Chapter 37 - Luna
The bay feels lonelier once the trucks are gone.
I stand there a while after Milton sweeps the ash back out and brings the door down, listening to the quiet settle in behind it.
The huge space is less busy than the last few frantic days of getting everything set up and built.
Now it’s just a new routine of daily chores to keep it all working.
I look around the space and realize this is it, this is home now and an idea pops into my head, so I go looking for my grandmother.
Gigi’s standing underneath one of the huge ventilation fans with her hair in a scarf, coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other with the smoke being sucked up by the fan. She gives me a wry smile when I step up next to her.
"I miss doom scrolling Instagram and seeing what new drama has hit the author community that day." She looks around the bay and sighs. Maybe I should write an apocalypse romance to keep the monotony of our new lives at bay."
"I have a better idea. We should have a party," I tell her.
She turns to me so fast her ash falls to the floor. "Say more."
"Tonight, in the cafeteria, a house…or mine, I guess, warming party.
Everybody from both groups in one room celebrating our new home.
" I lean against the wall beside her. "The main work's done, we're not dying today, and we've been living beside those people for days without learning their names or getting to know them.
That needs to change if this is going to work and a party is a great way to do that. "
"I know all their names."
"You would."
"I also know which one of them snores and I know who is sleeping with who but you’re right." She stubs out her cigarette and tosses it in a can set there for just that. "I'm in. What can I do to help?"
"I need Clayton to say yes so it's their party too, not just ours."
Gigi pulls the scarf off her head and shakes out her hair. "Then let's go be diplomats."
The visitor centre stairs come up into the cafeteria, and the view through that two-storey glass wall isn’t pretty to look at anymore.
Ash slides down the outside of it in dirty grey sheets.
The parking lot beyond is a smooth field of the stuff, and the light coming through it makes everything look dull.
Clayton is at a table near the window with a clipboard and a cup of coffee. He stands when he sees us, and his handshake arrives before his hello does like he needs to charm us for a vote. "Ladies. What can I do for you?"
I explain about the party I want us to have here in the cafeteria with both groups tonight to help people get to know each other and celebrate our new home. Clayton nods the whole time I'm talking, which I should feel good about but somehow it feels like he’s just humoring me.
"A morale boosting event." He repeats it back in the tone of a man filling in a form. "That's good thinking. Very good thinking. We used to have a supper and dance at the community hall a few times a year to bring the community together. We’d get some pretty good turnouts for them."
"So that's a yes?"
"That's a yes from me." He spreads his hands. "I'll pass the word down to our folks. People have been low after everything they’ve lost. There’s no denying that."
"That's what I'm hoping to fix."
"You know, when I was Mayor..." he trails off when Marlene comes up behind us with a stack of photocopies clutched in her hands and a quick glance at them shows me it’s bible passages that she must have printed out on the copier machine we left in the one office.
I feel the whole room change temperature at her arrival.
"A party." She sets the pages down on the next table without taking her eyes off me. "With everything the Lord has shown us these past days, that's what's being planned? Dancing and carousing?"
Gigi makes a small sound beside me.
"It's a supper, and maybe some music, a little bit of fun to help us all get to know each other," I tell her. "That's all it is."
"That's how it starts." Marlene folds her hands. "Carousing leads to fornication. It always has."
"Listen." Gigi says sweet enough to pour on pancakes. "Don't make me be mean, alright? I've got a pocket full of sunshine I don't want to waste today."
"Gigi."
"I'm just saying."
"There is no shortage of fornication in this building already by you without encouraging more with a party." Marlene's chin comes up. "Not with the example being set for the young people around here. Some of us still have standards, even now."
"Oh my God." Gigi presses a hand flat to her chest. "Somebody get me some pearls to clutch."
"You take His name in vain in front of me?" Marlene snarls at her.
"Lady, I take His name in vain in front of everybody, it's very inclusive of me.
" Gigi steps forward, and every bit of the sweetness drops off her.
"Now listen carefully, because I'm only going to say this the polite way once.
You can do all things through Christ except try me.
You keep coming at my granddaughter and you'll be dealing with His relative from down south instead, and that one doesn't do forgiveness. "
Marlene's mouth drops open in shock and outrage, but she doesn’t say anything. Her whole face pinches in on itself, sour and tight around the lips like she has a lemon stuck in there.
"Marlene." Clayton takes her arm. "Go on down and see if Andrea needs help with the little ones."
"Clayton." She protests but he cuts her off.
"Go on now."
She gathers up her scripture pages, and the look she gives me on the way past has nothing holy in it at all.
Clayton waits until her steps fade on the stairs. "I apologize for my sister. I'll speak with her."
Gigi takes a deep breath and spears him with a look. "That’s not the first time she’s made nasty remarks about people here. She’s been spreading her misplaced judgement around to anyone who will listen."
I duck my head and look at my feet hearing that and I feel my face getting red with embarrassment.
I never told anyone what that woman said to me, but I should have known that if she was willing to say it to my face, she would say it behind my back.
Of course, Gigi would have heard about it. She thrives on gossip.
"She lost a great deal." He rubs the back of his neck. "We all did, but Marlene lost her church along with everything else, and that woman built her whole life inside those walls. She doesn't know what to do with any of this."
"I understand that, and you all have my sympathies, truly." Gigi's tone gentles maybe ten percent. "But she cannot be spewing that kind of nonsense at my girl. I won’t stand for it."
"You're right." He nods. "You're right, and I'll talk to her about dialling it back. You have my word."
"Thank you." I put my hand on Gigi's arm before she can add anything. "We'll see you tonight, then? Six o'clock."
"Six o'clock." The handshake comes back out. "And thank you for including us, Luna. It means something."
Gigi steers me toward the stairs, muttering about bitter dried up bible thumpers.
At the top step I glance back over my shoulder and see Clayton is watching us go.
Nothing about his face matches the man who just shook my hand.
It's flat and hard and looks a little assessing.
He holds it there for a second, then turns his back and picks his clipboard up again.
My stomach drops somewhere down around my boots.
Gigi goes down the stairs hard enough to make the handrail vibrate. "That woman needs an exorcism and a hobby."
"Gigi, let's not turn this into more than it needs to be." I catch up to her at the bottom of the flight. "We'll just be the bigger people about it. Then there's no conflict and everybody gets to keep living here."
"Hell no." She stops dead and points a finger at me. "Never be the bigger person with someone like that. All being the bigger person does is give them permission to keep doing it. No, if they go low, peach, we are going straight down to hell and dragging them with us in return."
"I don't think that's a good idea while we're all trapped in here together." My voice is tight and worried. "There's enough trying to kill us outside. We can't turn the inside into a war zone too."
Gigi makes a noise that isn't agreement, but she shakes her head and lets it go.
"Forget about them for now." She loops her arm through mine and starts us walking again. "I think we go ahead with tonight anyway, and I think we make pizza."
"Pizza?"
"We have flour coming out of our ears, and there are four ovens in that kitchen upstairs that can bake a bunch at a time.
We can do the rest in the camper ovens." She's warming up to it, gesturing with her free hand.
"Everybody builds their own. Kids love that and so do adults, and there's not a soul alive who doesn't cheer up over pizza. "
"That's actually perfect," I tell her, and I mean it.
She talks the whole way down about toppings and who she's putting to work grating cheese. I nod in the right places while only part of me listens. The rest of me is back up in that cafeteria, watching a man shake my hand with his face doing one thing and his eyes doing another. I came up those stairs to try to build a bridge, to erase the line dividing us, and I keep thinking about which side of it everyone I love would end up on if it doesn’t work
The motorhome kitchen turns into a disaster area by two o'clock.
Gigi has flour up to her elbows and a dish towel over one shoulder, working three bowls at once.
She's trying to teach my best friend and Jules's little sister something that was never taught in their fancy rich people kitchens.
It isn't going well but it is very, very amusing for me to watch.
"It's on me." Briar whines while holding both hands up in front of her face with her fingers spread wide. Dough hangs off every one of them in long gooey strings. "Why is it on me? I did exactly what you said."