The Moondust Sonatas Read online

  I was freer than most, because now I understood what it was like not to be. I felt really, really happy about that.

  12. ROB

  So my guy Clyde and this dude Will came by my house; we went up to the roof, and they gave me this new drug.

  Son.

  I can’t even tell you about this hit.

  I can’t even begin to describe it. Sickest feeling ever.

  I traveled. I… fucking… traveled. I’m not even going to tell you where I went. And when I came back, I opened my eyes and this weirdo Will went, “Whoopeee!”

  Usually a dude doing something that lame would make me want to slap him. But, instead I laughed right, and I went “Hell-fuckyeah!” And stood up and jumped all around, all geeked on the raw joy moondust showed me.

  Clyde and I hugged, and I was crying, I guess, because the moondust was still in my eye. But, it was more than that too, because I could see the whole city from my roof, gleaming, and I thought it was beautiful. I’d never thought that before.

  Will lit up a joint and passed it, grinning like a fool, and I grinned right back at him.

  I saw Heaven, son.

  There. I said it. Moondust took me to Heaven. You don’t believe me? Get a pinch yourself. I dare you.

  As Will told it, you don’t see Heaven every time. He’d just been in jail, in an inmate. That’s how he said it, and when I didn’t understand, he said, “Well asshole, I guess you’ll have to take moondust again,” and he lit a cig and strangely, I didn’t even think of kicking him in the nuts or shooting his kneecap off because he didn’t know me like that.

  But then he was like “No, seriously,” and Clyde smiled and threw me the pouch.

  I said, “No way am I ready to do that again.”

  “You won’t go back… there. You’ll go somewhere different.”

  “I said no.”

  “You’ll go into a different person,” Will said.

  “Could be now or the past,” Clyde added.

  “Or the future?” asked Will.

  Clyde shrugged, and passed the joint.

  I wanted to know what they were talking about.

  13. CLYDE

  It was a crazy moment, all of us jumping around, celebrating being alive, because of moondust. I bet everyone who took it had that kind of moment sooner or later. After enough trips, you feel thrilled to be you.

  And it was good, because I needed these dudes with me. I needed a crew because in order to distribute it, we needed to find out how to make it, which would be tricky. It made sense to form a crew for this, anyway I thought about it. And I’d thought it through a lot.

  Will had been my friend for a while, he’d have my back. Rob was a fighter, hardest guy I knew well enough to bring in, street smart and hungry.

  There was tons of money to be made on this stuff, plenty to go around. We’d be rich.

  I turned to Rob. “Take your second trip,” I said. “I hate to rush you. But, it’s different the second time, and you need to know what you’re getting into.”

  He looked up at me, face blank. “Since when are you bossy?”

  “I’m asking with courtesy.”

  He glared at me before giving a predator’s smile. He held open his eye, and I took a pinch from my vial and sent him off again.

  He slumped down, his eyes closed, in REM—his face strangely blank.

  “What are we going to talk about?” said Will, as we finished the joint.

  “Business,” I said. Will nodded.

  We watched the skyline for a while or Rob’s face. Will said my name.

  I responded, “Yeah?”

  “What now?”

  “That’s what we’re going to talk about. Trust me.”

  Neither of us said nothing until Rob came back. But, after a while, I decided I misunderstood Will’s question. He’d meant something bigger.

  14. ROB

  Captain Wilkins finishes up with “end of story any questions” like he always does, and we shake our heads.

  Well, I’ll have my Garand rifle until the end, and the end will leave me on the field in bloody pieces or sitting on some troop carrier going home with dead friends behind my eyes, but only if this Garand bucks so pretty that Krauts fall to embrace flowers with their teeth and lady luck fucks me as I sleep. It’s just another pretty day in France, hot and my hands shaking because my blood fills with pillows and thunder. We start walking hunched over moving east out of a field that once had things in it like sheep. But, now we are nearly dead, only stepping on flowers and wild grass growing out of the dirt that had been shit from sheep who were dead now because sheep die first in war to feed the killers or to rot in piles on dead grass. Our regulation boots making no noise, olive colored and painful.

  We crouch lower because in the distance buildings appear over the hill, farmhouses and barns full of soldiers, which you can tell, because they are silent and curdled like death, and everything seems wrong the way it always does. Parts of me scream to return to anywhere where the windows are safe and no one, quietly behind one where you can’t see, breaks the silence by pulling a trigger so that with a zipping sound Hudson from San Diego’s head opens up causing the sergeant to scream “sniper” and me to dive for cover finding none close. But, the hill itself offers some protection so I roll and drag myself down. I go deaf, can’t hear the explosions, I only feel the ground quaking.

  Sergeant shouts commands. I can’t hear the slams of igniting bombs, which fills the whole world, but I can’t hear. I get on my knees into a crouch. Here I can’t be spotted by rifles throwing bullets screaming for limbs, lung, hip, or brain that will leave me here to become grass uncolored. I slowly nudge up the horizon the sky line slides.

  Boom. Boom.

  Boom.

  Screaming of soldiers and the word medic means it’s real and happening like it does every time, and I turn my head to see our medics running low, hoping it won’t be their turn to catch metal bees screaming. I turn my head back and limp up the hill, the horizon un-spills the roofs so I breathe, pull the rifle up to my eye, my eagle’s blood is silent death in my fingers. I spy a window with a pane of angry broken glass, and I crouch and wait until a metal flash of light illuminates the soldier behind it, and I aim to create murder of my own. When my trigger finger pulls, there’s a beat, then an arm falls through the window, breaks the glass, and does not move, which is copasetic. But, I duck anyway because I gave my position away and lie on my back for a second, staring up at the pretty blue French sky before home flashes behind my eyes, just for a second, then it’s gone. Sergeants scream, and a burst booming shock happens and reignites fear; I swore I felt something brush my helmet, and suddenly I can listen. But, sergeants only say, “Forward, goddamn it, move forward, cover fire; go, go, go,” and up ahead wait Yama Anubis the Reaper Ahpuch Hel Mictlantecuhtliand Thanatos Morrigan, and everyday German soldiers with angry rifles, firing pain and death under pretty skies. But, I go forward anyway because death is everywhere, inside and out. I see how they fall with knees buckling—my brothers and friends and enemies—falling like dolls or dead men.

  I run to a tree close enough to make it. I dart and zag and crouch and zip and zip, and slower for a split second, then even faster, I run and dive hearing the sweet horrible bright sound of bullets hitting bark. Fear, fear, fear is the emotion of the day, served up on hot plates by murderous Germans who love their madman shooting at me with vicious intent. But, the tree between them and me takes their punishment, gets pulpy and aerated with metal smoking holes. If I could unlink my frozen bones, then I could fire back. I could survive the day if only I could stop screaming.

  Then I manage, but my legs are wet. Somewhere sergeants shout, “Forward return fire, covering fire, forward grenade.” Explosions happen, which is a good time to lean from behind my tree to see German raised barrels pointing at my blood, and they’re southeast of us in the wrong place, which means we’re flanked and fucked. I fire twice and then again. I duck back hoping I hit someone. They
hold the trench and another position behind a fence, and it’s a good time to throw a grenade because I’m trapped, but I won’t panic. Instead, I’ll rain fire—yank it off my belt, pull the pin, cook it, and throw blind. But, I know it lands right because, even blind, I throw like an angel, and I pop out from behind my cover when the explosion happens, perfectly timed to do damage.

  Feel impact and burn in my side, shock-tinged pain legs buckling, cough blood, then I fall and struggle to breathe for seconds or years until someone pulls me into cover behind the tree. Too late, shock falling darkness, they scream medic. But, the medic won’t come in time, and I hope I wake up somewhere.

  15. WILLIAM

  And then Rob came out of it. We’d been waiting in silence, me staring at the skyline. The words echoed, What now? But, there was no answer, and I didn’t need one.

  When Rob’s eyes opened, he looked around, then up at us.

  “Holy shit,” he said.

  “Where’d you go?” asked Clyde.

  “World War II.”

  “You survive?”

  “Doubt it.”

  “I went to France once, World War I,” Clyde said. I’d never seen war, myself.

  “You survive?” Rob asked.

  Clyde shrugged and said, “It was hell.”

  “Is it anything like Slaughterhouse Five?” I asked. “You know, in real life.”

  Rob said, “What?”

  “Slaughterhouse Five. It’s a book about World War II. I read it in juvie.”

  They looked at me like I was crazy. I figured they either hadn’t gone to juvie or hadn’t read Slaughterhouse Five there.

  16. ROB

  What the fuck was this kid talking about?

  17. CLYDE

  Anyway, it was time to talk business. Verdun, France, was the last place I wanted to think about.

  “Okay. Rob, here’s the deal. Moondust is new. Right? It ain’t any controlled substance we’ve heard of. It sure as hell ain’t no medication. The government don’t know about it yet. So—”

  Rob cut me off. “Police can’t touch us.”

  “Right. If we don’t attract attention, then we can make tons before cops notice. We make enough, when they finally catch on, we retire and move to Hawaii or somewhere, find some big titty women, and live out our days in paradise.”

  Rob asked, “You got a plan?”

  “Yeah. Follow the trail back to where this stuff came from and figure out how to make it. Next we set up bank accounts, sell this shit like mad until the government makes it illegal or we’re so rich we don’t care anymore. You in?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “Good,” I said. “I got it on a rooftop in Williamsburg. We’re going to that building. The guy who sold it to me was a black kid with a tat on his neck, some kind of chalice, real recognizable. We’re going to find him. So get your asses up.”

  18. PERCIVAL

  The bad buzz wouldn’t go away. So now stairs, down to my apartment from the roof. The banging of the bass diminished, but not enough. An ocean of vodka inside of me, unquiet.

  I stumbled through the hallway, unlocked and opened the door to my place and fell onto the mattress. My arm hit someone; a girl was in my bed somehow—Ramona. I didn’t invite her. But, she knew I kept my window open, and we shared the fire escape. Her fingernails caressed my shoulder with a question. But, I flopped over and closed my eyes. I wanted vacancy. In the morning, maybe, but now I just wanted her to turn the light out. I wanted the noise on the roof to be over. I wanted a cigarette without having to smoke. I wanted nonexistence.

  Sleep pulled me into a dream where there would be no more moondust in the world, anywhere, ever. In the dream, we couldn’t make it anymore, the technique no longer worked. Hailey cursed a storm as we all stood over a moon-drenched crop that wouldn’t turn, realizing sadly that it was over. Mark kept throwing his hands through piles of dust, desperately hoping to coax it into spreading. He wore a linen suit and mumbled nonsense to himself. I looked up at the sky, thinking nothing lasts forever.

  I woke up thirsty. I went and got some water and sat on the bed, thinking of how everything changes. I lay back down and woke Ramona, made wordless love, and fell back asleep; thankfully I didn’t dream.

  When I woke up the second time and stretched, I noticed Ramona wasn’t in the bed. I heard her in the kitchen, and I yawned and got up. I put on a robe, went to my bathroom, and brushed my teeth.

  When I finished, I played music by Beirut. It flowed through the apartment, and I came out dancing a little.

  She was cooking something on the stove. “What’s for breakfast?” I said.

  She gave me an odd look before responding, “It’s three o’clock,” she said. “This is a late lunch.”

  “Okay, what’s for lunch?”

  “Omelet.”

  “You’re having an omelet for lunch, and you expect me not to be confused?”

  She laughed, sharply. Her laugh always grated on me, I never believed it. I kept smiling. But, something cold came over me, and suddenly all I wanted was to be alone. She was here uninvited, and I’d asked her not to do so before. Now that I was fully sober, this was a problem.

  “So… can I ask you a question?” I said. “I don’t mean to be rude, I really don’t. But, why are you here? Didn’t we talk about this?”

  Hurt, anger, weariness, defensiveness, and resignation all shuddered through her face. The anger stayed. She left the omelet on the pan, went into the bedroom, grabbed her shit, pulled on her shoes, and left without a word.

  Had I been cruel? Absolutely, but Pat Benetar was right about love. I’d made no promises, no demands. I hadn’t even invited her over.

  I finished cooking her omelet, and let it cool as I rolled a joint. I smoked the joint and ate the omelet at the same time, which was kind of a tricky thing to do, and ultimately not worth it. After I finished eating, I rolled another joint, watching the reality show about grandiose conflict, the mixed martial arts league.

  On this Friday afternoon, I had nothing particular to do but mix music on my laptop, the thing I loved most of all. My social calendar was pleasantly empty, and I was making plenty of money with Mark and Hailey selling moondust, so I had no financial worries to attend.

  How did this happen? After a surreal night on acid, we three had woken up with this powder and hand-written instructions. I think they came from this dude we spoke to at some point, at the time I thought his skin oozed, which really freaked me out. Mark remembered receiving something from him, and thinking it was a package of light.

  The instructions detailed how to take it, and how to replicate it. We instantly went into selling. Artists only; any and all types, as long as they were good. A good artist would never betray the dealer of something as inspiring as moondust; it was like we bottled the muses. So when we said, ‘No contacts other than yourself, this number goes to no one,’ our clients listened because competition was fierce in the art world.

  The quality of this stuff meant clients would pay quite a bit, and it was fast and easy to make. But, because you could only get thirteen crops a year, supply was naturally limited, and this also increased worth. It was beautiful. We got paid, and we were safe.

  After an hour or so, someone rang my doorbell. I wore only boxer shorts, no shirt, but I didn’t care. I opened the door. It was this guy Quincy. He lived in the building, and we weren’t quite friends.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Um… there are some guys on the roof asking about you.”

  Anybody could get into this building.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “They’re looking for the apartment number of a black dude with a grail tattoo on his neck, and they claim it’s about a business deal, and they’re in ‘creative.’ But, they won’t say what industry or what company or anything. They just say ‘you don’t need to know.’ It seems shady.”

  I was alarmed.

  “Right, thanks,” I said, and closed the door. It was time
to leave. Fire escape.

  I put my pants on, grabbed my keys, my wallet, my phone, my cigarettes. I put a shirt on, grabbed my shoes.

  Opened the window, glanced up to see if anyone on the roof was watching, then I looked down at the street. My blood pumped. My hands shook—no one was looking, so I squirmed out of the window onto the fire escape, closed the window, and started to make my way down.

  They saw me when I was about halfway.

  I knew because I got this intense version of that feeling you get when someone is looking at you. I looked up, and there was a dude on the roof staring down at me. When he knew I saw him, he turned, shouted something, and ran.

  I booked like hell down that fire escape.

  It was a pretty long way, but I was so quick that when I hit bottom, I just knew there wasn’t anyone coming after me. But, sure enough, the building’s door banged open, and as soon as I saw the tip of a sneaker coming out of the door, I was off. They’d had someone waiting in the lobby, probably, like I’d figured.

  But I ran like Hermes.

  I flew down alleys, I zigged and I zagged, then I slipped into a diner after a few minutes when I was seriously winded and sure I had lost them. I’d run fifteen, twenty blocks.

  There was no telling how my next few days would go; so because I could, I ordered pancakes, bacon, coffee, and grabbed a copy of The New York Globe. The headlines were so sensationalized, the articles crafted with such simplicity, it felt like dispatches from a dream world. I put off coming up with a plan until after I’d read and eaten. I ignored the fear, because fear was useless. The coffee tasted better.

  19. MAXWELL

  After Justine left me at the restaurant, I sat alone at our table, considering next steps and finishing my meal. After I told her what my scientist learned about moondust, she told me she wanted to try it, and I told her that was crazy. Taking drugs was stupid, and taking new, experimental street drugs was especially idiotic, lethally so. I was not wrong, and I should not have done anything different, even though she stormed off.