Meet Me in the Moon Room Read online

  “What!”

  “I’ve always wondered how you guys get the fish to hold still while the glue dries.”

  “What are you talking about?” Josh wished he were dressed. If he weren’t standing in the dark in his underwear he might be able to handle this.

  “And how do you get the fish’s head dry enough for the glue to take in the first place? A blow dryer?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Okay,” the caller said, “make it a hundred and fifty.”

  Josh banged the phone down. Banging it down felt so good that he picked it up and banged it down again. It didn’t feel quite as good the second time. He was trembling. The very idea!

  He walked back to his bedroom and got his robe. It had been a crank call after all. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Valerie would have told him not to brood, and she would have kept after him until he smiled. His reaction to the unusual had always cracked her up. But she had followed an idiot into oblivion (or joined the Others on the Starship, depending on how you looked at it) and he would have to deal with this alone. He went back into the living room and switched on the lights in all of the fish tanks.

  Cosmo came out to take a look.

  The fish was a vision of grace, Josh thought, a rosy pearl water snake with fins. At unpredictable times Cosmo rolled in the water like a kayak. That roll might lead someone who didn’t know any better to think that the black hat on his head was in fact artificial, that it had been added by some crazy person, that it was knocking the fish’s sense of balance out of kilter. Such things were not unheard of. Just look at the way people colored fish and called them “painted perch.”

  Josh had a moment of doubt. What if Cosmo were not a sombreroium after all? In fact, what if every Top Hat Fish he’d ever seen had been a fake? All that talk about a new species that seemed not to be altogether of this Earth might just be a lot of hot air. What if Cosmo were a bicirrhosum that someone had altered? How could that have happened? Well, for starters, the collector he’d bought the fish from would have had to be in on it. Wilkins was a man Josh had long trusted as a reliable source, but even a reliable source could be corrupted. Suppose someone comes to Wilkins and says hey we’ll give you this suitcase stuffed with money or maybe we won’t kill your kidnapped family if you convince Josh Torbert this common arowana is a rare and wonderful Top Hat Fish. Next someone would have had to break into his house and glue the plastic top hat to the fish’s head at just the time when a real sombreroium would have developed the characteristic satiny black growth. Was that why he couldn’t get in touch with Wilkins? Could it be that Wilkins was not really off on a collecting trip in Southeast Asia as his wife claimed? Or might this whole thing have something to do with Valerie and her circle of dead space cadets?

  Was Cosmo really developing lips? Ordinary arowanas had no lips—in fact they had large top-opening mouths that they used to scoop things off the surface of the water. Unlike the sombreroium whose face would flatten and who would slowly come to resemble a jowly man (say Richard Nixon), the arowana would never develop lips. So what about Cosmo? Josh got down on his knees to look at Cosmo’s lips.

  The phone rang.

  “Okay, maybe that crack about the glue was out of line.” It was the same man. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Josh said.

  “So look, I’m sorry about that. Hey, I don’t even know your name. Tell me your name.”

  “Josh Torbert.”

  “And the address.”

  Josh gave him his address and then regretted it at once.

  “Okay, Josh, enough joking around. Here’s my real offer for the fish, assuming it is in fact in good shape and developing lips. Are you ready for my offer?”

  “I’m ready,” Josh said. This could be it. Maybe the ad had worked after all. Maybe the conversation before had been some kind of test. Maybe the caller would now name a figure that would bail Josh out of all his debts. The back payments on the TV. (Why hadn’t the man named the figure yet?) It might be big enough to cover the missing mortgage payments. The bank had already filed the papers on the house, but that didn’t mean it was too late. Maybe he could even cover Valerie’s final expenses. (Why hadn’t the man named the figure yet? Had the two of them entered into some kind of weird time warp? Would Josh remain forever listing the things that he could pay off with the money?) Maybe there would be enough left over to pack up the rest of the fish and get out of town. Make a clean getaway—maybe get a van and revisit all of their favorites spots from Shasta to the red cliffs of Sedona. He looked over at Cosmo and saw that the fish was floating upside down, belly to the sky, hat pointed at the bottom. The kayak business again, this time not flipping over so fast, nothing to panic about, normal for the breed. (Why hadn’t the man named the figure?) Cosmo rolled upright, and Josh saw that the fish’s lips had become more developed just in the time he had been on pins and needles waiting for the man to name the figure that would chase his financial blues away.

  “Two hundred dollars.”

  “What?” Josh shouted. He took the phone away from his ear and looked at it then put it back to his ear. “What?”

  “Two hundred,” the man said. “It’s a fair price considering that I am the only game in town.”

  “Ten times that would still be an insult.”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars,” the man said.

  Josh hung up.

  Still on his knees, he moved closer to Cosmo’s tank and put his face very near the glass. Cosmo, in his top hat and tails, like maybe he’d be stepping out tonight, swam up to the glass. Josh looked closely at his new lips and saw that the fish was now forming a single word over and over again.

  What was Cosmo trying to say?

  The phone rang.

  Josh leaned away from the tank and picked it up.

  “Look, I know who you are,” the man said. “I know where you live.”

  Josh dropped the phone and scooted quickly back to the fish tank. Cosmo seemed to be saying something more complicated now. Josh concentrated as hard as he could, but he could not read the fish’s lips. He was distracted by a small voice shouting from somewhere far away. He picked up the phone again.

  “Josh, Josh?”

  “I’m here,” Josh said.

  “Forget what I said about the fire.”

  “The fire?”

  “I said forget about the fire,” the man said. “Let me tell you something you may not know about your fish.”

  “I doubt you know anything about my fish that I don’t know,” Josh said.

  “Certain reliable sources believe the Osteoglossum sombreroium is not rightly named,” the man said. “There are those who think the family is wrong, that it should be perhaps Synodontis or more likely Corydoras sombreroium.”

  “Nonsense,” Josh said. “You’re trying to tell me the Top Hat Fish is a cat fish?”

  “Exactly,” the man said. “So you see my offers have not been so far off the mark. Let me try another figure on you.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Josh said.

  “Three hundred dollars.”

  Josh hung up.

  He would unplug the phone. He grabbed the cord to follow it down to the wall, but before he got there, he stepped on something sharp, yelped and dropped the cord. He sat down on the floor to look at his foot. Just below the big toe of his right foot was a crescent cut, a bloody half moon. He pressed the edge of his robe against it to stop the bleeding and felt around on the floor for whatever he’d stepped on.

  Once he found it, he didn’t know what he was looking at. He turned the object over and over in front of his face; he moved it away for a more distant view, and then brought it in close. When it dawned on him what he was holding, he gasped.

  A tiny yello
w plastic fez.

  From where he sat he saw something else gleaming on the carpet. He got to his knees and crawled over to it.

  A little gray plastic fedora.

  And over there. He could see a line of colorful spots leading away from Cosmo’s tank. He crawled down the line of little hats.

  A tiny white straw boater.

  A flat black pill box.

  A beanie no bigger than the pad of his thumb.

  A green cloche.

  A petite red beret.

  The very essence of Cosmo was spreading across his living room floor toward the other fish tanks. Perhaps this was only the beginning of The Great Event Valerie and her friends had been always going on about. Maybe, someday soon, all the fish of the world would wear hats, and the Starship would swing back around the sun to pick up the people left behind last time.

  The phone rang.

  Josh crawled back to Cosmo’s tank. He sat down and leaned back against the tank stand and picked up the phone.

  “Okay, Josh,” the caller said, “we’ve had our fun, haven’t we? I’ll come over and if your fish measures up, I’ll write you a check on the spot for one thousand dollars. What do you say?”

  It probably was a reasonable offer. He wouldn’t be able to pay off many bills but maybe he could get a head start when he left town. Something in the man’s voice told him that this was the last offer.

  From behind him came the sound of a fingernail tapping on the glass of a fish tank. He shuddered. Valerie used to do that. It drove the fish crazy. He twisted around to look.

  Cosmo tapped the glass again with his top hat. Josh put the phone down and leaned forward until he and the fish were face to face with only a small space and the glass between them. Cosmo was desperately trying to tell him something, his new lips forming the same phrase over and over again. Something something something something something VALERIE.

  There was no doubt. Cosmo was talking about Valerie.

  The fish repeated the message, and Josh got the first word and said, “CAN’T something something something something VALERIE.”

  Cosmo swam in a circle and then returned to repeat the message.

  CAN’T YOU something something something VALERIE.

  Yes, he almost had it.

  CAN’T YOU something IT’S something VALERIE.

  Then he got it.

  CAN’T YOU SEE IT’S ME VALERIE!

  Cosmo was channeling Valerie! He might have known she’d do something weird like this. In fact he would have been disappointed by an ordinary haunting.

  There was more.

  Now that he had gotten the hang of Cosmo’s lips, reading the next utterance was a piece of cake: DON’T SELL THE FISH!

  Either Valerie had come home and was speaking through Cosmo, or Cosmo had come up with this scheme to save himself all on his own. In either case, Josh couldn’t sell him now.

  He picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”

  “Josh! I thought you hung up on me again.”

  “Look, the fish is no longer for sale.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you say that,” the man said.

  “I’m sorry, too,” Josh said.

  “I warn you,” the man said. “There will be repercussions.”

  “I know,” Josh said. He hung up and then stepped carefully around all the little hats and unplugged the phone.

  He settled back down in front of Cosmo’s tank. “So, how are things on the Starship?” he asked.

  Catch

  Your face, I say, is a wild animal this morning, Lucy, and I’m glad it’s caged. Her scowl is so deep I can’t imagine she’s ever been without it. Her yellow hair is a frumpy halo around her wire mask. My remark doesn’t amuse her.

  I know what I did. I just don’t know why it pissed her off, and if I don’t know, insensitive bastard that I am, she certainly isn’t going to tell me.

  She lifts the cat over her head and hurls it at me. Hurls it hard. I catch it and underhand it back to her. The cat is gray on top and snowy white below and mostly limp, its eyes rolled back in its head and its coated tongue hanging loose out of one side of its mouth. I know from experience that it will die soon, and its alarm collar will go off, and one of us will toss it into the ditch that runs between us. A fresh angry bundle of teeth and claws will drop from the hatch in the ceiling, and we’ll toss the new cat back and forth between us until our staggered breaks, when other catchers take our places. The idea is to keep the animals in motion twenty-four hours a day.

  In this profession, we wear canvas shirts and gloves and wire cages over our faces. I sometimes dream we’ve lost our jobs, Lucy and me. What a nightmare. What else do we know? My replacement comes in behind me. He takes up the straw broom and dips it into the water in the ditch that runs through the toss-box and sweeps at the smeared feces and urine staining the floor and walls. A moment later, the buzzer sounds, and he puts the broom back in the corner. I step aside, and Lucy tosses the cat to him. I slip out of the box and into the catacomb for my fifteen minute break before moving on to the next box.

  Lucy and I work an hour on and fifteen minutes off all day long. As we move from toss-box to toss-box, our paths cross and recross. I’ll be out of phase with her for half an hour, probably just long enough for her to work up a real rage.

  The catacomb is a labyrinth of wide tunnels dotted with concrete boxes. There is a metal chute running from the roof to the top of each box. The boxes are evenly spaced, and there is a light bulb for every box, but not all the bulbs are alive so there are gaps in the harsh light. The boxes are small rooms, and there is a wooden door on each side so catchers can be replaced without interrupting the tossing. The concrete walls of the tunnels, like the concrete walls of the boxes, are streaked black and white and beaded with moisture. The floors are roughened concrete. Everything smells like wet rocks and dead things.

  So what did I do?

  While Lucy dressed for work this morning, I played with our infant daughter, Megan, tossing her into the air and catching her again, blowing bubbles into her stomach while she pulled my hair and giggled until she got the hiccups.

  When Lucy came in, I tossed the baby in a high arc across the room to her. Megan tumbled in a perfect backward somersault in the air. Lucy went dead white. She snatched Megan out of the air and hugged the child to her chest.

  “Nice catch,” I said.

  “Don’t you ever,” Lucy said, her voice all husky and dangerous, “ever do that again, Desmond! Not ever.”

  Then she stomped out taking Megan with her.

  What the hell? I’d known there was no chance whatever that Lucy would miss. She’s a professional. My trusting her to catch the love of my life, the apple of my eye, Daddy’s little girl, was, I thought, a pretty big compliment. Lucy didn’t buy it. In fact, she didn’t even let me explain at all, said instead, oh shut up, Desmond, just shut up, and off we went to work, silent, stewing, our hurt feelings like a sack of broken toys between us.

  Now she’s not speaking to me. It’s going to be a long day.

  The buzzer sounds, and I move into the next box. I do my duty with the broom, and when the buzzer sounds again I replace the catcher. The cat here is a howling orange monster, and I have my hands full. When the animal is this fresh, the tossing technique looks a lot like volleyball. You don’t want to be too close to the thing for very long.

  By the time Lucy takes her place across from me, I’ve established a rhythm and am even able to put a little spin on the cat now and then. I have to hand it to Lucy. She catches up quickly, and soon we have the animal sailing smoothly between us.

  The animals go through stages as we toss and catch them. First defiance, then resistance, followed by resignation, then despair, and finally death. This one is probably somewhere in the resistance
stage, not fighting wildly, but watching for an opening to do some damage. I put one hand on the cat’s chest and the other under its bottom and send it across to Lucy in a sitting position. Not to be outdone she sends it back still sitting but upside down now. Maybe the silly positions have done the trick. Whatever. I can feel the animal slip into the resignation stage.

  I toss the cat tumbling head over heels, a weak howl and a loose string of saliva trailing behind it. Is Lucy ever going to talk to me again?

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” I say, giving in to the idea that I might never know exactly why I should be sorry.

  I see tears come to her eyes, and she falters, nearly drops the cat. I want to go to her. I want to comfort her, but it will be some time before we’re both on a break at the same time, and I see suddenly that it will be too late by then. It simply won’t matter anymore.

  My replacement comes in and sweeps up. Then the buzzer sounds. I step aside.

  Lucy isn’t crying anymore.

  I reach for the door.

  The Finger

  Bobby wanted to practice it on his mother, but he knew her face would turn red, then purple, and he’d see all the veins pulsing in her head. Smoke would pour from her ears and nose. Her eyes would pinwheel, and sparks would fly. Her lips would disappear in a tight mean line. She’d start vibrating and humming, and the top of her head would blow off like the lid of a steam kettle, and everything inside would run down her face, melting her until there’d be nothing left but a puddle of Mom stuff. So Bobby told her he was going out, instead.

  He let the rusty spring on the screen door have its way as he ran from the kitchen into the Arizona sunshine and summer bug noise, and he was almost out of sight when he heard the satisfying bang! that made all the peacocks scream.

  Bobby lazed on down the street, Main Street, the only street, a dirt road really, kicking rocks and looking for devils’ horns. Swarms of summertime flies buzzed around his head. He pulled at his jeans and the shorts riding up in the crack of his butt. He kept an eye out for whirlwinds to stand in as he practiced flipping birds, the middle finger of his right hand snicking out like the blade of a switchblade knife.