Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

Once, standing on their balcony, Biggs had watched as a lone woman parked her car and removed a sign from the trunk. The sign featured the grotesque image of a mutilated fetus torn from the womb. The woman made exactly one pass in front of the building, heels clicking on the sidewalk, before throwing the sign back into the trunk and driving off. When he told Carolyn about it, she speculated that the woman was conflicted and realized she didn’t feel right about her stance. Biggs was less generous. He saw it more as a checklist gesture. Buy groceries. Check. Take car in for tune-up. Check. Protest abortion. Check. “That’s awful cynical, Mr. Biggs,” Carolyn had said.

He went up the stairway along the side of the building and found himself on the second floor landing, peering into the windows of the apartment there. They both knew the floor plan well, since they had spent many hours inside with the elderly couple who once lived there. Carolyn had adopted the Whitneys, who were in their eighties when Mr. Whitney had a stroke. Every day for nearly two months, she went downstairs in the morning to help Mrs. Whitney wash and dress her husband. She prepared meals for four, and their casserole dishes and plates migrated downstairs. Biggs helped too, lifting Mr. Whitney from his wheelchair and setting him gently into bed.

One night, he had found Carolyn on the balcony, crying silently.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“She wants me to contact their son,” Carolyn said. “To find him.”

“He should know,” Biggs said gently, pulling her close. Moths ticked against the light. Beyond her, he saw the many planes—just a loose string of lights that extended toward the horizon—slowly advancing on the international airport, like lanterns on the tide.

She pulled back. “You know what that would mean.” Yes, they had discussed it. The family would come and put their parents in a rest home, box up their belongings and conclude the couple’s mastery over their own lives.

“They need the care, Carolyn.”

“I’ll take care of them!” she said fiercely. She was acting very much like a child who had found a sack of abandoned kittens. He knew this was connected to her mother’s sad demise. Yet that was different: the entire family had been there with her as she passed away at home. Carolyn, her sister, and their father. Maybe that’s what Carolyn wanted for Mr. Whitney—a death at home. Yet she knew that the children, whose failures and cruelty Mrs. Whitney had detailed, wouldn’t see their father through it.

As the situation arced toward the inevitable, Biggs began dreading what it would ultimately do to Carolyn, who was so slow to recover from grief. He was relieved when Carolyn honored Mrs. Whitney’s request and tracked down the son’s contact information on the Internet.

Two weeks later, just as they had predicted, the Whitneys were gone. Their absence put Carolyn in a dark place for weeks, but she eventually pulled herself out of it by finding the loft on the other side of town and urging that they buy it. It was an escape, Biggs knew. But they had been talking about moving for over a year anyway, to get away from the protesters that picketed the clinic every weekend. And they knew they needed to stop renting and buy something. That’s what grown-ups do. “Bottom line is, I’m tired of waiting for that angel to blow that thing,” she said, staring up at the statue overhead from where she had spread a blanket on the little lawn.

The loft was mostly one large room, but it had two small walled-off spaces. “One could be a studio and the other your office,” she insisted.

“Or a nursery.” He knew she wanted to hear this.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said, but he saw the agreement in her eyes.

The move had the desired effect. She loved the new place—the studio and the fact that it had skylights. The walls were lined with shelves, and she insulated their nest with boxes of volumes collected over the years. Their décor was the many colorful spines. She threw herself into a new film and was soon able to wonder about the well-being of the Whitneys without descending into sadness.

Biggs had not returned to the building since the move. He took the outer stairs up to their old apartment, and it seemed as though nothing had changed. The kitchen door was unlocked. He hesitated, listening, then entered. The place was trashed. He waded through the clutter of their former kitchen, the living room where they had assembled their thrift shop furniture. The carpet was concealed under books and papers, cushions from the couch. Biggs picked his way through to the bedroom. There he was startled to find an obese man standing against the wall, blinking in his direction. Or, rather, the man, who was naked except for a sheet that he wore like a diaper, was pressing his back against a mattress that he had propped against the wall.

He looked directly at Biggs, drifting forward a bit so that the mattress sagged toward the floor. “There is supposedly a guy there standing,” he said to no one. “But magic of the mind is all it is.”

“No, I’m real,” Biggs said. He wondered what proof he could offer.

The man studied him from behind a wild red beard. His pink complexion flushed, his gut sagging over the sheet, which was held up by a belt. “If so, then pillow me,” he nodded at a pillow at his feet and held out his hand. “Pillow me, then we’ll see.”

Biggs stepped closer, watching the man cautiously, and scooped up the pillow. The man snatched it from him and tried to put it behind his head. He seemed to be under the impression that he was lying down. The pillow stayed in place until the man leaned forward. It fell to his feet, and when he bent down to pick it up, the mattress folded over him. In a rage, he shouldered the mattress hard against the wall and kicked at the pillow. “There it is where it was so you are useless,” the man said.

Biggs backed away.

“Yes! Get back to the other side of my eyes,” the man said.

Back in the living room, Biggs called out for Carolyn.

“Oh, Carolyn is who you are looking?” the man called from the bedroom.

Biggs returned to the bedroom and stood in the doorway. He had once stood here before, during an earthquake. Carolyn had refused to leave the bed. He studied the man, who stared back at him. Biggs said, “Was someone named Carolyn here?”

The man scratched at his enormous belly. “Here and lots of places. There even.”

Biggs frowned. This guy was out of his fucking head. Or maybe not. “Listen, was someone here named Carolyn in the last few days?”

“She was here but very smallishly here,” the man said.

Did he mean that Carolyn is small? She is small. Petite. “What did she look like? What did Carolyn look like?” he asked.

The man didn’t respond. He pressed against the mattress and shut his eyes, as if to be sleeping.

“What color was her hair?”

“Ha! She has no hair but fur that’s white and orange,” the man offered without opening his eyes. He added: “Someone was calling her for her in the other room. She did not come that I know of but stayed under the bed.”

He’s talking about a cat, Biggs concluded. The person calling for her was him, only minutes ago. The man attempted to toss and turn against the mattress, drunkenly acting out the postures of sleep. He will fall over soon, Biggs speculated. And he will not be able to get out from under the mattress.

Biggs retreated through the kitchen. Before leaving, he checked the cabinets and found a box of cake mix. He tore it open and ate a fistful of the powder while staring out the window, into the empty courtyard of the medical center next door. He could hear the fat man pretending to snore in the other room.