John Brandon - A Million Heavens

The morning of the first day of the new semester, Cecelia skipped all this, so when she was pulled over crossing the Albuquerque line, she couldn’t resist the thought that she was being punished for neglecting her mother. She saw the lights behind her and heard the loudening siren. She drove a couple blocks, making sure she wasn’t going to cry unexpectedly, but she was nowhere near crying.

She turned into a plaza anchored at its ends by a battery store and a place that sold dirty magazines. She sifted through the glove box for her registration, then applied some lip gloss, killing the time until the knock would come at her window. She wasn’t going to crane her neck. She collected some trash into a pile on the passenger seat, fished a nickel out from under the console.

Here he was. Cecelia wound down her window and handed out her license and registration and her proof of insurance, which she wasn’t sure was still valid. The cop was a picture of freshness. He looked like in the past hour he’d gotten a haircut, a shave, a shower, his uniform pressed, nails clipped, shoes shined.

“Know why I pulled you over?”

Cecelia could see the cop’s breath. It probably smelled minty. He was standing up straight, way above her.

“I’m not intoxicated. I know I wasn’t speeding and I know I wasn’t littering. I’m not trafficking any Mexicans. I didn’t rob a bank.” Cecelia pulled her seatbelt away from her with her thumb. It didn’t really snap back.

“Is this the route you’re going? The smartass route?” The cop’s tone was not contentious. He wanted to have pulled Cecelia over for her own good.

“Is it because my car’s a total piece of shit? Is it not roadworthy?”

The cop wasn’t making a move to run Cecelia’s license. He was holding her information on his metal clipboard. “It’s your brake light,” he conceded. “The left.”

Cecelia looked back in that direction.

“You have to get it fixed,” the cop said. “It’s non-optional.”

Cecelia found the cop’s eyes with her own and listened.

“So, the question is where are you going to get it fixed? Do you have a place you go to?”

“Not anymore. I used to but he moved.”

“I can recommend one: Thomas Imports, up on Paseo Del Norte.”

“Thomas Imports.”

“If you promise me you’ll go there, I won’t write you a ticket.”

“I promise, then.”

“When?”

“How much does it cost?” Cecelia said.

“Less than a ticket.”

“Not for me, because if you gave me a ticket I wouldn’t pay it.”

“Oh, no?”

“Lack of funds. And I guess lack of interest.”

The cop smirked. A guy exited the dirty magazine shop weighed down with several bursting bags, like he’d been to the grocery store. Cecelia and the cop watched him until he was around the corner.

“Look,” the cop said. “If I tell them you’re coming, they’ll replace it at cost — couple bucks. I’ll tell them Cecelia’s coming in this afternoon.”

“Okay,” said Cecelia. “Thanks.”

“Paseo Del Norte, west of Transom. Thomas Imports. Big blue sign. I’m going to call them.”

“I appreciate that.”

“They’ll tell me if you don’t show, and I’ve got your information. The light needs to be fixed before the other one goes out and somebody hits you.”

“I get it.”

“There’s really nothing more dangerous than driving without brake lights. People get hurt. I’m making sure you understand.”

“I do. Fully.”

The cop nodded. He wrote something down, then handed Cecelia back her license and papers. He was happy with himself. He patted the top of Cecelia’s car sportily and went back to his cruiser, where he made a show of calling someone on a cell phone.

Cecelia stayed where she was. She wasn’t going to pull out first. And she wasn’t going to the mechanic on Paseo Del Norte. It wouldn’t only be the bulb. It would be fuses and wires and the whole electrical system. The mechanics would compile a list of all the things mortally wrong with Cecelia’s car. They would make her aware of every danger. It was that, but also she wasn’t going to the mechanic on Paseo del Norte because she didn’t want to accept a favor from some scrubbed cop. She hoped never to take another favor from a person who considered himself good. The world was full of goody-goody jerks and Cecelia did not aspire to inclusion in their ranks, nor did she wish to be fodder for their goodness.

She reached into her school bag and felt around for the inside pocket. She found what she was looking for — the twenty-five dollars she’d taken from the kid with the internship. She rubbed the bills in her fingers. She was never going to spend these bills. She would keep them close, for strength. She saw why she’d been pulled over. It wasn’t because she hadn’t woken her mother, it was because she’d trespassed and stolen this money. The world didn’t want her stepping out of line. It was reacting. Warning her. This cop and Nate were on the same side — all authority, all rich kids, all whom luck favored. Cecelia had engaged them and they weren’t going to let her get away with it.

She looked back and saw the cop still sitting there in his car. He was writing, listening to his dispatcher. Cecelia would wait him out. If he didn’t have to hurry off somewhere, neither did she. She’d read a book or something. But she didn’t even need a book. If she could sit at the vigils for hours on end, she could outwait this cop. She didn’t need to invent a task, didn’t need to keep cleaning her car’s interior or organizing her glove box. Cecelia was the best vigiler, and this cop was only good at being good. Every week there were fewer people outside the clinic because none of them were as ready as Cecelia was to be absent from their regular lives. Cecelia couldn’t wait for the next vigil, to see how many more had dropped out. She didn’t miss her mom. She’d never missed her uncle. She didn’t need television or home-cooked meals. She didn’t miss making music. She didn’t miss being a conscientious student, didn’t miss any of the old versions of herself she’d left behind. The only thing she missed was no longer in the world.

Cecelia saw the cop pull a computer out from his dashboard and type something into it. He took a gulp from a water bottle and replaced the cap. She’d be late to class if necessary, but she wasn’t going to leave first. She rolled down her other window, the passenger window, and let cold pass through the car. She repositioned herself, pulling her legs up into the seat, seeing what was across the street — a big open yard of stone birdbaths. They were endless, like a photograph of crops. Acres of them. There were no birds anywhere. A thousand baths and not one bird. The baths were bone dry. The sky was empty.

He was training new employees, two of them, to be co-mangers and co-clerks and co-stockers and co-janitors. The last time the gas station owner had an employee was five or six years ago, a kid whose father owned a car dealership in Santa Fe. The kid had been carrying on a feud with his old man. He hadn’t talked much but he showed up on time, until he hadn’t shown up at all and the gas station owner never heard from him again. He hadn’t even come back to get his last check. Probably he’d proven his point to his father and the two of them had made up and he was talking someone into a sunroof that very moment. Now the gas station owner had these two sisters, not babies but young — both, they informed the gas station owner, engaged in a correspondence course that would certify them as librarians. They’d be leaving at the end of July. They’d be done with their coursework and would be off to do internships. The internships could be in New York. They could be in Miami, Los Angeles.