Meet Me in the Moon Room (22 page)

Confusion washed through him. He darted a glance at Mabel and saw that her green twin had not somehow gotten off her body. This was something new.

“Ah ha!” Mabel cried. “I knew you were our kind of people, Frank. Clancy likes you!” She waggled a finger in his direction. “Such a good boy!”

“So this is it,” Frank said. He’d been taken over, occupied. Who would have thought? The woman had been bait. Dejorans were not born; they were made.

Frank felt himself merging with the creature on his shoulder, felt himself losing his will to resist, felt himself becoming Dejoran. He hoped the relationship would be symbiotic and not parasitic, but that was nothing he could control. He realized that he had never had control over anything, that he had never understood the universe, that there was nothing to do but reach out and touch someone. Huddle. Cuddle. Cling together. He put his hand out and Mabel took it.

Frank twisted around to look for the first time into the eyes of the creature that would ride him forever, his other half.

“Hello, big boy,” said the little green head. “Wanna mambo?”

On the one hand, he was talking to himself, it was his little green head, so he should know very well the correct answer. On the other hand, there were subtleties to consider. Did his right hand know what his left hand was doing? Was escape still an option? And if it was still an option, did he really want to sacrifice the promise of fruity rum drinks, salsa, and flickering firelight as he danced the nights away with Mabel under these strange new stars? No. He didn’t want to get away.

“Oh, yes,” he said.

Ceremony

There were still ten, maybe fifteen, kids lined up in front of the peppermint alcove when Santa died.

Brenda, as Santa’s helper in her short red skirt, whose fake white fur hem just covered her red underwear, and a floppy red hat, whose white cotton puff ball hung over her left shoulder, was pretty sure that yelling “He’s dead!” was not the way to bring x-mas cheer to the cranky kids and box and bag-burdened parents, all looking like they were waiting their turn for measles shots. Instead she stepped in front of the jolly old gentleman and urgently motioned Bob away from his camera.

Bob scanned her from head to toe, from toe to head as he approached, his fingers curling and uncurling in anticipation of touching her. “What is it?”

“I don’t know how you’re going to break it to them,” Brenda whispered. “But your Santa just died.”

“Died?” Bob darted a glance over her shoulder at Santa where he sat with his chin on his chest. “He can’t do that! I just crossed the break even point.”

A dad from the line called, “Hey! What’s the hold up?”

Bob put on a smile and turned it on the waiting shoppers. “Nothing, nothing,” he said. “We’re almost ready.”

“That’ll be some trick,” Brenda whispered.

“Now look.” Bob grabbed her upper arm and leaned in close. “You get back there and work his head. Yeah, that’s it. Get down on your knees behind his chair, and, you know, move his head around like he’s talking. I’ll lead the kids up, put them on his knee, and shoot them. Quick-like. We’ll run them through so fast nobody’ll notice.”

“Work his head?”

Bob narrowed his eyes. “Don’t give me static on this, Brenda. I make no money if I don’t shoot these last ones. I can get another Santa tomorrow, and I can get another pretty pair of legs to replace you, too.”

Brenda had been working for Bob for three days. Another day and she’d have the rent. Get fired now and she might spend the holidays on the Phoenix streets. At times like these, Brenda always heard Dolly Parton singing “Working 9 to 5” in her head.

“You do what you gotta do, kid,” Dolly said.

“You’re right.” Brenda pictured Dolly as she would be tonight on her Christmas-at-Home special with her family in the Smokies. Brenda planned on cooking a turkey leg to eat while watching the show wrapped in the afghan she’d knitted herself for the occasion. She’d sing along.

Brenda walked behind Santa’s chair and got down on one knee. Bob grinned and scurried away to the line, saying, “Who’s next? Who’s next?”

Brenda ran her right hand up under the white wig that was part of Santa’s hat and grabbed a greasy handful of hair and pulled up his head. His scalp was still warm.

“Silver Bells,” sang the Voice of the Mall. “Silver Bells.”

Bob led a wide-eyed little girl away from the line where her mother stood wrestling with her packages and scowling. Bob took the girl under the arms, sat her on Santa’s lap, and hurried back to his camera. The girl looked up at Santa, then she looked at Brenda peering over Santa’s left shoulder.

“Santa wants to know your name,” Brenda said.

“Crystal.”

“That’s a nice name,” Brenda said. “Like the singer.”

“What is this?” Crystal’s mom called from the line. “I want to hear some ho ho hos!”

Bob jerked up his chin at Brenda and lasergunned her with his eyes.

Brenda turned her face down so they couldn’t see her mouth and in a voice as deep as she could make it said, “Ho ho ho.” She jerked Santa’s head up and down and wagged it from side to side, hoping for a bowlful of jelly effect.

Crystal wrinkled his nose. “I think Santa pooped his pants.”

“I know. I know.” Brenda whispered. “Isn’t he silly?” She turned Santa’s face so he would appear to be whispering in her ear. “Santa wants to know what you want for Christmas, Crystal. Don’t you, Santa?” She nodded his head.

Crystal straightened her shoulders and rattled off a long list of merchandise.

“Okay,” Bob said. “Okay. I got it.” He rushed up and plucked the girl from Santa’s lap and set her on her feet.

“I didn’t get to finish my list!” Crystal yelled as her mother dragged her into the river of mall people.

“You don’t have to do this, Brenda,” Dolly whispered in her ear.

Brenda’s fingers were stiff, and a dull ache spread through her hand and up her arm. The weight of Santa’s head was like holding up a bowling ball. She just wanted to let go. She just wanted to go home.

“But what about the rent, Dolly?”

“Something will turn up,” Dolly said. “It always does.”

“It always does,” Brenda said. “I don’t have to do this.”

Santa’s head twisted suddenly in her hand. His skull turned to ice, freezing her fingers in place. He opened his mouth, and his breath was spoiled milk in her face. “Deliver unto me that which is mine, Brenda,” he said.

Brenda yelped and tore her hand from his head and jumped up. Santa slumped forward until his head hung between his knees.

“Hey!” Bob rushed up and knelt down in front of Santa and pushed him back up. “What the hell are you doing?” His voice was a mean hiss.

“We don’t have to do this,” Brenda said. She could see the remaining parents huddled in hushed conference, the children hugging their legs and hanging onto their hands and staring with wide eyes at Santa slouched in his big chair.

“You’d better hope you didn’t screw this up, Brenda.” Bob hurried over to the parents and joined the huddle.

A moment later, a man prodded a small boy forward. “Take him next,” the man said.

Bob pulled the boy to Santa. “Get back in your place, Brenda.”

“But surely they know now!”

Bob glanced back at the parents. “Turns out they don’t care,” he said. “They just want to get this done.”

The boy’s father smiled at Brenda and made the okay sign with his finger and thumb.

The rent. Her turkey leg. And Dolly’s show tonight. Bob wouldn’t pay her if she left now. Brenda looked out into the faces of the Mall People. They stood behind the red rope at the edge of the peppermint candy cane alcove and worshiped her, their faces glowing. A man lifted his shopping bag and rattled it at her. A woman did the same. Then they were all doing it. Their voices rose, pleading, insisting.

“Bring back the sun, Brenda.”

“Make the corn grow, Brenda.”

“Seed the New Year sales, Brenda!”

Her head swam with their voices. Brenda wanted to hide, wanted them to take their eyes off her, but the Mall People would have their way. She stepped behind Santa and crouched down again. Bob put the boy on Santa’s knee.

When she raised Santa’s head, the boy took one look at Santa’s eyes and screamed. Bob snapped the photo and plucked the child from Santa’s lap. Brenda turned Santa’s head this way and that, as if he were peering around for the nastiness that could make a child scream so.

Bob and the boy’s father stood looking at the Polaroid as it developed. Bob nudged the man in the ribs with his elbow. “Hang onto this picture,” he said. “It’ll be fantastic ammunition when the kid’s a teenager. Next! Next!”

Brenda turned Santa’s head around so she could look into his rolled white eyes. His mouth had twisted into a nasty grin under his cotton moustache.

“No,” Brenda said. “Just no.” She dropped his head and stood up.

“Hey wait!” Bob snatched at her as she pushed past him. “We aren’t finished!”

“What are you?” a woman hugging a weeping toddler to her chest said. “Some kind of Scrooge?”

“I’ll be home for Christmas,” Brenda said.

She ran from the peppermint alcove, scattering the Mall People from her path. The Voice of The Mall moaned in despair, and shops darkened as she passed them.

Poop

S
ometimes they felt like kids again, his arm around her shoulders, her arm around his waist, standing over the sleeping baby, this late-in-life lazy sperm, test tube wonder they’d named Lewis, because Lewis was a popular name these days (and you can call him Lewie), and just because Lewie’s parents were in their forties didn’t mean he had to walk around with an out-of-fashion name. Hey, years ago, they might have named him after one of Marilyn’s favorite causes. So, what’s your name, little boy? And he’d look down at his shoes and mutter, Save-The-Whales, sir.

You couldn’t expect the sailing to always be smooth. “It’s not like getting another cat,” he said or she said and they agreed that no, it was not like getting another cat. Even the cats they already had knew it was not like getting another cat. Not so much the smell of talcum and sour diapers, nor the fact that the guest room now had a permanent resident. It was more a wound-tight constant watchfulness. Karl and Marilyn knew babies weren’t made out of glass, but knowing that didn’t mean they weren’t on constant alert for danger. The cats all had the same new name, and that new name was “get away from there!”

One evening when Karl went into his Honey-I’m-home routine, she rushed out of the shadows sobbing with a bundle and pushed it into his arms and ran out of the room.

Well, it was his turn. He put little Lewis down on the couch and pulled at the Velcro tabs and peeled back the diaper and took a look at the load Lewis had left. It seemed to consist entirely of perfectly formed discrete bits, brown and soft looking, and shaped like an assortment of threaded nuts and bolts. Aside from the usual bad smells Karl had come to expect, there was also a hint of machine oil. Jeeze, what had the kid been eating?

“Hey, Marilyn!” he said. “Come on back out here. You gotta see this.”

“No,” she called. “That’s just the point. When it’s your turn, I definitely don’t have to see it.”

He grabbed Lewie’s feet, pulled the dirty diaper away and made a neat package of it. He hoisted the baby up higher and washed his bottom.

From somewhere far away, Karl could hear music, like the local philharmonic had decided to take a few turns around the block. He looked back over his shoulder at the window. The sound didn’t seem to be coming from the street. In fact, it seemed to be coming from Lewis. Feed your baby little radios and he will forever have a song in his heart? Karl moved to put his ear down on the baby’s stomach, but first strategically positioned his hand—having already been hosed in the traditional first defiant act of the son lashing out at the father—and listened. Yes, there it was—tummy music.

“Hey, Marilyn, the kid’s playing Bach!” Karl called.

“Concerto? Or symphony?” she asked.

“You could come listen for yourself.”

“Not a chance,” she said.

The music stopped suddenly. Maybe it had been coming from the apartment below. Karl fixed Lewis up with a fresh diaper.

Lewis got a look on his face like he’d eaten a bowling ball and maybe now was the time to throw a strike.

“Oh no,” Karl said. “Not again. Not so soon.”

The diaper bulged around the baby’s thighs. It bunched and unbunched like a fist in a glove.

When all movement finally stopped, Karl peeled the diaper down.

Small brown birds burst into the air and flew away in all directions.

Karl jerked away with a startled cry.

“You can knock off the sound effects,” Marilyn called. “I’m not going to look.”

The birds settled on the curtain rod above the big picture window. They spent a few moments squabbling and preening and elbowing for position before settling in to stony silence and sidelong glances.

“This is serious, Marilyn,” he said, and she must have heard something serious in his voice because a moment later she appeared at the kitchen door.

“What in the world?” she said when she spotted the birds.

“Lewis,” Karl said.

He looked back down at Lewis, and Lewis pumped his legs and waved his arms. His diaper was not too messy. In fact, Karl couldn’t tell if what was there had been left by Lewis or by the birds. Marilyn sat down on the couch and Lewis stretched his arms back over his head and rolled up his eyes to look at her. She absently tickled his nose and he giggled and snatched at her hand. Running mostly on automatic now, Karl washed the baby again and changed his diaper.

He looked at Marilyn over the baby and she looked at him.

“Where did the birds come from, Karl?” she asked.

“From Lewis,” he said. “They were in his diaper.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Really. There must be a window open somewhere.”

“Sure,” he said, “that must be it.”

But he didn’t believe it, and she could see he didn’t believe it, and he could see that she didn’t believe it either. Lewis gurgled and giggled and his parents, long practiced in marital telepathy, zapped thoughts back and forth above his head. We can handle this. We’re adults. We can do it. No we can’t. We’re children ourselves. What do we know about babies? No one told us anything about this. What are we going to do? I wish my mother was here. I wish your mother was here, too, or my mother. Your mother wouldn’t know what to do. What’s wrong with my mother? Would you shut up about your mother?