Moon Deluxe by Frederick Barthelme
"Moon Deluxe" by Frederick Barthelme is a brief narrative centered around Edward, a character who navigates a mundane series of events in his life. The story opens with Edward caught in traffic, engaging in a simple game of counting blue cars. His journey leads him to a drugstore where he purchases random items, highlighting a sense of restlessness and disconnection. Upon returning to his apartment complex, he interacts with neighbors Eileen and Lily, the latter of whom flirts with him, though he remains hesitant in his responses.
The narrative unfolds in four sections, each revealing Edward's internal struggles and social interactions, including a poignant yet awkward visit to Lily's apartment. There, underlying tensions between the characters emerge, particularly regarding Lily's relationship with another woman, Tony. Throughout the story, Edward grapples with indecisiveness and a longing for connection, ultimately finding himself alone as it concludes. The presence of the moon at the end serves as a quiet symbol of his solitude amidst fleeting human interactions. "Moon Deluxe" encapsulates themes of social realism, exploring the trivial yet telling moments in contemporary life.
Moon Deluxe by Frederick Barthelme
First published: 1982
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of work: The early 1980's
Locale: An unnamed southern city
Principal Characters:
Edward , the protagonistEileen , his neighborPhil , Eileen's boyfriendLily , another neighborAntonia (Tony) , Lily's roommate
The Story
"Moon Deluxe" is a brief story in which nothing of significance happens. Edward, the protagonist, is referred to throughout as "you," starting from the story's opening sentence: "You're stuck in traffic on the way home from work, counting blue cars, and when a blue-metallic Jetta pulls alongside, you count it—twenty-eight." The driver of the Jetta is a young woman whom Edward has seen before. A little later he stops at a drugstore, not to buy anything in particular but because he is restless and at loose ends. He looks at "red jumper cables, a jigsaw puzzle of some TV actor's face, the tooled-leather cowboy belts," and some other items, and finally buys "Curad bandages, because the package is green." On the way out of the parking lot, he "drive[s] too fast and nearly hit[s] a teen-ager."
When he gets home to The Creekside, the apartment complex where he lives, he is invited by Eileen, a neighbor and casual friend, to come by later. At the end of the first of the story's four sections, Edward rinses and sugars some lettuce leaves, "the way your mother did when you were a child, then eat[s], looking at the local news." He observes that his teeth need brushing, strips and runs water for a bath, and looks at his skin in the mirror.
Phil, Eileen's boyfriend, opens the door to her apartment, and refers to her as "Ivy"—Edward does not know why, nor does the story ever explain. Also present is Lily, dressed in "green slacks, a red belt, a shiny violet undershirt, a white jacket," who, Eileen says, moved into Carmen's apartment. She tells Lily that Edward "and Carmen had a thing. . . . Only a small thing, but definitely a thing." Lily flirts with Edward, but he does not respond. Meanwhile it begins to rain. There is a reference to Tony, Lily's roommate, then some inconsequential chatter, followed by an anecdote about Eileen's sister, who was thought to have a serious circulatory illness but whose skin discoloration turned out to have been caused by eating too many carrots.
At the beginning of the third section, Lily invites Edward to walk her home: "Outside, the air is sweet and dense after the rain, the sidewalks are still wet, and as the two of you bend to go under a tree limb that hangs low over the path, Lily slips her hand into yours." She makes a further overture—"You're not anxious to rush to my apartment and keep your record intact?"—but Edward stalls by proposing that they take a walk first. Lily begins "a rambling account of where she was born, what her parents were like, where she went to school, how much she loves her brother Rudy," then says that she has to get home: "I told Tony I'd be back by nine, and it's already ten."
The final section consists of a scene in Lily's apartment, involving Edward, Lily, and Tony (Antonia), who turns out to be the woman Edward saw on his way home from work. Antonia is "huge, extraordinary, easily over six feet," and wears "a white T-shirt with 'So many men, so little time' silk-screened in two lines across the chest." Lily says that the message on the shirt is ironic, and introduces Edward as "tonight's Mr. Lucky." The women's apartment looks like "the inside of a fifties-movie spaceship."
There follows much talk, nominally casual, out of which a degree of veiled tension emerges. If Lily and Tony are not actually lovers, Tony clearly wishes they were, and she regards Edward as threatening. Edward, however, is too indecisive, too disengaged, evidently too alarmed even by the minimal commitment implied by a single night with a woman, to contest actively for Lily. Abruptly he announces that he is leaving, then wonders what it would be like to spend the night on the couch, and briefly becomes part of the women's routine. They walk out with him, and by the pool they both kiss him "with their lips awkwardly, resolutely shut," then return to their apartment hand in hand. The story ends with Edward standing there, alone as he was when it began: "There is a moon. . . . Pool lights are waving on the sides of the buildings."
Sources for Further Study
Harper's. CCLXVII, September, 1983, p. 74.
Library Journal. CVIII, September 15, 1983, p. 1807.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. July 31, 1983, p. 1.
Maclean's. XCVI, August 8, 1983, p. 51.
The New York Times Book Review. LXXXVIII, August 14, 1983, p. 24.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXIII, June 17, 1983, p. 61.
World Literature Today. LVI, Autumn, 1982, p. 690.