Life on Other Moons

Life on Other Moons

  by Roger Market

  Copyright 2014 by Roger Market

  First edition copyright 2013 by Roger Market

  Printing History:

  Limited Paperback Edition / May 2013

  Limited Handmade Edition / May 2013

  "King Henry on a Porch Swing" first appeared in Welter, in May 2013.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between characters and real-life people is pure coincidence.

  for Justin

  my pocket rocket on this journey

  And I make my bed with the stars above my head and dream of a place called home.

  —Kim Richey, "A Place Called Home"

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not be in your grasp without the knowledge, inspiration, love, and support of a lot of people. I couldn’t possibly list everyone who’s guided me or put up with me or, in some way, shined a light on me in my journey to make Life on Other Moons a possibility, but I’ll hit the highlights.

  First, I need to thank Justin Sosebee for being patient throughout this process and for listening to me bitch about apostrophes and production schedules. I love you, Justin.

  Next, I want to thank Karen Brehmer for being one of my most loyal supporters. I don’t always deserve it.

  Then there’s my family. Thanks to my mom, Tammy Smith; my dad, Roger E. Market; my sisters, Krista and Kayla Market; and everyone on the extended family tree…which could fill a book by itself. And especially to the most voracious reader in the family—and perhaps my most fervent, hopeful supporter: thank you, Aunt Terri.

  While in Baltimore, I’ve met a lot of great people. Fantastic writers and teachers who I’m proud to call friends and mentors. So here’s to them, but especially to Lori Miller, Eli Dillard, Danielle Crawford, Christine Lincoln, Christina Lengyel, Emily Lee, Timmy Reed, Jessica Jonas, Megan Stolz, Kimberley Lynne, Jane Delury, Steve Matanle, Kendra Kopelke, Marion Winik, Jenny O’Grady, Pantea Tofangchi, Theresa Segreti, Peter Toran, and Gregg Wilhelm. You all taught me what a book or story is and what it can be.

  Thank you to some other people who have supported me as a writer, artist, and person: Amanda Oldham, Michael Lunsford, Sande Bemis, Susie Runyon (you’ll always be Mrs. Runyon to me), Jamie Britton, Robin Pruett, Stephanie Pezan, Hélène Huet, Toby Herzog, Warren and Julia Rosenberg, Thomas Campbell, Kristen Wilkins, Arielle Krasner, Kim Sullivan and the team at Words & Numbers, and Annie and Steve Larkin.

  Finally, to Joy Castro: brilliant college professor, author, mother, woman. Your encouragement, wisdom, and grace have touched every page of this book. You’ve helped make me the writer and editor I am today. Thank you for always pushing me and believing in me.

  Contents

  Stopping to Talk to Porch Lights When the Moon Is Not Enough

  Paterfamilias

  Don’t Mind the Bunny

  Fresh

  King Henry on a Porch Swing

  Life on Other Moons

  Looking

  Love the Shoes

  Home on the Moon

  The Paper Man

  Walking to Vietnam

  Gratitude

  About the Author

  Connect with the Author

  Stopping to Talk to Porch Lights When the Moon Is Not Enough

  As far as I knew, my mother was the last woman alive on Earth the day her heart stopped beating in the produce section and she plunged face-first into the romaine. I was eight at the time, and my best friend, Matthew, was with us. In the ten years after that, I didn’t see a single woman, and neither did any other man I knew. We were in a lonely new world. But in that world, there was Matthew, and he had a way of making things better. We stuck together, even in college.

  One night, when I was a freshman, I was sitting on the lawn of the Sigma Chi house, smoking, when the moon, the last great symbol of femininity, broke in half like a walnut cracking. A single egg-shaped object hurtled from the moon toward Earth and burst into flames when it hit the atmosphere. The two moon chunks floated there among the stars, and I watched them dance around each other for what seemed like hours. I wondered about the egg-shaped fireball that had fallen.

  The next day, there were theories about the moon’s split. I walked around campus and heard them all. For instance, the religious men of campus, who held prayer circles on the mall, thought maybe the world was coming to an end and the extinction of women had been the first step. Others thought it had something to do with the weight of Russian salmon or the way men drove with reckless abandon in the new world; the more red lights we ran, the closer the moon came to cracking under the pressure of universal chaos. Or maybe it was alien warfare.

  Matthew was a sophomore and a Lambda Chi whose first love was science, and he had his own opinions about what had happened to the moon. I never understood them, and usually, he would realize this early on and stop talking over my head. He would laugh.

  "Sorry," he would say. "Did I upset your soft little English major noggin?"

  Then he would reach both arms out and pull me toward him in one smooth motion, reeling me in, like a master fisherman.

  "Beard burn!" he would say at the top of his lungs.

  And within seconds, I would feel the rough sting of his five o’clock shadow as he buried his face in my neck and shook his head back and forth, occasionally brushing his lips against my skin. He would laugh at me as I pretended to pull away. In those moments, I never knew what he was thinking, but for myself, I was hoping: each time, wanting his lips to stay still on contact and maybe suck in a little bit so that a tiny part of me would go inside him, just for a second. It would be almost like a kiss, which I’d never had, not even when there were women.

  In the days and weeks after the moon became the moons, I saw a new category of men arise both on and off campus. I knew some of these men personally, and I knew that they still had hope for the world when the women started dying, or at least for men. Some had even gone off to search for women once it seemed clear that we were alone, just to prove we weren’t and the human race was safe, but they had so far returned empty-handed. They were psychologically fragile afterward.

  One night, I went to the window at the entrance to Sigma Chi and looked out. I was alone. While I gazed out the window, a silver-haired man who I knew to be a religion professor at the college came walking down the avenue, wearing only a plain white T-shirt, occasionally making a stop at a house with its porch light on. He looked like a drunken frat boy. Or, rather, a drunken former frat boy trying to relive his glory days. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew he was speaking to the lights. He spoke calmly, tenderly, as if the lights were people he cared about, maybe women. Maybe his dead mother or sister. I watched the all-but-naked man as he chatted up the avenue’s porch lights until he drifted out of sight.

  A few weeks after I saw the first of these men, Matthew and I went out drinking at a popular hole-in-the-wall bar. It was cheap, and it was close. All the men from the college went there. I’d heard stories of this place in its heyday, when young men would line up at the bar to talk to a crew of female bartenders with eccentric nicknames. Barkin’ Larkin apparently had the loudest voice of them all and could bellow out an audible what-can-I-get-ya even over the loudest music. As if she’d been born and raised in a bar. She had black hair with blue
streaks, and she was sweet unless you crossed her or got in a fight. She was a legend. I heard she died of a brain aneurism.

  Now the bar was staffed with thirty-something men with boring brown hair and common names like Larry and Joe and Larry Joe. Tonight, it was Larry Joe.

  "A vodka tonic!" I said.

  "What?"

  "A vodka tonic!" I said even louder.

  Matthew got himself a sour, and we sat in the corner and drank and talked about the upcoming statistics final and then about the moons. He theorized that global warming had made the oceans rise, which wreaked havoc on the tides, and ultimately that was what had cracked the moon. That was the part I understood. When he started writing equations on napkins, I put my hand on his. He dropped the pen and looked at me.

  "Sorry," he said, "got carried away again."

  "It’s okay, I just don’t understand it. I can barely get through stats as it is. And only with your help."

  I winked. He pulled my hand up to his chin and rubbed the two together.

  "You’re adorable," Matthew said as he let go.

  "I know."

  "I love you, man. For serious."

  This took several seconds to process. He’d never said anything this affectionate to me before, though it was clear he was comfortable getting close physically.

  "Do you mean that?" I said.

  "I said for serious, didn’t I?"

  Now he winked.

  "How could I not?" he said. "Haven’t we always been best friends, like forever?"

  I nodded as I realized what he