Two Moons

Janey Lou was a female chess player who played downtown. Female chess players get a peculiar sort of attention in general, but in this case, the attention she was getting was just going too far.

So there's this girl, she plays chess down at a weekly tournament in her town, oh, let's make up a name for it, let's call it Colorado Falls. Yea, that sounds ok. No. Let's call it Seven Falls. No Eight Falls. And she plays chess downtown there every Wednsday (I will never learn to spell this so let's change it to Monday) night at a cafe. She's been going to this cafe for years, it's called Rich Richard's cafe. And she's been a loyal customer there, she buys lots of coffee. Lattees. Is that how you spell that?

And this girl, let's call her Janey-Lou, she plays there, and then one day around Thanksgiving she notices someone comes in there and starts watching her play.

And I mean watching her. He gets as close as he can to her. And Janey-Lou, being the only female chess player she's used to this. Being watched. But this guy is taking it to a whole new level. He follows her from room to room. And Rich Richard's has a lot of rooms. It is a coffee shop and a book store, it's got at least six different rooms in it all laid out strange. You find yourself turning corners in there, reading books, reading about the Meddicci family one minute and getting a bagel with cream cheese the next. Only a lot of times they are out of cream cheese. So then you just get butter on it or something like that but it's not the same.

And you can buy toys there for your kids even, they've got puppets. They've got a place to do puppet shows. They've got a magic castle in the back. Well, it's not in the back exactly, it's around the corner and past the puppets and then you take a left at the great big mirror where you can watch yourself go by. You can watch yourself and try to make it look like you're not looking at yourself if you just glance as you pass. But then you only catch a glimpse.

You can only catch a glimpse unless you stare like this guy does. Staring with eyes that look like two big yellow moons. They never move either. Unless you move. Just like the moon. It moves when you move.

Don't you ever feel like the moon is following you?

Well, Janey-Lou did, she felt like the two moons in this guys head were following her, wherever she went. She began to lose chess games. She started hanging pieces, left and right, and I don't know if you know Janey-Lou, but she's not much of a good sport. And so she'd sit there losing her queen, losing her rook, getting red in the face, all the while the two moons watching her. She dropped her purse and all the contents spilled out all over the floor. All the other chess players shushed her. They didn't seem to notice what was happening to her.

She tried to make it obvious. She moved really really close to one of them at one point, hoping maybe two moons would think she had a boyfriend and go away, but all that happened was the guy she moved close to offered to buy her a hot chocolate.

"No thanks," she said, and then she moved her eyes to the right to point out Two Moons, and jerked her head to the right, hoping he would look over there and see it for himself but he didn't.

Two moons did this week after week. Every week she hoped he wouldn't be there but he was, along with the ambiance of the cafe, the great big white coffee cups, a little too big if you ask me, they start to make your hand look small.

Then one day...

Author's Note

I know, I know, my spelling needs work.