Envious Moon(27)

I opened one of the bottles of wine. I drank straight from it. I lighted a cigarette. I was halfway up the cliff face. The path was to my left. To my right were more trees and the hilly land that led to the cliff walk. In front of me was the dark ocean obscured by the rain and the fog and the dark. Behind me was the house and inside it were Hannah and her mother.

I wondered what they had eaten for dinner. Surely more than the turkey sandwich from the general store that I had devoured as soon as I bought it. I wondered what Hannah talked about. If she was tempted to tell her mother about me, about how in two weeks we had grown closer than many people do in a lifetime. Mostly, I wondered if she looked to the window. If she looked to the window and the rain and worried about me. Worried about me sitting out here getting wet.

Maybe Hannah would come find me. When her mother fell asleep, I thought. Mothers went to sleep early. She probably couldn’t wait. Of course, she’d look for me on the beach. But that’d be okay. I’d hear her on the path when she went by. No one else would be walking the path to the cove in a downpour. I’d surprise her. And then she’d join me under my tarp and we could share the wine and make love with the rain around us. She’d tell me how hard it was to be at the house knowing the whole time that I was down here.

The night moved on. The rain continued. The dark grew more dense. I had a lot of time to think. I couldn’t see anything except for the flash of my lighter when I lit another cigarette. In the quick light I got a sense of rain and trees and water. Lots of water. Spilling off the raincoat above me to the ground. Then the dark shrunk around me. I thought of Victor and the story I would have to tell him. I thought about his eyes, how big they would get when I told him all that happened. When I told him about having sex on the beach. What it was like to have such a beautiful girl move on top of you. No f*cking way, Tony, he’d say. I’d tell him the whole thing. God’s honest truth, Vic.

I’d have to get an apartment. One like Victor had. Then on weekends Hannah could come visit and we’d never leave bed. The only thing that would make us move would be hunger. We’d get up to eat and then return to bed. Or maybe we’d just eat in bed. Or not eat at all. For who needs food when you have a warm bed?

I missed Victor. Everything we did together. Our summer routine, those nights drinking beer on the jetty. Someone to talk to like a brother. Who understood me like a brother.

And I missed Berta. She’d be watching television by herself. And she’d fall asleep in front of it. Without me to wake her she’d come to in the middle of the night and groggily make her way upstairs.

I even missed the Lorrie Anne. It would be nasty out there tonight. Fishing in this kind of rain. The deck slick with it. But I also knew when you had the work you didn’t notice the weather as much. You were too busy. Besides, they were good men. Big Al and Ronny. Carlos. Captain Alavares. Brothers of a different kind.

I stubbed out one cigarette and lighted another. I took a long pull off the bottle of wine. Come find me, Hannah. Come find me and take me away from this rain. Take me away from this silly homesickness. Take me somewhere warm where I can climb inside you.





I had no sense of time. I never wore a watch. It had been hours since the sun went down. Because of all the rain it seemed longer. There had not been much light in the day to begin with. It had to be around ten now. Ten or eleven. And no sign of Hannah. No footfalls on the path to the cove. She had not come to get me.

At one point my legs cramped and I stood out from under my jury-rigged tarp. The rain had slowed a little but still fell steadily. Mist rose up all around me in the dark grove of trees. The rain soaked my hair. Where was she? Hannah had not said anything about coming to me, but I didn’t think she had to. It was implied. I knew her mother was there and could not know about me and I respected that. Well, I understood it anyway. But she couldn’t be with her mother all the time. Don’t mothers go to sleep?

I began to walk. I moved carefully through the pine trees, fending off low-hanging branches as I went. Some were heavy with rainwater and when I pushed on them it spilled off in a rush and fell on me like a shower. I didn’t care anymore. I reached the trail and turned toward the house.

The path was muddy from all the rain. My boots sloshed through it as I climbed. Out from under the tree cover it was a heavy rain and I had to wipe it away where it ran into my eyes. To my right the ocean was hidden by the fog.

The ground leveled below me and I knew I was close. I came through the final stand of trees and in front of me now was the house. It was ablaze with light and through the mist and the fog it glowed orange. It was like I was seeing it through gauze and the effect was almost confusing. She only used the one light at night, the one in her room. I had never seen the house like this before. With the heavy fog and the falling rain and the fuzzy light, it was like walking through a dream.

I moved across the wet grass toward the house. The orange lights seemed to pulse with every step I took. Maybe it was the wine, but if I didn’t know better I might have thought the house itself was alive. It looked like it was breathing in the fog.

When I got about sixty yards from the house, I stopped. Through the rain I could see into the floor-to-ceiling windows of the big ballroom on the first floor. The chandelier was on and the whole room was awash with light but I didn’t see anyone. I moved forward and I was even with the house now, standing on the side of it, and the windows were right in front of me, close enough that I could see the whole room but far enough away that anyone looking out would not be able to see me. And as I watched, a tall, thin woman with long blond hair came into view. She wore a black T-shirt and white pants. This must be her mother, I thought. She was really beautiful. I thought maybe she was talking on the phone because she was pacing back and forth on the parquet floor and she seemed to be speaking, though I didn’t see anyone else. Then I realized she wasn’t on the phone because her arms dropped to her side. Then she raised one up high and brought it back down, as people do when they are making a point. I strained my eyes through the rain and the mist. And then behind her, half-in and half-out of the room, I saw Hannah.