Fawn on the Moon

Chapter 3-2

“If you’re up for it, I’d sure love to see you tonight. I was thinking dinner at Arcadia? I know you love the food there. Then maybe we could take a walk on the pier if the rain clears up? It’s been too long since I kissed you, beautiful. Buzz me back, okay?”

Gerry silenced the answering machine and rewound the tape. As sincere as Francois sounded in the message, Gerry knew that it would only be a matter of minutes of being in Francois’s company, maybe even seconds, before he’d be sick to death of the man’s pompous attitude. He did, after all, go by Francois. Like a simple Frank wouldn’t be good enough. It probably wasn’t even his real name; the guy wasn’t even French, for God’s sake. It didn’t matter that Francois could, most likely, swallow a baseball bat without gagging. The last thing Gerry wanted to do was have to sit back and try to disappear quietly into his chair while Francois berated some poor server about the texture of the chicken. Or the quality of the broccoli. Or the way the damn napkins had been folded. He had no patience for that.

Maybe he had no patience for any of them anymore. Maybe it was time to give up on finding Mr. Right and settle for the suggestion that Mr. FUBAR had been all Gerry was getting out of life. He huffed a breath, reset the answering machine to pick up calls, and rubbed his eyes while he walked into the kitchen. He’d slept too much of the day away. After his visit with the loft, he hadn’t had the energy for much else. He’d heard the phone mid-afternoon but had ignored it due to the war he was waging with his eyelids to stay open enough to watch at least part of the TV. A knock on the door sometime after that had made Gerry’s eyes fly open and pointed out that he’d lost the battle sometime between rounds.

There’d been no great rush to answer the door. He wasn’t expecting company, which meant if someone had decided to drop by, he had a legitimate reason for ‘not being there’. If it was the postal service, his mailbox would serve just as well as his hand. And if it was someone trying to introduce him to Jesus, or ask his opinion on the next election, it was more than likely best for them if Gerry declined the face-to-face.

With one hand, Gerry dug sleep out of the corner of his eyes, and with the other hand, he dug through the freezer for one of the Hungry Man frozen dinners stacked at the back. He didn’t bother to pick out a preference; they all tasted like cardboard and plastic anyway. He just grabbed, knocked the tray out of the package, stabbed at the covering absent-mindedly with a fork, and tossed it in the microwave. “Still better than Arcadia and Francois,” he said, and slammed the door closed.

While the microwave worked its magic, Gerry strolled to the front of the house to have a peek and see if he could figure out who might have been there, and what they might have left behind. There was no way he was leaving a pamphlet of good tidings waving out of his screen door for the whole world to see. He stilled when he got to the front door, though. He pulled aside the lace curtain that had been there when he moved in, and which he could never get motivated enough to replace and frowned out at the front porch. The previous night’s rain still fell, and the world beyond the window looked gray, cold, and soaked. Not a single bird huddled on the telephone wires, and nothing moved but the streams of water that meandered along the roadways and into the storm drains. There was only one spot of color, as eye-catching as the evening dress in Vettriano’s ubiquitous art piece, and it was wound around a long, slim box that rested on Gerry’s perfectly simple, perfectly drab porch—a ten, maybe twelve-inch multi-looped, brilliantly-red bow. It glistened with gathered raindrops and shuddered with the wind.

For reasons he couldn’t quite figure out, indignation grew in Gerry’s chest as he watched the bow shake on top of the soggy box. It wasn’t right that something so beautiful and frail should suffer. Who would abandon such a thing on a day like it was? By the steps, nonetheless, so the packaging had no protection and the rain could beat at it so clearly?

He unlocked the door and stepped out cautiously. The wet porch was cold enough to make his bare feet sting, and he hurried over to the package. The box was far too long for a regular delivery, somewhere in and around three feet, with a diameter similar to the ones that held the long-stemmed roses Gerry so frequently purchased and handed off to Manon for the wife de jour. A mistake? A misplaced delivery? An attempt by Francois to get Gerry to finally return a call?

It only took one grab for Gerry to realize that the cardboard was well beyond damaged; it folded into a limp V the second that he tried to lift it. Instead, he dragged it closer to the door, worked the bow out of the way, and stripped the top of the box off. A dozen pink lilies, maybe more, tumbled from their delicately placed rows, spilling past the sides of the flaccid box and over the porch.

Gerry caught his breath, looked up and scanned the street. And still nothing moved but the water. He shook his head and lowered his eyes. His toes ached from the cold and he had a moment’s pity for the delicate blooms that lay at his feet. He picked up the stems one by one and gently shook the petals free of water. They hung lifelessly, as though exhausted by the trauma, and when Gerry laid them over his arm, he couldn’t shake the image of a half-drowned, weak, and seemingly fragile body in his arms.

He was so caught up in placing the flowers carefully that Gerry almost missed the movement. With the soundless flurry of a crow taking to flight, something black caught the wind and billowed into the open air from between the two houses across the street. And the moment Gerry acknowledged it, a figure pushed out of the space and hurried down the driveway. He, or possibly she, nudged a wide-brimmed leather hat that much farther down their forehead, spun on their heel, their ankle-length, black leather coat once again flapping, and walked down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. The silence of the street was broken by the hard fall of high-heeled boots.

Gerry watched the retreat, fascinated by the presence of such a striking form on such a lowly street, and almost waved, foolishly, when the person shot a glance back over their shoulder. Gerry let out a long breath when they finally turned on to the main street and disappeared. He chuckled at himself and shook his head. He set the last of the lilies in place and leaned over to snag the box. And when he lifted his eyes back to the street, one by one the raindrops in the sky became snowflakes.

He was humming when he walked back into the house:

“And here I find you on my moonbeam, child,

A wide-eyed sweet with a taste for something wild…”