Idea in Stone | Page 5

fallen for this magic trick. He quietly followed as the cleric led him back to the front entrance of the church.
~
Stefan turned the corner to his street and walked under the canopy of trees. He saw a rental truck parked and knew it was for his house. Closer now, he watched men in blue jumpsuits moving large objects from the open rear of the truck to his front door -- boxes, gnarled antique furniture, and a procession of cello cases. Stefan stepped around the workers and boxes to get through the door.
"Stefan," he heard Delonia saying from somewhere in the mess. He kept moving, wanting nothing more than to reach his room, the place his friends jokingly referred to as The Fortress of Solitude. However, the notion of Superman living in his mother's basement had loserish implications he didn't like to think about.
"Stefan," repeated Delonia. She'd spotted him and closed in. He tried to dodge around a cello case, but his foot made contact with something disturbingly soft, and the thing made a hiss of feline protest. "There you are," said Delonia. "I wanted to ask you to stay home for supper tonight. It's the first night Cerise will be with us, and I thought it would be nice for us all to eat together."
"Mom, can you understand how galactically weird this is for me? You're asking me to have supper with my mother and her goddamned--"
"Hello Stefan," said Cerise, suddenly at his side.
"Hello," he replied. "How are you?"
"Frankly, I'm a bit nervous about the move. I was in my other house for a long time, and I'm not sure how the cats will adjust. And I don't want to come between you and your mother."
Feel free, he thought. "Well, thanks for being so honest."
The phone rang, mercifully ending the conversation. It stood on a table next to Stefan, but he made no move to answer it. Stefan watched as Delonia rushed awkwardly through the slalom course of detritus, then he picked up the phone and handed it to her. Offended on his mother's behalf, Cerise asked in a tone far too parental for his liking, "Why didn't you answer that for her?"
"I can't use the telephone."
Delonia covered the mouthpiece, aware of the exchange. "He hears things on it, voices," she said, wiggling a hand next to her ear.
Cerise looked at Stefan blankly.
"She exaggerates," he said. "It's just one voice."
"Oh." Not sure what to do with the information, Cerise picked up a cat.
~
Stefan took off the respectable-looking sweater he'd worn to the supper table, folded it up, and stuffed it in a drawer. He put on his cordless headphones and put a CD in the flat stereo on the wall. The upbeat music made him feel happy, and he danced around as he pulled off his trousers. He stood in front of the mirror in his T-shirt and Y-fronts. You are kinda short, he thought, and pretty skinny, except for that. He lifted his shirt and poked his small tummy. And you might lose your hair. He lifted his drooping bangs to inspect the tide-line with its V-shaped peak. But I think you're cute. His eyes were big and brown, set into a long face that tapered (maybe a little too much) into a small chin. His long nose led to a wide smile bracketed by long dimples. I have dimples, not lines, he thought. The whole effect was endearingly cute, but cartoonishly, friendly-cute. The aquarium guy was smoulderingly cute. I want to smoulder. People like smoulder. Smoulder, smoulder, smoulder. The word lost its meaning and sounded funny, foreign.
He hit the Stop button on the stereo, hung up his headphones, and dropped into bed, the rhythm of the song still in his head, carrying him away.
He drifted backwards, flashes of the day's sights before him, giving way gradually to a soft darkness. A familiar voice spoke words he couldn't quite hear, then faded out, replaced by the sound of his father's voice singing a simple tune. Then that, too, became just a faint echo in a large space.
He opened his dream eyes and found himself sitting cross-legged on the moon. The powdery landscape stretched away in every direction, punctuated with the odd rock or crater. Fireworks went off overhead in the dark space-sky. Stefan reached for the can of beer which, of course, by dream logic was at his side. He took a sip, then placed it back down, noticing as he did that the ground wasn't dusty anymore, but covered in prickly, purple, almost floral undergrowth. Looking up again, he saw the whole moon covered in purple.
~
Stefan's stereo turned itself on, blaring music. He sat upright in bed, but couldn't see. Blearily panicked, he groped at his face, discovering that his T-shirt was up over his head. He pulled