Nikki Moonshine
came about that name not because it was Christian-born, or because she guzzled liquor or howled under the stars, but because she found it scribbled on a piece of wood spinning towards the mouth of a gutter after a summer storm.
Nikki wanted to find the goddess who birthed it-she'd assumed it was not a man-and offer her pie, or a quilt, or a jar of preserves, but of course never did. She kept the name, wrote down her own in pink sharpie glitter on black construction paper and balled it away with Thursday’s trash.
All the men Nikki loved, left. So Nikki left men. They stole energy, men did.
She didn’t like the city because it was grimy, smelled of shit and beer, and because people in it frowned on Birkenstock sandals and green apple sun-dresses. But the shoes were comfortable, could be had at cost from the Saturday markets, and moved air through her toes, which was always a good thing. The country didn’t like her because she always found it ten degrees colder or ten degrees hotter to her liking, and it grew tired of her wishy-washiness. Nikki knew this and rented a small, white cottage, blue-trimmed, equidistant.
The Next Morning News read:
Girl Escapes
*
Nikki had lemons. Most days, after dawn and when cool, she picked some. The trees had been planted on the east side of the property with the sun during the Depression and kept in good standing by new neighbor, Sanchez.
Because of diabetic feet, Sanchez had a sitting-down job making cymbals at the factory in the city. He possessed a bulbous forehead-pockmarked with blackheads- tan leather skin, and thick brown lips that always appeared to be wet. At times she wondered if he would mind a nice flat of the lemon swipe across the head, in hopes the acid would heal, but she never pressed the issue.
Sanchez wanted to tend her grove, but he only came up to her breasts and upon inspection, Nikki found his gardening tools unimaginative.
Still, he tried, wanting skin-black and legs-forever, and hair- wild and big.
One morning he came and said, “The lemons, they came in good this year, no?”
“Yes. Yes, they did, didn’t they? Would you like some?
Sanchez nodded. Nikki knew he had been stealing some of her fruit to sell at the markets, but never ran with the idea of confronting him with it. She told him to fill his basket and say hello to his wife, even though she knew he wouldn’t. Most men didn’t.
Nikki found a gig at the city library. She was an assistant to the assistant librarian, Mr. Spagnola, a nub of a man who spent the better part of the day looking at her ass. She tolerated it, needing the work, and because he gave her Saturdays off.
One of those Saturdays, he called.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“Ms. Moonshine?”
“This is she.”
“You sound different over the phone. Spagnola here.”
“Good Saturday.”
“It is. Well look, the children’s librarian…”
“Lupe?”
“Yes, Lupe. She’s sick and I need you to fill in for her. Can I count on you?”
Nikki went in, knowing that nothing good could come from working when you were not supposed to.
The children’s department was a basement place set inside large glass walls decorated with color and scribble. Nikki wasn’t, though having been one herself, the best she could be with kids, not all the time.
One of them, a never-missed-a-meal boy, who felt the need to pick at his face in her personal zone, made a request of Nikki to: “read something funny". She was not in the mood for funny and had not been for quite some time.
But it turned good.
She saw him, as he sat on a mat-Indian style-, reading The Little Engine That Could to a gaggle of kids who liked the way he made “I think I can” sound like “I thank I cane”. He was bowlegged and black, in that order, talked low and slow, and seemed the sort who didn’t run away from work, but had it run away from him.
Him.
He introduced himself as that and as a piledriving man. Nikki was unaware such men were still around, yet there Him was. He explained to her, over coffee and raspberry scones, that he had been speculating on some bottom land and some business. Equidistant agreed with Him.
It was cool out, too cool for cotton shirts to be sweated stuck on backs. Him wiped his forehead on a sleeve, wiped his lips with his hands and asked Nikki if she could spare a glass of ice water.
Nikki offered Him a tall glass of Pepsi-cola instead, at which point the man thanked her and commented on the quality of the ice.
“You make this?”
“You’ve never had a Pepsi?”
He swallowed hard, pointed to the glass. “I mean the ice. That’s good ice.”
Nikki would later discover that Him was a connoisseur, carried a portable ice maker in the bed of his truck and spent considerable effort comparing what he made to that of what he found.
