Envious Moon(8)

“But she didn’t see you?” Victor asked.

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. She couldn’t have. It was too dark. I was in the shadows. Listen, light me a cigarette, will you? My hands are shaking too much.”

Victor lighted a cigarette and then lit another one off of it. He handed one to me and I drew on it and underneath the boat I felt the swell of the ocean, where it lifted us up and let us back down again. I looked deep into the distance, into the black horizon, and I saw where the sea became sky and where the stars touched the earth.

“But the man,” I said.

“What?” said Victor and in his voice I heard the alarm.

I sighed. “He fell. Fell a long way, I think. He tried to tackle me on the stairs. I shook him off. At least I think I did. He was gone. Over the railing.”

“Jesus, Tony,” Victor said. “How far?”

“A long way,” I said. “I heard him hit. On the wood floor. I heard him hit on the wood floor.”

“He’s okay, though, right? He’s okay?”

I shook my head. “Shit, I don’t know. It was a long way.”

“It was an accident,” Victor said hopefully.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It was an accident,” Victor said again, and this time I didn’t feel like consoling him. I was the one who had gone in the house, the one who had been there.

I said, “I don’t know, Vic. We were robbing the f*cking house.”





We rode the skiff toward the mainland and approached Galilee from the west, as if we had been fishing the shoals down coast. It was something we often did in the summer and maybe on any other night we would have looked only like two fishing buddies, throwing a line to pass the time.

The harbor was quiet when we crossed the breakwater. One trawler was heading out but it was late and there was little other activity.

I tied up the skiff and we walked along the darkened wharves and then past the cannery without speaking. In an alley between warehouses a drunk on his knees retched and when we went by he looked up at us. At Main Street we stopped for a moment before we split up. I thought there was something I needed to say but I did not know what. I knew I didn’t have to mention the money because neither of us wanted to think about that now. I would put it away and try to forget about it.

“Call me tomorrow,” I said.

“Sure,” said Victor, and he held his hand out, palm up, and I smacked mine, knuckles down, against it. It was something we did all the time then, and it felt silly this night, it felt forced, as if nothing had happened in the last couple of hours. Like it was any other night when we didn’t have to work.

I watched Victor walk toward the studio apartment he rented above the restaurant. I didn’t want to go home just yet so I lighted a cigarette and stood with the yellow from the street-light above me spreading across the black pavement at my feet. Now that I was alone, I was suddenly exhausted. I felt the tired in my arms and in my legs. I wanted my bed but I needed time to think. I walked the deserted streets for a half hour, thinking on the night. Finally, I turned down my narrow street, the small bungalows all in a row; mine the only one showing any light. My mother must have fallen asleep in front of the television.

Sure enough, when I opened the door she was in the reclining chair, a late-night show on in front of her. A blanket covered her stout legs and looking at her wide, pleasant face, her closed eyes, a strong feeling of love washed over me.

“Berta,” I whispered.

She slowly opened her eyes. She gave me a sleepy smile and she stretched. “Anthony, bonito,” she said, and then she frowned. “You were out late.”

“Fishing with Victor.”

“Fishing,” she said. “Always fishing.”

“It’s something to do,” I said.

“Help me up,” she said.

I took her hands in mine and they were rough like a fisherman’s hands and this always surprised me. I knew it was from all the work in the kitchens but I expected them to be smooth. I always thought a mother’s hands should be smooth. I pulled her to her feet. When she stood her head only came to my rib cage and I hugged her.

“Work comes early tomorrow,” she said.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” I said, and I remembered the money in my pocket.

“No rest for the wicked,” she said, and she smiled and leaned up and kissed me.

“Good night, Mama,” I said.

In my bedroom I opened the window and I looked out to the other houses and the small sandy yards with their chain-link fences. I dangled one leg out in the air and I lighted a cigarette. Berta hated when I did this but she had stopped saying anything to me a while ago. The wind had picked up since we had left the water and I listened to it move through the stubby trees.

I looked back into the room and to the bureau where I had put the money when I came upstairs. When I took it out from under my shirt, there it was, all those bills. I had not intended to count it. But when I saw them spilling out, I couldn’t help it. I took them out onto the bed and they were all thousand-dollar bills and I had never seen a thousand-dollar bill before. I picked one of them up and on front was Grover Cleveland. Fat with a thick mustache. I laid them out on the bed, one next to the other. There were sixteen of them. Sixteen thousand dollars. More than Berta made in a year. Enough for college, I thought, though I did not know that.