Meet Me in the Moon Room (2 page)

“Jack.”

“Hmm?”

“Jack, please.”

Jack jerked up from the desk and looked up at her standing in the doorway of his office. Backlighted from the living room, she seemed to be nude. At least on top.

“What is it?” He got to his feet and came around his desk. There had been something desperate in her tone.

She took his hand and put it on her stomach. “Look here.” He could see the very top of the light patch of pubic hair and then silver. He touched the seam lightly. It felt like a cold scar.

“And here.” She moved his hand to the top of her left hip. Silver fingers of suit fabric spread into the small of her back. Molly’s space pants were complete.

“My guess is a catheter,” she said. “Now will you shut up about it?”

The suit had crept up her abdomen to just below her breasts.

“It’s possible,” he said, “that our universe has touched another somehow and the very different physical rules of the two universes have gotten all jumbled together.”

“That must be it,” Molly said.

“Or maybe everyone over here with a suit has a double without a suit over there, and somehow what’s happening here has metaphorical significance over there.”

Molly rolled her eyes, turned and headed for the door.

“Look here,” he said quietly, finally giving up on working his way up to it.

Something in his tone stopped her. “What is it, Jack?”

He had his shoe off and his foot in his lap. She approached and dropped down on her knees in front of him. He pulled the big toe of his right foot away from the others. “There,” he said, “can you see it?”

A patch of suit.

“I’m so sorry, Jack,” she said. She hugged his foot to her cheek and then kissed his toes.

Plan B was a shortwave radio. A ham rig. Transmitter, receiver—the works. He didn’t bother with a license. If everything else failed, maybe he could at least stay in touch with her until she drifted out of range.

It turned out Jack was not the only one with such a plan. The guy at the radio place told him he was lucky he hadn’t waited another week or he might not have been able to pick what he wanted right off the shelves.

“How will I know where to tune in?” Jack asked.

“Suit communication happens on two frequencies,” the clerk said in a tone implying Jack had either been living in the wilderness or was an idiot.

“And those are?”

“HF One and HF Two.”

“I don’t see anything like that on the dial,” Jack said.

“You wouldn’t,” the clerk said. “I’m talking about Holy Frequency One and Holy Frequency Two. No one knows why God needs two.”

Jack pushed his credit card across the counter and glanced at the door to make sure he was clear to make a break for it if necessary. “Do you suppose you could give me the actual numbers?”

The clerk ran Jack’s card through the machine. “Sign here,” he said.

Jack signed. The clerk took the pen back and wrote the holy frequencies on Jack’s receipt.

“Thank you.” Jack picked up his boxes. He supposed he had been aware, in some detached way, of the world going crazy around him, but he had been entirely zeroed in on Molly. He hurried home to her.

“There’s got to be a way to slow you down,” he said. “Or speed me up. I simply cannot accept the scenario where I’m drifting along through space behind you just out of radio range until we get to Uranus.”

“Urine nus,” she said. “You pronounce it like we all pee.”

“You say urine nus,” he sang. “And I say your anus.”

He’d made her smile. It felt wonderful.

“So why Uranus?” she said.

“I read where someone worked it all out,” he said. “The speed we’ll be traveling, everything. There’s a window. People leaving during this window will just cross the orbit of Uranus in time to be captured by the gravity of the gas giant.”

“And what about the people who left before or leave later?”

“They go to Saturn,” he said, “or maybe Neptune. Who knows? Some might miss planets altogether.”

“And does this genius say why the gravity of Uranus and the other planets will be working any better than the gravity of Earth?”

“It just will be, that’s all,” Jack said. “What I want to talk about is figuring out a way to go together.” He took her hand. “If I miss Uranus, Molly, I could go to Pluto.”

Her suit would cover her shoulders soon. He still had only boots and pants not up to his knees.

“I’m already feeling light, Jack.” She squeezed his hand. “I don’t want to spend these last few days working on a problem we can’t solve.”

“But . . .”

“I can’t feel you,” she said. She pulled his hand up to her face. “Touch me here. I want to feel your skin.”

“Maybe I could buy an ordinary space suit,” Jack said. “And put it on and hold onto you. We both shoot into space and when my skin suit is finished, I just throw away the store-bought one?”

Molly had gotten her helmet that morning. Jack’s pants weren’t even done yet.

Now she snatched Ol’ Engine Number Nine from the kitchen table. “Hold me,” she said. “I think something’s happening.”

He pulled her in close, still muttering nonsense about his latest plan. Her faceplate snapped into place. The sound startled him and he nearly jumped away from her, but then he saw the fear in her eyes behind the glass and held on tight. She went weightless in his arms.

Then she was more than weightless. He could feel her tugging to get higher. He was having trouble holding her down. She slipped away from him and her head bounced lightly against the ceiling. She drifted toward the French doors. He grabbed her foot.

She dragged him toward the doors.

“It hurts.” She might have been shouting, but her voice was muffled. “I need to go up, Jack.”

“Not yet!”

She parted the French doors with both hands, threw them open wide, and dragged him out into the backyard. He took giant steps, dream leaps, as she pulled him off the ground. He would have to let her go.

Then he saw Sparky’s leash. He got a good grip on her ankle with one hand and stretched down for the leash. The grass had grown up around it. Had it been that long? Just a few more inches. No, he couldn’t reach it. Desperately he hopped toward the doghouse. The force pulling her into space was getting stronger. He would have only one more chance.

He got to the doghouse in another two big leaps and hooked his foot into the door and pulled down with his leg. He got the other foot hooked in too, and pulled with both legs. Molly came down. Jack reached down with one hand and grabbed Sparky’s leash. He maneuvered it through his fingers until he found the end. Her pull was very strong now. If he didn’t get her tied down in just the next few moments, he would lose her.

He looped the leash around her ankle and his other hand. He pulled himself closer and took the leash in his teeth. Then with his free hand and his teeth, he tied a clumsy knot. It wouldn’t hold, but it wouldn’t have to hold long. He let go of her leg and grabbed the leash with both hands and secured the knot.

Jack fell back onto the ground and Molly shot off for space. He heard her cry out when the leash stopped her with a snap. She floated above the backyard like a tethered balloon. He thought crazily that the neighbors would think this was some kind of advertising gimmick. What would they think he was selling?

When he noticed the doghouse lifting off the ground, he grabbed and secured the other end of Sparky’s leash to a water spout and left Molly tethered and moving one arm slowly up and down like she was pointing at something. She seemed bigger, bulging. He needed to talk with her.

The shortwave rig was in his office. He had thought she’d already be out of sight by the time he used it. He would be in his office surrounded by his books. He would read her things. They would talk. She would tell him what she saw. Now he needed the radio in the backyard. She was right there. He couldn’t just go into his office where he could not see her.

Molly hung motionless now at the end of the leash, and it was like looking down at her dangling from a cliff rather than stretching up toward space.

“Molly!” He yelled. No response.

Jack ran into the kitchen and got the long black extension cord they used to power the stereo when they had backyard parties. He hauled the radio gear out of his office and set it up on a TV tray and plugged it in.

He pulled up a chair and put on the big earphones. He pulled the microphone in its black plastic stand in close and turned the dial to Holy Frequency One. “Molly? Come in, Molly. Can you hear me, Molly? Come in.”

Nothing.

He tried Holy Frequency Two.

Still nothing.

If God did speak now, Jack would have to tell Him to get off the air. He needed to talk to Molly.

He stood up and yanked on the leash trying to get her attention. After maybe a dozen tugs, he saw her bend her head down to face the ground. The effort seemed monumental. He waved his arms at her and jumped up and down.

“Is your radio on?” he shouted and pointed at his ears. “Your radio!”

He sat back down in front of his microphone and put the earphones on again.

He found her on Holy Frequency Two.

“Molly!”

“Jack,” she gasped. “My foot. I think the pull is getting so hard it will pull my foot off. The prisoners. Remember? Flattened sticky goo on the ceiling. Did mother describe it to you? I think you’ll have to let me go, Jack.”

She gasped in pain again and dropped Ol’ Engine Number Nine. The miniature locomotive bounced onto the lawn.

“Oh, no, Jack.”

Jack leaned over and picked it up. He stood up and lobbed it back up at her. She snatched at it, but it slipped through her fingers and fell again.

“This can’t be happening,” he shouted into the microphone. “It can’t be real. The pieces don’t fit together quite right. There are too many loose ends! Nothing is working right. There must be something else to try. I can figure it out. Wait, Molly. Just hold on a little longer.”

He grabbed the train and threw it up at her.

She missed it again.

“Oh, cut me loose, Jack,” she said. “Just cut me loose.”

Then she screamed. She seemed to be elongating like a victim on the rack in an old movie, and he couldn’t stand the sound of her pain. He ripped off the earphones and ran to the end of the leash.

For an endless moment he couldn’t get it untied and didn’t know what to do. Then he took a deep breath, took out his Swiss Army knife and carefully opened the big blade.

He cut the leash.

Molly shot into the air.

Jack scrambled back to his earphones. “. . . love you, Jack.” And then she was gone.

Jack made careful preparations for his own departure. He would take her train, of course, but he also had a few other supplies. A flashlight for one thing. If you were going to be floating through the deep darkness to Uranus, you’d want to be able to shine a light around and see what was what. The
Collected Works
. And a small fire extinguisher.

“By the time we get to Uranus, there’ll be all this junk floating everywhere.” The Earth was a big wet blue marble, and he was already talking to himself. “All the stuff people grabbed when they floated away. We’ll need to assign clean up crews to pick it all up. Or maybe we can just rearrange it. Who knows maybe someday there will be so much you can see the rings of Uranus from Earth not that there will be anyone on Earth by that time. But you know what I mean.”

“Do you know how far away Uranus is?” Not Jack. A voice on his suit radio.

“Well, now that I can no longer touch it . . .”

Hoots. Jeeze Louise. Who is this joker?

Then he saw them. Suited figures scattered around him, the closest waving his arms like a mechanical man maybe a hundred yards away, the sun gleaming in his faceplate.

“My name is Jack,” he said, “and like all of you, I’m on my way to Uranus.”

“I think we’re too late for Uranus,” someone said.

“So, here we are zooming along at what? Maybe a hundred miles an hour?” someone else said.

“Oh, surely much faster than that.”

“Do you have any idea of how long it would take to get to Uranus, Jack?”

“I really don’t think I want to know that,” Jack said.

He got a firm grip on Ol’ Engine Number Nine, switched on his flashlight, and activated the fire extinguisher which increased his velocity considerably.

The Barber’s Theme

B
renda shuddered when old Milo Durkovich lurched into the barbershop. She’d have to clip his nose hairs, and his nostrils were as big as her thumbs. She hated that. Harvey, her boss, beamed a tight-lipped glare her way, and she coerced a smile onto her face.

“Morning, Mr. Durkovich,” she said, dusting the red leather seat of her barber chair.

Durkovich made a sound, an East European snort, she thought, or maybe he’d just hacked up pieces of his lungs and then politely swallowed them. He shrugged out of his long black coat, and his sour smell rushed up at her, pushing away the pervasive odors of hair tonic, shaving lotion, and old magazines as he settled into her chair. He smelled like a dead man, she thought, a sweaty dead man, stuffed with garlic sausages and lately reanimated by Frankenstein’s spark so he could stumble into Harvey’s to have his thin black and white hair trimmed, the black holes of his nose snipped clean.

For one wild moment she thought of draping her green cloth over his head instead of his chest and lap. Call the paramedics! He just sat down in my chair and died, Officer. Can’t you smell him?

The picture of Mr. Durkovich sitting there, his head covered with her barber bib, wondering what the hell was going on, getting steamed, made her smile for real. No way she could do it, though. Harvey still had his eye on her. He’d made no bones when he’d hired her. It’s your butt, he’d said, my old farts will love your butt. Smile. Be friendly. She’d been that hungry, that broke. Most afternoons, a group of Harvey’s customers lounged around the shop, peeking over their magazines to see her stretch and bend, wiggling their bushy eyebrows up and down at her.