John Brandon - A Million Heavens

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.