Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

Chase wasn’t exactly sure what he had said that night. He had drunk with the intention of bolstering his courage but had gone too far and eventually blacked out. He vaguely recalled uttering the names of the pills he wanted: “Viagra, Cialis, you know, Spanish Fly, whatever.” By the time Chase had woken up in his room the next day, Jordan was already back from work and standing over him with a bottle of water.

“Better drink this,” he said.

Chase took it and sat up while Jordan pulled back the blanket Chase had hung as a makeshift curtain. He poured the cold water into his mouth, the water glugging musically as it spilled forth. It made his teeth ache.

Jordan had sat on the narrow windowsill. Chase glanced his way. It was hard to read his face. Had he agreed to do it?

They sat in heavy silence.

Jordan shifted his position and said, “Didn’t you used to have a mural on that wall?”

Chase stared at the butterfly pattern before him. “It’s still there,” he said. “Underneath it.”

“What was it, some kind of animal, right?”

“A tiger.”

He recalled the rest of the painting—the abandoned city overwhelmed by jungle. The ruins of civilization. A sci-fi geek’s apocalyptic vision before he fell in love with Felicia. Now it was more Jordan’s thing, apparently, the collapse of civilization. He would see it as an omen, a prophecy of some kind, no doubt. But it was actually just proof that the mind moves on, that these dark preoccupations are really just retreats from coping with fears of growing up and that it’s life itself that helps you get past it. His parents had told him it would happen. He had come to their bedside when he was sixteen, woken them in the middle of the night to say that he didn’t think he could do it.

“Do what?” they asked in the darkness.

“All the things you’re supposed to do.” He listed his fears involving relationships, having kids, a career.

His father was first to respond after a long silence. “You’re thinking too much,” he said. “It works out.”

“Of course you can’t imagine it now,” his mother said. “You’re a kid. That’s why kids shouldn’t do all those things. You’re not meant to be ready.”

To help him get ready, they sent him to a psychiatrist once a week during his junior year. The doctor told him, on the topic of relationships, that what usually occurs is you start loving someone and a kind of alchemy happens, and all these fears, which are just fears of the unknown, turn into a desire to be brave or, even better, to move through your days, months, years, without giving all those dicey moments we all face too much weight. Sure enough, that’s what had happened. Almost. He had almost reached that place with Felicia.

He stood up and stepped out of the sleeping bag that gathered at his ankles.

“Watch this,” he said.

Chase pressed himself against the cool wall, remembering the image underneath against the measuring stick of his body, the span of his arms. For one entire high school summer, he had worked on the mural every afternoon. It was another kind of therapy. He still knew the wall intimately, because of the spatial demands it had placed on him. So much so that he was able to measure out a distance from the center, crab-walking his hands, until he came to a spot of interest. He scraped at the wallpaper there, eventually pulling away a strip to reveal two green eyes, the size and color of limes, smoldering with predatory intensity.

It was a good trick. Jordan actually smiled.

He stood and came over to the wall. With his fingernail, he worked up a tiny flap just below one of the eyes and pulled at it. A strip came away, revealing the side of the tiger’s nose. A stripe of tooth and tongue.

Within minutes they were tearing furiously at the wall, uncovering the tiger’s face, the piercing gaze and tensed mouth. The rich orange of the animal’s fur blazed out at them. They revealed the heavy paws and muscled shoulders of an animal regally posed in the heart of its reclaimed dominion: the crumbled buildings overtaken with vines, the entire scene lushly framed by the glossy, wide fronds and the curling tendrils of ferns. Over the beast’s shoulder, partially hidden by vines, was the dark mouth of a cave—the tiger’s lair.

Standing back, it looked as if someone had thrown a chair through a window, punching through to an alternate world. Chase saw his work with fresh eyes, thinking it would embarrass him. But it wasn’t bad. He had always been a good painter. He had a way with images. But the subject seemed to him laughably childish. Hopefully Jordan saw it that way too, and recognized that he had now embraced the same common and trite fantasy in his world without sleep.

“Pretty lame, right?” Chase had finally said.

Jordan looked at the wall, then turned and put his back against it. “Actually, I think it’s pretty fucking cool. Come, Armageddon, come ,” he sang.

And though he had leaned away, it seemed to Chase that he had closed the distance between them, smiling the way he was, showing some hint of warmth.

“You know what else I think?” Jordan had asked.

“No idea,” Chase said. He had started raking up the shredded strips of wallpaper with his feet.

“I think I should kiss you. I think that would be the best thing for you.”

Chase looked up. “What?”

“I said I think I should kiss you.”

“I don’t get it,” Chase said. “What? You think I’m gay?”

“No one isn’t,” Jordan said.

“So you’re into guys now? Is this what you’re saying?”

“It’s not even a thing,” Jordan said. “It’s one of the things we’ll lose when we stop sleeping.”

Chase put it together. He must have given details about the problems he had with Felicia. Jordan had come to an obvious conclusion. It didn’t exactly surprise Chase. After all, Felicia had suggested the same thing. But it wasn’t true. If it was true, what about the dreams? To this Felicia had said maybe he was just suppressing it all. People are good at denial, she told him. It sounded implausible to Chase. Just something she had picked up from her psych classes. Or maybe something Dr. Dreamy had told her. The thought that she had maybe discussed their situation with a stranger horrified him.

Chase didn’t want to talk about it then or now, with anyone. But what was Jordan telling him about himself? He immediately thought back through Jordan’s history, looking for clues. There were plenty of girls. Was this openness part of Jordan’s new end-of-the-world outlook somehow?

Jordan stood.

“Get the fuck away,” Chase said, his fear spiking and urgent.

Jordan raised his hands and sat back down in the window. “Whoa.”

“Why do you have to say such weird shit?”

A long silent pause passed.

Finally Jordan spoke. “What I’m saying is you have to get down to the truth of things, and pretty soon that’s all we’re going to have, so you might as well get ready. Those pills you want are just lies. A lot of pills are just that—shiny little lies that we choose to swallow. They won’t help you. Pretty dumb, or desperate, to think they will, don’t you think?”

Chase looked at Jordan in the window frame. Behind him the air was unusually clear, blown west by a mild Santa Ana. He could actually see the jagged, moon-colored mountains that rose up like storm clouds over the valley. They looked muscular, dense, convoluted. Orange light from the descending sun colored the peaks. Jordan followed his gaze, turning to look out the window. The mountains were like a massive fist hanging over them. Somewhere along the way, living in the foothills of these often shrouded peaks, Chase had picked up the belief that truth was conditional and subject to change. Sometimes it was as real as a mountain range. Other times it was just a blank space in the sky. “Look,” Chase finally said, glancing up from the floor. “I don’t believe in your stupid insomnia thing and I’m still helping you.”