Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

“I’ve stayed here before,” Jordan said from his bed. “With my dad.”

Chase looked over, checking Jordan for some sign of emotion. His father had been killed in a biking accident when Jordan was twelve. A year later, Jordan lost his eye. Jordan didn’t like to talk about either incident, nor the fact that his mother had squandered the lawsuit money. Maybe the trip, being back where he had spent time with his dad, had shaken things up. But Jordan’s face revealed nothing as he stared up at the ceiling. He asked, “You ever fish?”

“No.”

“I got really into it,” he said distantly. “There’s something really weird about feeling an animal, under the water, biting at the bait. That little tug. It’s like a mild shock, or a message coming from another world. I used to dream about it a lot, just that feeling in my hands.”

“I guess I did try it once, but I never caught anything.”

“Up where we’re going, you can see the fish in the water. Trout. Can catch your limit in less than an hour and cook them on the spot. I used to live for those trips.”

Chase noted that a wistful tone had finally crept in. He tried to say something cheerful. “Let’s do that when we get up there.”

Jordan didn’t respond. He continued to stare at the ceiling.

Chase stood and pulled on his pants. “I’m going to get us some food,” he said.

“There’s a pizza place next door.”

“I’ll get us some sandwiches.”

“Get me a meatball sub,” Jordan called after him as he stepped outside. He crossed the parking lot, checking to see that the car was okay. The thought occurred to him to dig out the pills—his pills—from the stash. He was eager to try them, to see if they worked, though he wasn’t even one hundred percent sure Jordan had bothered to get them. They had pulled over in the dark, as soon as they cleared the suburbs, and stuffed everything into the trunk. Jordan insisted he had grabbed the right stuff. “Decades’ worth of boners,” he said. Chase regretted not nabbing a few then. To do it now would put them at risk. Anyone could be watching.

He crossed the street and took the stone stairs down into the park. The river pooled there, where a small dam created a wide pond and water spilled like a layer of glass on the concrete banks into mild, stepped rapids. The sun had set, but there was still some seepage of light in the sky, beyond the black shapes of tall pines. Swifts darted over the water, through swarms of mayflies. The air smelled of forest and fish. Standing at the water’s edge, Chase pulled his phone from his pocket and called Felicia.

As expected, he got her voice mail. She had stopped taking his calls. If they communicated in real time, it was limited to text. She held to her assessment that they had said everything they could possibly say.

Had she answered, he would have skipped over the hello and jumped right into conversation, saying, “A year ago I was living under your bed.”

“Rent free,” she would probably respond, not missing a beat. It was true that, after his parents had rented out the house and left for Boston, he had had a gap of homelessness before he could move into the dorms. Their plan was to have him secretly stay in her room for a week, then relocate to a series of campsites on the beach. She would join him and they would live out the remainder of their summer in the same tent that was now in the trunk of Jordan’s car. Her parents weren’t fans of the idea, but they had little leverage since she was paying for college herself—with her saved-up waitress money, and now with her work-study salary as a lab assistant. She shamed him, really, with her drive and industry. His parents covered his tuition and he did not need to work, yet he sleepwalked through his courses and squandered his afternoons napping in his dorm room.

By the time they arrived on campus, all of their clothes and their hair smelled of campfire smoke and their shoes were filled with sand. They had spent their mornings waiting out the June Gloom, then tanning in view of the titlike nuclear reactors of San Onofre. In the evenings, they watched sparks fly from the fire ring. They had connected their sleeping bags and pressed together at night for warmth, but Chase would eventually pull away, defeated and frustrated when his body wouldn’t respond to her urgings. Sometimes he would go back out and sit by the fire until she fell asleep, telling himself that he was guarding her from psychos and rapists that wouldn’t hesitate to cut through the fabric walls and drag her into the night.

Now, hearing her voice instructing all callers—not just him—to leave a message, he felt the sting of losing her. At the beep, he said, “Hey. It’s me. I’m standing by a river in Idaho, believe it or not. I’m here with Jordan. It’s been kind of crazy but I wanted to remind you that we’re meeting up for your birthday, okay? It’s going to be different, Fel. It’s going to be so different. You’ll see. Yeah.” He didn’t know what to say, but didn’t want to hang up. “Hear that river? I’ll hold up the phone. Oh, Jordan says hi. I’m a little worried about him. It’s a long story, but basically he thinks the world is ending. Because of sleep, or people not being able to sleep. He’s so sure that he almost has me convinced. But if something like that was really happening, Dr. Dreamy would have told you already, right?” He immediately regretted saying that, so he deleted the message and said everything over, leaving out the dig at Felicia’s boss before hanging up. There was no reason to bring up his jealousy of Dr. Lee, whom she described as a genius, even if he had meant it playfully. It was time to at least act like he wasn’t threatened.

He hung up and stared into the darkening water. A shadow darted through.

WHEN Chase returned to the room, he found that Jordan wasn’t alone. A girl was sitting on his bed, laughing at something Jordan had said. Maybe twenty or so in age, blond hair pulled back, and wearing a blue industrial apron over jeans and a sweatshirt. This explained the cleaning cart outside the door.

“She thought the room was empty,” Jordan said. “She really wants to scrub our bathroom.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m just dying to do it,” the girl said, laughing.

Jordan introduced him. Her name was Michelle and her mother owned the motel. “I like working at night,” she explained. “Usually most of these rooms are empty, to tell you the truth, so I can even vacuum.”

“So you sleep all day?” Jordan asked.

“Most. Well, to about three thirty in the afternoon.”

Jordan gave Chase a knowing glance and he wasn’t quite sure how to interpret it. Chase handed him a sandwich, which was wrapped in foil.

“So you’re a vampire,” Jordan said, smiling slyly at the girl. He unpeeled the foil and took a huge bite of the sandwich. It was the old Jordan.

“Maybe I am,” the girl said, grinning, “but I like ice cream, not blood.”

Chase said, “Do you want some of this?”

He held out half of his own sandwich.

The girl shook her head. “That’s sweet, but I already ate.”

Jordan said, “She’s ready for dessert.”

“You guys finish those sandwiches, and I’ll take to you to the best place in town for banana splits.”

“Don’t you have to work?” Chase asked.

The girl shrugged. “That’s what’s cool about working for your family. I mean it’s not like they can fire me,” she said with a laugh.

JORDAN didn’t put up much resistance when Chase said he was going to opt out of the banana split hunt. He was polite enough to ask twice if Chase was sure, but quickly let it drop. Again, he flashed a look that Chase now read as a signal that he was interested in this girl. It seemed he was able to put his apocalypse on hold to spend some time with a Mormon cutie in Idaho Falls. This relieved Chase, since it made Jordan more familiar. But it also confused him, after a conversation they had had a week earlier, following their late night drinking strolls along the horse trails, when Chase revealed why he was willing to help Jordan.