  “We’re perfect for each other,” he echoed. He ran his fingers through her fingers and she smiled.

  *

  Celia watched from the balcony, pleasantly stoned.

  Moony looked confused. The shrubs, an ornamental sort from China, were yellowing in parts. Handling their waxy leaves to inspect for a possible infestation, they crumbled and fell off. He noticed that there were several small clumps of browning leaves – he had assumed they were old blooms which had dropped after doing what they did, leaving seeds, possibly. Using his hands to dig through the dirt at the base of the plant, he was surprised by an odd smell – like pesticide or tar. He used the maintenance radio Perry had given him – it had “Julio” markered onto its back -- to ask whether anything had been sprayed on the bushes. Perry said no. He told her about the condition they were in, but that she shouldn’t worry, he would take care of them. He had seen an infestation like this before, 10-4, he said.

  Only the west-facing bushes were showing any signs of sickness. He squinted west at the golf course; a family of six wearing red shirts reading “Cartoon Animals” gave each other high-fives. He looked farther down the green. Two holes behind them, another group of six, wearing blue, shouted something like a warrior chant at the Cartoon Animals family.

  It could be some sort of herbicide from the golf course, he thought. With these shrubs being foreign, they might be considered weeds by the herbicide, however that worked. He could ask the golf course maintenance people if they sprayed, but, he supposed, that wouldn’t do any good now, unless there was some sort of antidote for ornamental shrubs. Instead, he counted the bushes. A total of seventeen might need replacing. He shook his head. That would mean a lot of digging – he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He lit a cigarette.

  There was a springy sound of a large elastic band that issued from the distance on the golf course – Moony looked up again and saw The Cartoon Animals had been pelted with sky-blue toy arrows with suction cup heads. The blue family sat ducked behind a golf cart, shouting at the other family and cheering for themselves. Apparently they were done playing golf and had moved on to blood sports.

  “You manure!” yelled the Cartoon Animals father in an impressive bass voice, clenching his hands into fists hard enough to crack his knuckles. His wife pulled out the arrow trembling from his perspiring brow. “Now you will be defeated.” He motioned to his eldest son, who produced from a backpack a half dozen eyeball-design water balloons and handed them out to the rest of the Animals.

  Moony sided with the Cartoon Animals. The leader of the blue-shirts, a lanky man in blue overalls and cap, barked at his army to reload. “These are tipped with super adhesive. Keep your eyes peeled, hit your mark.”

  There was no time for the blue-shirt assault. Some of them still wearing suction arrows, the Cartoon Animals inundated their cowering opponents – every balloon hit its target in the face. The eyeball designs burst into a tasteless fog-zombie green hue of thick, nearly dry paint. While the blue team recovered from the paint attack, the Cartoon Animals advanced, producing close-range weaponry constructed from hollow plastic.

  “Rip off your shirt, beat the shit out of those blue dorks,” Moony muttered near the shrubs. Sure enough, the Cartoon Animals patriarch unbuttoned his red shirt. It looked like it was a gesture of peace, maybe—he extended the shirt in his hand toward the blue father to wipe his face with. The rest of the Cartoon Animals stood by, within striking distance. Beyond them, a stone’s throw away, were three more blue-shirt kids. They unleashed a volley of grape-sized firecrackers that cackled and spit yellow sparks. The stubby turf around the golf cart where both teams stood smoldered, and the paint let off an odd gas. A girl in blue was struck in the ear by a firecracker, and she ran, braids whipping her toward the little pond to cool her singed scalp. A little blue girl about the same age hopped out from behind the reeds and threw turquoise-painted eggs at her as the red girl dunked her head underwater. The eggs missed her head, yet broke apart anyway on the surface of the water, pooling briefly before vanishing.

  Moony felt something brush over his toe. He jerked his foot back, and looked down to see he had flipped a small turtle on its back. As he leaned over to turn it upright, the turtle did so itself, and headed in the opposite direction. Its shell was patterned as intricately as a distant mountaintop.

  The Cartoon Animals father stepped over the blue dad to rescue his daughter. The blue team took the opportunity to shoot their super-glue arrows at him. Several of them stuck to the seat of his shorts – they waited a moment for the glue to set, then tugged the fishing line attached to the suction cups and ripped open the back seam of his red shorts. Moony couldn’t tell, but it looked like the man wasn’t wearing underwear. The Cartoon Animal kids dropped their weapons and ran to their sister and dad. At any rate, the game was over when the red grandfather, with a three-person slingshot from a nearby hill, pummeled the entire blue team with a massive balloon of paint which ruptured into a huge and oppressive pile. Assisting him hurl the wobbly beast was the blue-shirt father’s wife and grandmother, who, both extremely attractive, both in tight shirts, had become loyal to the Cartoon Animals.

  *

  Beneath the base of one of the bushes sat the God pot. Moony peered into it, seeing a cloudy reflection. He threw it into the garbage.

  “Hey buddy,” a pale thirty-something man screamed from across the C complex parking lot. The man who looked like a figure on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, delicately watering miniature cacti, waved back, but the screaming man was gesturing with his pinky-ringed right hand that Moony should hurry over. A robin, coming out of the clear blue sky, swooped low in front of him on his way across the parking lot, so close that he could feel the wind displaced by its wings.

  “Are you the maintenance guy?” The pinky ring had a numbingly large turquoise stone set into it.

  “Nope,” Moony answered, pawing at his gardening gloves.

  “No?” he asked again for verification. Moony watched the man’s knobby nose move. As the man looked Moony over, shaking his head with the importance of his situation, the nose wagged and bounced a little. It looked like it had been through a hailstorm, or as if it were made from primitive rubber.

  Moony chose to answer that yes, he was the maintenance man.

  “Well,” the man paused, “I was needing to get a maintenance man to look at my garbage disposal. It smells like a trash can in my apartment. Like old food. And it’s because of the drain on the damned garbage disposal.”

  Moony took out his walkie-talkie, turning his face away from the tenant. “Perry,” he said into the walkie-talkie. He asked the man his apartment number. “There’s a tenant here who has a complaint about his garbage disposal. He said his apartment smells.”

  Perry responded, “It’s the weekend, sleepyhead. Tell him we’ll fix it first thing Monday.”

  The man went red in the face.

  Moony said, “Let me take a look at it, and I’ll try and help.”

  *

  It really did smell like old food in the apartment of the man with the hail-damage nose.
r />   The standard Sod Hill faucet had been replaced with a brass Kohler model – it shone like gold. The rest of his place looked like the most boring apartment Moony had ever seen. Above the sink was a map of Colorado hung diagonally.

  Moony, who didn’t understand the slightest thing about plumbing, asked for a flashlight.

  He peered down the garbage disposal. Small dirty things rested in the bottom of the cylinder. He turned it on, and it flung out pungent mucus into his mustache.

  “The disposal works fine, no?” asked Moony.

  “Yeah, it just smells bad.”

  Moony looked under the sink.

  “That’s your problem right there.”

  “What is?” the man asked.

  “It’s got a leak.”

  “Where?”

  “Right there. See?”

  “It's the gasket. Cross-threaded. I’ll be damned.” The man’s nose whistled as he exhaled relief. “Oh, look at that. Somebody overtightened the P-trap. I can replace that. Boy, I’m glad it wasn’t a split in the line. Young man, what’s your name so I can recommend you to your supervisor?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary.”

  “There aren’t many good workers out there. I insist.”

  “Moony.”

  “Mookie,” he repeated.

  “Sure, whatever.”

  “No, I mean it. People should always remember a good one.”