John Brandon - A Million Heavens

“How come you didn’t finish college, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind. I never even got close. I went to three different colleges for a year each.”

“I didn’t know three.”

“If you count that community college.”

“I didn’t get to go at all, so…”

“You didn’t miss much.”

“No?”

“You can read, right?”

“Passably.”

“And you can drink beer, even when you don’t feel like it?”

“Now that I can do.”

“That’s all it is.”

Dana pulled out a cheeseboard and a small pewter tankard that contained honey. The view out the window was a brush of shadows now. Mayor Cabrera heard the heat kick on.

“I always wanted to work in a high rise,” Dana said. “People always run that down, working at a big company in a cubicle, but I think it sounds nice. Elevators and casual Fridays.”

Mayor Cabrera adored every part of Dana. Her elbows and her heels. He didn’t care what she’d looked like twenty years ago. He adored her now. He could not understand what was wrong with him. His lower half was dead. He felt sweat breaking out under his clothes.

Dana said the lid of the cocktail shaker was stuck and asked Mayor Cabrera to pull it apart. He closed the space between them but instead of reaching for the shaker he pressed himself against Dana. He had nothing to press with, nonetheless she shuddered, her knife blade sunk into a strip of mango. Her head tipped back into his chest. She held the knife as though she were steadying herself with it, the blade static there in the flesh of the fruit.

The scent of her hair alone should have been enough. Her little waist in his grip alone. The suppleness of her ear against his whiskers. But none of it was. Mayor Cabrera felt thoroughly fed up with himself. He knew it was a lost cause. He knew that to keep trying would be swimming in quicksand. This had never happened to him before. Dana was everything and the only thing he desired.

His thoughts quickly switched to protecting her feelings. This wasn’t her fault, of course, and he didn’t want Dana to feel inadequate. She was nothing of the sort. She would handle this sort of problem like a pro, Mayor Cabrera knew, smooth it over, but it would hurt her pride. Mayor Cabrera had to invent some emergency, some pressing mayoral business that had slipped his mind. The little kitchen window showed only darkness outside now and his nose was full of foreign fruit and Dana’s shampoo. He’d say he needed to rush back to Lofte and he’d act annoyed about it, which would be easy because he was annoyed. He was not going to wait around to see if Dana bought any of it. He was going to pay her and get his coat and get the hell out of there and catch his breath. People had emergencies. Emergencies were a fact of life.

In his car, headed south, Mayor Cabrera had to face it: he did not want to be a client of Dana’s anymore. He didn’t want to be a client because he wanted to be more than that. He wanted her body but he wanted the rest too. He wanted Dana to be his and no one else’s. He wanted her in her jeans without makeup. He wanted her scarfing greasy McDonald’s instead of pressing her lips against a dripping plum. He wanted to watch TV with her, take up jogging with her. He wanted all her gifts to come from him. Mayor Cabrera let up on the gas pedal. There was nobody behind him. He felt rushed in his mind and didn’t want to rush down the road. What he was considering was nuts. He squeezed the steering wheel and then honked the horn a half-dozen times, trying to loosen things up in his head. He wanted to know all Dana’s problems, but he didn’t want to become one of her problems. He was entertaining a fantasy and trying to convince himself the fantasy could be reality. There wasn’t an ounce of wisdom in Mayor Cabrera. He was trying to ignore all the roadblocks, and there were plenty. For instance, where would they live? There was that. They wouldn’t live at the motel, now would they? Would she be willing to quit her job, to give up a client list that, at her age, would be impossible to recover? Did Mayor Cabrera have enough money, enough prospects, for the both of them? Would she want to be with someone of so little accomplishment? Sure, Mayor Cabrera was a mayor, but he was destined to be the mayor that finally killed off Lofte. Dana might laugh at him. She wouldn’t laugh, because they’d known each other too long, but she might not take him seriously, might let him down easy. It was a well-worn way to be pathetic, falling in love with a professional lady. Mayor Cabrera had told himself he’d set their appointments at once a month because he didn’t want to get used to Dana, didn’t want her to lose her allure, but that had never been the danger. The danger was this, falling for her, and it would’ve happened no matter how often or seldom he saw her. Normally when he drove this road in this direction, the sun was rising and Mayor Cabrera was gladly exhausted. This time, dawn was far off and if Mayor Cabrera was exhausted it was with himself. His life was off course. He’d taken a bad exit thousands of miles ago. He’d tried to fashion himself into a loner. He wasn’t a loner and he wasn’t really a mayor. He’d been an uncle and a brother-in-law and he’d once been a hell of a husband. Now he was nothing. Now he was desperate.

Picking her way through the music building, changing batteries and locking up A/V cabinets that professors had left wide open, Cecelia saw Nate’s name on the rehearsal space schedule. Space 4. Noon. This was something he’d mentioned from time to time — pursuing a minor in music in order to gain access to the university’s rehearsal facilities. He had a perfectly good place to practice — that plush garage behind his house — but he had to go and lay claim to scarce rehearsal space at the school. That was Nate. If he ever thought about other people it was in terms of what he could take from them.

Cecelia strolled herself over to the student union and picked at a muffin, killing time. She flipped through the school newspaper, skimming a story about an African prince that would be attending University of New Mexico. She stood at the windows that looked out onto the field where the band practiced. No band today. Football season was over. Instead, some kind of intramural flag rugby game. It looked like something from a college brochure. Cecelia watched the people collide with each other, watched them laugh, watched them arch their backs as they ran to avoid having their flags pulled off, watched them drink sloppily from a big orange cooler.

She returned to the music building. The card in the slot outside rehearsal space 4 said Thus Poke Sarah’s Thruster, and from inside there was noise. Cecelia peeked in the window, knowing that no one inside would spot her because she didn’t care if they did. Apathy was her camouflage. Nate was behind his drum set, banging on it, an obnoxious look on his face. He was keeping the beat exactly. He always could do that : hold the beat like a metronome. The song they were playing wasn’t one of Reggie’s. Cecelia had never heard it.

The guy on bass and the guy on guitar looked like brothers, the sort who bicker constantly but never want to be apart. They didn’t seem like anything special. There was another guy, on keyboards. He was the talent. He had on a loose-fitting ski cap and no shoes. He didn’t have to think about what he was doing, didn’t have to contort his soul. Yes, they were a band. No denying it.

Cecelia didn’t want to stick around long enough to hear them play one of Reggie’s songs. She felt as though she’d gotten a bead on an enemy, and she wasn’t sure if hearing Nate and his minions tromp around on the hallowed ground of Reggie’s imagination would add fuel to her fire or discourage her. She was shrinking her soul, and discouragement was an indulgence. She backed away from the studio door as if children were sleeping behind it and descended onto the main walk, blending herself in with a late-day stream of amiable young people who were filled, each and every, with vague intentions of making themselves better. Cecelia hid among them, walking how they walked. Her intention was to be worse, and so far what she’d accomplished was stealing twenty-five dollars and mouthing off to a cop. She needed to escalate her tactics. She needed to reach a darker height. If she couldn’t, then she was as feckless as any of these girls in their ballerina shoes or these soft-eyed unshaven boys who’d never have it in them to do anything despicable. Cecelia had enemies and now she was learning how to be an enemy. This herd of kids Cecelia was walking along with, all hats and fancy cell phones, was on its way nowhere.