Rogue Moon

“I’m a man, too, Al.”

“Yes?” Barker’s arms sank down to his sides. “Yes? Well, I don’t like you any better for it. Get out of here, man, while you still can.” He whirled and crossed the room with short, quick, jerking steps. He flung open the door. “Leave me to my old, familiar assassins!”

Hawks looked at him and said nothing. His expression was troubled. Then he set himself into motion and walked forward. He stopped in the doorway and stood face to face with Barker.

“I have to have you,” he said. “I need your report in the morning, and I need you to send up there into that thing, again.”

“Get out, Hawks,” Barker answered.

“I told you,” Hawks said, and stepped out into the darkness.

Barker slapped the door shut. He turned away toward the corridor leading into the other wing of the house, his neck taut and his mouth opening in a shout. It came almost inaudibly through the glass between himself and Hawks: “Claire? Claire!”

7

Hawks walked out across the rectangle of light lying upon the lawn, until he came to the ragged edge that was the brink of the cliff above the sea. He stood looking out over the unseen surf, with the loom of sea mist filling the night before him.

“An dark,” he said aloud. “An dark and nowhere starlights.” Then he began walking, head down, along the edge of the cliff, his hands in his pockets.

When he came to the flagstoned patio between the swimming pool and the far wing of the house, he passed by the metal table and chairs in its center, picking his way in the indistinct light.

“Well, Ed,” Claire said sadly from her chair on the other side of the table. “Come to join me?”

He turned his head in surprise, then sat down. “I suppose.”

Claire had changed into a dress, and was drinking a cup of coffee. “Want some of this?” she offered in a soft, uncertain voice. “It’s a chilly evening.”

“Thank you.” He took the cup as she reached it out to him, and drank from the side away from the thick smear of lipstick. “I didn’t know you’d be out here.”

She chuckled ironically. “I get tired of opening doors and finding Co

“He’s up.”

“I know.”

He passed the coffee cup back to her. “Did you hear it all?”

“I was in the kitchen. It — it was quite an experience, hearing myself talked about like that.” She put the coffee down with a chatter of the cup against the saucer, and hugged herself, her shoulders bent, while she stared down toward the ground.

Hawks said nothing. It was almost too dark to see facial expressions across the table’s diameter, and he closed his eyes for a moment, holding them tightly shut, before he opened them again and turned sideways in his chair, one hand resting on the table with its fingers arched as he leaned toward her.

“I don’t know why I do it, Hawks,” she said. “I don’t know. But I do treat him as if I hated him. I do it to everybody. I can’t meet anybody without turning into a bitch.”

“Women, too?”

She turned her face toward him. “What woman would stay around me long enough for me to really get started? And what man is going to ignore the female part of me? But I’m a human being, too; I’m not just something that — that’s all physical. But nobody likes me, Hawks — nobody ever shows any interest in the human being part of me!”

“Well, Claire…”

“It doesn’t feel good, Hawks, hearing yourself talked about like that. ‘I know what she is — by God, I know what she is.’ How does he know? When has he ever tried to know me? What’s he ever done to find out what I think, what I feel? And Co

“Doesn’t that make him useful to you?” Hawks asked.

“And you—” Claire burst out. “So damned sure nothing can touch you without permission! Making smart cracks. ‘Egging’ Al on is what I’m supposed to be doing! Well, listen, could I make a brick fly? Could I turn an ostrich into a swan? If he wasn’t the way he was, what could I do to him? I don’t tell him to go out and do these things. And I tried to keep him away from you — after you left, that first day, I tried to get him to quit! But all he did was get jealous. And that wasn’t what I was trying to do! I’ve never made a pass at you before today — not a real pass — I was just, I don’t know, just doing business as usual, you could say — and you know that!”

She reached across the table with a swift gesture and took his hand. “Do you have any idea of how lonely I get? How much I wish I wasn’t me at all?” She pulled blindly at his hand. “But what can I do about it? How am I going to change anything now?”

“I don’t know, Claire,” Hawks said. “It’s very hard for people to change themselves.”

“But I don’t want to hate myself, Hawks! Not all my life, like this! What do all of you think I am — blind, deaf, stupid? I know how decent people act — I know what bitchiness is, and what not being bitchy is. I was a child, once — I went to school, I was taught ethics, and morals, and understanding. I’m not something from Mars — do you all think I’m this way because I don’t know any better?”

Hawks said haltingly, “All of us know better, I think. And yet each of us forgets, now and then. Some of us sometimes think we have to, for the sake of something we think needs it.” His face was a mixture of expressions. “If that doesn’t seem to make sense, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to tell you, Claire.”

She jumped to her feet, still holding his hand, and came around to stand in front of him, bent forward, clasping his fingers in both hands. “You could tell me you like me, Ed,” she whispered. “You’re the only one of them who could look past my outsides and like me!”

He stood up as she pulled at his hand. “Claire—” he began.

“No, no, no, Ed!” she said, putting her arms around him. “I don’t want to talk. I want to just be. I want someone to just hold me and not think about me being a woman. I just want to feel warm, for once in my life — just have another human being near me!” Her arms went up behind his back, and her hands cupped his neck and the back of his head. “Please, Ed,” she murmured, her face so close that her eyes brimmed and glittered in the faraway light, and so that in another moment her wet cheek touched his. “Give me that if you can.”

“I don’t know, Claire…” he said uncertainly. “I’m not sure you—”

She began kissing his cheeks and eyes, her nails combing the back of his head. “Hawks,” she choked, “Hawks, I’m so lost…”

His head bent, her fingers rigid behind it, the tendons standing out in cords on the backs of her hands. Her lips parted, and her leather sandals made a shuffling noise on the patio stones. “Forget everything,” she whispered as she kissed his mouth. “Think only of me.”

Then she broke away suddenly, and stood a foot away from him, the back of one hand against her upper lip, her shoulders and hips lax. She was sighing rhythmically, her eyes shining. “No — no, I can’t hold out… not with you. You’re too much for me, Ed.” Her shoulders rose, and she moved half a step toward him. “Forget about liking me,” she said from deep in her throat as she reached toward him. “Just take me. I can always get someone else to like me.”

Hawks did not move. She looked at him, arms outstretched, her face hungry. Then she lowered her arms slowly and cried out softly, “I don’t blame you! I couldn’t help it, but I don’t blame you for what you’re thinking. You think I’m some kind of nympho, who’ll go wild for any man. You think because it’s happening to me now, it always happens like this. You think that because you could do anything you wanted with me, then what I said about myself before wasn’t true. You—”