Chocolate Chocolate Moons (2 page)

When I see CC inch closer to Drew and swoon, I toss inside my salad costume. I hear “Your green cheese would feel so good in my pot.” Then she bends and sinks her teeth so deeply into Drew’s onion ring that it spins.

Suddenly I feel like a pizza cut into more than eight slices, more stunned than if I saw the prophet Elijah actually show up at a seder table, more grated than a Parmesan cheese. How could love have made me blind? Like those nights Drew came home late not hungry for anything. Anything! And me chalking it up to hard work and ambition, which as it turns out, depending on definitions, was in fact technically true.

CC and Drew dance the first dance. They circle near me. “Drew, sweetheart,” she says in a loud voice so I can hear, “you are the best melted cheese I ever ate.”

Hearing that, I yank the green peas that hang like cultured pearls around my neck and hurl them at Drew.

“Ouch,” he winces holding up his hands to ward them off. “Cut it out, Molly.”

Several peas land in CC’s fondue pot. “I hate vegetable fondue,” she hisses in a spiteful baby thin voice, the kind of jeering voice that makes me want to push a chocolate cream pie into her face but I would never because I couldn’t disrespect and ruin all that chocolate.

Instead, using what’s at hand I rip the carrot sticks off my shoulders; free the tomatoes from my chest, sever the corn dangling from my waist, tear the curly endive wrapped around my hips, and hurl everything at them.
Splat!

CC’s light goes out under her fondue pot. She reaches up for a fondue fork.

I glare at Drew.

Drew looks at CC. She lowers her arm and narrows her eyes. He wipes tomato pieces from his face.

CC glowers at me.

I look back at Drew.

None of us say anything. We all know what it means.

On our way home Drew and I are more rumpled than empty candy wrappers. Finally, in bed, as my head hits the pillow, he murmurs, “Night.” It was not good.

The next morning before I can say
granola,
Drew’s bags are packed and he announces that he is moving in with CC.

“What does she have that I don’t have?” I sob to a friend. “Is she prettier than me?”

“Nope.”

“Is she smarter than me?”

“No way.”

“Have a better personality? Is more charming?”

“No to the first and no to the second. I can’t believe you don’t know. Everybody knows.”

“Knows what?”

“CC is the daughter of Carbon Copies, owner of Carbon Copies Media, the Moon’s largest media conglomerate. And CC is his heir apparent.”

2

D
REW’S AFFAIR WITH
CC doesn’t last. He and CC have such differences that they can’t even agree on how many filets in a mignon, something the average school child knows. But when they went head to toe about what’s beyond the bed and the bath, a topic Drew had given many hours of serious thought, he knew he made a mistake. Nor did the job CC promised that her father would give him materialize. Not after Drew reached over Carbon Copies’s desk to shake his hand and knocked to the floor and shattered his rare autopen-signed photo of George from Washington with his arm draped around redheaded Cherry Tree lying about.

After enduring two weeks of the silent treatment from CC, and trying to salvage what was left of his troubled relationship, Drew buys her a gift. It’s in a small black velvet box.

“I hope it’s what I think it is,” she says, crunching several Fontina cheese-coated potato chips.

“How can it not be, sweetheart?”

CC opens the box, peeks inside, and frowns.

“What’s the matter, don’t you like it?”

“But it’s a diamond ring.”

“Yes. Ten carats.”

“Are you completely out of touch? What’s the matter with you? Ever since so many diamonds were discovered on the outer planets, the diamond market has tanked. No one wants diamond jewelry anymore. How cheap can you be?” She closes the box and gives it back to Drew. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Drew is stunned.

CC smiles slyly and bats her eyelashes. “Now, a lump of coal,” she coos, “that’s a rare and beautiful thing.”

Bored and disappointed with his life, Drew sees an ad for Congress Drugs, a company that makes the Freedom Plan, low-calorie diet alternatives. Congress Drugs is looking for plus-size sales representatives who will lose weight eating their products. Those selected will have their “before” and “after” pictures featured in ads. However, the company’s headquarters is on Mars.

“Mars?
Mars?
A red rock millions of miles from a good restaurant?” shouts CC jumping around like fire ants just nested in her cleavage. “Why would anyone want to go to Mars? Why would anyone want to eat fake food? Why would anyone want to lose weight? Big is beautiful!” And with that she takes the chocolate cannoli that she was eating and crushes the shell between two fingers. “That’s what I think about going to Mars! And don’t think I won’t tell my father about this, you post-nasal drip!”

Meanwhile I have to learn to cope without Drew. Fighting back tears I make a turkey sandwich. I spread honey mustard over a crunchy seeded roll. I feel a little better knowing that I could never be depressed enough to eat boar’s heads, whose signs I saw in my Earth history class hanging in every twenty-first century deli.

Soon I hear that Drew left CC and was headed for Mars to work in some kind of diet food company. I feel like a newly risen popover waiting to be buttered and bitten. I cut and lighten my hair, buy a sexy black skirt with some swing to it, and splurge on a bright yellow spandex blouse that shows off the right places.

I wander into a bookstore and finger the Moon’s best seller,
Is It a Food If It Has Less Than 100 Calories?
Then I go to my favorite place: the café.

A young man sits alone tapping a small screen.

“May I join you?” I ask. “My name is Molly Marbles.”

He shifts a broad shoulder and looks up. My heart flutters. His deep and sonorous voice says, “Cortland Summers. But only if you will share today’s special: a pound of melted garlic butter with a side order of focaccia bread.”

“My favorite,” I say, wishing he had said chocolate decadence cake.

Cortland’s brown hair is twisted with a clip that looks like a G clef. Earrings like little solar systems dangle from his ears. His eyes are as dark and dense as chocolate cherries. He wears black jeans and a black sweatshirt with lightning-gold lettering that says “Cracked Craters.”

I lean in, making sure my blouse hints at what lies beneath. “And the Cracked Craters are…?”

“My band,” he says thumping his chest. “I write music. Maybe you’ve heard “Like a Floating Stone”? Third-place runner-up for a Naughty Nebula.”

“No, but I’d love to hear it.” We add our contact codes to our palm directories, a calling device that looks like a tiny dot in the center of our left palms.

Soon thereafter I receive a chocolate decadence cake with a little cube on top containing a holograph of Cortland and his band in concert. For the next twenty-eight day moon month, a cake with a cube arrives. I’m so overwhelmed I can’t tell if I’ve got a sugar high or I’m in love.

Next, Cortland and the Cracked Craters stand outside my window. He croons the mid-twentieth-century hit “Earth Angel.” When I hear him say, “five, six, seven, eight,” and the beat rises, I run outside, hair flying, panting to the rhythm. He grabs me from the doorway, spins me like a dreidel, gets down on one knee and pops the question.

“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes,” I shout. “A thousand splendid moons!”

Our wedding is held in a domed crater covered with white silk flowers. My dress makes me look like a cream puff bouncing down the aisle. As Cortland and I exchange rings, The Craters play “Clair de Lune.” My parents, who pay for the wedding, say that if they knew how much food a plus-size person’s reception needed, they would have been less generous. But aside from remarks about tapping into their retirement savings, they are happy for me, especially because I am not marrying Drew Barron, about whom they now admit they had reservations.

I work for the MTA, the Moon Transit Authority, giving out parking tickets.

“You know, Cortland, I’m very overqualified for this job.”

“What makes you say that?” he asks, annoyed because I’ve interrupted him reworking “Moon Rover,” his latest composition.

His finger jabs the delete key.

“But it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to be working there much longer.”

Silence. More deleting.

“I’m pregnant,” I say.

Cortland looks up. “Pregnant?”

“Twin girls.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure. It’s not hard to be sure.”

Cortland takes a breath and holds it for a very long time processing the information. I wait until his eyes open wide, meaning: all clear. “Everyone’s naming their children after places on Earth. What do you think of
Los Angeles
and
Quebec?
”

“Los
Angeles
as in ‘Lois’ and ‘Becky’ for
Quebec,’
he muses. “I like it.”

“And I’m carrying them internally rather than egg-crating them at ‘Free Delivery.’ It’s more expensive, but I want to do it.”

“Expensive?” Cortland sweats.

For years Cortland moonlights as a real estate salesman and is very successful. We live in a polished stone condo that is built into the side of a crater. Its cheerful bright colors offset the stark rugged landscape outside the crater’s protective dome. We have lots of interesting friends, take a yearly vacation to a ranch in a canyon called Canyon Ranch, and, as I love to cook, give wonderful dinner parties. But best of all, blond, curly-haired Becky and Lois dance and sing to Cortland’s music like songbirds and win every children’s talent contest. By the time they are fifteen, they are tall, willowy, and graceful. As proud parents we think they could become stars. Life is good. I have all I have ever wanted.

But one day while reading the
Larousse Gastronomique,
and trying to decide if I should make puffed-sushi-rice-crusted salmon or duck breast in a coriander fig sauce, Cortland comes up the stairs from his padded basement studio.

“Can I talk to you about something?” he says in a way that makes me death-grip the
Larousse
like a floatable seat cushion before the plane hits water. Unfortunately, I’ve learned from experience that this innocently worded sentence is usually a prelude to information that leads to sleepless nights filled with overeating everything in sight, including dried bouillon cubes and extra-strength All Bran.

“I’ve invested all our money in a new shopping center, sweetheart.”

“All our money?” My voice rises as I digest the words:
all our money.

“Well, all that makes a difference.”

“A difference: as in for food, clothing, and shelter?”

Cortland stomps around the room. “Things just didn’t work out as I planned.”

“Meaning?”

“We’re broke.”

“Broke? As in, all gone?”

“It was such a wonderful opportunity. Near the long prairies, a beautiful spot and so cheap.”

“Aren’t the long prairies on the side of the Moon that the Earth never sees?”

Cortland sighs. “That’s right. I thought it was a minor matter, but as it turns out, no one wants to buy advertising space because Earth can’t see the ads.”

“What are we going to do?” I stand and walk to a dish of candy and stuff the largest Chocolate Moon into my mouth.

“I’ve already called my cousin, Billings Montana.”

“Billings? Billings lives on Mars!”

“His Little Green Men Pizza chain is expanding, along with hundreds of new communities.”

“So?”

“Sooooo,” he repeats, dragging out this one-syllable word into as many parts as possible, “if we relocate to Mars, he can guarantee work and in time make me a partner.”

Cortland puts his arm around me, but I lean away. “There must be other options,” I venture, trying to bolster a losing cause. “How about selling glow-in-the-dark dental fillings?”