Shine On

September 27, 2007

On our way home from the corner store, I noticed the full moon glowing oversized, low, and orange over a warehouse to the east. I stopped.

"What is it?" Deborah asked, hungry and eager to transform the bag of groceries she was carrying into dinner.

"Look," I said, nodding to my left.

The sky was chalky, and the moon seemed to float, which I guess it does.

"Let's go to the roof," I said.

We dropped the groceries off in our loft and climbed three more flights to the flat expanse of tar. It was quiet up there. No one was hanging out, drinking, or casting Wiccan spells. No one was throwing bottles or chairs, or kissing each other in the moonlight. A few cars hissed along the road below, their headlights casting oddly stiff pools of yellow. People walked along the sidewalks, some with loud shoes, others silently, their shadows turning like hands of a clock as they passed under the streetlights.

I took a picture of the moon, then a few of Deborah, blurry and laughing.

"Let's go," she said, "I'm starving."

"One more." But she wouldn't stand still.

"Wait," I said, as she started down the steps.

I followed, trying to capture the images she shed as they piled up behind her like Nude Descending a Staircase.

"Wait, hold on. Hold still."

She turned and looked up, just a second, click, before skipping a few steps to the landing, where she stopped to briefly indulge me, click, before running away again.

Her footsteps echoed off the brick walls, flip flops slapping against cement. When I got to the doorway of our floor, she was waiting for me. I snapped several pictures, click click click, she made faces and twirled this way and that. I took more pictures, hoping for the best.

"I don't have my keys," she cried.

So I took a few more. Then let her in.