Arn worked nights, at a place where they monitored outer space for sonic anomalies. It was a rip-off of a government site in another part of the state called Very Large Array. All Arn did was sit in a chair all night and watch meters. Arn felt this job suited him because he didn’t care whether aliens existed. He didn’t mind solitude. Arn went to work with a gallon jug of water every night and drank the whole thing before morning. He had a taut bulbous belly, like a toddler. He had two nights a week off, and Wednesday nights he went with Dannie to the vigils. In a way, those were their most intimate times, right next to each other in a drawn-out silence — no sex or suspicion or anything else. The vigils were a sanctuary, where no one had a past or a plan. It seemed like bad form to show affection at the vigils, but sometimes Arn would take Dannie’s hand and hide it in his jacket pocket so he could hold it, like something valuable he’d found on the street, a good luck charm, and this reminded Dannie of misbehaving in high school. Dannie hadn’t noticed many other couples. There was a pair who looked like grad students, the guy in a flannel shirt and studded belt and the girl always wearing tights and scarves that didn’t match. Then there was a lesbian couple who sat with their knees touching. At first Dannie had dragged Arn down to the clinic, but now he didn’t seem to mind going. He wasn’t a vigiler in his own right, not yet anyway, but if you went to the vigils you went to the vigils. No vigiler was above any other. No one was on probation, no one received gold stars. No one had to give explanations or listen to them. It was enough to simply want the vigils to continue, and Dannie wanted them to continue forever, wanted to keep meeting these same strangers smack in the middle of each week until the weeks ran out. She knew for that to happen, Soren had to stay in his coma. She wanted the vigils to continue and she wanted Soren to wake up healthy. The vigils were good news in Dannie’s life and they could only be stopped by other good news.
Dannie stood and positioned herself behind the telescope. She aimed it down the street, whisked past the Javelina, past all four stoplights, until she found the market. The old couple was out front, eating their lunch. They were talking, and then the old woman noticed something at her feet. Her shoelace was untied. The old man unhurriedly set his plate beside him on the bench and went down to one knee. The woman smiled faintly. He was tying her shoe. He was tying her goddamn shoe. There was no way Dannie was going to return the avocados. She couldn’t. She knew what she’d do instead. She’d break them open and get the pits out and plant them down below her balcony. She could water them from up here. She could root for them. Root for them to root. They’d be something to wait for, to invest herself in. This was another way she could convince her body she was settled.
THE GAS STATION OWNER
He turned off the radio, which always went to static this time of day. He had the disassembled parts of an old pricing gun on the counter, and he finally gave up on the thing and scraped the parts into a cardboard box with his forearm. From his stool behind the register he saw a slick sedan with California plates roll up to the nearside pump. It was that gal who was renting out Terrence’s place. She had on a cream-colored coat with a city look to it that she buttoned up as she stood by and watched a kid about young enough to be her son select low-octane and get the pump chugging. It wasn’t her son. The gas station owner already knew it wasn’t her son but after the kid got the nozzle set up the gal leaned him against the car and planted one on him. The gas station owner had seen the gal around but had never laid eyes on the kid. If he had his own car, he got gas for it elsewhere. The pair of them were still smooching, so the gas station owner averted his eyes. He idly tapped the keys of his adding machine, thumping out a nonsense sum. The truth was, it was nice to have a new couple in Lofte. The town didn’t get new couples. It didn’t get new anything. When the gas station owner had moved here, all those decades ago, it had been as lively and hopeful as any place. The turquoise trade had still been humming. Families couldn’t wait to take car trips across the desert in their station wagons. The gas station owner had thought he was making a bold change, making his own way in life, moving from predictable, peopled Albuquerque to this spirited basin outpost. The spirit was gone now. The money was gone. If the gas station owner tried to sell his house now he’d get about enough for a steak dinner and a beer. And he hadn’t even escaped anything. He was in the same old desert, living by the desert’s rules — still, in his heart, afraid of the desert. He’d never challenged it. He’d only taken an elk or two from the desert when an elk was offered.
When the Audi was full up, the couple came into the store. The gal asked for the restrooms and the gas station owner pointed the way. He got a jolt of pride about once a week when a lady asked to use his restroom because he kept it spotless. The gal disappeared into the back hall and the kid stepped to the counter with cash wadded in his hand. He stood there without saying anything, squinting against the light of the big window behind the gas station owner.
“What brings you all from California?”
The kid glanced out toward the car. “She’s the one from California,” he said.
“Oh,” said the gas station owner. “What about you then? What lucky burg has the pleasure of claiming you?”
“I’m from all over,” the kid said. “I guess I was born in Ohio or something.”
“Ohio. Never been. Is it nice?”
“Every place is the same,” the kid said. He wasn’t squinting anymore. “Some places it rains a lot and some places it doesn’t rain at all. Other than that, every place is exactly the same.”
“How are they the same?”
“Bunch of people acting like they know what they’re doing when really they don’t know shit.”
“I never heard it put like that before.” The gas station owner stood up off the stool. His knees weren’t what they used to be. He wanted to ask the kid more questions because the kid obviously didn’t want to answer them. “Did you all move out here for work?”
“I work at that observatory,” the kid said.
The kid counted out the money owed for the gas and put coins with it. He set it on the counter and the gas station owner left it sitting there.
“That place where they listen to the stars?” he asked the kid.
The kid nodded.
“Aliens were trying to get hold of me, I don’t believe I’d take that call.”
“I want this too.” The kid picked up a bulky chocolate bar off a rack and put another dollar with the money.
“I’m Mr. Fair,” the gas station owner said. He offered his hand and the kid set his jaw and reluctantly shook.