MOTHS

MOTHS

 Ben walks in the night—with the night, as with a friend. 

The moths don’t bother Ben, though they cloud the streetlights like kinetic haloes. Stray dogs, broken glass, cigarette butts don’t bother him, nor the tatters of paper that blow against his pant legs and cling there.

Nothing bothers Ben. Not even the children who smoke and inject in shadowed doorways. Ben’s heart is light as a feather tonight. If he died right now, the guardian at the holy gate would put his heart in one pan and a feather in the other and find their weight equal. Then Ben would be admitted into the holy world. That would be fine, but he is in the holy world already. What other world is there for one whose heart is feather light?

The girl who lies stretched across the doorway of a closed cut-rate department store, face down on cradling arms, wide awake in the sense of a caged cat that’s lost hope, has a heart more like a heavy suitcase. She is tired of carrying it. She’s carried it endless years without even undoing the latches to see whether the contents are her own or someone else’s. She would—almost—just as soon leave it at a bus stop. Then she would be heartless. Fine.

Ben is happy that every shop window offers him a little world. In one, a row of cups decorated with colorful birds: crested cardinal, orange tanager, Steller’s jay. In the next, three headless torsos wear V-necked sweaters in rust, forest, sea foam. Which would Ben choose? None; he doesn’t need them, though he pauses to admire. The Gay & Lesbian Bookstore—nothing about sex just now, thank you. Sex means wanting, and Ben wants nothing. He is perfect, as the night is perfect, as the world is perfect with nothing added or taken away.

Suddenly, Ben pauses: between two windows, in the gaping arch of a store entrance, a bum lies face down on the black terrazzo. No, not a bum; a homeless person. A girl—rumpled rump of her jeans, legs stretched out straight, the whorled soles of her sneakers. Drunk? High? No, she’s too stiff, as if standing at attention although face down on the terrazzo.

Hearing footsteps stop close by her head, the girl stiffens more. Her face shifts on the cradle of sleeve so one eye can open. The feet are not cop feet; good. The eye closes.

“Hey there,” says Ben, his voice feather-light. “That’s not a very good sleeping place you’ve found.”

Even here there are moths—dead ones, dying ones. Some, stepped on earlier, are nothing more than disintegrating remnants. A passing car scoops the doorway in its circle of light, leaves it dark. Across the street voices of runaways chatter, fade; they are smoking, the smell drifts everywhere. What are they drinking? Turpentine? Night listens, Ben listens: no answer.

“Girl. You. On the ground. That’s no place to be.”

The girl feels the (light) intrusion of a person’s hands shaking her by the shoulders. This person should go; he should just walk on. She tries to tell the person, but no words come. Trying harder, she finds a thing between moan and growl. Go away from my life, she wants to say. 

“Come on, we’re going to get you into a sitting-up position.”

Groan. Almost a word, fuuuohgod.

“Help me. Don’t be a sack, eh?”

“Hey!” That got her. She sits up sharp. “Don’t FUCK with me.”

“It hasn’t come to that yet, don’t worry. First you have to make some sense.”

“Right, sense. What even is sense?”

“What do you think? Whether you’re hurt, or ill. Whether someone knocked your teeth out and left you to choke. Whether you’re dying of starvation and could use a cheeseburger.”

“Leave me alone. Let me get back down.  It was good there.”

“Good? Strange kind of good, I’d say.”

It must be some air-borne sweetness that has brought them out by the thousands tonight. Moths hatch, streetlights stand brave against the beat of white wings.

Night walks; Ben and his angry girl walk with it. In other doorways, bodies sprawl, lounge, loaf, talking low, shooting up. All young, all without home. Where have they all come from? Ben sees them, smells the acrid drift of their smokes, feels the barbs of their looks. His heart, with its moth-like lightness, is an affront to them. Maybe they would like to kill him and eat him. Really, what else can they eat if not him? He cannot buy all of them a cheeseburger. Only this one, the one he found.

The girl sees them, too, but she doesn't look their way. They are not her friends; she doesn’t know them. She doesn’t know Ben. She doesn’t even know her own self; her self feels like a grubby interloper who has set up its homeless persona inside her alien clothes. She thinks about the cheeseburger more and more, though, as if it were a friend, waiting. Its rounded top, its bits of soft, dripping cheese around crusty edges. Her feet walk toward it, walk with Ben, with the night.

Moths—why are there so many? She waves them away; she screams at their bumping touch.

“They won’t hurt you,” says Ben’s voice, moth-wing light. “They just want the light, to get to the light.”

“They are crazy,” says the girl, her voice heavy as a suitcase. “I hate them.”

“They won’t hurt you, though.”

“It hurts me to look at them. I want them gone.”

But Ben can’t make them gone. Some things are simply the way they are. The moths are all around the streetlights. The runaway kids are all in the doorways and the alleys. That doesn’t mean Ben’s heart needs to be heavy. Things are the way they are.

“How far to the cheeseburger?” the girl wants to know. Ben laughs. It was a funny question, which means the girl is feeling better. How far to the cheeseburger. 

“I don’t know,” Ben says lightly. “I haven’t walked this street for a while. But it’s never very far to a fast food place.”

“Oh, you think? You don’t know. It can be a thousand miles.”

“No.”

“It was for me.”

“Once. But now you are with me. My heart is really very light, so a cheeseburger can’t be far off.”

The girl looks at him, sideways, meanly, full of weight. “You think you know so much. I don’t see any fast food place.”

Another doorway. Children cut their arms and watch the blood drop onto drifted refuse against chipped marble stairs that once were grand. Newborn babies are stuffed into stolen handbags and left beside—or inside?—apartment dumpsters. Cigarettes are lit, one from another, their smoke acrid against the flowery sweetness of the night.

Another streetlamp, another cloud of white moths. The girl bats at them. She says, “I hate these moths.”

Ben says, “They’re a new hatch. They will all be dead by morning.”

She says, “What a stupid idea. Whose stupid-ass plan was that?”

“God’s,” says Ben, frowning though still light. It does seem an odd arrangement. But things are the way they are.

A moth lights on the girl’s arm, on the cuff of her sweatshirt. Near her hand. “Hey look,” she says. “One landed on me!” She doesn’t brush it off.

 “It likes you,” Ben smiles.

“It likes me. I think it does.”

“Don’t hurt it.”

“I’m not. I wouldn’t! This one is mine.”

“It chose you.”

“I know. It feels safe on me.”

They walk on, Ben and the girl and the moth and the night.

“It’s not flying away. It likes me.” The girl looks at it closely but doesn’t want to breathe on it. “Can I save it? Can I take it home with me?”

“What home, girl?”

“Wherever we’re going. Can I take it?”

“It will die soon.”

“But I want it. It loves me, see? It hasn’t moved. It just flaps its wings and stays on. I want to save it.”

Ben says, but not as light now, “You can’t save moths. Their life is too short.”

“Not moths,” says the girl. “Just this moth. My moth. I call him Mothy. I want to save him.”

“You can try,” says Ben, not light at all now, painfully heavy with sudden vision. “You can try to save one moth who’s going to die anyway. One moth. There’s not much point in it.”

The girl looks at him again, sideways, meanly, full of weight. That suitcase, heavy from things not even hers—“Oh, really?” she says. Then she brushes the moth onto the ground. Steps on it. Grinds it underfoot. “Don’t bother about the cheeseburger,” she says. Then she fades away, into the night.