A Million Heavens (38 page)

He was visiting with his sister-in-law when the call came from the clinic. They told him Jay Fair had been brought in, worse for wear but stable now, severely dehydrated and torn up a little from a run-in with some coyotes. A young couple had come across him driving back from a remote hike, on a washboard road that sometimes went unused for days. Mayor Cabrera wasn't sure if Fair had asked for him because they were friends, or if he'd been contacted because Fair had no family and Mayor Cabrera had long been the head of the town Fair hailed from. He hoped it was the former. He hoped he was about to drive to Albuquerque on purely personal business this Wednesday evening.

He excused himself from the living room, said goodbye to his sister-in-law with a lingering hug, and dumped the rest of his tea down the sink. He went up the hall toward the front door and stopped at Cecelia's room. He knocked and heard Cecelia's small, clear voice. Mayor Cabrera went in
and Cecelia was making her bed, tucking the last corner in tight. Then she stepped over and gave Mayor Cabrera a hug that was stiff but nonetheless felt sweet to him. He asked her if she was still going to the vigils at the clinic, because he had to go there too tonight, to see about Mr. Fair, who'd turned up half-dead from the desert. He asked his niece, not whispering but not loud enough that his sister-in-law could've heard from the living room, if she wanted to ride over with him. He knew catching a ride with him wasn't any more convenient for Cecelia, and probably she liked being alone with her thoughts when she went to the vigils. He had no idea how late she usually stayed, but he assured her that he'd be happy to sit with Mr. Fair all night if necessary, and was surprised when Cecelia rested her Rubik's Cube in the center of her bed, glanced toward her window in the general direction of Albuquerque, and said, “Sure.” She asked if he was ready to go right then and Mayor Cabrera said he guessed so and stood by as Cecelia wriggled into a sweatshirt, her face emerging open and calm. She patted her pockets then told Mayor Cabrera to lead the way.

They got in his car and set off and Mayor Cabrera made sure not to act like it was a big deal that Cecelia was riding with him, not to act like it marked a success for him. They opened their windows and got clear of Lofte and onto a two-lane county road that wasn't paved very well but didn't have any stoplights. Mayor Cabrera didn't want to be on the interstate, where you couldn't converse over the whipping wind. The evening was almost warm, the air with weight to it and carrying a scent like grainy crackers.

Mayor Cabrera knew it didn't matter what he talked about. He had to say something. He had to not
say nothing.

“I had a dream last night where people kept smiling at me,” he offered.

Cecelia was lost in thought, but she abandoned whatever she'd been mulling. She considered Mayor Cabrera's statement earnestly, as if he'd stated a philosophy.

“Like in a good way?” she said. “Or creepy, like in a Christian coffee shop or something?”

Mayor Cabrera didn't know about Christian coffee shops. “No, not in a good way,” he told her. “It was like they knew something about me.”

“Sinister grins?”

“You could say that. And they were all standing really still.”

Something dashed against the windshield, a large insect or a tiny bird.

“Sorry, fella,” Cecelia said.

“The farther away they were, the creepier it was. I saw one guy grinning at me from all the way across a parking lot.”

“Were you at a mall?” said Cecelia.

“It's possible.”

They turned onto a different two-lane road, this one running quickly through an isolated development that had been abandoned half-built. A few folks lived in it, wondering if they would ever have neighbors. Farther up the road were homes that had always been there, shabby but permanent. There were donkeys in the yards.

“Thank you for the studio,” Cecelia said. “It's really nice. The car and then the studio. You can stop now. I get the point.”

“Well,” said Mayor Cabrera. He knew Cecelia had been over there, because he'd left the key with her mother and then checked back on the studio room each evening. The other day he'd found the equipment shifted around and a gum wrapper in the wastebasket. He hadn't wanted to mention it until she did.

“Is it big enough?” he asked.

“It's plenty big. It's perfect.”

“Any songs you write in there, I get to hear it first.”

“It's a deal,” said Cecelia.

Mayor Cabrera reached over and let the glove box open and pointed to a bag of pistachios, offering them to Cecelia. She shook her head. He didn't want any either, he supposed. He thought he could see the lights from the rooftops of the downtown skyscrapers, but maybe they were just tower lights from one of Sandia's foothills, or low stars appearing. He wasn't driving fast, but he slowed a little.

“What do you think is the best way to woo a woman?” he asked. “In your opinion.”

“Did you say ‘woo'?”

“I don't know what it's called anymore.”

Cecelia let the glove box back open and shut it again. “Who are you planning on wooing?”

“I don't want to say yet.”

Cecelia crinkled her face. “Fair enough,” she said.

“I'm so out of practice.”

“Yeah, but being out of practice can be an advantage,” Cecelia said. “Depending on the woman. Sometimes if you're not smooth, that's good.”

“That's a relief to hear.”

“Do it the old-fashioned way. Don't get creative. That's one of the problems with the world. Millions of people want to be creative and only a couple dozen of them are good at it.”

“Which old-fashioned way?”

“Flowers. Overrun her with flowers. Don't get cute, just bombard her with mass amounts of bouquets.”

“Right. I can do that.”

“Leave them in her yard at night. Put them in her car and in her mailbox and hire some neighborhood kids to knock on her door every hour.”

Mayor Cabrera didn't know if there were any kids in Dana's complex. When he thought of her front walk and her door and the hall that led to her kitchen, he didn't feel anxious. He'd wooed Cecelia and her mother, hadn't he?

“How about chocolate?” he asked Cecelia.

“That may be too old-fashioned. A lot of people have funny diets.”

“Perfume?”

They rose out of whatever valley they'd been in and were suddenly crossing numbered streets.

“Does she use perfume usually?” Cecelia asked.

“Yeah, she switches every few months.”

“I don't know about perfume, but I know clothes wouldn't hurt. For you, I mean.”

Mayor Cabrera looked down at his button shirt. The pocket had a fish embroidered on it. “Like a suit?”

“Sure, a suit would be good. A suit and a haircut.”

“I just got a haircut.”

Cecelia looked over, right at him. “Your part makes you look careful.” Mayor Cabrera laughed. He checked himself out in the rearview mirror.

“I burned down a barn,” Cecelia said. “Some people's fancy barn in their back yard. I dumped gasoline on it and burned it to the ground.”

Mayor Cabrera made an effort to not appear concerned, which probably wasn't working. “You burned down someone's barn?”

“I'm an arsonist. The kid whose barn it was covered it up. He wanted to have a fair feud.”

“A fair feud?”

“And I also trashed his band's equipment. And I lied to a cop.”

“About the barn?”

“No. It was a white lie.”

“You've been busy.”

“I also mugged a rich kid.”

“You mugged someone? For their money?”

“Not much money.”

“When?”

“Over the holidays.”

This was what uncles were for, Mayor Cabrera knew. This right here. People could tell their uncles things. That was the function of a proper uncle. You couldn't tell an uncle every single thing maybe, but you could tell him a lot, and he had to take it like an uncle. Cecelia knew. She knew how to be a niece.

They had to wait almost forty-five minutes to see Mr. Fair. The wound specialist was in there with him. He had just been moved from the ER, and Cecelia and her uncle sat in the hard molded chairs and succumbed to that exhaustion that always set in as soon as you sat still in a hospital. For the first time, Cecelia was inside the clinic, which of course felt odd because
she'd stared at the outside for so long. She felt like a little girl inside a dollhouse. The clinic wasn't cozy like she'd come to imagine. It wasn't especially high-tech. It looked like all medical facilities, only cleaner. When Cecelia and her uncle were called in, Mr. Fair wasn't really cognizant. He grinned a little when he realized he had visitors, but he was elsewhere. Tubes were hanging out of both his arms, pumping him with fluids and probably painkiller. His right arm was bandaged neatly.

Cecelia's uncle got comfortable. He made no move for the TV. Cecelia was already late for the vigil. This would be the second week she'd be all alone out there. She wondered how long was polite to stay in Mr. Fair's room, seeing as he was oblivious, and after about ten minutes she cleared her throat and said she was going on down. “Take your time,” her uncle said.

She was free to arrive at the vigil any time she wanted. She would have the parking lot to herself, no one to witness or judge her. In another way, she wanted to keep observing the rules. That corner of the parking lot was sitting vacant and Cecelia was the only person who had the right to change that. If she was going to vigil, she was going to do it correctly.

She took the monotonous hallway toward the elevators, thinking of being outside, of completing another week, fulfilling duty, of breathing the night air, which this evening had been strangely humid as it had rushed in the windows of her uncle's car. A few rooms from the end of the hall a woman wheeled out from her doorway and called to Cecelia, her wheelchair almost bumping Cecelia's leg. Cecelia stopped short and the old woman pinched the sleeve of Cecelia's sweatshirt.

“Can you find me a blanket, sweetie?”

Cecelia looked up and down the hall. Not a soul. She couldn't tell what kind of face she was making at the woman.

“I need a blanket and a cola,” the woman said. She opened her eyes as wide as they would go. “You can't say no to a cold, thirsty old lady.”

“I guess that's true,” said Cecelia. “I bet that line works every time.”

The old woman dug through a small bag hanging from the arm of her wheelchair. She smelled sick and sweet, like a dessert that had been left out. Her gray hair was thick and lustrous. She tugged a rumpled dollar bill
flat and handed it to Cecelia, then explained where the vending machines were. Cecelia was wondering why the woman didn't call her nurse. She probably wasn't allowed to have soda.

“I like you,” the woman said. “So far.”

“I'll be right back,” Cecelia answered.

She stopped by the nurses' station first and asked for the blanket. There was only one nurse behind the desk. She squinted up at Cecelia and said she had to finish typing a note, that she couldn't save the note halfway through with this new computer system. She didn't know why they'd changed the system again. She hunted and pecked at the keyboard, Cecelia leaning forward against the counter. Cecelia was going to be an hour late for the vigil, she saw. A full hour. She was ready to feel panicked about this, but the panic wasn't arriving. Cecelia could detect run-of-the-mill annoyance at unexpected chores, but even this was not strong. It was mild annoyance. She wanted to help the old lady out. She wanted to exercise patience with this rundown nurse as she dealt with her computer.

In time the nurse sighed and hit the ENTER key with finality. She rose and slipped into a back room, and when she returned she handed Cecelia a blue blanket folded in a sharp square. Cecelia tucked it under her arm and went down a side hall to the vending machines. She found the one that sold soda and fed the old lady's dollar into it and the machine promptly spit the bill back out. Of course it would. The thing was about as limp and crinkled as a dollar could get. It looked like it was going to fall apart completely in the next week or so, a tiny portion of the world's wealth lost. The price for a can of soda was eighty-five cents. Cecelia dug into her pockets and came up with two quarters and a dime. She draped the blanket over her shoulders and squinted at the vending machine. She could go back to the old lady and ask if she had other dollar bills. She could find the nearest open door and ask whoever was inside to borrow a quarter. She had an impulse to just leave the blanket on the floor and escape this floor of the clinic via the stairs, which were at the opposite side of the building than the elevators. This was Cecelia's most familiar impulse, but she wasn't going to follow it. She was going to get this lady her damn soda. She felt in no rush about the vigil,
still felt no anxiety as she grew later and later. She had nothing against the old lady or the nurse or her uncle's slow driving. She had nothing against anyone. She had stepped inside the clinic for the first time tonight, and being inside this place, where lives were fought for and won or fought for and relinquished, it made the outside, the vigil, feel like a farce, like make-believe. The vigil was comfortable, Cecelia knew. She'd convinced herself it was some kind of test, but it was a comfortable place where real life was not allowed, where you didn't have to face anything. It would have been easier for Cecelia to descend to her smoothly paved sanctuary, and suddenly she was washed with the anxiety she'd been awaiting. She pulled the blanket snug around her. Letting the vigil slip away was not a matter of worry, but what she had to do instead was. She had to go up and see Soren, had to set eyes on the boy. As she stood in front of these dull-lit vending machines she was breathing the same air as Soren. He was two floors above her. The blanket on her shoulders might've warmed him some recent night.