Loonglow (14 page)

“Pardon me?” Louey said, but her roommate, already reabsorbed in conversation, didn't answer. Dumping her books in the outer closet, Louey opened the door to the bedroom adjoining her roommate's.

She should have had an inkling. Mia lay on her bed, idly reading an old draft of a paper she'd just finished. Louey went in and sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall across from Mia.

“Happy to see me?” Mia stretched, laying down the papers.

“What are you doing here?”

“Did I come at a bad time?” She grinned at Louey.

How had she managed so long without this sight? Louey wondered. It had been nearly a year since she'd touched (or even seen) Mia. “What are you doing here?” Her head was spinning.

“How'd you do on your finals?” Mia stroked her lower lip lazily, her eyes not leaving Louey's.

“Pretty well, I think.” Her voice was shaky, and she cleared her throat. “Did you drive all the way out here?”

“You must have me confused with some other common trollop.” Mia put a hand over her eyes and nestled against the pillows. “I hitched. One guy even took me two hundred miles out of his way. Wasn't that sweet?”

“From now on, he'll have his eyes glued to the side of the road looking for you.”

“Tough break,” said Mia softly, unbuttoning her shirt. Louey's heart stung in her chest. It didn't make sense, Mia here in her dorm room, lying on her bed, undressing. She'd wondered more than once if she'd imagined what had happened that bewildering afternoon. Mia bent to take her shoes off. “Is there something keeping you from leaping onto this bed, by the way?”

Louey went over to the bed and Mia pulled her down against her. It had been ten months since she'd kissed—since she'd seen Mia at all; with each kiss she banished weeks. Mia slipped her hands under her sweater, studying Louey's face as if looking for some transformation brought on by the separation or its cause. “You miss me?” she said, doing several things beneath the thin material that made it difficult to answer. Louey was breathing heavily; the blood seemed to be pumping in slow motion as she closed her eyes and yielded to Mia's hands. What was Mia doing here? It must have happened, then; she hadn't dreamed it. She couldn't believe that Mia had come here—for
her
?

“Loved your letters,” she said, breaking away and getting off the bed. Mia gave her a child's truant grin as Louey went to her closet to change her clothes. (The only piece of mail Louey had received had been a gaudy postcard with Mia's uncontrolled scrawl explaining that the baby was fine but that Louey should send money for braces or risk having her child a marked woman for life.) Louey had tried to call, but Mia never seemed to be at school. Even at midterm she had had to learn from Mia's distantly contemptuous mother that her daughter had gone traveling with several friends.

“I notice you took advantage of your own ample opportunity to write,” Mia said.

“I wrote you four letters, if you'll pardon my mentioning it. For all I know, you burned them.”

“Sold 'em.” Mia came up behind Louey, toying with her neck and sliding an arm around her waist. Louey shivered. “Made a tidy sum, by the way. You should just see the frilly little thing I bought with the money.”

“Fetched a good price, did they?” But Mia didn't seem to want to talk, biting Louey's bare skin gently, cupping her shoulders. Louey cleared her throat.

“Porn's in great demand,” Mia went on.

“You must have gotten the letter I meant for Mom.”

At this Mia put both arms around her waist. Louey leaned back, unable to concentrate on anything but the sensation of Mia against her. She started to say something, but Mia's hands were moving across the front of her, making it difficult to think. “Uh, come here often?” she managed.

“Try to.” Mia nibbled a trail down her back. “Wouldn't want you to get bored with all those coeds.”

“You're so thoughtful,” Louey said. “In fact, I've always felt—” But before she could finish, Mia was turning her around and soon it was all Louey could do to remain standing.

The next day Mia loaded Louey into the car she'd borrowed from Louey's brother. (The young man had been a complete fiction, as Louey should have suspected.) Once they hit the highway, Mia mentioned that she had discussed summer plans with Louey's family, who had casually let slip that they had never really liked Louey much anyway.

“That's a relief,” Louey said.

“Which leaves the coast clear,” Mia mentioned, weaving in and out between cars in breakneck fashion.

As they drove across the country, Mia became effervescent, almost childlike, filled with energy. She seemed barely able to contain herself, tugging Louey from one spot to the next, showing off her favorite sights as if they didn't exist until Louey saw them. Was being alone with someone always like this? Louey wondered. Did other people share this special, private heaven?

It was as if the blue of the sky, the friendliness of strangers, the mysteries of passion had been invented just for them. She couldn't believe how elated she was all the time, as if she'd never feel any emotion besides joy. She couldn't believe Mia could make her feel this way—that Mia could feel this way because of her.

If only the summer didn't have to end.

The day after the Fall, Louey came into work and started clearing out her office, piling books and papers, calendars and folders into boxes she had brought from home. As people started drifting into the office—first assistants, then their bosses—they soon formed a crowd around her door, watching her pack. She smiled ruefully at each of them, unaccustomed to her sudden notoriety. Around her, conversation was hushed, as if no one could fathom how things had abruptly come to such an end.

“Hello,” the mournful voice of her now-former boss issued behind the mob. The crowd dispersed and she was left alone with him.

“Hi, Burt,” she answered cheerfully, clearing the plants off her windowsill. Her boss sat down in the chair across from her, his silence heavy, fraught with accusation.

Louey gave in to the pressure of his gaze upon her back at last, sitting down.

“Well,” he said, rubbing his hands down gray-clad legs. “You gave us quite a surprise yesterday.”

“You and me both,” she started, then reconsidered her next words. “I assume you'll want me to help break in my replacement—and I'll try to ease the transitional period for my authors over the next two weeks.”

He averted his eyes. “That won't be necessary.”

“What?” She frowned. He studied a corner of her office, silent. “I have to tell my authors and their agents what to expect. It's hard enough to leave them dangling, with sales conference just around the corner.” (You should have thought of that, she could hear him thinking.) “I'm sorry I don't have more time to wrap things up.”

He seemed intent on memorizing a spot slightly to the left of her shoulder. “They want you out by five.”

Her jaw dropped. “Today?” He nodded, still not looking at her. “But that leaves everyone just—” She stopped. His tone was too flat; it was useless. How did he manage to be so cool so abruptly—when just the other day he'd laughed with her about an author and even grudgingly expressed approval of her work? “Are you sure you can find someone to help rip my books to shreds on such short notice?” He looked at her with mournful eyes. “Burt”—she bit her lip. “You can't pull the rug out from under so many people. Even if I could reach most of them today—” He was barely listening. “But they're the ones who are going to suffer,” she trailed on, helpless.

“You knew it was a tough business when you took this job.”

So she wasn't tough enough for it, she thought, was that the problem? “Did you ask Daisy for more time to make things easier for my authors?” He picked at the fabric of his suit jacket. “Have you been dissatisfied with my work?”

He rose. “Taking an attitude like that is counterproductive, Louey. There's no point in dwelling on side issues.”

Before she could reply, he'd turned and left her office. Louey looked down at a half-packed box, her head filled with cotton. After a moment, she shook herself, reaching for the phone.

Once Louey had been walking, late at night, home from a party, when she'd found herself in sudden danger. Both she and Mia were just slightly drunk; when Mia stopped to buy some flowers, Louey went to buy some milk the next block up. She saw a young girl come out of the market just as she did, casually slipping something into her bag. An old woman standing nearby shouted, “Put that back!” and the girl broke into a run, putting the stolen package on the ground under a car. The store's two owners started after her, but without thinking Louey picked the package up and put it back. “She put it back,” she said, and then the two men stopped, and the girl went free. Mia caught up with her and they began to walk, when Louey heard a noise. She turned and saw the girl, who had been joined by several boys.

“Why don't you mind your business?” the girl yelled, and Louey realized the girl was much more shabbily dressed than she'd first thought.

“What do you mean?”

“Did you ever think that might have been my dinner?”

“I put it back,” she said, “so they wouldn't chase you.” Mia glanced at her, surprised.

“All those guys would have found was what I bought,” the girl said. “They'd look in the bag and wouldn't find it.”

“Oh.” She hadn't realized that the girl had never meant to give the package back; she'd been planning this, to put it down if she'd been caught, then come and get it later. “Sorry,” she said, shrugging. Mia took her arm.

The two of them had walked half a block when someone started throwing cans at them. Louey turned: it was the girl, enraged, as if she blamed Louey for what had happened. Instinctively Louey started walking faster, but the cans still came, landing around their feet.

Without thinking, Louey turned. “Are you going to throw cans at us all the way up Broadway?”

The girl was at her side instantly, a bottle in her hand. Louey's eyes grew wide. “Don't you talk to me that way!” the girl shouted. “Are you crazy?” She waved the bottle right in Louey's face, then tapped the back of Louey's head with it as if just barely holding back from smashing it against her skull.

“Hey!” Mia said, grabbing the girl's arm violently. The muscles strained in both their arms; Louey could barely breathe. She couldn't believe she'd been so stupid, couldn't imagine how the night had come to this. The girl glared at Mia, her arm still poised, then turned to Louey.

“Don't you ever do a thing like that again,” she spat out. Louey saw the bottle, thinking, All she had to do was shatter it against me, one two three. She felt her mind go numb. The girl said, “Meet you at that corner,” and Louey felt the blood drain from her face.

“There's a cop right there,” said Mia, steely. “Want me to go get him?” The girl gave Mia a cold stare, then jerked her arm away and walked on with her friends.

Around them, people stared at Louey as if she'd made a drunken scene; before she knew it, tears were streaming down her face. “Sweetheart.” Mia took her in her arms.

“Do you like it?” Two days later Mia stood framed in the doorway of a new apartment as far away from their now tainted neighborhood as she could find. No one did that, Louey wanted to explain, just walked around New York as if it were a friendly five-and-dime and found a closet, much less a sunny, big apartment in a lovely neighborhood. No one but someone for whom “Sorry, we can't help you” was as alien a phrase as “Face reality, why don't you?”

“Well?” Mia prodded. Louey walked several timid steps inside and looked around; her heart felt as if it might fly out of her chest. And Mia hadn't even let on what she'd planned. How had she ever found someone so wonderful? “No, no, no, miss,” the narrator's disdainful voice was sure to break in any minute. “That was Mr. Kennedy's order. Yours is over here.”

“Love what you've done with the place.” She turned from the window, where a view of trees and grass soothed her eyes. “When do we move in?”

“Today. It's ours.” Mia looked at her with such affection Louey wondered how she'd come to deserve this happiness. “There's even room for the children.”

“Honey, there's something I've been meaning to tell you.”

“Can it wait until I've reduced you to a helpless wreck?” Mia flung her arms around her, collapsing them both on the floor.

“You're insane,” said Louey as Mia kissed her: bullet-fast kisses that weakened her until she lay back, out of breath and wanting more. Yet she was obviously the one who was crazy, taking all this as a matter of course. “I can't believe you did this just for me.”

“Heavens! Did I say
you
? I don't know
what
I could have been thinking.” Mia bent and kissed her, not coming up for air. “The property values are certain to go up, of course,” she added, reaching to undo Louey's dress. “Once the neighbors see what I've got, they'll all want one.”

The day after she'd brought the pile of boxes back to her apartment, Louey walked around the city, looking at tall buildings as if she'd never seen Fifth Avenue before, St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Plaza Hotel. At Forty-second Street she walked east to the public library, sitting on the steps among the crowd of people. After an existential juggler tried to draw her out, she rose and made her way back home.

In the evening, she walked all the way across town to a quiet, winding street she hadn't visited in years. “I'm telling you she'll do it,” warned a woman standing at the door as Louey reached her destination.

“She's
always
doing that,” said Louey, entering the bar.

“See?” the woman told her friend, whose face went slack, surprised at Louey's boldness. “It's hopeless. Tell her.” She nudged Louey, who smiled faintly, moving toward the bartender.