The Moonlight (6 page)

And, Jesus, she was lush, with nice-sized breasts with nipples as hard as diamonds.  The rest of her was just soft enough to be luxurious.  And when she came it was in long shudders, like she was starved for it.  She made him feel like King Kong.

They made love for three straight hours.  Nothing, nothing in his whole life, had ever been anything like it.  Not even close.

“Will I see you again?” she asked as he was putting his clothes back on.  There was a little note of uncertainty in her voice, as if it mattered to her, and he liked that too.

“I could come in to the restaurant about ten o’clock.  Then, after you get off . . .”

“I’m not working tomorrow night.  Why don’t you come straight here?”

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his socks on, and she put her arms around him from behind and kissed him on the neck.  They were lovers.  It was a settled thing between them.

“If I can rent a car by tomorrow, maybe we could go out to dinner.”

She kissed him again, letting her lower lip drag across his earlobe.

“I hate restaurants,” she murmured—he could feel the heat of her breath on his neck.  “Just show up here, and I’ll feed you.”

“Sounds good.  I’ll bring the wine.”

When he went down the stairs it was four o’clock in the morning, so he went to the Grand Union to finish the shopping. The sky was still black while he walked home, lugging his plastic grocery bags, and this time he didn’t stop for a cigarette. In the purely intellectual way that, for instance, he knew his social security number, he knew that he was tired, yet at the same time he felt ready to explode with the sheer animal joy of being alive.  He thought he might just wait up for the sunrise.  Why not?

By the time he had made it back to the roadhouse and put everything away—orange juice, a jar of spaghetti sauce, in Beth’s honor a six-pack of Coors, two quart bottles of ginger ale, a pound of sweet butter, a couple of frozen dinners—his lungs were perishing for a smoke.  It was a filthy habit.  Beth didn’t smoke, although she hadn’t said anything.  Maybe he should give it up.

But not tonight.  He didn’t feel virtuous.  He felt wicked.  He liked feeling wicked.  He was the T. Boone Pickens of sex, king of the hostile takeover.

Balls.  There hadn’t been anything even remotely hostile about it.  She had just about handed herself over to him.

He had never had a woman who really, really wanted him like that—just come into my bed, Big Boy, because I have this bad, aching need and only you will do.  There wasn’t anything life had to offer any better than that.

He put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it.  He decided he wanted to feel the cool night air on his face, and listen to the bullfrogs.  He would have his smoke out on the dance floor and then go to bed.  To hell with the sunrise.

He walked through the main room, not bothering to turn on the lights, and actually had his hand on the latch of the glass door when he saw through it a flicker of reddish light.

It was perhaps forty feet beyond the door.  The light hovered in the air for a moment, then moved in a slow arc, disappeared and them came into view again.

It was the tip of a lit cigarette.  He was sure of it.  He couldn’t really see anything in that darkness, not even shapes, but he had a sense of someone sitting on one of the lawn chairs.

He watched with a kind of paralyzed fascination for several seconds before it occurred to him that he had only to switch on the floodlights to see who it was.

The light switch was on the wall opposite, about fifteen feet from the door.  He walked over, felt around in the darkness for a moment, and snicked it on.  When he got back to the glass door—how long did that take? a second? a second and a half?—he saw there was no one.  The lawn chair was precisely where he had expected to see it, but there was no one in it.

“Nobody can move that fast,”
he thought. 
“Therefore there never was anyone.  Q.E.D.  Maybe what I saw was a firefly.”

He had never seen a firefly, so it struck him as a real possibility.

He opened the door and went outside.  Once he left the house, and had stepped into the area where the flood lamps made bands of hard, yellow light, he could see the traces of cigarette smoke curling up through the empty air.

June 21, 1990

“Louise, I’m takin’ the dog.”

Leo Galatina stood on his porch, hooking a chain leash to the collar of his ancient black poodle, waiting for an answer.  God damned woman, she might let someone know she was alive in there.

“I’m takin’ the dog for a walk, dammit!”

Still no answer.  Leo shrugged in resigned disgust and started down the porch steps.  It was the same each evening:  he and the dog went out for a little stroll after dinner, no more than forty minutes there and back, and Louise never came out to see them off.  She would wait until they were gone and then come out and park her fat ass on one of the wicker porch chairs so she could be there waiting like God’s vengeance when they got back, but she always hid in the bathroom when they left.  It was because of the dog—she was slighting the fucking dog.  Goddam stupid bitch.

He paid her good money to look after them, but all you had to do was screw a woman a couple of times—just a couple of times—and she starts giving herself airs like she’s lady of the manor.  She didn’t like the dog because once in a while the dog forgot himself and did his business on the carpet.  Well, the dog was old, so what did she expect?  The dog had been his wife’s, so if it was such a thing for her to clean a little shit off the carpet once in a while she could find herself another job.

Goddam bitch.

Anyway, she took care of things nice, and for an old broad she wasn’t such a bad piece of ass, so maybe it was okay about her hiding in the bathroom every time he went out with the dog.

She was down in his will for a quarter of a million—what the fuck, she was the last woman Leo Galatina was ever going to get it up for.

Leo glared at the dog with something like hatred.  His wife had bought it as a puppy, saying they needed some company now that they were old, and five weeks later the damn woman had fallen down dead of a stroke.  And ever since, Leo Galatina, who used to be a pretty tough guy, had to take the stupid poodle out four times a day so it can sprinkle the bushes.

A car passed on the road, dark red, shiny as a new dime.  He watched as it pulled around the bend and disappeared.  The sound of its engine died away almost at once, as if it had stopped just up ahead.  One of the neighbors must have brought a new car home.  Well, they could all afford it.

Leo lived in the smallest house on his street, but he could have bought and sold everyone on Mill Road twice over.  He was a rich old man and, although his wealth did not show in his manner of life, he took a pride in it.  He took an even greater pride in just being old, in having lived so long when so many of his friends and enemies—and especially his enemies—had been rotting in the earth for decades.  But he, Leo Galatina, expected to die in his bed, surrounded by his family, having taken the sacrament and unburdened his soul of its many sins.  Why not?  He had nothing to fear from his enemies anymore.  His enemies were all dead.

“Come on, dog.  Let’s go.”

On Mill Road you could hear the traffic on the freeway that ran parallel to it only sixty or seventy yards north, but the road itself had hardly any traffic.  He had seen one car tonight already, but he might not see another before he came home again.

He would walk the dog to Birch Tree Lane and back, which was three quarters of a mile in each direction.  That was enough at his age.  Then he would watch television with Louise until nine o’clock, and then he would go to bed.  Louise would bring him a glass of warm milk, no different than as if he was a baby, and she would sit on the edge of his bed in her nightdress and wait for him to drink it.  She knew just how to be nice to a man and, if he could manage to get it up, she would take the nightdress off and come into bed with him.  Sometimes she would anyway.

What the hell, she was paid to be nice to him.  There wasn’t another housekeeper in Fairfield County who got anything like her salary. 
And
she was in his will.  She could damn well afford to take her nightdress off once in a while.

Bitch.

Sure enough, the red car was parked in the Crockers’ driveway, its hood just visible as it emerged from the shade into the last of the sunlight.  Leo Galatina only made the identification and then glanced away.  The habits of a lifetime kept him alert, but he would have been ashamed to admit to any curiosity about his neighbors.  Except for their names, they were strangers to him, in some cases even after twenty years.  They knew who he was—or, more to the point, who he had been—and they had never wanted to know any more.

So screw the pack of ’em, fuckin’ Yankee Doodle pansies.

There were no sidewalks, and all the front lawns along Mill Road were guarded by fences of one kind or another, so you walked on the tarred gravel, long since worn to a smooth silver gray.  Leo had a bad leg, the result of a gunshot wound he had received in his forties, and part of the reason for these evening strolls was to keep it exercised.  But the leg meant that he couldn’t walk very fast—a mile and a half in forty minutes did not exactly qualify him for the Olympics.  Anyway, at his age he was lucky he could walk at all.  He was fine as long as he kept an eye out for traffic, and there was never much traffic.

A squirrel, clinging to the side of a tree not five feet away, watched as they passed.  The dog looked at it longingly through rheumy eyes but did not even bark.  The dog was nearly eleven years old and well past it.  They were both past it, Leo reflected.  They were both as good as dead.

It had been over three months since the last time he had got it on with Louise, and she was beginning to get a little impatient.  So tonight he would take it slow and easy, and maybe this time he could keep his battery charged up enough to make it happen.  He tried to concentrate on remembering what she looked like naked, but it was an effort.  Funny, there were women he had fucked sixty years ago who were more real to him now.

It would be better to live without women, except that then you were as good as dead.  Leo considered the decay of his own lust with a kind of horror.  No, you had to go on with it.  When you stopped being a man you might as well shoot yourself.

So much was desire mixed up with the fear of death—Leo had only to think of his own son to be struck by the truth of it.  Leo Jr., who was nearly sixty, had just divorced his second wife and had two mistresses jockeying to be Number Three.  Plus the damn fool was only fifteen months away from bypass surgery.  You’d think he only messed around with women to give himself something to worry about.  And that was probably it.

What made a man cling this way to life?  At eight-six Leo Galatina had no answers.  He only knew that it was so.

This part of town was full of little creeks and ponds, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the frogs croaking.  The road was completely in shade now, for the sun was just an angry red ball that showed itself between the trees.  It was already seven thirty, but the daylight would last until almost nine, by which time Leo Galatina expected to be in bed, holding Louise’s breasts in his hands.

When he reached Birch Tree Lane he turned around and started back toward the house.  He was already feeling tired—it wasn’t going to be any good with Louise tonight.

From somewhere ahead of him he could hear the growl of a car engine, but he could tell by the sound that it wasn’t going fast.  People didn’t drive fast on this road, because there were too many children and dogs and old men.  A second later the car came around the bend in the road just ahead.  It was the dark red one that had driven past his house and then parked in the Crockers’ driveway.

He reached into his jacket pocket and then remembered that he hadn’t carried a gun in twenty years.  There hadn’t been any need.  There wasn’t any now.

The car drove slowly toward him, its tires whispering against the bare asphalt.  When it drew parallel, the window on the passenger side rolled down and a man leaned out as if he wanted to ask the way.  He was in his middle thirties, probably, and was dressed in a brown suit.  Leo was sure he knew him from somewhere but couldn’t place him, which was surprising because Leo had a good memory for faces.

The man smiled.  It wasn’t a very nice smile.

“Leo Galatina, am I right?”  He laughed, as if he’d made a very funny joke.  “Of course I’m right.”

Leo didn’t say anything.  He could feel his bowels turning to water—if this was a hit, he figured he had maybe three or four seconds to live.

But apparently it was just a tourist with a sense of humor.  The window rolled back up and the car started forward again.

Leo’s heart was pounding in his ears and he was short of breath.  The son-of-a-bitch had scared him.  He turned around to get the license number—he still had a few friends; he thought he might just have them teach the little shit a lesson—but the car was already far enough away that all he could make out for sure was that it had one of those temporary paper plates the car salesmen give you scotch taped to the rear window.

Who the hell was that guy?  He hardly knew a soul anymore who was under the age of sixty, so you’d think he’d remember a young punk like this one.  He knew him from somewhere.