She remembered everything as if time were an accordion. Fifteen years felt like fifteen minutes; it was 1981 again; Leroy was on the phone and the line between love and loyalty, trust and treachery had not yet blurred in her mind.
"Good evening, Lorna Mae. Is Jerry home?" Leroy was her husband's boyhood friend. He lived in Boston.
"No, he’s not in,” she answered. “Don't you remember?
“Remember what?”
“It’s volleyball season,” she said. “Jerry isn't sixteen anymore, but he still lives as if he is.”
"Good for him,” Leroy said. “I wish I could trade places.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” she teased.
“I hate this time of year, with the cold and the way the time change robs the afternoon of its sunshine," he said. "Darkness comes much too early."
From where she sat she was a stranger to his world. The island breeze filtering through her wooden jalousies smelled like roasted asphalt, just like it did on hot nights in the village where she grew up. Lorna Mae sat up in bed, her check book and unpaid bills scattered among the cotton-stuffed pillows. The TV watched itself.
During the 80s, many of Lorna Mae's former schoolmates traded in island living for American dreams houses and Yankee accents. But hearing Leroy complain about the cold weather reminded her of why she refused to leave Margarita.
“What are you complaining about,” she said feigning impatience. “Don’t you get all the sunshine you need?
"I guess nature gives and the government takes," he replied, turning on his trademark wit.
"How's work?" she asked trying to throw him off balance.
"It's office politics and subtle racism as usual at AT&T," he said.
"Talking about politics, whom do you like in next week's election?" She remembered Leroy was one of the few radicals on Margarita to call the government radio station to protest the 1983 U.S invasion of Grenada.
"I'm voting for Ralph Nader instead of Bill Clinton,” he said. “Nader won't win, but at least he's not a bagman for the big corporations.”
“You haven't changed much, have you. So how’s Donna and the twins?” she asked struggling to carry the conversation.
"She's at her mother's for a few days. Her mother isn't feeling well," he replied. "Renate and Sara are asleep. I'm washing the dishes.”
She heard the sound of water on china and the metallic chaos of cutlery being wiped and stacked.
"I have a thing for men who don't mind washing the dishes," she said. "I wish Jerry would follow your example."
"Jerry isn't much of a follower," he reminder her. "Plus, this is therapeutic for me. Even though we own a dishwasher, I prefer to wash the dishes by hand. It gives me time to think."
Jerry always said Leroy spent too much time thinking. Her husband preferred to act first and think later.
"So what’s on your mind tonight?"
“You,” he chuckled. “That's why I really called.”
She was taken aback by his forthrightness. If he could have seen her an ocean away, Leroy would have seen her face glow, flush with surprise. She held her breath and waited; she felt her heart wanting to hear more.
“There’s a full moon out tonight. I can see it from here,” he said. “Full moons always remind me of you.”
“I don’t get the connection,” she responded. “Why me?”
He paused for a few seconds before answering. When he did, his words were more a jazz riff than a response to her two-word question. He said full moons exerted a certain cosmic pull on his soul, made him feel vulnerable and restless.
“Restless enough to step outside on to a moon beam, keep walking and never look back,” he said.
He sounded closer than usual; his word flowed freer.
“Sounds like you're trying to get away from something or is it someone?”
“Who said anything about escaping.”
“Not me,” she played along.
“I don't confuse my fate with my fantasies,” he said.
“You’re in an interesting kind of mood tonight,” she countered.
When he turned off the faucet and the sound of running water died, she heard the light switch click. She pictured Leroy standing, lanky and long in the hushed darkness of his kitchen, his refrigerator humming and wheezing, moonlight slicing through his window. She pictured him staring at the moon with hungry dog eyes, whispering to it as if courting her, like he courted her fifteen years before.
This was the first time Leroy had ever hinted at what they had done with and to each other. Until then, it were as if they had imposed a no-fly zone on their dual memories. Since their break up, they had conducted no autopsy, sought no reassessment, had never asked each other why, after all the promises they made to each other, they both ended up with someone else.
