Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin

Author:Armistead Maupin [Maupin, Armistead]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780061844270
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-06-03T13:23:09+00:00

The voyage to the island took a little over an hour and a half. Mercifully, the smog lifted and the temperature dropped as soon as we were out of sight of land. The seats on the boat were airline style, really quite comfy, but the view they afforded was completely lost on me. Sensitive to this fact, Neil led me out to the slippery deck several times, where I clung for dear life to the bottom rung of the railing and made appreciative noises about the color of the water. A whey-faced lady in a sundress and Barbara Bush beads watched this awkward ritual with smug, philanthropic glee, as if I were some midwestern orphan with leukemia catching my first glimpse of the mighty Pacific. “She must enjoy that,” she said to Neil, apparently perceiving me to be deaf as well. For Neil’s sake, I restricted my response to a brief, murderous glare.

Our first glimpse of Avalon was amazing. The town was almost ramshackle, miraculously undone, The Land That Time Forgot. Simple wooden cottages as random as shipwrecks tumbled down the dry hills to a pristine crescent-shaped beach, at the end of which stood the great circular ballroom, as natural there as the dot on a question mark. There were dozens of sails on the harbor. And dipping gulls. And chimes, so help me, as if to welcome us, ringing from a distant hillside. Neil and I both wore expressions of wordless wonder. Blink once, I remember thinking, and the whole damned thing disappears.

Up close, of course, it was easier to detect the chinks in the fantasy. The eroding crag above the boat landing had been repaired with sprayed-on concrete, and there were far too many lard-assed tourists like me (well, almost like me) slouching along the promenade in search of diversion. Even worse, some of the more recent architecture (a sort of faux-Spanish postmodern) had lost touch with the charming artlessness of the rest of the town. Still, I liked the place a lot, and Neil did too. We felt unreasonably proud of ourselves, as if we were the first people ever to discover it.

We had an hour or so before the funeral, so we camped out on a waterfront bench and let the motley parade of humanity pass us by. The people who weren’t on foot were in goofy little white golf carts, since cars are verboten on major portions of the island. I couldn’t help grinning at the sight of these Toontown vehicles. Here was one place, at least, where life seemed a little closer to my own scale.

Neil pored over a street map he’d bought at the landing.

“How far are we from the church?” I asked.

“Not far.”

“Let’s see.”

He pointed to it on the map.

“That’s far,” I said.

“Is it?”

I nodded. “Unless you’ve got time for two funerals.”

He chuckled. “We’ll rent a golf cart, then.”

I made a face at him. “You can’t go to a funeral in a golf cart.”

“Who can’t? That’s what they do here.”

So that’s what we did.

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