Gatsby

The eclipsing moon was a hard-edged wafer in the night sky, with a fat bite taken out of the upper left quadrant. Spheres passing in free-fall, Naomi thought, casting light, shadow and gravitational pull on one another. These things move according to laws which govern their movements, and in that sense are no freer than we are. She shivered as she gazed at the vanishing moon another long moment before the surprising October chill sent her back into the warmth and garlicky fragrance of her kitchen. The place seemed empty without the dog under foot. He’d been gone less than two weeks, but the pain of separation had not lessened even a little. Gatsby – what a name for a Chesapeake Bay retriever. The Great Gatsby. The late Great Gatsby. Since he’d died, Naomi and Jack had been grief-stricken and reticent with each other like the parents of a murdered child. Except for the ticking and pinging of the coal stove as the metal expanded and contracted, the house was silent. Jack drifted into the kitchen like a boat that had slipped its mooring. He avoided Naomi’s raised-eyebrow glance and busied himself at the sink, scrubbing baked-on grease from a cast-iron Dutch oven. “When you’ve finished that, why don’t you light a fire in the other room?” Naomi said. “Already did.” Jack rinsed the pot and scrubbed it with a clean dish towel. “Thanks, Hon.” Naomi stepped up behind her husband, quietly on slippered feet, put her arms about his neck and rested her cheek against the left side of his head. “Don’t do any more dishes. Pour us a cognac and let’s just go sit by the fire. Dishes’ll keep until morning.” “Look at the moon first,” Jack said. The disk of the moon had metamorphosed into a dark copper shadow, with only a fingernail of bright silver on its lower edge. The night was still and cold, except for an intermittent mewing screech from the woods across the creek. “Raccoon,” Naomi said. “Eclipse must have him upset.” “Gatsby....” Jack’s voice caught in his throat. “Bastards.” “I know, Honey. Gatsby would have howled at that moon. Or at that raccoon. He was always howling at something. That’s probably why someone poisoned him. But we don’t know who. What’s done’s done. Let it be.” “Let it be like hell.” Jack pulled open the door, held it for Naomi and followed her inside. He grabbed the Martell VSOP bottle and two big snifters from the cabinet beside the kitchen hearth. For Naomi, there was more to it than grief, really. It was sad enough that Gatsby was gone, but Naomi was frightened at the thought someone had killed him. She slept no more than half an hour at a time. Sudden noises startled her – especially when she was alone in the house. She felt violated somehow, raped, taken against her will, assaulted and battered. She felt certain Jack sensed it, too, but in the way a man takes it when he’s been robbed or ambushed. She was sure a bubble of rage was building up behind the stricken look on his face. She hoped she’d be able to help him – without being destroyed herself – when it burst. In the meantime, Naomi steadied herself with sips of brandy, tenacious skirmishes with housecleaning, and cultivation of the herb garden in her kitchen windowsill. Jack prodded the burning logs in the fireplace, sending a spray of embers up the flue. “Seems to be drawing all right, “ he said. “Remember how Gatsby used to love a fire?” “We should go away for a while,” Naomi said.