Luna: New Moon

Wagner is gripped in an agony of pins and needles, but his eyes can focus and he can speak. Irina, who likes to bite. Sasha Ermin. The Magdalena pack.

‘Come on go go,’ Sasha Ermin. Er pack rushes Wagner down the street. He’s numb, itchy, he’s pissed himself.

‘You cubs have a lot of learn about being a pack,’ Irina says. ‘You’re way too used to having the Earth over your heads all the time. You don’t stop being a wolf when the Earth goes dark.’ But she looks different, smells different, wears her hair differently, dresses in standard sports gear; a thousand differences that say she isn’t a wolf.

‘We’d heard tenders were out for a hit on you,’ says a tall, muscled man in sports tights and running shoes. Wagner saw him swing over the rail one-handed and take a hit-woman straight down with a kick to the kidneys.

‘Thanks,’ says Wagner. Lame but no word more true.

‘There’s got to be some better way than everyone for themselves, all the time,’ Sasha says. ‘We’ll get you fixed back at the Packhouse.’

‘I need to get to João de Deus,’ Wagner protests. ‘I need to see my family.’

‘We’re your family now,’ Irina says. She hands him his lost knife.

Marina brings the tea from her living room to sit and sip and watch the man sleep. Sex has always rewarded her with insomnia. The men have snored or grunted or mumbled their way into the night while she pulls an arm from under a belly, repositions a leg, slips out from under a shoulder and there is no sleep until sun-up.

Marina drinks her tea. The darkened room, lit only by accidental light from the bathroom, the street, turns Carlinhos’s skin to velvet. He has the most beautiful skin. Like all dusters he has shaved his body hair. It’s a particular agony, peeling a sasuit off over back hair. She touches his skin gingerly, afraid to arouse him; enough to catch the nap, feel the living electricity. The light casts fine shadows across the landscape of his back, like low sun exposing the memories of old craters and rilles. His side, his hip and the sculptural curve of his ass are covered in a faint network of lines. Scars.

The charmer, the schemer, the talker, the fighter.

He breathes like a baby.

How good it is to have a muscled man. A tall, muscled man; moon-tall, big enough to scoop her up and enfold her and overpower her, which she likes. A big man to roll over on to his back and ride. The other men had been collegiate: geeks and engineers, dice-rollers and occasional runners; snowboarders and skateboarders. Board boys. One jock once; a swimmer. He had been a good shape. Earthmen. This is a moonman. Marina has seen Carlinhos naked, freshening up after the Long Run, suiting up, suiting down, in that precious pool at Beikou under the eyes and claws of Ao Jung, but she has never seen him as a man of the moon until now; on his belly, head turned to one side, in her bed. And he is so different, this moonman. A head and some taller than her, though he’s reckoned not tall among the second generation, and below average by the slender trees of the third gen. His skin lies close over a different musculature, a landscape, like all landscapes, governed by gravity. His toes are long and flexible. You grip with your toes. His calves are round and tight: Marina’s calves ached for a whole lune while she learned how to walk like a moon girl. Carlinhos’s thigh muscles are defined and long from running, but underdeveloped by terrestrial standards. Thigh muscles are too powerful for the moon: they can send you slamming into walls and people, or soaring up to crack open your skull on the roof. His ass is magnificent. Marina wants to bite it. Calves and ass get you around, give you that Gagarin Prospekt swing. That’s why 1950s retro is so hot this season; those skirts and petticoats, these box jackets move like seduction on the streets.

His belly is turned from her but she knows it’s tight and packed. His spine runs in a deep valley of muscle. The upper body by contrast is overdeveloped. Heavy shoulders, massive pecs, biceps and triceps bulging. He’s top heavy. On the moon you need upper body strength more than lower. He lies sprawled on her bed like a defeated cartoon superhero. Mouth-breathing.

Strange man, beautiful man. You’re fit for this world and fitness is beauty. But I’m as strong as you, I pushed you into a wall at the hospital, when you scared me. I grabbed you when you came down on me and turned you over and you laughed because no amor has ever done a thing like that with you and then I came down on you.

Marina’s tea has grown tepid.