The Moonlight Hour

It's not unusual at any time for city streets to be crowded, noisy, and full of people in too much of a hurry for civility, but in the Iron Age this is especially true. A person could resort to such judicious responses as blogging, making rude faces, and other instances of patriotic civil disobedience--but getting away from it all is also, occasionally, the best option. An instance of the latter occurred once upon a late winter day when Emma, the protagonist of this tale, had had enough of being harassed, bumped into, and shouted at for the time being, and ducked in from the sidewalk to the Moon and Stars Cafe just in time to avoid being run over by a mother with a stroller and a cell phone.

Respite, of course, is a relative term, especially when you're talking coffeehouses. You are probably imagining Emma ordering a latte and collapsing into the nearest open chair to catch her breath as an antidote to the zeitgeist, but that won't do. No. In fact, she did walk up to the counter, and she did order a mocha. And given no other choice, she might have taken the nearest seat, which is what she did most of the time, despite the fact that the cafe itself was a breeding ground for wanna-be-world rulers and the poorer class of law students. (In a totalitarian age, the government left nothing to chance, not even espresso.)

Today, however, she glanced at the back corner, in which, always without warning but often enough to make it worthwhile, the outline of a slim doorway, invisible to the casual observer, would on rare occasions appear. Emma was aware that she was in full view of the cafe's patrons as she walked up to the door and said the secret word (it was "chocolate," but she never said this aloud), but she also knew that no one else, for reasons that remained a bit cloudy, ever followed her. As soon as she passed through, the door closed behind her, and the noise of the cafe was instantly shut out. She was now in a dark tower with a faintly luminous staircase that rose before her, first in a smooth spiral, and later in exuberant zig-zags as it neared the top. This she began to climb, with a tight grip on her mocha.

The tower had windows that opened onto a velvety black sky pierced with stars. There was also moonlight, so that finding her feet was not a problem. Despite the steepness of the climb, and the distance, she was never out of breath when she reached the top. At the very end, the stairs broke free of the tower entirely, with a doorway on the left leading to a small platform and another short hop of steps, broad but crystal-clear, so that one saw through them entirely. At the top of these steps, like a cardboard cutout at a fun fair, hung the moon. There was actually a bit of a jump at the end, but one always landed smoothly, gliding onto a window seat perched on the very edge of la luna, behind which was a small room with a table and two chairs (in case of inclement space weather, though it had never yet been necessary to use it).

Michael was already there, as usual. He occasionally brought his own cup of coffee, but more often it was a beer. They had sat that way, feet dangling into space (and an occasional passing cloud) numerous times over the years. There had never been a time when she had arrived and not found him there. They never talked much about their respective ways of getting there or how it was even possible. It very obviously was possible, so that was that. (When she had told him that her access was via a hidden staircase from a coffeehouse, he had grimaced a little and said his route involved "Kind of a wormhole." He hadn't seemed to want to say more.) In fact, their conversation was usually interspersed with large gaps of silence, for who, faced with such a prospect before them, would want to waste time in talk. And what, in fact, was there to say?

Below them is the earth, resplendent in blue and green. It has the appearance of a cartoon earth, or earth as seen in a child's picture book, with landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall, and the Golden Gate Bridge clearly visible, as are the occasional toy airplane or ocean liner passing into view. Despite dominating the foreground, the globe as a whole is somehow comically foreshortened, so that everything appears much closer together than it actually is, entire countries taking up no more room than a large park. Aside from that, stars twinkle all around them, and they are occasionally treated to the sight of a passing comet or a planet hoving into view.

It was not as if a visit to the moon made one forget anything. With the earth so insistently present, it would have been impossible to forget anything no matter how hard one tried. But the distance gave one perspective, the quiet was a relief, and it was a heady experience to find oneself sitting companionably on the edge of the moon with such an entertaining panorama on offer. Even the mocha tasted better there, Emma's opinion being that the altitude cleared her sinuses. And it was not quite true to say that space was completely silent. At times, there was a low-pitched humming and sometimes a faint sound of a high, distant voice, which reminded Emma of Dawn Upshaw singing Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.

Aside from the rareness of the occasion, the brevity of each visit also ensured that every moment counted. Half an hour? Forty-five minutes at most? Each visit was a jewel of such clarity and beauty that its memory was sustaining for months at a time. Breaking free of gravity for short periods was enough to help you get through tax season, the end of Daylight Saving Time, pap smears, and Vitamin D deficiencies in winter. You carried the view from that window seat around with you like a locket with an unfathomable secret folded deep inside.

Tonight, Michael looked at her, and she could tell by his brief but searching glance that he knew she had had a tiring day. But why ruin a nice evening by talking about it? She kicked her legs back and forth and watched a developing supernova overhead; Michael sipped his beer and followed a wandering planet with his eyes. In the background, that angelic voice was singing, "Ah, ah, ah . . ." It was celestial relaxation at its best. It was also over with all too soon.

The upper end of Michael's wormhole suddenly yawned, like a cave opening, to their right. Michael and Emma both got up, standing at ease on a wispy but otherwise quite substantial cloud. "It's been real," Emma said. Michael smiled. "Till next time," he said, with a tip of his hand. And then he was walking away, disappearing into the mouth of his tunnel, which instantly dissolved. And here goes Emma, jumping lightly from the cloud and landing on the crystal stair, descending slowly, and climbing into the tower once again for the long walk down.

It's a thing she has often noticed, the different quality of the return trip. The closer one gets to the bottom the more one notices chips at the edge of the stairs and cracks in the walls of the tower that never seemed to be there on the way up. At the bottom of the tower, the stairs are worn; one notices a coffee stain and a bit of dust on a windowsill. Then the outline of a door appears, and you are somehow through it and back in the noisy environs of a crowded coffeehouse. No time seems to have passed while you were gone. Despite a sense of residual sadness, though, there is something else. The sunlight seems brighter than it was, and the aromas of freshly brewed coffee and baked croissants, which now come through with a sharp intensity since your sinuses are clear, are heavenly.

Emma takes her cup to the counter for a refill, sits down, and finds a newspaper someone has left behind. She unfolds the front page and scans the news of the day. "So the world is still here," she murmurs to herself. "And honestly, how glad I am. Even if it is the Iron Age."

This is the latest version of a story I've been writing for a number of years. Originally, it involved two children; then, a single child. This is the first time the story has featured two adults.