Best Part of the Moon

The house is a jumble. Dirty plates and food packaging everywhere. Little heaps of floor sweepings  along the perimeters. The window sills are old battlefields of insect carcasses and sagging spider webs. But a Barney Kessel record is playing. There’s a glass of red wine. The smoke of a soldering iron does a slow jazz dance in the bright light of a work lamp.

His feet tap a rhythm as he works. His shoulders do an upper-body dance. We take a better look at his clutter — and it’s anything but trash. There are stereos, gadgets vintage and new, computers, a drafting table, pens, cameras, two beautiful guitars, magazines, books on shelves, books in stacks. He’s a man of many interests. A man with no time for mere housecleaning.

He’s obese, with fat fingers, but oh how those fingers can work. Tirelessly and precisely. Slowing down only to scratch the cat, all down its neck and back, then a disappearing leap of cat and back to work for the fingers.

In a corner, up close, a spider works on its web, a kindred spirit to our man.

A cuckoo clock tells him he’s nuts. Tells him three times.

“Fuck! he says. “Fucking world!”

In his bed he tries to become unconscious. Switches positions. Gives up and turns the reading lamp on. If he’s going to be awake, he might as well be awake. He picks up one of the books that lie on the other half of the mattress.

The alarm clock sneers him awake. “Fucking fucker,” he tells it. 

He crosses a poorly maintained parking lot in an office park on the ratty, weedy fringe of his town. 

He sighs a good morning to the chipper girl at the front desk. Goes from the bright reception area into a dusky room of big brown desks, big gray filing cabinets, big drab shapes in women’s clothing, exchanging flat good mornings, and into a sort of above-ground basement, dark nearly everywhere, bare cement block walls, bare concrete floor, a few blue tubes of light overhead, a walk-in dumpster of office junk, only a few small squares of daylight peeking through. “Morning, Leong,” he says to a man bowed over a keyboard. “Hey,” comes the reply, barely. He maneuvers his obesity between metal shelves filled indescribably with discarded office stuff, and he takes a seat, arranges himself, pushes buttons, sighing, and bows over a keyboard, his fingers suddenly tap dancing..

Later, he crosses the broken, weedy parking lot again, lowers into a car sheathed in dirt and rust and crammed with trash. And drives, with his fingers beating a rhythm.

And so it goes. His uneventful, messy indoor life, messes and too little space at work, at home and in between. His large body always just barely fitting. His fingers always tapping. 

He adds the day’s unopened mail to a pile just inside the door. A triangle of white flags him from days ago — a flat white square. “You’re kidding,” he says, obeying the summons. A tune commences as he opens it. “Happy 50, Little Brother!” the handwriting reads. He stands at attention while the music plays. He says to himself, “I’m fifty now?”

The cat is on his shoulders out of  nowhere, demanding attention until it gets some, then leaping into hiding.

It is January. Cold rain smacks on the windows. He pours a glass of red wine, turns on the music, sits at one of his worktables and dissects the birthday card, begins to shoulder dance, tapping his feet. 

The cat along the top of the sofa. Drops into a hunting crouch — nope, false alarm. Or maybe it was just practicing, keeping its reflexes alive. It disappears lazily into the clutter.

It’s time to rise for work again. The bathroom mirror is half-awake, too, looking none too well, but as it opens — the birthday song! Careful positioning and a bit of tape and wine.

He gets out of his car at work, bending over three times to gather the fast food packaging that tries to escape. “Fucking fuck trash!” He has parked in exactly the same spot, at the far end of the 99.9 percent empty parking lot. Looking sour and walking sour he slogs the same diagonal route we’ve seen him slog before, passing the same tall pothole weed he always passes. “I’m fucking 50?” he asks.

It’s a day like all the others. The same cheerless good mornings. The same journey from light to dim to dark. Only today he can’t fit into his work space. Additional junk has appeared. He tries to squeeze through, ripping his shirt, exposing a round belly, hairy and pale. “He did it a-fucking-gain! Vinnie!”

His boss weaves his way through the junk, an overdressed Italian, all hairdo and cologne, constantly checking his button and collar. These two clearly don’t get along. They argue without fully seeming to argue. Our man agrees without agreeing. “So you’ll have Jimmy move this shit?” he says. “And tell him to stop dropping it in front of my desk?”

“Of course, Ronnie. I just said I would. You worry too much. Leong, you keep it down back here. You’re making too much noise.”

“Hey,” says Leong.

Ron worms through the junk to a door, stands outside at the back of the building, even more barren than the front. Stands in the bright sun, no coat, shivering. “Fucking little dago fuck,” he hisses. Then: “You need this fucking job, Ron. It makes the rest possible. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Home alone, he has a reckoning. “I’m fifty,” he tells himself. He works for an hour, packing his latest projects into plastic bins, stacking things even more precariously, clearing space. He exposes an electric typewriter, a relic, nearly steampunk, and switches it on. The instant hum of readiness. He tests a few keys — SNAP SNAP! This thing is rarin’ to go!

In a spare bedroom he opens a closet — all shelves from top to bottom, every shelf stuffed with the boxes that typing paper comes in. He beats away the spider webs and dust with a t-shirt. The boxes are labeled by year, going back 30 years. He pulls out the two most recent ones, dated five years back. 

He drops the boxes hard on his desk like what he wants is to break something, to tell someone or something, “No!” Or maybe he just wants to hear that his old writing has some weight.

Only now does he start the music. He answers the door, pays for a pizza. He maneuvers into his desk chair with pizza and red wine. Pushes the cat aside. “No! Go! Go!” He lifts a limp manuscript out of its box, handling it like a patient. Takes a sip of wine, takes bites of  his pizza, regarding the manuscript, preparing himself. “Now where were we,” he says, and begins to read.

The pizza is finished. He pours the last of the wine. He looks at the cuckoo clock — is it broken? 

It’s not even 11 o’clock!

He falls heavily into bed, sets the alarm, lets his head fall, is instantly asleep.

The morning walk across the parking lot. The tall weed again, casting its morning shadow. Now the weed again, casting its nighttime dusk-to-dawn shadow. Into his car again.

At the typewriter again. Music again, but this time no wine and pizza. This time just crackers  and water. He got maybe 50 pages into his manuscript last night. “Lets read this whole fucking fucker to the end,” he says, cocking his ballpoint pen like a pistol.

Falling heavily into bed again. Even earlier than the night before.

The maintenance guy, Jimmy, has done it again. More junk blocking Ron’s desk. “Vinnie!”

This time there’s no pretending not to argue, no pretending to agree. He topples the shelves that surround his desk. An almost jurassic crash of metal! Leong jumps up in his chair. “Hey!”

“You’re fucking fired!”

“You’re fucking right, I’m fired.”

“Jesus Christ, Ron. Jesus Christ.”

“Just forget it, Vinnie. It’s time for me to go.”

“We’ll work it out, Ron. Never mind all that crap we said, you’re right, we’ll get all this cleaned up. Jimmy!”

“Forget it, Vinnie. Forget it. I’m sorry. It’s just time. It’s just time.”

And evening of wine and music. Of congratulating himself. “This is good!” Of reading his manuscript on his feet, dancing with his whole body, now. More telling himself this is good. Minutes of of panic. But then dancing again. Falling heavily into bed at 3 a.m. Almost setting the alarm clock, and then remembering. 

But next morning he wakes up right at 7:15, same as ever. Fully awake. “Holy shit. What have I done?”

Daytime in his house. Too antsy to read his manuscript. Starts to makes soup in the microwave, but every bowl and cup and spoon is dirty. The sink is is overflowing with dirty dishes and pans. He zaps the soup in a tall beverage glass and drinks it.

Late afternoon sun cutting through the room like honesty, like contempt. Dust and crumbs everywhere in stark relief. But he still doesn’t see it. “This is just what I needed! I was fucking going under. I was fucking dying.” He’s on his back on the couch, dressed but barefoot, his legs crossed like he’s both lying down and sitting, one foot air-dancing to an unheard rhythm. Some part of him is always moving. “Yeah, baby! Come here, Zooz. Tell me you love me.” The cat looks into the disarray as if it’s heard or seen something over there, not over here where Ron’s voice came from.

Opening the door at night, paying for his Chinese food. “Hey, Melvin.” “Hey, Ron.”

Another day unable to focus on his manuscript. Too antsy to sit. “Once around the block,” he says. But doesn’t take time to bundle up warm enough. And the neighborhood is at its winter worst, the life and color all sucked out. His shoulders hunched and his jaw quivering.  At a block and a half he does an about face. “Enough of this shit!”

Another morning. He shaves. He puts his work clothes on. He makes coffee and toast, working at the one bare spot on his counter, a six-inch clearing in a mountain range of dishes, utensils and emtpy food packages. He sips his coffee at his desk, and begins making phone calls. “Thank you. No, I understand….well thanks, anyway. Sure, I’ll stay in touch…okay, well thanks, Judy, I’ll stay in…what? Wait, really? Of course! I’d be perfect for that! In six weeks? Absolutely! That’s perfect. I’ll see you then, Judy. I’ll call you the week before, and we’ll — yes, definitely! I’m  yours! I’ll see you in six weeks!”

He has a job! He’s dancing again. “I told you, fucking Vinnie! I told you, fucking Leong! I don’t need your soul sucking job! Come here, Zooz! Who do you love?” He picks up the cat. It screeches and jumps free like it’s just met Jack the Ripper. “All right, baby. We’re cooking now. Who’s fifty years old? I’m not fifty years old!”

For four weeks he is ecstatic. He cleans house. Reorganizes his junk. This is the fresh beginning he’s been waiting for. But after a month of this work, the house looks little different. And he is depressed.

Then the months drag on, and he can’t find another job. He fails at each of his interviews, and we can see why. His attitude is just not right. 

And then his cat gets sick. He takes it to the vet, comes home without the cat.

Of all the things that clutter his house, his most prized possession is a guitar once owned by Chet Atkins. It’s a very handsome, red, western-looking guitar. It is evening. He is drinking red wine, listening to Chet’s music, looking at Chet’s guitar. He has had it for 20 years. He takes the guitar off the wall. He waits for a certain part of the song, and strikes a note. Beautiful! The note hangs in the air, a moment of perfection. He strikes another note — he is off by one fret, and it sounds awful. But he quickly adjusts, and — another lingering note of perfection.

Then the song picks up pace, and he can’t keep up. He really can’t play very well. He has a nice vibrato and a good ear for harmony, and we can see he is filled with music, but he lacks the disciplined skill to get his internal music out.

Next day he takes the guitar to a pawn shop. He expects to sell it for $6,000. The dealer offers him $500.

He advertises it on craigslist. Finally finds a buyer who is very, very interested on the phone, but can only pay $5,000. Our guy says he will take it.

The buyer arrives, examines the guitar, finds all kinds of faults — the neck has twisted, the body has sunken. “You should have stored this better, man. The dry hair has killed it. You had a treasure here.” He offers $800. Our guy takes it.

Next day he hands over all that cash in one handful to the pet doctor. He is reunited with his pet, bandaged and weak. “He’ll be okay,” says the girl in the vet’s office.

“Thank you so much,” says our guy. “You’re so nice. And very beautiful.”

“Oh, thank you,” she says, blushing. “I haven’t heard that lately.”

“You should have,” he says.

He doesn’t know where this confidence is from, but it feel like his birthright. It feels like his younger, thinner, happier self.

He sits petting his cat, looking at the spot where his Chet Atkins used to hang. He daydreams a date with the woman at the vet’s office. The date goes beautifully until she says, “Let’s go back to your place.’

He snaps awake. “I’m 50 fucking years old,” he says. His birthday is just now hitting him. He has been in denial.

He puts the cat aside and gets up. He is suddenly a flurry of motion, going through his house again and again, filling black trash bags. 

As the sun rises, we we five bulging black trash bags outside at the curb for pickup. He comes trotting out of the house in his bare feet, rubbing his hands for warmth. He opens a bag, pulls out several items. We hear the garbage truck coming. He grabs one more item then runs back inside with his recovered treasures before he can be seen.

We see him at an electronics store, buying a digital camera and a hard drive. “These have gotten really cheap,” he tells the salesgirl, who knows nothing about the technology she sells except what the packaging says. “One of these will hold 90,000 photographs. Which should be just about enough.”

“Enough for what?” she asks.

“For almost anything,” he says.

We see him photographing his belongings, one at a time. Setting up the lights just so, retaking the shot, treating everything like ancient treasure. Much of it is pure junk and trash. He is obviously a person who carries around inside him a couple tons of sentiment.

In the end, he is taking pictures of it by the pile. Almost addicted now to filling trash bags and carrying them to the curb.

Every trash-truck morning, another mound of black bags.

Finally, his house is nearly empty. Panic comes over him. “What have I done?”

But then he is buying new clothes. He brings his purchases home, gives himself a fashion show. Folds and hangs every item neatly.

He goes to sleep on clean linens. No overflow of his latest hobby project sharing the bed with him.

He splurges on a cut and a shave. He hardly knows if barbers still offer a shave. He’s never done this before.

He dresses in his new clothes. He goes to the veterinarian’s office and asks the woman out. She accepts.

On their first date, she asks him what he loves. He tries to tell her about his novel. How he has been working on it since college, how many different forms it has taken, how each one is better than the one before. That he is presently on Chapter 3. He expects to hear a great compliment.

“That’s so sad,” she says.

“Well, I’m very patient,” he says. “Quality’s worth it. I’ve got inventions I’m working on, board games, children’s books…I’m slowly building up all these things, letting them ferment. Letting them distill. I surround myself..used to surround myself with mementos, and stimuli, and…”

“That sounds like it could take a long time.”

“It’s already been a long time,” he laughs. “I must be pretty close by now.”

“I hope so,” she says. “For you, I mean.”

He goes home. Stands with a black trash bag before the closet dedicated to the storage of his novel in progress.

He watches the garbage truck arrive.

“How much more of this you got in there,” asks the worker.

“This is the last of it.”

He goes on a job interview. There is something different about him. He easily gets the job.

We see him coming home in the evenings. Instead of drinking himself into an ecstatic stupor, daydreaming among his dozens of hobbies and projects, he has a meal at his dining table, reading a book. Afterwards, he sits outside on his porch and draws pictures.

After a few weeks of this, we see him getting up very, very early, sitting in his empty, boring office, and writing. On the fourth morning, he says, “Finished.”

At the end of his next date, standing at her door, he hands her a manilla envelope. “I started something brand new,” he said. “It’s not an idea I’ve cooked and cooked for years. But would you read it?”

It is a long drive home from his girlfriend’s town. “I didn’t even revise!” he says, cursing himself.

He is getting into bed. There’s a phone call.

“I couldn’t wait to read it,” she says. “I finished it.”

“What did you think?”

“It’s so sad,” she says. “But so beautiful. I mean, so beautiful. I didn’t know — “

“Didn’t know what.”

“That you were one of the people who can do that.”

They are on another date, sitting on a park bench beside a river, looking at the moon.

“Tell me a story about the moon,” she says.

So he creates a story for her. Part science fiction, part fable. He gets a little ways into it, and gives up, laughing. “I’m not one of those great improvisers,” he says. “I need to let it cook inside a little.”

“For 30 years?”

“God no. Never again.”

“Well, finish it for me,” she says. “I don’t care it it’s good. Just tell me how it ends.”

“It ends,” he said, “with the hero saying, ’I could build this rocket, and it could work. We could get to the moon for under a million dollars. I would win the prize and be set for life. But I’m not going to do it.’ His partners ask him why, and he says, ‘What’s great about the moon isn’t when we get there. It’s when we can’t. The best part of the moon...“ 

And here our guy looks his date. He points at the moon, touches the moonlight on her face, gestures with his hand at the moonlight on the landscape.

“...is here.”

She looks at him with surprise. “If you can do better than that, who cares.”

He kisses her.

“Right here and right now,” he says.