Maybe the Moon

afternoon light, so that everything around us seemed rendered in sepia.
    “I wonder if we’ll see buffalo,” said Neil.
    I gave him a half-lidded look. “Sure thing, kemo sabe.”
    “They have them, you know.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “Not here, maybe, but they’ve got them.”
    “Real ones, you mean? Wild?”
    “Yep. They just keep multiplying.”
    I asked him how they got there in the first place.
    “Somebody brought a few of them over for a movie and forgot to take them home. Back in the twenties.”
    “I didn’t know buffalo went to movies.”
    I thought this was a brilliant witticism, but all Neil could manage was a tiny smirk. “They used to shoot Zane Grey westerns here.”
    “Aha.” In my drunkenness I conjured up my own version of a Gary Larson cartoon—a retirement home for aging buffalo actors, where the inmates sit around reminiscing about the big stampede scene that brought them their only fame.
    “He lived here, in fact.”
    “Who?”
    “Zane Grey. His house is a hotel now, sort of pueblo style. Across the harbor there.”
    “No kidding.”
    He swung the golf cart off the road and parked it.
    “What’s this?” I asked.
    “Stretch my legs. Wanna get out?”
    I told him I was fine right there.
    He climbed out and shook the stiffness from his limbs, then he fished a cigarette from the pocket of his blazer and lit it, took a drag, surveyed the picture-perfect scene beneath us. I wasn’t used to seeing him so dressed up, I realized. He looked nice like that. One more thing to thank Janet for.
    After a while, he came and stood next to the golf cart, still holding the cigarette and staring down at Avalon.
    “You know what?” he said.
    “What?”
    “There’s no way I wanna get back on that boat.”
    I had no earthly idea what he expected to hear from me, so I kept it as pleasantly neutral as possible. “It’s pretty nice here, all right. I’m surprised.”
    “Yeah. Me too.”
    “Who’d’ve thunk it?”
    He took another drag. “We don’t have to, really.”
    “Have to what?”
    “Go back.” He shrugged, then looked at me directly, those amazing eyes probing mine. “What’s the rush, anyway? It’s not like we’re working. I bet we could get rooms at the Zane Grey.”
    Rooms. Plural. I can’t remember when a single letter has mattered more to me.
    “Yeah,” I said carefully, drawing out the word to cover my confusion, “we could, but…” I didn’t manage to finish the thought.
    “But what?”
    “I’m broke, Neil.”
    He laughed it off. “Forget it. It’s on me.”
    “You’re broke too.”
    He shrugged. “That’s what credit cards are for.”
    “Don’t you have to get back to Danny?”
    “Nope. Linda’s got him. She’s picking him up at the neighbor’s right about now.”
    “She’s gone back, then?” I don’t know why I had to know this, but I did. Linda had vanished completely after thanking me for my performance and spending an agonizingly inaudible moment or two with Neil.
    He nodded. “Took the plane. Right after the reception.” He smiled ruefully. “After she helped ’em clean up, I’m sure.”
    Surprised by how relieved I was, I kept from betraying myself by changing the subject. “How much does that cost, anyway? The plane.”
    He rolled his eyes. “More than we’ve got, believe me.”
    Oh, how I wallowed in the sound of that we , the way he’d lumped us together so casually, so naturally, as a functioning unit—in distinct contrast to Linda. And now, separate rooms or not, we had a whole island to ourselves. A whole night, too, and another whole morning.

    The Zane Grey was so high up on a ridge that it looked across at the carillon we’d heard on our way into the harbor. A small parkingspace next to the road was as close as we could get to the place without walking, so I waited in the golf cart while Neil climbed the stairs through the cactus garden to inquire about accommodations. He came bouncing back down less than five minutes later.
    “Two singles,” he said, beaming, “next to each other, just off the swimming pool. With a view you won’t believe.”
    “Great.”
    “It’s a climb.”
    “Yeah, I see.”
    “Why don’t I carry you?”
    I declined this time, because the operation struck me as a little too public and undignified, and because I didn’t want him to think of me as helpless. Also, I’d begun to pit out my funeral frock. “You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll meet you up there. They don’t sell