Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich Page B

He did hang around waiting for her to call. She didn’t call.
    The next woman in Joe’s life was a freelance creator of computer games. Her name was Roberta. She was all the time shooting him with imaginary ray guns. She had a ten-year-old daughter named Tiffany and a sixteen-year-old son named Sam. One night Sam tried to strangle Joe with the cable that hooked his mother’s computer to the laser printer. Joe decided he wasn’t cut out to be a dad. He and Roberta weren’t together anymore.

    There were posters all over town.
    The Amazing Maggie! Come one, come all. See her pull a rabbit out of a hat. See her pull a hat out of a rabbit. Put her in a box and watch her get out of it! You won’t believe your eyes.
    The big question for Joe was whether he wanted to be in the first row or not.
    Opening night, Joe took a seat somewhere in the middle of the third row—not too near, not too far. When the lights went down, he decided he had agonized for nothing. She probably couldn’t see him anyway.
    The curtain went up. The band jumped into a song, long and lazy in the beginning so the dancing men in black tie, tails, and top hats could tap along with their walking sticks, picking up the pace, putting on the Ritz, lining up along the stage, and then in the middle pulling back into a big V so Maggie could appear in a thundering explosion of pink smoke.
    Ta da!
    Nobody’s assistant now, she was the main event, a headliner. She did card tricks. She made things appear and disappear. She made things float in the air. She was really very good.
    So, did she look either sadder or wiser? Joe couldn’t tell. Mostly she just looked good. She seemed totally at ease on stage. She loved the audience and the audience loved her back.
    Could he take credit for any of it? Probably not. At best, he’d been practice for her, and there had been jail and therapy and whatever else she’d been up to since he’d lost track of her.
    She lined up her dancing men and pulled produce from their ears. Cantaloupes! Watermelons! Fat zucchinis.
    Hey, no fair, Joe thought, that’s our trick!
    “For this next part,” she said, and from the shadows came a drum roll, “I need a volunteer from the audience.”
    A spotlight swept across the crowd, and when it passed him, he thought he saw her eyes widen a little.
    Okay. Now or never again. Joe jumped to his feet.
    “Me,” he shouted, “pick me!”

Season Finale

    I am a P.I. on TV. You’d know me if you saw me. Sam, who is the brother of my dead lover, knows me. He grabs my arm as I step out of Brinkmann’s Hollywood Pharmacy.
    “You!” he says. I can see the emotions swashbuckling on his face. He’s purple with anger, but he’s got this goofy grin that keeps going off and on like he can’t believe his luck. Being bald and beefy with tattoos on his hairy arms, he doesn’t look much like Pamela.
    “Hello, Sam,” I say. “How are you holding up?” I expect him to ask me if I found out who killed Pamela.
    He punches me in the mouth.
    I fall to the sidewalk, and he comes down on my chest, pinning my arm with his knees. He pummels my face with his fists. People step around us.
    “Help!” I call, but no one comes to my aid. No doubt they think we’re filming. My lights go out.
    It’s not a pretty sight I see when next I’m able to open my swollen eyes. Pam’s mom is stirring something on the stove, and a long ash from the cigarette in her mouth falls into the pot. Pam’s dad folds his newspaper and gives me the eye. Sam is punching his left palm with his right fist. I want to touch my face but find that I’m tied to my chair. Pam herself is across the table from me, and she looks cold and blue. There are crystals in her honey hair, and a little icicle hangs from her nose. She sits at attention.
    “Let’s begin, Mother,” Pam’s dad says.
    I can see that this is going to be bad.
    Pam had died off-stage. I had imagined her going peacefully—a sweet, gentle drifting away on puffy clouds