Christopher Moore: The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

As the story of the Sea Beast spread and was sensationalized, interest rose in an obscure B-movie actress named Molly Michon. Discs and videocassettes of the Warrior Babe series were remastered and rereleased to an enthusiastic audience, and the Screen Actors Guild came down on the producers like an avenging accountant angel to capture a piece of the profits for Molly.

Valerie Riordan’s practice stabilized as she struck a balance between therapy and medication and she was able to schedule a sabbatical to join her fiancé, Gabe Fenton, on an oceanographic expedition aboard a Scripps vessel to look for evidence of the Theosaurus in the deep trenches off California.

After he testified against John Burton, putting him away for life, winter settled on Theophilus Crowe like a warm blessing. In the second month of his recovery, he realized that his addiction to marijuana had been nothing more than a response to boredom. Like the child who whines away a summer day because there’s nothing to do, but makes no effort to actually do anything, Theo had simply lacked the ambition to entertain himself. Sharing his life with Molly solved the problem, and Theo found that although he was often exhausted by the demands of his job and his lover, he was never bored. Molly’s trailer was moved to the edge of the ranch by his cabin. Every morning they shared a hearty breakfast pizza at her place. In the evening, they ate dinner on his cable spool table. She answered his calls while he was at work, and he ran interference with the geeky fans who were rabid enough to seek her out at the ranch. Not a day passed that he did not tell Molly how special she was to him, and as time passed, the narrator in her head fell silent and never spoke again.

There was no winter in the deep submarine trench off California, two miles down. Everything was as it had been: a dark pressurized sameness where the Sea Beast lay by his black smoker, grieving for love lost. He stopped grazing on deep water worms that grew on the rocks and his great body began to waste away under the weight of the water and the years. He had resolved never to move again—to lie there until his great heart stopped and with it the throb of heartbreak—when sensor cells along his flanks picked up a signal. Something he had not felt for half a century, the signature of a creature he thought he would never feel again. He flipped his tail and shook off the crust of loneliness that had settled over him, and that organ buried deep beneath his reptile brain picked up a message coming from the female. Roughly translated, it said, “Hey, sailor, want to get lucky?”

My thanks to Dr. Kenneth Berv and Dr. Roger Wunderlich for their advice on mental health and psychoactive drugs; to Galen and Lynn Rathbun for help with biology and rat tagging information; to Charlee Rodgers, Dee Dee Leichtfuss, and Jean Brody for manuscript readings and comments; to Nick Ellison for agent stuff; to Rachel Klayman for patience and precision in her editing; and finally to all those people who were willing to share their experiences with antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs—you know who you are, you crazy fucks. (Just kidding.)

CHRISTOPHER MOORE is the author of seven novels, including this one. He began writing at age six and became the oldest known child prodigy when, in his early thirties, he published his first novel. His turn-ons are the ocean, playing the toad lotto, and talking animals on TV. His turn-offs are salmonella, traffic, and rude people. Chris enjoys cheese crackers, acid jazz, and otter scrubbing. He lives in an inaccessible island fortress in the Pacific. You can e-mail him at BSFiends@aol.com. Visit the official Christopher Moore website at www.chrismoore.com.

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