Moon [jake]

Lying under the last of summer skies, in the coolness of autumn’s approach, I gave up trying to explain myself.

“I guess I just don’t know what I mean,” I concluded. Plus it was getting late.

“That’s it,” she replied. “That’s the question.”

I ceased breathing for a moment, as perplexed as ever by her response. “What?” I asked, and she just smiled.

I sat up abruptly and turned to her as she remained lying on her back. Thoughts without forms—which would become statements without words—stampeded through my brain, but, anticipating their futility, I kept them penned and held my tongue. She seemed not to notice, her eyes so lost above. She would undoubtedly be the end of me, I thought, feeling strangely exposed.

“We should go,” I said.

Instantly, as though she had been looking at me the entire time, her gaze shifted from deep space into my eyes—which, whenever she peered into them, seemed another sort of deep space. I shivered and tightened my arms around myself.

“We should go,” she echoed.

***

I had driven her home and was now lying restless in bed, contemplating the night’s conversation in tandem with my own bewilderment by it. It wasn’t that it was too deep or even out of the ordinary—in fact, most things she said tended to go over my head. It was that, I think, something in me finally connected to her words—no, not just her words…

After stirring and pondering for what seemed like hours, I grabbed my cell phone from my nightstand and called my friend, Rob.

“Ugh, yeah?” mumbled the groggy conversant on the other line.

“Hey.”

“What is it?”

“Can you meet me somewhere? I can’t sleep.”

He muttered something sleepy and indistinguishable. I waited and stared at my ceiling. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, meet me at Dim’s—we’ll grab a beer.”

***

“No, Greg, not yet—I’m waiting for Rob,” I said to the bartender. “Thanks though, I’ll let you know.” Greg knew me well. His family had owned this bar and restaurant since the ‘70s, and Rob and I had been going there on random late nights for years.

“No problem,” he said. “Let me know.” Greg slung a towel over his shoulder and walked away.

From the bar, I sat and absorbed the familiar surroundings: the faded, maple-stained wall-paneling, the hanging plaques and pictures of legendary patrons, the faint aroma steeped into the walls: beer, food, and dust. I glanced over my shoulder to see Rob staggering in, rubbing his eyes. He nodded his head toward a corner booth in the back, where we usually sat, and I followed his lead.

“Two, please,” Rob called as I slid across from him into the booth.

“You got it, guys,” Greg responded.

We sat quietly for awhile, while Rob gradually shed layers of sleep. For the first time I can remember, sitting in that same seat, I consciously looked out the window just above my friend’s head: the moon seemed noticeably fuller and brighter.

“Damn it, we’re getting too old to do this,” Rob yawned, stretching his arms like wings behind his head. “It was cool in college, but now… I don’t know.” He laughed and brought his arms back down. I nodded.

“Here you go, gentleman.” Greg placed our drinks on the table. “Just holler if you need a refill.” We thanked him and continued silently for awhile. I spun the coaster I wasn’t using for my drink on the table a couple times.

Rob took the first drink. “You know,” he said, pausing to savor the taste, “I’ve got to admit, I love this place. It’s tradition, you know? Makes you feel like you know who you are.” He took another drink. “It’s belonging.”

I nodded and took a slow drink.

“I had an interesting conversation with Sophie today,” I started, peering into my glass. “An interesting day, really.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

We each sipped our beers.

“I don’t know why I feel the need to talk this out, other than to capture some aspect of the swirling in my head, you know? Give some substance to these thoughts…” I sighed. “I don’t know if that will do a thing at all.”

“No,” Rob replied, “it’s cool, man. I’m listening. You’re here for me; I’m here for you—that’s why we started doing this.”

“Yeah, I know,” I agreed, still a little uneasy.

“So continue,” Rob said, holding his glass to his lips. I adjusted my position in the booth seat. Rob gulped his beer.

“Okay so, to start, the morning was a little unusual, but not dramatically—only in the sense that I woke up to her phone call rather than the alarm I had set for an hour later.

“‘You need to get up,’ she said cheerfully. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

“‘Now?’ I asked her.

“‘Yes, now,’ she said. ‘I’m outside.’

“So a t-shirt and a yesterday’s jeans later, I was slouching into her passenger seat and closing her car door. I told her that I had work in about two hours, just so she was aware, but instead of responding, she just asked if I was ready and smiled.

Rob laughed and I took another drink. “So where’d she end up taking you?”

“Totally random,” I exclaimed, though now I thought it considerably less so. “We pulled up to some old abandoned gas station, miles outside of town. I wouldn’t say I was completely shocked, but it was still a surprise.

“‘Isn’t it tragic?’ she asked rhetorically, stepping out of her car. She grabbed her camera from the backseat and started snapping photographs. Meanwhile I still sat in the passenger seat, wondering what she was doing, as usual. ‘You know how they say that homes without someone living in them seem to die faster?’ she asked. She continued speaking, but I had gotten out of the car by then and was circling the building. Someone had apparently smashed the padlock on the front door with a sledge or something, so Sophie and I wandered in and explored the place. It was somewhat interesting, but mostly just filthy. She meandered around in complete silence while I wrote my name in the dust on the counter.

“I was underlining my signature when she approached me and said, ‘Let’s go.’ She looked concerned, or contemplative.

“‘Let’s go,’ I echoed.

“The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. She brought me back home and I got ready for work. I spent the rest of the day working, and then she called me as soon as I got off.

“‘Can we go talk?’ she asked me—which seemed a slightly unusual request for her.

“‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to come over?’

“‘Yeah, but take me somewhere. I want to go somewhere.’

“I was already driving back from work, so I just swung by her place to pick her up. I didn’t have a clue where to take her, but she seemed convinced that it should be up to me, so I headed out to that old field north of the city—you know, where we used to play capture-the-flag when we were kids?”

Rob nodded as he finished the last of his glass.

“So we pulled off of the dirt road and onto the field a little ways and got out. I grabbed a blanket from the bed of my truck and said, ‘I don’t know if this is what you had in mind, but—’ and she cut me off.

“‘Perfect,’ she said, marveling at the sky above us. ‘It’s great.’

“I rolled the blanket out in front of my truck, and we laid out on it, just staring silently for awhile.

“‘Look at that aura,’ she said, referring to the aura produced by the full moon, enveloped by a single, gray cloud. The scene was cliché to be sure—a guy and a girl in a field looking at the stars—but the more I told myself this, the more I felt pulled in by her gravity. I was captivated; the same aura that she saw above was shimmering in her eyes as she looked on. Hers was the aura I wanted, but it seemed that the further she affixed her eyes, the further I would be from reaching that aura—no matter how close to her body I was.

“‘Well?’ she asked, still gazing up.

“‘Well what?’ I responded, hoping for an invitation, but sensing something different.

“‘I thought you wanted to talk,’ she said. Once again, she had lost me—effortlessly, but cavalierly.

“‘I—what? I thought you said you wanted to talk about something.’

“She made a terse sigh, evidently frustrated with my response.

“We laid there in utter silence. She just stared on into the atmosphere, and I grew surprisingly upset about our conversation. For some unexplainable reason, it agitated something within me, deeply. I felt physically uncomfortable, shifting and squirming on the blanket. My eyes darted around for something to focus on, but the only things present were the moon and Sophie—both of which felt equally vexing. With nothing visual to distract me from my discomfiture, I was forced to seek release vocally.

“‘It’s like—I don’t know. I have never known, Sophie. I, well, you—you’re inexplicable, Sophie. You’re too simple and yet too complex. You’re a mystery—that sounds stupid. It’s like—a question. No, what question? I don’t know—I don’t know what you think I wanted to talk about, but I….”

“So there we were. Lying under the last of summer skies, in the coolness of autumn’s approach, I gave up trying to explain myself.

“‘I guess I just don’t know what I mean,’ I concluded. Plus it was getting late.

“‘That’s it,” she replied. ‘That’s the question.’

“I ceased breathing for a moment, as perplexed as ever by her response. ‘What?’ I asked. She just smiled.

“I can’t explain it. I had always thought that the feeling in me was for her—that the magnetism I sensed near her was love or something—but I don’t know. It was like, in that moment, something in me, beyond thought or attraction, connected not just to her words, but to her meaning. I just don’t know that I’ve ever felt that before.”

I sat still, staring out the window at that moon again.

“The truck,” Rob interjected.

“What?”

“In the field, when you wanted to distract yourself. You could’ve looked at your truck.”

A couple seconds passed. I nodded and emptied my glass.

Rob raised his hand and called Greg for two more beers.