an fp mini-book by Joe Meno
By Monday the moon has stopped glowing. One moment it is the singularly most important shape in the nighttime sky and then it is gone, a blurry afterimage burning beneath everyone’s eyelids, and then it is only a question, only a flash, and then nothing, only a memory. Once the moon is no longer shining in its place, the rest of the stars quickly fade. And then, without the moon and stars, each and every kind of lightbulb loses its inspiration and soon begins to fail. Finally, there is only darkness, a complete and total absence of light as soon as the sun disappears every night. Tragically, the public suddenly finds itself getting lost each evening. Those who are lost must sleep in their cars, in doorways, or on strangers’ lawns. In the darkness, they wander around until they are tired, then lie down wherever they are, like brave little orphans. At night, it seems the buildings themselves have begun to move around. Street signs suddenly exchange positions. At night, avenues and boulevards become cul-de-sacs. Without the moon or the stars or streetlamps to keep things in place, people suddenly realize the speed at which the world is moving. The effect, as you can imagine, is rather dizzying.
Every evening, Thomas stares through his telescope at the absolutely black sky, squinting at the phantom-less night, waiting for his father’s telephone call. The remainder of a few candles light his room. It seems the glow of the flame is the only light that still works properly. It is true that Thomas does not have a job anymore; once he was an illustrator for a magazine about nightlife in the city but then people began to get lost in the dark and so, of course, the magazine quickly folded. Thomas has noticed that since the moon has gone dark, his hair has begun to grow very rapidly. In dark waves, it hangs messily above his ears. Thomas spends his time drawing pictures of what the moon used to look like. He attempts sketch after sketch while he waits for his father’s call each evening. Thomas’ father works nights; he is an accountant at a very large insurance company. The insurance companies have been doing quite well—because of the general chaos and calamity—and so they have found it necessary to extend their business hours. Every evening after work, Thomas’ father will spend much time hopelessly wandering around the vacant city, his long white face wrinkled in a frown, searching aimlessly for where he has parked his car, then, after hours of that, he will drive in widening loops, looking for the hidden location of his house. Often times, he will give up and wait until morning, sleeping in his car alone. Or he may pick up someone else who is lost and offer them a ride, but after many tense hours, this other person will often be unable to locate their home as well, and so Thomas’ father and this stranger will pull over and try to rest; an unidentified though awkward unfamiliarity will make it quite difficult to sleep. Out of this unnamed nervousness, and to avoid hearing the other person breathing, Thomas’ father will often leave the car’s engine running. But, as it turns out, there are thousands of people who find themselves stranded like this each and every night.
Usually around midnight, Thomas’s telephone will begin to ring. Tonight, Thomas adjusts his telescope, searching through the impossibly unclear shapes orbiting the darkness downtown for the tall, slanted figure of his father, dragging a brown, sturdy-looking briefcase at his side, but there is nothing. In the viewfinder of the telescope, there are many different kinds of blackness—some resembling the kind of darkness that occurs when you place your hands over your eyes, a certain kind of darkness that is partly cloudy, and one that is all pins and needles—but there is nothing there resembling a man.
“Hello?” Thomas answers.
“Thomas?” His father’s voice is higher and more confused than he usually expects.
“How are you tonight, dad?”
“I’m well, son. I’m in a parking garage right now, I think. I don’t know where I am exactly. I keep driving around and around but I can’t find the exit. Is it possible they forgot to build an exit?”
“I don’t think so, dad.”
“It has to be somewhere. I’ve been at it for about three hours now. I just keep driving in circles.”
“Is anyone with you?”
“No. There are a number of other cars driving around, too, doing the same thing. None of us can find the exit to this thing.”
“Do you want me to try and find you with the telescope?’
“No, I’m okay. I guess I was just getting very lonely. The radio keeps playing the same songs over again. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t dreaming.”
“Well, dad, I’ll talk with you as long as you like.”
“Thank you, Thomas.”
“So tell me about your day, dad,” Thomas says. “Did anything good happen?”
“I had a large bowl of soup for dinner. It was very delicious.”
“That sounds good.”
“And how was your day, Thomas?”
Thomas looks around at the wrecked nest of his apartment. There are reams and reams of crushed paper strewn everywhere. There are illustrations of what the artist imagines the moon used to look like when it was full, hanging above a very delicate mountain. There is a drawing of a couple, a man and woman, kissing, their hair lit by magical moonlight. There is a picture of the citizens of some imaginary city, pointing up at the wondrous beauty of a half moon, their eyes dancing with pleasure.
“I spent the day drawing mostly.”
“And the evening?” his father asks.
“I spent most of the night looking through the telescope.”
“And what did you see?”
“I saw a lady with a dog walking along the street. She must live in the apartment building across from mine. I thought it was too late to be walking her dog, because it was just around twilight, and the woman began to shout as the sun went down and she made it back to her apartment building just in time. But her dog wasn’t with her. It had gotten lost, I guess. She cried from her window for a few hours but the dog hasn’t come back yet.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I know. Even the animals have been getting confused. The pigeons outside my window don’t leave the telephone wires anymore. They’re getting awfully skinny.”
“It is all a mess,” Thomas’ father says.
“Are you having any luck finding the exit, dad?”
“I am following a station wagon now. It seems to know where it’s going."
“Okay, we can keep talking until you find your way out.”
“I appreciate that. There’s about ten cars behind me now. We’re all lost, I guess."
“Can you see a sign anywhere?”
“Wait a moment, yes, there, there it is. It was there the whole time, Thomas. I got lucky following this gentleman with the station wagon. If your mother calls, tell her I’ll be home very soon.”
“Okay, if you get lost again, don’t be afraid to phone me.”
“I will, Thomas. Thank you.”
Thomas glances out the telescope once more. What looks to be a large silver skyscraper suddenly becomes an abandoned factory. In the autumnal 3 darkness, twin smokestacks begin to bellow out gray smoke. Thomas places the telephone beside his bed waiting for it to ring again. When it does begin to chime a half hour later, twice, then quickly stopping, Thomas knows his father has made it home okay. From the corner of his eye, Thomas glances once more up at the sky, sure he will catch the moon sneaking guiltily across the firmament, but no, like always, there is nothing.
Thomas makes drawings of the moon and sells them to people who are nostalgic for how the sky used to be. His specialty is drawings of the moon rising in the nighttime air above an imaginary city. Already Thomas has forgotten certain critical details of his subject. He remembers the moon having a number of windows, like portholes, directly along its center. In other drawings, the moon is shaped more like an egg. It balances obliquely between a number of silvery clouds, a thin crack running along its middle. In other depictions, the moon has grown a number of visible rivers and lakes. Thomas, as he works, will often set down his pencils and will place his right eye against the viewfinder of the telescope, trying to spot the moon—to see if what he is imagining is accurate—but there will be only the deepening darkness of the empty night collapsing around him. He will then go back to his drawing, unsure, trying to remember if the moon used to have wings.
When Thomas’ father calls that evening, he sounds quite frantic. His voice is pitched and uneven. Thomas can hear his father’s nervous footsteps echoing against the black pavement in a hurry.
“Thomas?”
"Yes?"
“I don’t know where I am. I’m walking somewhere. I haven’t been able to find my car yet."
“Just take your time, dad. We’ll figure it out together.”
“I’ve been walking for hours. I think I’m almost our of breath.”
“Where are you now, dad? Describe what’s around you.”
“I seem to be walking beside a river of some kind.”
“Are you on a bridge?”
“I might be.”
“What color is the bridge?”
“I can’t tell. It might be blue. Or green.”
Thomas opens up a map of the city, tracing his finger along the river, searching for a bridge. In the darkness, with the unequal glow of the candle’s light, he is unable to tell what is blue and what is green.
“I’m not sure if there are any blue or green bridges, dad.”
“Maybe it isn’t a bridge. No, it’s an escalator. I was wrong. I am on an escalator."
“Do you know where your car is parked?”
“I do. I went there but what I thought was the parking lot is some kind of building now. I’m sure if I keep circling around I will find it. Go on and tell me about your day, Thomas. That will keep me from feeling so worried."
Thomas looks around his tiny room.
“I worked on a new drawing today, dad. Of the moon, when it was under the ocean, just before it would rise. There are a number of boats in the drawing being rocked by the enormous waves, and seabirds circling around it."
“I don’t think the moon used to do that, Thomas.”
“I’m almost positive. I’m almost sure I remember it did.”
“It might have been a dream.”
“It might have.”
“Did you do anything else today?” Thomas’ father asks. Thomas listens
and thinks he can hear his father’s anxious breath. It sounds like a soft clock ticking.
“Oh yes, I watched the girl from the apartment across mine this evening.”
“And?” His father voice suddenly seems to twinkle.
“And she went out to go look for her dog. I was afraid she wasn’t going to make it back in time, but she did. When she came back, she had the dog’s collar but the dog was still missing.”
“Oh, that is too bad.”
“She spent some time calling for it, but it didn’t come.”
“I think I’m all right now, Thomas. I think I’ve found the parking lot.
No, no, it’s the wrong one. But there’s a number of people here, wandering around. If I can’t find my car, I can always ask one of these other people for a ride.”
“Dad, are you sure?”
“Thomas, don’t worry. If I get into any trouble, I’ll give you a call.” Thomas hangs up the phone and sets it down beside his bed. When he
wakes up in the middle of the night, he realizes the phone has not ringed yet. Quickly, he dials his father’s number. His father answers, his voice very soft, very quiet.
“Dad, are you okay?”
“Thomas?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sleeping in an elevator right now. There’s a few other people here. None of us could find our cars tonight.”
“Are you okay there, dad?”
“I think so, Thomas. I’ll give you a call in the morning.”
“Goodnight, dad.”
“Goodnight.”
Thomas places the phone back in its receiver and checks the telescope once again. What appears to be the moon for a moment is only the crowded white face of the woman from the building across the way. She has her window open and is shouting for her dog once again. Her face glows brilliantly with the lines of recent tears. Thomas quickly finds his sketchbook and does a hurried drawing of the moon with the woman’s forlorn face.
By the end of the month, a sad turn of events has begun to take place. Those people who find themselves lost at night, those who wander the streets helplessly searching for their cars, those who are finally fortunate enough to find their cars but who drive about searching for their homes, only to pull over, falling asleep behind the familiar safety of their steering wheels, have all begun to vanish. When the sun comes up, these lost people are all inexplicably gone. Their automobiles are parked in awkward places, pointed in the opposite direction of usual traffic. Their clothes are left strewn about, only afterthoughts now, and in the morning, those people who work during the day find these ownerless garments in the oddest of places; in closets, beneath desks, in stairwells, in the middle of busy intersections. It is suggested that it has something to do with the moon going dark, with its silent, unknown particles, or possibly with X-rays, but the cause remains very imprecise. All that is known is that there is something wrong with the nighttime now. Once you fall asleep anywhere outside of your home, anywhere beneath the shadowed moon, its unseen, sulfurous rays may do you mortal harm.
After this recent development, Thomas begins to worry seriously about his father. One day, instead of drawing pictures of the moon, he decides he will try to make a detailed map of the city. Using the telescope, he finds his father’s office building—a flat, featureless, rectangular skyscraper—and then he begins to sketch everything surrounding it in a hurry, depicting the busy city streets in a few quick, quavering lines. One by one, he marks the trees, the lampposts, the intersections, the signs, then with more detail, a piece of trash, a garbage can, stubs of certain cigarettes. By the time his father calls that evening, he has all but finished a map of a large part of the center of the city.
“Thomas, you’re never going to believe it but I’m lost again. I’m in my car and driving past what looks to be a forest.”
“A forest?” Thomas traces his finger along his map and taps it twice.
“No. It’s a park, dad. Go to the next intersection and take a right.”
“And now there’s a fountain of some kind.”
“What does the fountain look like?”
“Well, there’s a statue. It might be a man. Or a woman. I can’t tell.”
“Does the statue have a trumpet?”
“No, I don’t think so. It has a sword of some kind.”
Thomas searches the spotty lines for the statue with a sword and finds his father’s exact position. He instructs his father to take the next right.
“It’s working, it’s working, Thomas. I’ll be home in no time.”
“Good, we’ll just keep following the map.”
“You are quite smart my boy. What a brilliant idea! What a brilliant plan!"
His father’s voice sounds gilded with joy. Turn by turn, Thomas places his finger along the sketched city streets, imagining his father traveling there safely, somewhere at the tip of his forefinger where his heartbeat beats. Within an hour, his father has returned home. From the receiver of the telephone, Thomas thinks he can hear his mother clapping, then shouting happily, a sound he thought he had already forgotten.
By the following Monday, even this plan too begins to fail. For the moon, and the people, and the world in its darkness, seem quite intent to stay lost. At night, whole city blocks begin to exchange places with their neighbors. Buildings turn around, their facades shrugging into the shadows like grieving widows. In the clouded dark, more and more people begin to vanish. Where do these people go? Their clothes form small mountains of debris all about the city streets. Unaware of the unfolding complexity of this disaster, Thomas continues to work on his city atlas, sketching out his map in excruciating detail. During the day, as the sun—unremitting, glorious, as welcome as a favored child—glows brightly in the summer sky, Thomas places his eye against the viewfinder of the telescope, adding a line of birds along a telephone wire, a crooked lamppost, an empty soda pop can lying along a curb. That evening however, when his father calls, the map does not work. It seems, in the dark, everything is upside down.
“You’re sure you’re standing beside a rose garden?” Thomas asks.
“I’m very sure, Thomas.”
There is a long pause. Thomas traces his finger along the map, finding the rose garden is some twenty blocks from where he thinks it should be.
“Are you having difficulty finding it, son?”
“I’m afraid I must have made some mistake, dad. Tell me what else you see.”
“I don’t know. It is very dark. I think I might be standing beside a museum of some kind. There are two bronze lions out front.” “Don’t go into the museum. You’ll only get lost.”
“I think it might be too late. I can’t even see what’s behind me. I’m sitting down for a moment. My feet are hurting me terribly, Thomas. And the air. It feels sharp. And my lungs are very tired. It feels like they’re glowing."
Thomas places his eye against the viewfinder of the telescope, searching for a glimmer, a blush, a faintness of light, but there is only the blackness, like a curtain sewn from a burlap sack, blackness crossed with blackness crossed with blackness.
“I don’t feel so well, Thomas,” his father whispers. “I feel very light-headed. Like I am floating. I would just like to lie down and go to sleep.”
“Don’t lie down, dad.”
But then there is only the telephone static of his father’s telephone. In a moment, Thomas thinks he can hear his father snoring. His father’s snore sounds like a watch spring unwinding. Thomas listens to his father sleeping for a few moments then he begins to whisper loudly:
“Dad, you have to get up! I have the map right here. We’ll find your car, I promise."
“Okay, Thomas,” his father says. Thomas can hear his father yawning, pulling himself to his feet with a groan.
“Now tell me where are you now, dad?”
“I don’t know, Thomas. Everything is very blue. It looks like a dream of some kind. It’s very pretty. Oh, and there are trees. The trees are very white. It looks like they are made of crystals. I am walking. There is a whole forest of these beautiful trees.”
Thomas searches the map, squinting as hard as he can, though he knows there is no place anywhere in the city that looks like what his father is describing. He glances through the telescope, then down at the map, then stands, throwing open the window. Outside, it is very quiet. From across the street, he can hear the woman with the dog still crying. She calls its name once, then twice, then begins sobbing again. Thomas glances about for a marker, for a sign, for a star, something, anything to help guide him. But everything is dark now. The woman across the street has suddenly gone silent. She closes her window up tightly. Thomas places the phone against his ear and asks:
“What do you see now, dad? Where are you?”
“All of the houses look the same. One after the other. They’re all white and square. They look very lovely. But the doors don’t look right. The doors are shaped like stars. I think these houses belong to the stars maybe.”
“Don’t give up, dad.”
“I’m getting very tired, Thomas. I think I might lie down.”
“If you lie down, there might be trouble.”
“I’m very sleepy, Thomas.”
“We’ll talk all night if we need to.”
“Okay, Thomas, okay.”
“Okay, where are you now, dad?”
“I’m walking past what looks like a factory.”
“What kind of factory?”
“I don’t know, Thomas, I can’t tell. Everything is so blue.”
“Describe what you are seeing, dad.”
“There’s a large rectangle, then another, then another. There are three smokestacks. The smokestacks, they are pouring out white smoke. The smoke, it’s not smoke, it’s stardust. It’s glowing. It’s blue and then it becomes black. Do you have any idea where I might be, Thomas?”
“I don’t know, dad.” He holds the map very near his face. In the brief candlelight, it’s almost impossible to see anything. The lines are only lines. Beneath his sketch of the city, Thomas thinks he can see an imprint of the moon hiding.
"Thomas?"
"Yes?"
“I’m afraid I might be on the moon.”
Thomas can hear the nervous breath of his father echoing within the plastic earpiece of the telephone. He imagines the face his father must bemaking, the worried lines around his eyes and mouth, gaped with wrinkles, he imagines the other sounds of the empty night congregating all around his father’s head, the way his hand might now be gripping the telephone with an arthritic claw, the sight of his boxy briefcase swinging back and forth as he hurries nervously along. Thomas tries to think of something that might help. He imagines his words, his voice saying something great, something wise, he imagines his map suddenly becoming clear, but all that exists between him and his father now is distant silence. He only has to figure out where this factory is, if it is indeed on the moon and how he might lead his father back from there. He only has to figure out where his father might now be walking, where his next step should be, and why the moon is acting this way. Thomas closes his eyes, imagining his father’s shape crossing quietly beneath a cloud of white crystal trees. Finally he opens his eyes and says, “I’m right here, dad. Now tell me: what do you see?”.
//
Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright that lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award and the Society of Midland Author’s Fiction Prize, he is the author of five novels, The Boy Detective Fails, Hairstyles of the Damned, Tender as Hellfire, How the Hula Girl Sings, and most recently The Great Perhaps. His short story collection is Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir. His short fiction has been published in the likes of McSweeney’s, Witness, TriQuarterly, Mid-American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Washington Square, Other Voices, Gulf Coast, and broadcast on NPR. He is a professor who teaches creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.
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