One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (40 page)

Clellen laughed. “I see someone is planning his gigolo agenda for the evening.”

They reached the end of the tunnel, which brought them to a pair of double doors. Pete opened them, and they all walked through into a large, high-ceilinged reception area with aluminum walls. There was a desk to the left. No one sat at it, but a big piece of cardboard was propped up on it with the word party, followed by an arrow pointing to a door at the rear.

The reception room was as nondescript as possible, and the music was getting louder. The teenagers had no other recourse but to cross the reception room and head farther into the mysterious maze. The door they headed to had a sign over it:
CONFERENCE Room 5
. They entered, and despite the music they had heard since entering the library, they were still surprised at the level of outlandish behavior being exhibited by the fifty or so full-grown adults, all dancing and drinking under the flashing lights of the large conference room. The tables and chairs lay piled up against one of the walls to make room for the bar, the sound system, the DJ, and the extraordinary crowd of mostly drunken people who appeared to have already danced half the night away and were obviously enthused about continuing into the wee hours of the morning.

No one noticed the party crashers. Clellen, not wanting to waste a single second, dragged Pete with her into the abyss of music and dancing, where she threw out every outlandish move possible. Pete, although an unimaginative dancer himself, laughed uproariously at Clellen’s antics. Hieronymus remained on the side and scanned the room for the one familiar face who might be able to help him, and certainly enough, there he was.

Uncle Reno.

Slue, still holding his hand, whispered in his ear, “Hieronymus, that man dancing with those two women—isn’t that your father?”

“No,” he answered. “That’s my uncle Reno.”

“He looks exactly like your father.”

“He does. Except he’s younger.”

The man was surrounded by partiers, and they watched him hop up and down, happily engage in all sorts of conversation, and laugh nonstop among the loud music and general aura of cheerful debauchery.
He has no idea his brother—my father—is in jail
! Hieronymus thought to himself.
Which means the police don’t really know of his connection to this whole miserable ordeal. Which means this library might be a safe place for a while
.

Bruegel had already found a place at the bar and was making the bartender laugh about something while the man poured what must have been two large glasses full of vodmoonka.

All along the walls were large, comfortable chairs, most of which were filled by revelers of all sorts and ages. It was difficult to understand the purpose of this party, or who these people were, except it was undeniably a stroke of luck it was happening at that moment, for now they did not have to seek out his uncle or wake him up.

Hieronymus and Slue began to walk directly to him, and just as they were about to start pressing themselves through the mass of dancers, Reno Rexaphin turned his face in their direction and suddenly realized who had just come to the party.

“Oh my God!” he shouted. “It’s Hieronymus!” He touched the elbow of a woman who was dancing next to him. ”Look who’s here! It’s my nephew!”

Reno barged through the crowd and ran to Hieronymus and gave him a huge and unbalanced hug that almost brought them both crashing to the floor. He had the unmistakable smell of liquor on his breath. The man was drunk.

“I don’t believe this!” he shouted. “What a wonderful surprise! How did you find out about my party? Did your father tell you? Is he here? Where is Ringo? Ringo, you old bastard!” he began to shout good naturedly, fully expecting Hieronymus’ father to be there. Then his eyes shifted to Slue.

“Oh my!” He grinned at Hieronymus for a second, then shifted his clownish grin back to the One Hundred Percent Lunar Girl.

“Hello, dear lady.” He took her hand and kissed it. Then he bowed. “Reno Rexaphin, at your service.” Unfortunately, he bowed down too far and fell to the floor. The woman he was with, wearing a gold-sequined

dress, quickly knelt to help him up.

Hieronymus glanced over at Bruegel and watched him down two glasses of vodmoonka in the same number of seconds. Clellen and Pete were doing something called the bird-dance, which was currently a popular number where everyone circles each other with their arms waving about like crazed hummingbirds…

Reno jumped in front of Hieronymus and placed his hands upon this nephew’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Hieronymus. I’m a little drunk.”

“That’s okay, Uncle Reno.”

“Is your father here?”

“No.”

“How did you get all the way out here?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Does your father know you’re here?”

“No.”

He nodded toward Slue. Then he half-whispered a question in Hieronymus’ ear.

“Is…is…is that your…is that your girlfriend?”

Hieronymus hesitated as he looked over at Slue, who was talking to the woman in the gold-sequined dress.

He smiled at his uncle.

“She’s your girlfriend, isn’t she?” asked Reno. “Well done, nephew! Well done!”

Slue came over with the woman in the gold-sequined dress.

“Hieronymus!” she beamed. “We’re in luck! This is Matilda—she’s going to let me into the law library!”

“Law library?” laughed Reno as he looked at Slue. "You’ve come all this way, you have the good timing to show up while we are having this excellent party, and the first thing you want to do is go to the law library?”

Slue disappeared with the woman named Matilda, who, as it turned out, was a staff librarian at the gigantic complex. She was sober. Uncle Reno was trashed. The occasion for the party was non-existent—every couple of weeks, one of the staff members would decide to throw a party for whatever excuse. The real reason was they were bored because this library was so far away from everything else on the Moon, and the workload was intense—not only was it a library in the storage sense of the word, it was the last refuge for paper books in the entire solar system. It was also a massive archiving operation. Thousands of books a day had to be scanned—the old-fashioned way—page by page, and because of the fragility of the books themselves, the only way they could be handled was by human hands. Needless to say, this was an ongoing project that would probably, by all estimates, continue for the next three hundred years, at least. The library was also understaffed. Reno loved going there for two reasons: As a professor of ancient literature he had access to the most extraordinary sources—the paper editions themselves. The research he accomplished there was unparalleled, and he loved working with the librarians and archivists in his never-ending quest to solve the puzzles of ancient literature.

The other reason was no less important but much less public. Reno led a double life. Unbeknown to his wife on Earth, Reno had a girlfriend at the library. She was a librarian. They had been lovers for years. Her name was Matilda. Hieronymus had no idea of this when she took Slue down to the law library.

Hieronymus was exhausted. He went over to one of the many couches shoved back against the wall, and he sat. The dance crowd became a little thinner, and he noticed Clellen doing another completely original take on one of the current pop dance hits of the day. Naturally, some people thought she was a complete eccentric, but most of the crowd thought she brought an extraordinary enthusiasm. In the middle of it, she turned to Hieronymus. She caught his eye and gestured for him to come over,
Come on, Mus
! she must have yelled, although he couldn’t hear her.
Come on, Mus! Join the party
! And just to her side, there was Pete, also shouting,
Come on, man! Get out here!
Even Bruegel was on another part of the dance floor, ripping it up with a group of drunken women who must have been in their thirties. They appeared to find him highly amusing. Hieronymous hesitated before jumping into the melee, after all, what fun was it to start dancing without Slue—on the other hand, he felt overwhelmed by an incredible melancholy. Soon, the police would catch up with him. Soon, he would never see his friends ever again. The feeling of certain doom, that time was running out, that this, the fun of being with friends from both the Loopie class and the Topper class, as well as the class in the middle as represented by Pete, was slipping away. They were coming to get him. It was time to dance. With Clellen, and with Slue as soon as she got back. With all the people there. To hop up and down, to wave his arms around, to be human, to have fun.

It was about to end, it was about to end…

He got up from the couch and jumped into the crowd, Clellen shrieking with delight, Pete bellowing out with laughter. Hieronymus let himself go, dancing his enormous troubles away on the far side of the Moon, deep within a cavernous vault, among thousands and millions and billions of books made of paper that had not been read for centuries and would most certainly never be read again.

You have never spoken to your mother
?

Uncle Reno, you are drunk.

I knew your mother many years ago
.

I figured that.

Not a word?

You know what she’s like. All she does is cry.

I think my brother is an ass.

Please, Uncle, don’t go there.

No, I’m serious. I love him. He’s my older brother. But what an idiot. Such a loser.

I wish you’d stop. It’s not easy to hear my uncle call my father those things.

Do you know why your mother cries all the time?

I don’t know. Because she’s stuck on the Moon? Stuck because of me?

No. That is not why she cries all the time.

Well, I guess it is very deep then. Very pathological.

Your father is the one who named you Hieronymus, right?

I guess so. I don’t really know. Probably. What does that have to do with anything?

You know something, your mother was a wonderful writer. Did you know that?

I knew that she once wrote a book.

She did not write a book—she wrote a novel. A wonderful novel.

Okay. So she wrote a novel. Great.

You’ve never read it?

Da told me that it was out of print. Out of circulation. Impossible to find.

Haven’t you ever been curious about your mother’s novel?

Reno, the woman sits in bed in a plastic raincoat crying all day.

She was not always like that.

And you were not always a drunk.

I am not “a drunk.” I AM drunk, right now. But I’ll be sober tomorrow. I don’t drink very often. Today is a special occasion.

What might that occasion be, Uncle Reno?

I forgot. I’ll have to ask Matilda when she comes back with your amazing little blue-haired friend. What is her name?

Slue.

A lovely name. Tell me, what do you think of Matilda?

I didn’t really get a good look at her.

Do you think she’s nice looking?

Sure.

You know, don’t tell your father, but me and her, we’re, ugh, she and I, we…

Please, I don’t want to hear this. You didn’t tell me this, okay?

She is…she makes me very happy…she is so…

You want some cofee, Reno?

Your mother, she told me something once…

I think I’m going to go back and dance a little more with my friends.

When your mother was young…

Oh, I almost forgot. Uncle Reno, can me and my friends all crash here tonight?

Uhhh, sure, Hieronymus. When Matilda gets back, she’ll set you all up in our dormitories. But before you crash, or before I pass out, there is something I have to give you. I discovered it last week, quite by accident. It’s a present. I was going to give it to you yesterday, but you were gone, and I had to get back here because we were having this wonderful party tonight. Don’t move from that couch. I’ll be right back. I’ll be…right…back…

Hieronymus sat for a while, so exhausted he could not get up. The music slowed down, and only a few couples were still out there, slow dancing. Among them were Pete and Clellen. During the entire time they were there, not once did they leave the dance floor. It must have been at least two hours. Hieronymus looked at his watch. It was about fve thirty in the morning. Nobody appeared to be leaving, or even preparing to leave. The bartender was still pouring drinks. Bruegel was on a couch between two women, and they were all laughing and clinking glasses and laughing some more. One of them had taken his top hat from him and was wearing it. Through the entrance, another team of caterers arrived. They pushed a fancy-looking table on wheels into the noisy room. It had a wide selection of barbecued meat piled onto big oval plates.
What kind of a party is this?
Hieronymus wondered.
Everyone here seems determined to keep on partying…