“Why did you do that? Who do you think you are?” she shouted. Dimly she was aware that a restless Saturday-night street crowd was watching them with the halfway interest of people who are drunk and bored and waiting for something better to happen to them.
“Stop it, Luna,” said Joe, holding up his hands to shield himself. “I’m sorry. It’s just— The way he looked at you. I couldn’t help it.”
Luna stopped hitting.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
* * *
The elevator deposited them at the penthouse floor. Wall sconces made of smoky glass and shaped like flaming torches lined the elevator landing. Luna’s heels clicked on pale gray marble, and she wondered why Joe had never brought her here before. Joe took her hand, and she leaned into him. The scene with Donny faded, a reverse Polaroid of an image undone. With the warmth of Joe’s arm around her shoulders, the night seemed to Luna like a hurricane, some natural disaster that neither could be blamed for, that together they had survived.
Joe opened the door, and they stepped into darkness. He didn’t turn on the lights. The far wall was all window, and the bright gray of night light filled the room, reflecting off the television screen and the glass of photo frames lining a bookshelf, so that for an instant the room seemed full of winking eyes. Luna’s sight adjusted, focused, and there they were: framed photos of Joe’s three sisters, Renee, Caroline, Fiona, and their mother, Antonia, whom they all called Noni for reasons that Luna still did not understand. Photos of children, too, Joe’s nephew, Louis, and two nieces, Beatrix and Lily. Twins, he’d told her.
It was only then that Luna noticed the piles of clutter crowding the floor and the tabletop, the boxes stacked against the walls. Oh, she thought, so this is what he’s been hiding. She said nothing about the mess and went straight for the photos.
“Who is who?” she asked. “Tell me.”
Joe picked a frame off the shelf and angled it for Luna to see. Here Joe was younger, thinner, his hair thick and brown. “This is Renee, the oldest,” he said, pointing to a tall, slim woman with bare shoulders, even teeth, a wry smile. “Caroline, middle sister. She’s the one with kids.” Caroline was pale, with pink cheeks, a bright orange shirt, mouth open as though she was laughing or calling out to the photographer. “And here’s Fiona, the youngest. She writes that blog I told you about.” Fiona’s hair reached to her shoulders, curly and a rich dark brown, and her face was plump, her body easily double the width of Renee’s. “She’s lost a lot of weight since then,” Joe said. “She’s almost a different person now. I haven’t looked at this in a long time.” He said the last almost to himself and tilted the picture more toward the light. “This was Louis’s birthday, I think. Louis, my nephew, Caroline’s son. This was his fifth—no, sixth birthday. The twins were still toddlers. We were all back in Bexley.” He started to place the photo back on the shelf, but Luna stopped him.
“May I?” she asked and he handed it to her.
“Sure. Let’s go sit on the balcony. Light’s better out there anyhow.” He took her hand and carefully led her through the mess of the room, out the sliding glass doors, and into the cool, fresh night. “I’ll make us some drinks,” he said, and turned back inside.
Luna studied the photo in her hands. The sisters. She was younger than them all, though in this photo Fiona seemed about Luna’s age. There was something in Fiona’s stance that interested Luna, a forcefulness, an aggression, and also a sadness in her eyes. The other two—Renee with her confidence and polish, Caroline with her kids and long hair—seemed members of distinct female tribes that Luna had seen before: women with money and careers, women with children and husbands. These two would undoubtedly decide that she was too young or too poor or too something for Joe. Only Fiona seemed like she might accept Luna.
Joe returned with two gin and tonics.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he said. “Come to Bexley with me. I want you to meet my family. And it’s time I went back for a visit. It’s Louis’s birthday soon. Caroline always throws a big party at their place in Hamden. He’s turning twelve. Jesus, that means I’m old.”
Luna sipped her drink and gazed out at the night sea. “Do they know about me?” she asked.
Joe tilted his head to the side. “Well, not exactly.”
Luna lifted her eyebrows. When she didn’t respond, Joe said, “Just consider it. I think you’d like them. I really do.”
“Mmmm,” Luna said, not quite a question, not quite a statement. Joe continued talking, but a vision of her own sister came to her then, from the night before Mariana disappeared. Mariana had been lying on the couch watching TV. A children’s program, some cartoon played out in manic color. “See you for breakfast,” Luna had called, and Mariana’s eyes stayed fixed to the screen as Luna left for her shift at the restaurant. What cartoon had Mariana been watching? Luna realized that she could no longer remember. A vicious ache for her sister and mother overcame her. She put down the drink and closed her eyes.
“Why don’t you move in here?” Joe asked suddenly.
The question could not have surprised her more. Luna opened her eyes and looked at Joe. He sat leaning forward, elbows on knees. He took her hands into his. “Move in with me,” he said.
“But . . . but what would your family think?” Luna said.
“My family? Oh . . .” He smiled with relief as though the answer to a vexing riddle had just been revealed to him. “Luna, I don’t care what they think. And they’ll love you anyhow. And even if they don’t, we live here, they live there. It doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t know,” Luna answered slowly. “Are you sure you want a roommate?”
“I don’t want a roommate.”
“Are you sure—”
“Yes,” Joe interrupted. “I’m sure.”
Luna bit her lip. “But my hours at the bar suck. I’m not back until three, sometimes four a.m.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“And I snore.”
“I know.” Joe smiled. “Me, too.”
“But—”
“But what?” asked Joe.
Now Luna went quiet. What if she broke her lease, moved in here, and then Joe decided he wanted someone else? What if he decided to move back to New York? Living alone was easier, safer. She knew where everything was kept, she knew what food to buy. Living alone was the daytime; Joe was the night. Joe was drinking and sex, the clubs, the constant side-to-side motion of the bar and behind her the brilliant glistening bottles lit up like vaudeville girls. During the day Luna tended her plants, she cooked sometimes, and watched her tiny color TV; she sewed the rips in her clothes with a long needle and black thread, the short, fine stitches her mother had taught her how to make.
The day and the night together, in one place, here, and in this moment Luna wanted it with a raw longing that terrified her.
Luna smiled. “Okay, roommate,” she said. “Go get us another drink.” Joe leaned in to kiss her, but she pushed him away, and he stood up too quickly and swayed, or maybe Luna’s own head initiated the movement, an unsteady mixing of sky and balcony, city lights and sea, the horizon, the railing, tall Joe, his arms held up to right himself, and then he was gone, opening the glass doors, disappearing inside.