Moonlight & Vines (43 page)

“And then he dumped you—just like that?”

Mona nodded. “I suppose I should've seen it coming. All it seems we've been doing lately is arguing. But I've been so busy trying to get the new issue out and dealing with the people at Spar who are still being such pricks. . . .”

She let her voice trail off. Tonight the plan had been to get away from her problems, not focus on them. She often thought that too many people used Jilly as a combination den mother/emotional junkyard, and she'd promised herself a long time ago that she wouldn't be one of them. But here she was anyway, dumping her problems all over the table between them.

The trouble was, Jilly drew confidences from you as easily as she did a smile. You couldn't not open up to her.

“I guess what it boils down to,” she said, “is I wish I was more like Rockit Grrl than Mona.”

Jilly smiled. “Which Mona?”

“Good point.”

The real-life Mona wrote and drew three ongoing strips for her own bi-monthly comic book,
The Girl Zone
. Rockit Grrl was featured in “The True Life Adventures of Rockit Grrl,” the pen-and-ink-Mona in a semi-autobiographical strip called “My Life as a Bird.” Rounding out each issue was “Jupiter Jewel.”

Rockit Grrl, aka “The Menace from Venice”—Venice Avenue, Crow-sea,
that is, not the Italian city or the California beach—was an in-your-face punkette with an athletic body and excellent fashion sense, strong and unafraid; a little too opinionated for her own good, perhaps, but that only allowed the plots to pretty much write themselves. She spent her time righting wrongs and combating heinous villains like Didn't-Phone-When-He-Said-He-Would Man and Honest-My-Wife-and-I-Are-as-Good-as-Separated Man.

The Mona in “My Life as a Bird” had spiky blonde hair and jean overalls just as her creator did, though the real life Mona wore a T-shirt under her overalls and she usually had an inch or so of dark roots showing. They both had a quirky sense of humor and tended to expound at length on what they considered the mainstays of interesting conversation—love and death, sex and art—though the strip's monologues were far more coherent. The stories invariably took place in the character's apartment or the local English-styled pub down the street from it, which was based on the same pub where she and Jilly were currently sharing a pitcher of draught.

Jupiter Jewel had yet to make an appearance in her own strip, but the readers all felt as though they already knew her since her friends—who did appear—were always talking about her.

“The Mona in the strip, I guess,” Mona said. “Maybe life's not a smooth ride for her either, but at least she's usually got some snappy come-back line.”

“That's only because you have the time to think them out for her.”

“This is true.”

“But then,” Jilly added, “that must be half the fun. Everybody thinks of what they should have said after the fact, but you actually get to use those lines.”

“Even more true.”

Jilly refilled their glasses. When she set the pitcher back down on the table there was only froth left in the bottom.

“So did you come back with a good line?” she asked.

Mona shook her head. “What could I say? I was so stunned to find out that he'd never taken what I do seriously that all I could do was look at him and try to figure out how I ever thought we really knew each other.”

She'd tried to put it out of her mind, but the phrase “that pathetic little comic book of yours” still stung in her memory.

“He used to like the fact that I was so different from the people where
he works,” she said, “but I guess he just got tired of parading his cute little Bohemian girlfriend around to office parties and the like.”

Jilly gave a vigorous nod which made her curls fall down into her eyes. She pushed them back from her face with a hand that still had the inevitable paint lodged under the nails. Ultramarine blue. A vibrant coral.

“See,” she said. “That's what infuriates me about the corporate world. The whole idea that if you're doing something creative that doesn't earn big bucks, you should consider it a hobby and put your real time and effort into something serious. Like your art isn't serious enough.”

Mona took a swallow of beer. “Don't get me started on that.”

Spar Distributions had recently decided to cut back on the non-superhero titles they carried and
The Girl Zone
had been one of the casualties. That was bad enough, but then they also wouldn't cough up her back issues or the money they owed her from what they had sold.

“You got a lousy break,” Jilly told her. “They've got no right to let things drag on the way they have.”

Mona shrugged. “You'd think I'd have had some clue before this,” she said, more willing to talk about Pete. At least she could deal with him. “But he always seemed to like the strips. He'd laugh in all the right places and he even cried when Jamaica almost died.”

“Well, who didn't?”

“I guess. There sure was enough mail on that story.”

Jamaica was the pet cat in “My Life as a Bird”—Mona's one concession to fantasy in the strip since Pete was allergic to cats. She'd thought that she was only in between cats when Crumb ran away and she first met Pete, but once their relationship began to get serious she gave up on the idea of getting another one.

“Maybe he didn't like being in the strip,” she said.

“What wasn't to like?” Jilly asked. “I loved the time you put me in it, even though you made me look like I was having the bad hair day from hell.”

Mona smiled. “See, that's what happens when you drop out of art school.”

“You have bad hair days?”

“No, I mean—”

“Besides, I didn't drop out. You did.”

“My point exactly,” Mona said. “I can't draw hair for the life of me. It always looks all raggedy.”

“Or like a helmet, when you were drawing Pete.”

Mona couldn't suppress a giggle. “It wasn't very flattering, was it?”

“But you made up for it by giving him a much better butt,” Jilly said.

That seemed uproariously funny to Mona. The beer, she decided, was making her giddy. At least she hoped it was the beer. She wondered if Jilly could hear the same hysterical edge in her laugh that she did. That made the momentary good humor she'd been feeling scurry off as quickly as Pete had left their apartment earlier in the day.

“I wonder when I stopped loving him,” Mona said. “Because I did, you know, before we finally had it out today. Stop loving him, I mean.”

Jilly leaned forward. “Are you going to be okay? You can stay with me tonight if you like. You know, just so you don't have to be alone your first night.”

Mona shook her head. “Thanks, but I'll be fine. I'm actually a little relieved, if you want to know the truth. The past few months I've been wandering through a bit of a fog, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Now I know.”

Jilly raised her eyebrows.

“Knowing's better,” Mona said.

“Well, if you change your mind . . .”

“I'll be scratching at your window the way those stray cats you keep feeding do.”

When they called it a night, an hour and another half pitcher of draught later, Mona took a longer route home than she normally would. She wanted to clear her head of the decided buzz that was making her stride less than steady, though considering the empty apartment she was going home to, maybe that wasn't the best idea, never mind her brave words to Jilly. Maybe, instead, she should go back to the pub and down a couple of whiskey's so that she'd really be too tipsy to mope.

“Oh, damn him anyway,” she muttered and kicked at a tangle of crumpled newspapers that were spilling out of the mouth of an alleyway she was passing.

“Hey, watch it!”

Mona stopped at the sound of the odd gruff voice, then backed away as the smallest man she'd ever seen crawled out of the nest of papers to glare at her. He couldn't have stood more than two feet high, a disagreeable and ugly little troll of a man with a face that seemed roughly carved
and then left unfinished. His clothes were ragged and shabby, his face bristly with stubble. What hair she could see coming out from under his cloth cap was tangled and greasy.

Oh my, she thought. She was drunker than she'd realized.

She stood there swaying for a long moment, staring down at him and half expecting him to simply drift apart like smoke, or vanish. But he did neither and she finally managed to find her voice.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I just didn't see you down . . . there.” This was coming out all wrong. “I mean . . .”

His glare deepened. “I suppose you think I'm too small to be noticed?”

“No. It's not that. I. . .”

She knew that his size was only some quirk of genetics, an unusual enough trait to find in someone out and about on a Crowsea street at midnight, but at the same time her imagination or, more likely, all the beer she'd had, was telling her that the little man scowling up at her had a more exotic origin.

“Are you a leprechaun?” she found herself asking.

“If I had a pot of gold, do you think I'd be sleeping on the street?”

She shrugged. “No, of course not. It's just. . .”

He put a finger to the side of his nose and blew a stream of snot onto the pavement. Mona's stomach did a flip and a sour taste rose up in her throat. Trust her that, when she finally did have some curious encounter like the kind Jilly had so often, it had to be with a grotty little dwarf such as this.

The little man wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket and grinned at her.

“What's the matter, princess?” he asked. “If I can't afford a bed for the night, what makes you think I'd go out and buy a handkerchief just to avoid offending your sensibilities?”

It took her a moment to digest that. Then digging in the bib pocket of her overalls, she found a couple of crumpled dollar bills and offered them to him. He regarded the money with suspicion and made no move to take it from her.

“What's this?” he said.

“I just. . . I thought maybe you could use a couple of dollars.”

“Freely given?” he asked. “No strings, no ties?”

“Well, it's not a loan,” she told him. Like she was ever going to see him again.

He took the money with obvious reluctance and a muttered “Damn.”

Mona couldn't help herself. “Most people would say thank you,” she said.

“Most people wouldn't be beholden to you because of it,” he replied.

“I'm sorry?”

“What for?”

Mona blinked. “I meant, I don't understand why you're indebted to me now. It was just a couple of dollars.”

“Then why apologize?”

“I didn't. Or I suppose I did, but—” This was getting far too confusing. “What I'm trying to say is that I don't want anything in return.”

“Too late for that.” He stuffed the money in his pocket. “Because your gift was freely given, it means I owe you now.” He offered her his hand. “Nacky Wilde, at your service.”

Seeing it was the same one he'd used to blow his nose, Mona decided to forgo the social amenities. She stuck her own hands in the side pockets of her overalls.

“Mona Morgan,” she told him.

“Alliterative parents?”

“What?”

“You really should see a doctor about your hearing problem.”

“I don't have a hearing problem,” she said.

“It's nothing to be ashamed of. Well, lead on. Where are we going?”

“We're
not going anywhere. I'm going home and you can go back to doing whatever it was you were doing before we started this conversation.”

He shook his head. “Doesn't work that way. I have to stick with you until I can repay my debt.”

“I don't think so.”

“Oh, it's very much so. What's the matter? Ashamed to be seen in my company? I'm too short for you? Too grubby? I can be invisible, if you like, but I get the feeling that'd only upset you more.”

She had to be way more drunk than she thought she was. This wasn't even remotely a normal conversation.

“Invisible,” she repeated.

He gave her an irritated look. “As in, not perceivable by the human eye. You do understand the concept, don't you?”

“You can't be serious.”

“No, of course not. I'm making it up just to appear more interesting to
you. Great big, semi-deaf women like you feature prominently in my daydreams, so naturally I'll say anything to try to win you over.”

Working all day at her drawing desk didn't give Mona as much chance to exercise as she'd like, so she was a bit touchy about the few extra pounds she was carrying.

“I'm not big.”

He craned his neck. “Depends on the perspective, sweetheart.”

“And I'm not deaf.”

“I was being polite. I thought it was kinder than saying you were mentally disadvantaged.”

“And you're
certainly
not coming home with me.”

“Whatever you say,” he said.

And then he vanished.

One moment he was there, two feet of unsavory rudeness, and the next she was alone on the street. The abruptness of his disappearance, the very weirdness of it, made her legs go all watery and she had to put a hand against the wall until the weak feeling went away.

I am
way
too drunk, she thought as she pushed off from the wall.

She peered into the alleyway, then looked up and down the street. Nothing. Gave the nest of newspapers a poke with her foot. Still nothing. Finally she started walking again, but nervously now, listening for footsteps, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching her. She was almost back at her apartment when she remembered what he'd said about how he could be invisible.

Impossible.