Fawn on the Moon

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

October 1994

For what seemed like the hundredth time, the traffic in front of Gerry Faun came to a slow-rolling halt. It was the rain doing the most damage, though the end of the workday was always ugly on the streets of New York City. Not that there were many pretty things on the street, regardless. Giuliani was trying, but the way Gerry had it figured, it was going to take more than a smile and a stand on graffiti and m*******a to clean up their kind of dirt. So, while the rest of the city offered the mayor awe-induced stares of appreciation over recollections of Mafia Commission and Boesky trials, Gerry mostly sat back and speculated. When government officials got clever enough to stop assholes from blowing up pregnant secretaries and hard-working fathers, then they might actually get his attention. Until then, Gerry wasn’t putting any more trust in them than he would anybody else. He’d learned a long time ago that not all that glitters is worthy.

He was lost in thought enough not to acknowledge the tunnel. He was, in fact, well into it before he remembered to take off his sunglasses. He forgave himself the digression. It had been a long week. Though Gerry worked in the financial district, he was no more than a glorified yes-man for his boss, a real estate broker that had made a f**k-ton of money in the eighties and was merely coasting until the inevitable retirement. He ran errands and answered phones. He took messages and booked flights that he was more than sure did not drop Mr. David Manon in places of business. He made reservations in exclusive restaurants, paid Mr. Manon’s membership fees for a gym the man never went to and bought Manon’s anniversary and birthday gifts for the wife-of-the-moment. Gerry had a flair for it, or so his boss would tell him whenever the requirement came up, and Gerry was cocky enough to verbally agree with Manon every time. Damn right he was good at it.

Taillights suddenly flared in front of him and Gerry cursed and slammed his brake pedal down. His eyes flicked between windshield and rearview, assessing space and distance, and he blew a sigh of relief when he confirmed that the guy behind him had been paying more attention than he’d been. Maybe it really was time to give up the car. He’d heard it a thousand times from friends, family, and casual observers: public transport would not only save him money, but they swore up and down it would save him time. God knew gasoline was getting more expensive by the day, and parking costs in the district were insane. Gerry considered it pretty much every time the numbers went up on the billboards beside the gas stations. One day he would, he’d tell himself. One day for sure. When he could convince himself that walking the six blocks from the bus stop in Jersey’s bitter January winds wouldn’t be as appealing as slitting his own throat with barbed wire. When he got over his control issues.

The side road whereby Gerry’s rental home waited for his return was already jammed with cars, so instead of parking on the street, Gerry carefully worked his 1984 Buick into the tiny concrete pad that served as his driveway. He nudged the car as close to the house as it would go, wincing when the fender butted against the foundation and the ancient bow window above him shook with disapproval. While some of the properties on the street had given up parking for an attempt at a front lawn, Gerry couldn’t see the point of bothering to maintain a six-by-eight square of greenery and have to fight for a place to park every day. Besides, what was the point? In the summer everything got so damn hot that his neighbors’ plants and grass got their lives choked out of them. In the winter, anything that had managed to get a hold on the Earth was quickly destroyed by the cold and the snow.

Looking, he was sure, about as sexy as a maggot trying to escape from a nostril, Gerry inched out from between his car and the base of the entranceway steps. His suit wasn’t worth that much, but it was worth too much to go rubbing it up against rain-mucked concrete or the wet door of a car that hadn’t seen an auto-wash in months. His breath puffed out from between his lips, the rain making October that much colder, and Gerry lifted his eyes to the sky. Dark, ominous clouds roiled in the gray heavens, and Gerry had serious doubts that the light rainfall was all the skies had in store for them.

In the second it took for Gerry to muse, a deep rumble of thunder broke, a distant sheet of lightning answered the call with a flare of brilliance, and the drizzle became a downpour. Without bothering to spit out the curse on his tongue, Gerry ran for the front door. The porch roof did nothing to protect him as the rain whipped against his back and legs, and he had to seat the key twice before it finally dug in and allowed him to open the door.

Dripping, mumbling, Gerry slammed the door behind him with a definitive clunk and flicked the deadbolt. He kicked off his shoes, sighing as small rivers of water raced across the lopsided flooring of the hallway, and he began to peel off of his wet clothes right where he stood. He might as well only drown one part of the house, and at least that particular location was vinyl tile. Most of the house had decades-old carpeting that, when wet, released all kinds of odors. None of them good.

With his wet clothes piled in his arms, Gerry stepped gingerly down the narrow hallway, and ducked into the bathroom. He dumped the armload into the tub and grabbed a towel off the rack. He didn’t pause to look in the mirror and fix his hair. The cut was short, short enough in fact that he barely had to brush it, and that always seemed to make his sister chuckle when she saw him. There was a time when God himself wouldn’t have been able to get him to cut his hair—when the arguments with his parents would grow to screaming matches over the bangs in his face and the uneven lengths that fell past his collar. But everybody grew up. Eventually.

As he walked back to the hallway, he toweled himself dry. The heat had been on since mid-September, an expense Gerry despised, especially since it seemed impossible to regulate the output. From October to April he either froze or sweated, nothing in between. And there had been winters, in the beginning, when the freezing had been unavoidable. The bills had been too high to bear. Oil, it seemed, was a commodity as valuable as gasoline. That had changed with his current boss, at least. The great and useless Mr. Manon paid him well for his services. If the man managed to hold out on retirement, Gerry might even be able to move into one of the brownstones in the city that he was so fond of. It was cool that he’d managed to find somebody who was willing to pay for the talents of a highly developed schmooze.

In the kitchen, staring through the window above the sink, Gerry contemplated coffee or wine. The sky was darkening so quickly that he doubted the change had anything to do with the time of day. By tomorrow, if the rain wasn’t snow, he’d be damn surprised. With the impending weather in mind, he skipped the light stuff and chose vodka.

The silence of the house was deafening. Even the kids from the houses across the street were quiet, and that was all but unheard of. At that moment, silence was not something Gerry was interested in. There was too much silence in his life already.

With a huff Gerry slung the damp towel over his shoulder and marched into the living room. As though daring the house to stop him, he picked up the remote control for the television and turned on the set. He clicked past the news, past the hilarious but endearing family that managed to sum up all of life’s problems within their twenty-four-minute timeslot, and stopped to watch a super-slim, spiral-haired teenager wail notes that put opera singers to shame. He didn’t make it to the chorus before the button was pressed again.

Gerry took a long drink out of his glass, squatted beside the couch to stretch his legs, and set the glass of vodka on the coffee table. With one hand, he kept flicking through channels; with the other, he pulled the towel off his shoulder to scrub his damp balls. A flash of light from the TV set stilled both hands. Music played. And time and place shattered into a million prisms around him.

“Heaven’s lock on your golden cage, heaven-bound for heaven’s sake…

Don’t worry, baby, no one has to know that you’re afraid.”

He clutched the towel against his naked body. He didn’t have to look up, preferring, in fact, to keep his eyes on the worn hardwood underneath his feet, but even without the visual he knew the eyes that would be staring at him from across the decades. Angel blue. Coke-bright blue. Glitter-spangled blue.

The remote control fell from his hand and clacked on the surface of the coffee table. The glass of vodka danced as he fumbled to retrieve it. His breath caught in his throat; a pained squeak fell from his mouth. Twenty years slipped out of his grasp and challenged him to keep his balance…