Maybe the Moon

mean?” The way he punched the J-word made me put my guard up.
    “You having sex with me. It could be Jewish guilt, for all I know. Your version of a freedom ride.”
    “Well, that’s pretty nasty.”
    “No nastier than comparing it to a couple of free doughnuts.”
    “It wasn’t a couple ,” I said, thumping him on his sticky stomach. “It was lots. And bags and bags of groceries.”
    “Oh, well…in that case.”
    “I wasn’t comparing, either. I just wondered…”
    “Yeah, yeah. Did it work?”
    “What?”
    “Did you cure his arthritis?”
    I gave him a guilty smile. “I got a movie about that time. We never went back.”
    He issued a little murmur in response—disapproving, I thought—then left the bed, snatched a towel off the floor, and wet it in the bathroom sink, mopping himself up. When he came back a minute or so later, he worked on me, dabbing delicately at my face and shoulders as he held my head with the other hand.
    “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said finally.
    “What?”
    “You granted my wish.”

    I sailed along on that thought all night, willing myself awake sometimes just to prove that he was there, warm and real and breathing beside me. Once I even left the bed, so I could stand by the window and feel the breeze and memorize the look of it all: that enchanted ballroom, the dwindling constellation of lights along the shore, the miracle of Neil’s body beneath the sheet. I knew that whatever happened from then on would never be quite the same as this, never as pure and rich and bracingly new. I wanted to save it somehow, to store it away somewhere to be treasured again when I needed it most.
    The feeling lasted well into the next morning, but I never gave words to it, for fear of frightening him. He had hoped this would happen, I reminded myself; he had planned on it even, much more than I had. His actions that morning gave witness to that, since he held my hand at breakfast (a sweet little greasy spoon straight off a sound stage) and romped with me in the clear blue-green waters of our own secret cove. Even as we sailed back to the smogbound mainland and watched with mounting melancholy as our special island shrank back into nothing, he stayed close to me always, touching, smiling, speaking with his eyes. There was nothing to dread, I realized. Everything about him said this was a beginning, not an end.
    He dropped me off at my house a little past six. We kept our goodbyes brief and unsensational, sealed with a couple of pecks on the cheek. Renee watched us from the door, giving a little wave, obviously bursting with curiosity, since overnight funerals are not all that common a phenomenon. Once Neil was gone, I told her something vague and half-assed about missing the last boat and went directly to my room.
    That was yesterday. Now it’s night again, late, and I’ve been writing nonstop since who-knows-when, practically to the end of the journal. Renee has been in and out all day, both excited and vaguely unsettled, I think, by this burst of literary activity. She had a date last night with “a serviceman,” she says, though she seems unclear about exactly which branch of the service it was. Theywent to a taco place in Burbank and then out for beers somewhere. I have a strong suspicion she fucked him in his car.
    She’s in bed now, talking ladylike in her sleep, delivering her Miss San Diego acceptance speech. I melt a little whenever she does that; don’t ask me why. I’d hoped that writing this all down would eliminate the need for a listening ear, but it doesn’t seem to have worked at all. This one takes a girlfriend, I think.
    Maybe I’ll tell her in the morning.

14
    I ’ VE SWITCHED TO THIS KIND OF NOTEBOOK, WHERE I CAN ADD pages at will, since life is getting weirder by the minute and I’d rather not be restricted by space considerations. Renee lobbied zealously for another journal with a Mr. Woods motif, insisting it would mean something to future historians, but I put my foot down and told her the elf was history. The cover is quite plain this time, clean white vinyl, in the hope that the stuff on the inside will speak to my future, not my past.
    Neil and I have been having a thing—for want of a better word—for over three weeks. We aren’t cohabitating, but we talk on the phone almost every night. When we’re together it’s usually early afternoon, when Renee’s at work and Danny’s in school. Neil comes over here (the logistics are simpler),