A Trip to The Moon

A Novella in Two Parts

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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*This is a 9,000-word novella (or long short story, if you like): Part 1 is free; part 2 is paid.

Enjoy.

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Part I

San Diego

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They were meeting at the Plaza Hotel at 4pm.

Craig Ellroy walked slowly, heading east from the 59^th Street/Columbus Circle subway station, along Central Park South, the three blocks to the famous Plaza Hotel. The hotel, he knew, was on the corner of Central Park South and 5^th Avenue, and even more technically on CPS and Grand Army Plaza, boxed in by Grand Army Plaza, West 58^th and Avenue of the Americas.

He was nervous about meeting with her. Lenora Smith.

Lenora was an acquisitions editor for Simon & Schuster. They’d met six months prior at a two-day writers’ conference—he was beginning to loathe these gatherings more and more over time—in sunny, perfect San Diego. She’d been there as paid staff, her flight and expenses all paid for. Her job was to meet with aspiring writers who’d paid an egregious amount of money to be there and who couldn’t write for shit and lie to them, assuring them they were talented and that she’d take a look at their work.

At the time of the conference six months ago—in mid-February—Craig had still been living in San Francisco. He and his fiancé had just broken up. Or, rather, the more honest way to say it was this: She’d just left him. After six years. It was complicated, as it always was. They’d lived in a big, spacious apartment up on Russian Hill with an incredible view of the city. Everything felt below them from up there.

She was Jewish—her parents were old school and orthodox, pretentious Cornell grads who couldn’t stand Craig with his WASPY non-Jewishness and non-doctor-lawyer-ness. They fought constantly. He loved her but he felt misunderstood by her on such a potent, fundamental level that their union simply stopped making any sense. He knew it was over. But he couldn’t pull the trigger. He couldn’t end the relationship. Finally, shocking them both, she ended it. And then they were both free, grieving and sad, but absolutely and inexorably free.

Not long after that—the breakup happened in early January—he found himself working hard and saving up money to leave S.F. and follow his dream: Moving to Manhattan. Why not? He was 35, single again, had no kids, could work from anywhere—he was a freelance book editor—and he had nothing to lose. Life was short, right?

But before moving he decided to do a little road trip, driving the eight hours from San Francisco to San Diego. He needed the drive. He still owned his 2000 red Honda CR-V which he’d had since 2012, his faithful little beast which had taken him all over California and into other nearby states, not to mention endless backpacking trips.

He went to the conference with no expectations. He’d brought a hundred book editing cards but he didn’t even care about that. He didn’t care if he got clients or not. Writers were classically fickle, dishonest and squirmy; you couldn’t believe most of what they said anyway; they usually didn’t email him until months later, when their manuscripts were supposedly at last “ready.” (They never were, and most were terrible.) Plus he had one huge client—a famous one—and he was being paid handsomely for working on this one book at the moment. He was fine in the financial department. More than anything he wanted distraction from his heartache.

And so, getting to the 30-story hotel where the conference was to be held, the day prior to it starting, he walked into the place with nothing on his mind but the warm sensation of the March clean air and sunshine which had been blasting him through the open windows of the CR-V on his drive. He’d smiled the whole way down. Listened to a couple of his favorite political podcasts and then Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, one of his all-time favorite records.

But when he walked into the open, spacious, high-ceilinged building, approaching the massive, long, curving front desk, he encountered a problem right away.

There, to his right, about 25 yards off, was a beautiful woman wearing all black, a dress which ended just above the knees and, worst of all, a transparent light screen which covered—sort of, not really—her D-cup breasts. Her breasts behind the screen reached out to him like a dark omen, smiled at him cruelly; they were a finger gently lulling him, calling him over to her. He thought at once of a younger, sexier Cruella Deville. Her hair was black. Her eyes were a deep, penetrating deep brown. She must have been about 5’4, roughly six inches shorter than he. Instantly, to his horror and chagrin (and also secret horny delight), he felt his dick stiffen in his jeans.

Oh, fuck.

The rest of the conference was a blur.

It went like this. He got dinner alone that night. He didn’t see the woman at all. He wasn’t even sure she was with the conference. He’d felt a fire, a heat in his loins like he hadn’t experienced in years. His ex certainly hadn’t produced that sensation, at least not since the early days. This mystery woman brought out something animalistic in him, something overtly masculine, primitive, even dangerous.

That first night he slept early and woke up early the next morning. The first day of the conference.

That morning he wandered around, gladhanding with some writers he recognized, a few he knew personally—Dennis Wakefield, the YA bestseller was there; he’d edited one of his early books—sitting in on a few classes, one about forming voice in writing (impossible to teach anyway, he thought) and one about the business of publishing told from the point of view of several literary agents (made to sound as if any writer could do it; patently untrue). He browsed some author’s books, spoke with some local small San Diego publishers, and even snuck onto one book editing panel, for ten minutes speaking lazily about the process and cost of book editing (long and expensive).

Then the main ballroom was full of loud chatter, 500 people all sitting at tables eating the crappy food provided with the conference fee (exorbitant). For a while everyone simply ate. Conversations goggled in and out and, to Craig, it all sounded like manic, pointless white noise. Garbled indistinguishable jargon. He was bored. No one spoke to him. A man in a three-piece suit discussed ghostwriting with a younger woman next to him. He listened, silent and amused.

Right after the main speaker stepped up to the platform—R.L. Stine of 1990s Goosebumps fame—Craig happened to glance up and across the room and there, four, no, five tables across from him, he saw her. The woman. Again she wore all black. Again the same dress with the breast-screen. Again his physiological reaction. Again his pounding heart and the feeling like she was dark, mysterious and craven somehow. Where did that feeling come from? He didn’t know. Sometimes you just got a feeling.

Then he realized two things: One, he was staring at her, practically drooling; Two, she was looking at him, too. Their eyes were positively locked on one another, hungry, frightened tiger and eager, tough gazelle. They might have been animals in the wilderness spotting one another across the expanse of earth, river and trees. The tiger wanted his prey, and the gazelle in fact wanted to be caught.

And yet, that dangerous feeling. It felt both thrilling and off-putting.

Hours later, around 3pm, Craig was talking with a gaggle of new, inexperienced writers—word had gotten around that he was the book editor of a famous author everybody had heard of—when, out of the blue, as he was fumbling his words and gesticulating like some kind of literary cretin, he spotted her again.

She was walking directly towards him.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He eyed her and forgot what he was saying to the aspiring writers. He knew his mouth was moving, opening and closing, but he didn’t know what it was spouting. Probably some bullshit about working on their craft before coming to an editor-for-hire. (The same useless drivel he always spouted at these conferences.) The woman walked directly at him…but she wasn’t looking at him. And at the last second she pivoted slightly to the right and walked to another man, a tall guy in bright white jeans and a bright, starched white collared-shirt. She laughed—a shrill laugh—and shook the man’s hand. But just then, she looked over at Craig and, totally unsmiling, she said everything he needed to know with her eyes.

Around 6:30 that night it all finally came to a head.

Dinner. He got his plate and stood in line and scooped up his salad and pinto beans and lemon chicken with asparagus and added a glass of Chardonnay. Why not. Food and glass in hands, he turned and scanned around for a table. He picked one randomly, close to the very center of the main ballroom. The omnipresent chatter of 500 people was low at the moment. People were tired from the long day, and hungry.

There would be a speech by the guy who ran the conference—a Hunter S. Thompson sort, a wild man in his sixties who had once been a well-respected screenwriter in Hollywood and who now wrote formulaic bestsellers—and then the Main Speaker, none other than the thriller megastar, Lee Child. He’d never liked Child’s books. He found the short, clipped sentences—like Hemingway on crack—disorienting and manic; he felt annoyed, boxed-in by the famous author’s prose. But whatever: He was a sensation.

Craig pulled a metal chair out and sat, gently placing his wine and plate in front of him on the table which was covered by a maroon-colored, fancy tablecloth. Soon, within 15 minutes, the chairs around him filled, a circle of writers all chattering and laughing like hyenas and buffoons. Only two seats, directly across from him, still sat open. (There were ten chairs in all, around the circular table.) One was filled by an old man he’d seen around, some guy with a pot-belly and short gray hair; his name tag said “Ray.” The quintessential all-American bourgeois. Wife probably encouraged him to attend the conference, probably read something he wrote and told him “you should write a book.” He obviously agreed, hence he was here.

And then, like a fucking movie—however unlikely the plot; real life was often weirder than fiction—the mystery woman approached, from behind him. She daintily walked around the table, coming from his right, passed sitting person after sitting person after sitting person, slowed, then stopped at the one empty chair. She avoided his gaze, which tormented him. She smiled at Ray and said, “Is this seat free?”

Ray, his mouth full with potato salad, looking up at her and catching her breasts behind the screen, hesitated, did a double-take, did that overt male sexist thing where he obviously scanned her body up and down all at once—amateur—and, gesturing with his hairy, meaty hand, said, “Please.”

She smiled at him, then smiled at everyone at the table…except for Craig.

She sat. His heart was thudding so hard in his chest that he worried he might faint. He needed to move, go, leave, stand up, go somewhere, do something. But he didn’t. Instead he just sat there and did nothing.

The dinner wore on like that. He looked down at his plate, mostly. He drank his glass of wine too fast. When a waiter walked by he asked for another glass. He drained that, too. Jesus. Get yourself together, Craig, he told himself. When he finally managed the courage to glance up at look at her, he saw that she was madly engaged in conversation with none other than Ray. Ray!!! No way. C’mon, buddy, you don’t even stand a chance of a chance of a chance. Everyone else was busy in loud conversation. Then someone tapped the mic up on the stage 50 yards off and people started to quiet down and the Hunter S. Thompson conference creator spoke. Most of it slipped through his mind. All Craig caught were the words “grateful,” “success,” “proud of the attendance,” “book business,” and a couple other key words. Hard, sustained clapping. A handful of people even stood up for an ovation. And then Lee Child walked up to the stage and started talking.

Craig didn’t hear a single word. He was using all his energy to avoid gaping at the woman. He wished more than anything that she’d just get up and go, walk away, exit his life. He had planned for this conference to be relaxing, a sort of mini-vacation getaway and, instead, it had turned into a lusty, heart-pounding desperate mental game. He hated it. And of course he loved it, too. He couldn’t have stopped it if he’d tried. He was a victim of biology just as she was. He put his head down and finished his meal. He felt her gaze on him, or at least he imagined he did. Was he blushing? Was anyone else paying attention? What was Lee Child saying?

At last it happened.

The waiter came again and he ordered his fourth Chardonnay. Craig accidently looked up and caught eyes with her. Shit. Fuck. Damn it. He’d been hoping with all his might to avoid that. And he was positively on fire that it had happened. Volcanic. Calm down, he told himself. Was his hand shaking? It seemed as if it was. Jesus Christ. Self-control, Craigy-boy; self-control.

He noticed, then, that only four people were left around the table. Ray was gone. It was just himself, her, and two late forties women, one with gray short hair and intense blue eyes. He and the woman ogled each other across the table. They both fingered glasses of white wine. He felt a little buzzed. He liked that. He wanted more of that. She slowly twirled her glass by the thin stem. He realized that there was just the faintest whisp of a grin on her ruby-red lips. Her skin—he had somehow failed to notice this before—was nearly pale. She was very white. She might have been 38, perhaps 40, but she still had all her good looks. An older woman. Mrs. Robinson.

They stared at each other awkwardly, still silent, all the time silent, without uttering a single word.

Craig realized Lee Child had just said his finishing remarks. Briefly, he glanced away from her and saw Child waving on stage, smiling his big fake smile, and everyone (almost) was suddenly clapping wildly and enthusiastically, on their feet, cheering. Lee Child was like a Homeric figure for many in the book world. His books may not have been “serious literature,” but they sold in the hundreds of thousands. He was like the J.K. Rowling of thrillers.

When he looked back at her the two women in their forties were standing up, snatching their glasses of red wine, laughing about something together—as if in secret code—and then they walked off, cutting like sharks through a huge school of tuna.

She didn’t waste any time.

“What’s your name?” Her voice was about what he’d expected: High but not too high, with even a very slightly masculine edge. He liked it. She still twirled the wine glass slowly by the stem. Finally she stopped and, lifting the glass to her lips, she gulped down the entire half-full glass.

Name…name…what’s your name…

She laughed then. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Oh, sorry,” he said, feeling the crimson blooming across his cheeks. What an idiot he was. He swallowed, trying to gain composure. Keep your shit together, Ace, he reprimanded himself. What was wrong with him?

“Craig,” he said finally. “Craig Ellroy.”

“Writer?”

His nerves were fraying. Anxiety slithered like a King Snake throughout his chest and solar plexus. This was nearly unbearable. He needed more wine.

“No, no…no,” he added emphatically. “Book editor.”

She flipped a chunk of her long, thick black hair casually over her shoulder with a pale hand and it nearly undid him completely. Women never understood what they did to men, what their physical bodies made men need, want, seek out in an almost spiritual sense, beyond the mere physical, though of course there was that, too. A woman could save or utterly ruin a man, just by her very existence, just by her simple presence in a room.

“Ah,” she said, ceasing to twist the wine stem for a moment. “A crusher of writer’s dreams.”

He laughed awkwardly and he hated the sound of the laugh the instant it flew from his mouth. He sounded too eager, too upset, too anxious and nervous, too embarrassed and out of control. Clearly she held the cards here. But was it really a game like he felt it was? Yes. Of course it was a game. Everything between men and women was a game. How could it not be?

“Sometimes,” he said, trying and failing—he felt—to sound rational, intellectual and calm. “I try not to crush too many dreams. What do you do?”

She smiled this time and pointed to her little white nametag, which was, of course, directly over a breast, pinned just over from the screen. To the left of the nametag he could just barely make out the tiny outline of a jutting nipple. But she must be wearing a bra, he speculated. She had to be. C’mon.

The nametag—he had to squeeze his eyes and focus mightily on multiple levels to read it—said, in thin black sharpie, Lenora Smith. Acquisitions Editor, Simon & Schuster.

“Lenora,” Craig said, almost automatically as if a robot. “That’s an unusual name.”

She rolled her eyes, then sipped on her glass of white wine. “My mother named me. I’m French and English. Lenora stems from ‘Lena,’ going back to the ancient, original Latin. ‘Lena’ means ‘alluring’ or ‘charming.’”

She certainly WAS alluring.

“I like it. Lenora. A very…”

“Charming name?” she giggled.

He laughed and again it felt like he might explode. He felt dirty, vile, teenage, amateurish, pathetic. “Right.”

Lenora finished off her wine. She daintily wiped her pale, small chin. He tried to avoid looking at her chest.

Abruptly she pushed her chair back from the table. She stood up. He felt incredibly glad and also profoundly alarmed. Where was she going? What was she doing?

For just the slightest nanosecond adjusting her bra, Lenora gazed around her. Craig followed her craven eyes. The stage was empty. Most of the tables were empty now. People had moved on. How much time had passed? What time was it? Where was everyone else going? Waiters were slowly clearing away the plates and wine glasses; he heard the light tinkle of glass tinking against more glass, and plates clanking against more plates.

He faced her again. She was eyeing him seriously now. Her eyes seemed to be burning holes in his skull. She looked as if into the depths of his sordid soul. Just then, of all times, he thought momentarily of his ex. What a strange juxtaposition, placing his mousy, codependent, good and loveable ex alongside this witchy, black beauty.

“Well?” she finally said, not a wink or a smile or a sign of anything whatsoever. “Are you coming?”

For a moment he just sat there. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t seem to move. His body was bolted to the chair. Finally snapping out of it, he dutifully pushed his chair back and stood. He gripped his wine glass and downed the rest of it.

He walked to her. She took his hand, shaking it. Her hand was small and pale and cold. And he once more felt a mix of lust, shame and embarrassment. Men were apes, women were the witch-doctors who controlled apes. Men were simple, dumb creatures and women were refined, sophisticated, intellectual and good at psychological warfare. Psy-Ops.

“Follow me,” she said, and, holding his hand, she led him across the ballroom.

They went to the little hotel bar. A few other staff were there: Two young Gen Z literary agents, a few scattered writers he’d seen here and there throughout the day, and, surprising him, alone at the very end of the bar, not being harassed by a soul, totally alone, and having a quiet conversation on his iPhone, was none other than Lee Child.

Life was strange.

They sat very close to each other on two tall, brown-leather barstools. The barstool stems were thick gold. He saw handprints along the shiny, otherwise buffed gold. They sat so close their knees nearly touched. She ordered a martini; he ordered another Chardonnay, his fifth. He was beginning to feel good; warm, loose, relaxed. Uninhibited, at least a little.

Halfway through her martini—she immediately ordered another one—he finished his wine and ordered his sixth. She was telling him about growing up in Long Island, how she’d lived in Manhattan (Upper East Side, Lenox Hill) for the past five years, how she’d been a literary agent for a while and hated it so had worked her way up first at Random House and then at Simon & Schuster first as assistant editor and then eventually becoming head acquisitions editor.

Lenora wore a certain perfume; it reeked of a sharp, hardcore vanilla mixed with some kind of honeyed, mint musk. Delicious, but also a little too heavy for Craig’s taste. Yet of course it worked on the animal side of him.

By the time she started telling him about the angry, abusive ex-boyfriend who happened to be an NYPD cop and who she was at the moment “taking a break from”—his palm was already planted firmly on her exposed, naked knee, her dress tugged back a little, as if inviting it. He hadn’t even recalled putting his hand there. It was just suddenly there. It was as if he’d suddenly woken into consciousness out of an alcoholic blackout to realize he was driving a car.

By his eighth glass of wine and her third margarita they were making out, breathing heavily into each other’s faces, her warm breath and wet tongue lapping his.

“My room,” she whispered loudly into his ear. She clutched both his hands and soon they were off the barstools and waving to the bartender who was cleaning a glass with a clean green rag, smiling at them as if he knew. They half-walked, half-stumbled across the bar, then down the plush red-carpeted hallway, then into the elevator. Craig thought of his own room, alone up there on the 11^th floor. His things. Who cared.

Once in the elevator—she pressed the 17^th floor—she shoved him against the wall and they made out hungrily, almost angrily. Then, shocking him, she knelt down on her knees, unzipped his jeans, pulled his dick out and started sucking. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe it. This was like a rated X movie. After a minute she stopped when the elevator slowed. He was hard as brick.

She grabbed his hand and pulled him behind her. It took her a minute, frustratingly, fumbling around in her small leather black purse for her keys, and then she found them and unlocked the door. They burst into the room. She closed and locked it behind them. And then they were moving together towards the queen-sized bed, shedding clothing left and right. When her massive breasts bubbled out he was delighted; they were as perfect as he’d imagined; better, even.

Naked, he on top, both slick with warm sweat and hard effort, he sucking on her nipples, he slid it inside her—no condom—and they were fucking, desperate and eager like two wild horses, going hard, she half screaming and he grunting. She was tight and warm and wet. She gave him everything and he gave her the same back. They danced together.

“I’m gonna cum,” she said. He went harder. “A little more.” Still harder.

She jerked her body underneath him, bucking, a spasm, and he knew she’d made it.

And then he came. They were both exhausted, drunk and breathing heavy.

He lay down next to her. She curled up into the crook of his arm. He smelled her perfume mixed with the warm sweat and odor of their physical bodies. He loved it. His heart was still pumping rapidly. They laid like that for a long time. Silent. Inert. His stomach moving gently up and down, up and down.

He fell asleep.

~

Part II

Manhattan