Maybe the Moon

it at my leisure, soaking it up like sunshine after too many weeks of rain. When I finally opened my eyes again, Neil was beaming up at me, every bit as stunned as I was.

    “We killed ’em” was the way he put it later, when we were down on the beach at an open-air café.
    “Fuckin’ A,” I said. “Miss Ross can sing.” I’d had a few margaritas by then.
    “We should do funerals more often.”
    “We should do something more often.”
    “Hey.”
    “Oh, c’mon. We’re washed up, Neil. Aren’t we?”
    To my horror, he didn’t even bother to deny it. He just shrugged and twitched a little and shook the ice in his glass.
    “That’s what I thought.”
    “Things could change,” he said. “The whole economy’s lousy.”
    “Yeah, right. Want another one?”
    He looked down at his empty glass. “Well…”
    “Waitron!” I made an elaborate semaphore signal across the deck at the girl who’d been serving us, then turned back to Neil. “I owe you at least a round or two.”
    “What for?”
    “The journal, remember?”
    “That was a present.”
    “You said I could buy you a drink sometime.”
    He smiled. “That was a figure of speech.”
    “Well, I, for one, plan to get shitfaced.” I polished off the tangy remains of my margarita and plonked the glass down. “That’s another figure of speech.”
    He chuckled, studying me for a moment, then looked up as the waitress arrived.
    “The gentleman would like another gin and tonic,” I informed her grandly. “And I’ll have my usual.”
    “Coming right up,” said the waitress.
    “I think that should be my last,” Neil said after she’d gone.
    “Why?”
    “I have to drive, remember?”
    I snorted. “You couldn’t kill anybody with that dinky thing if you tried.”
    “Just the same.”
    “You wanna hear my theory?”
    “About what?”
    “Us,” I said. “The business.”
    “OK.” He wove those long mahogany fingers through each other and laid them on the table in front of me.
    I could never have said it without the booze, but I did say it: “I think the problem is me.”
    “Oh, shit.”
    “No, hear me out…”
    “Look, Cady, we did a record number of gigs after you came on with us.”
    I told him I was aware of that.
    “Then, why would…?”
    “Just listen, OK?”
    “I’m listening.”
    “I think the clients liked me at first because…it was a novelty, and everybody wanted to see what it was like. But the novelty has worn off now, and they’re just left with sort of, you know, a creepy aftertaste.”
    “For Christ’s sake.”
    He looked so annoyed that I winced a little. “It’s just a theory,” I said.
    “Were you conscious back there?”
    “Back where?”
    “The Gliddens’ house. Those people adored you, Cady. You let them look into your soul, and they worshiped you for it.”
    As much as I enjoyed hearing this, I felt compelled to remind him that it had been, after all, a funeral, that the audience had been emotionally primed for the moment.
    He wouldn’t buy it. “They weren’t primed for the old lady. They barely clapped for her at all.”
    “Well, her teeth fell out, for God’s sake. She lost the momentum.”
    He threw back his head and groaned in exasperation.
    “Besides, I wouldn’t exactly call that…”
    “One margarita and one G and T.” Out of nowhere, the waitress had returned with our drinks.
    We both thanked her sheepishly and waited until she’d left before resuming.
    “Did it ever occur to you,” said Neil, more softly this time, “that business just might be shitty, period? It’s a big world, Cady. Everything doesn’t have to be about you .”
    “It doesn’t?”
    “No.”
    “Well, that sucks.”
    He laughed wearily. “I hate to be the one to break it to you.”
    “I need a drink,” I said, grinning at him over the salty rim.

    The boat back to the mainland didn’t leave for several hours, so we paid for an extension on our golf cart and took it out for a spin. Neil seemed relatively sober, thank God, but I was feeling very little pain. We followed the coastal road past the original pottery works, long ago demolished, then hung a right at the water conversion plant and climbed into the hills. There wasn’t another vehicle in sight, so the road was all ours most of the way. It snaked along through spicy eucalyptus groves and huge forbidding clusters of prickly pears, affording random glimpses of the blue-green water below. A fine red dust danced in the slanting