The Harbors of the Moon
- Our narrator is a big-time dude. For example, he once met John F. Kennedy in 1946 soon after they'd both "been elected to Congress" (1.1). In fact, these two men were on a double date.
- The narrator's date is Deborah Kelly, the daughter of a wealthy trucking magnate. Yes, the narrator sees dating her as a way to get to the top.
- Although the night goes well, Deborah calls the narrator the following day to tell him that she's moving back to a convent in London where she once lived. Naturally, these two end up married—but more on that later.
- Stephen Rojack (our narrator's name, finally) fought in World War II before becoming a congressman. His memory of killing "four very separate Germans" (1.3) haunts him to this day.
- Rojack joined the army after graduating from Harvard—smarty pants—and luckily for him, his bona fide smarts kept him away from most of the front-line fighting.
- One night, however, his squad is climbing a hill when they get pinned down by machine gun fire. Suddenly, the mild-mannered Rojack transforms into Rambo, tossing grenades like he's starring in The Expendables.
- To make a long story short, Rojack kills the German soldiers in a fairly gruesome way. He's wounded during the encounter and is sent home, earning a Distinguished Service Cross in the process.
- Although Rojack now walks with a limp, he leverages his story into C-Level celebrity status, which he in turn leverages to become a congressman. Easy as pie.
- These days, Rojack is a professor of "existential philosophy" (1.11) at a university in New York City. He also hosts some sort of television show, but he doesn't seem to want to talk much about it.
- Even though things seem rosy on the surface, Rojack is suicidal, and he and Deborah are now separated after eight years of marriage.
- At the moment, Rojack is standing on his friend's balcony after that night's rager has ended. He wonders if his friend's been hooking up with Deborah—after all, Rojack would (and has) done the same thing with his friends' wives.
- As he is chatting with his friend and remembering how uncertain Deborah's infidelities made him, Rojack vomits "over his balcony" (1.14).
- Rojack looks to see where his pukey "paint" has landed, and he finds it did not quite make it to ground level. Then he tells his friend to leave him, as he stares at the moon.
- Rojack hears a voice telling him to "come now" (1.19), so he starts climbing the railing, as if something is possessing him. Although the voice keeps telling him to jump, he eventually gets down and goes back inside.
- After a quick drink, he leaves—as he often does, Rojack feels compelled to visit Deborah. Although he hates her in many ways, he still see her as "leverage" (1.49) to reach the upper echelons of high society, a.k.a. the world of her father, Barney Oswald Kelly.
- Rojack stops at a phone booth and calls Deborah. She seems excited to see him, which Rojack interprets as a bad thing. What a marriage…
- Deborah has been staying at her friends' apartment for the time being. Her German maid, Ruta, politely greets Rojack when he enters the apartment (because apparently, when you are filthy rich, your maid accompanies you on extended stays in your friends' homes).
- It's immediately apparent that Deborah is as drunk as Rojack—which is a lot—and the two ex-lovers argue for a bit, with Deborah criticizing Rojack for not visiting Deirdre (her daughter from a previous husband) before she left for boarding school.
- They were going to have a child of their own, but Deborah "lost the baby" (1.105) after drinking too much during one of their more brutal fights. Presumably, that's when their relationship went sour.
- Rojack tells her that he loves her, and Deborah tells Rojack that she doesn't, which slays him.
- She continues, telling him about a bullfighter she was once passionately in love with. This hurts Rojack even more because he thought he knew about all of her past relationships.
- She rubs a bit more salt into the wound, graphically alluding to her current sexual relationships. Suddenly, Rojack loses his mind, attacking her and strangling her to death.
- Well, that certainly escalated quickly.