THE VENGEFUL LUNA

The party was scheduled for six p.m. that evening. It was to hold at Cubana's Luxury and all the classy, rich, fun lovers would be there, including tourists who visited the city on weekends just for the sole purpose of enjoying the inexhaustible recreational activities it has to offer. Annie was a thirty three years old independent, city, young woman. She was tall as a few shorter people would describe her. In fact, she was about 5.4ft tall and weighed about fifty seven pounds. Slim, fair, chocolate skinned, and a figure to die for. Annie visited her hair stylist, and got a make over. She preferred for this weekend that her lush black hair be packed all the way to the top and wrapped in a huge circle on the top of her skull. She had her lashes fixed, her hands manicured with nails as thick and long as every twenty first century young lady liked it. She was mostly a loner, living alone in a one room self contained apartment on the twenty third floor of a victorian building. The weeke

When my mother named me Lolita, she thought she was being literary. She didn’t realize she was being tragic. But then, I’m not sure she understood the concept of tragedy, the same way that people who are born into money don’t realize they’re rich, don’t even know there’s another way to live. She thought the name was beautiful, thought it sounded like a flower, knew it was from a famous story - play or novel, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I guess I should consider myself lucky, since her other choices were Ophelia and Gypsy Rose. At least Lolita had some dignity.I’m thinking this as I push a cart through the produce aisle of my local supermarket, past rows of gleaming green apples and crisp blooms of lettuce, of fat, shiny oranges and taut, waxy red peppers. The overly familiar man in meats waves at me and gives me what I’m sure he thinks is a winning smile but which only serves to make my skin crawl. “Hi, honey,” he’ll say. Or “Hi, sweetie.” And I’ll wonder what it is abou

Gray is late coming home, and Victory is already sound asleep upstairs in her room. I am sitting on a leather sofa I didn’t choose and don’t actually like, watching the high, dancing flames in our fireplace as he walks through the front door. For a second he is just a long shadow in the foyer; he could be anyone. But then he steps into the light and he is my husband, looking strained and tired. He doesn’t know I’m watching him. When he sees me, though, he smiles and looks a little less world-weary.“Hey,” I say, getting up and going to him.“Hey.” His embrace is powerful and I sink into it, hold on to him tightly. There is no softness to him; the muscles on his body are hard and defined. In this place I am moored. The churning of my day comes to calm.“Want a drink?” I ask as I shift away from him. He holds me for a second longer, tries to catch my eyes, then lets me go.“What are you having?&rdquo

Today something interesting happened. I died. How awful, they’ll say. How tragic. And she was so young, with everything ahead of her. There will be an article in the paper about how I burned too bright and died too young. My funeral will be small…a few weeping friends, some sniffling neighbors and acquaintances. How they’ll clamor to comfort my poor husband, Gray. They’ll promise to be there for our daughter as she grows up without me. So sad, they’ll say to each other. What was she thinking?But after a time this sadness will fade, their lives will resume a normal rhythm, and I’ll become a memory, a memory that makes them just a little sad, that reminds them how quickly it can all come to an end, but one at which they can also smile. Because there were good times. So many good times where we drank too much, where we shared belly laughs and big steaks off the grill.I’ll miss them, too, and remember them well. But not the same way. Because my life with them was a smoke screen, a caref

I’ll never forget our first August in Florida. I didn’t even know it could get that hot; the humidity felt like wet gauze on my skin; it crawled into my lungs and expanded. Violent lightning storms lit the sky for hours, and the rain made rivers out of the street in front of our trailer park. And the palmetto bugs-they made New York City roaches look like ladybugs. The only thing that redeemed Florida for me was how the full moon hung over the swaying palm trees and how the air sometimes smelled of orange blossoms. But generally speaking, it was a hellhole. I hated it, and I hated my mother for moving us there.The Florida I live in now with Gray and Victory is different. This is the wealthy person’s Florida, of shiny convertibles and palatial homes, ocean views and white-sand beaches, margaritas and Jimmy Buffett. This is the Florida of central air and crisp cotton golf shirts over khakis, country-club days and fifty-foot yachts. To be honest, I hate it jus