CECELIA
She stayed in line with a convoy of cars leaving the clinic until the interstate loomed up. Car after car pulled onto the west ramp, heading toward other parts of the city, and only Cecelia broke off and climbed the ramp going east. She was already on the outskirts, and after she cleared the jutting foot of Sandia she would be clear of town entirely. She lived out in Lofte, a stagnant outpost on the once-lively Turquoise Trail, about a twenty-minute drive into the desert and then another ten minutes on the state road. She had a stop to make before home, at the cemetery that served Lofte and the other basin towns — Golden, Hill City, Cromartie. There were few other cars on the road this late, and they either screamed past like rockets or drifted around in the right lane. Though it was nowhere near morning, light was bleeding up from the corners of the sky.
When Cecelia reached the grounds of the cemetery she couldn’t help but feel like she was trespassing, like she was going to get run off by a rent-a-cop, but the gate was wide open and the streetlights along the lane were burning. She pulled around a curve, assuring herself that she was using the cemetery precisely as it was meant to be used. No one could say what the right or wrong time was to visit the dead. The place was absolutely still. Going this slow, Cecelia could hear her engine gargling and hacking and she felt rude. She let the car cruise without touching the gas or brake. She didn’t hear any birds, didn’t hear an airplane in the sky. The place likely didn’t have a night security guard and Cecelia didn’t see any cameras on the lampposts, and in short order she went from fearing surveillance to feeling too unwatched. She wasn’t being monitored and she wasn’t being looked out for. She could do anything, but what she was going to do was absolutely nothing, just like the last time she’d been here. When she’d come to Reggie’s funeral almost a month ago she’d lost her nerve and stayed in her car, and the same thing was happening tonight. She had the same feeling, helpless and unhinged. She parked at the curb in the same spot as before and wound her window all the way down like before. She tipped her head toward the sky. There was no weather, not even the ambitious little clouds that had been blowing over the vigils.
There was a modest hill between Cecelia and the gravesite over which, the day of the funeral, she’d seen the tops of the tall men’s heads — Reggie’s father and uncles probably, men Cecelia had never met. The funeral party had been partially shaded by the cottonwood trees. The cut grass sprawling in every direction had struck Cecelia as the greenest thing she’d ever seen, the fresh flowers around the headstones jarring bursts of color. Even with the engine and the radio off, she hadn’t heard anything that was said about Reggie, any of the eulogy. She’d heard only a reasonable daytime wind that had little to whistle against. She’d been unable to raise herself from her car that day, unable to shut the door as gently as possible and blend into the group at the gravesite to cry and pray like everyone else. She’d sat behind the steering wheel in a black dress she’d picked up that day at a consignment shop. When the ceremony was over and the bereaved had begun descending toward the parking lot, Cecelia had fired up her engine and fled. And it had been only a couple hollow days later that Cecelia found herself at a vigil for a boy in a coma, part of a mild crowd hungry for unspoken rules. That she knew how to do. She knew how to vigil. She knew how to sit passively. She’d logged hours and hours down below the sixth floor of the clinic but after a month had still not laid eyes on her friend’s grave.
Reggie sometimes didn’t seem gone. He did but he didn’t. Cecelia had never met anyone like him and she had thought that even before he’d passed away. When Reggie had been doing nothing he never seemed to be wasting time, and when he was doing a lot he never seemed to rush. He’d spent his energy and his money and his mind at the correct rate, never hoarding or throwing to the wind. His temper was rare and expertly wielded. And yes, Cecelia had admired his hard-earned tan and his loose-limbed mannerisms and his arresting jawline. She had watched him with more than the curiosity of the bored as he did everyday tasks like making coffee or changing his shoes, and she’d listened with more than a bandmate’s professional interest each time he’d shared a new song in rehearsal. She was glad she and Reggie had never succumbed to any demoralizing trysts or clumsy grope sessions. Truly. Now that he was gone, she was grateful she’d be able to miss him in a straightforward way, as a fallen ally. She didn’t know how to grieve him, only how to miss him, as if he’d only moved away rather than died.
Cecelia breathed the night air, smelling neither flowers nor cut grass. She smelled her car. She didn’t want to go home yet, didn’t want to face her mother or the stupid chickens her mother kept in the yard. The chickens were all her mother cared about any more. Her mother wasn’t well. Mess around with chickens and watch television, that’s what the woman did. She didn’t do anything else. Cecelia didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to walk into that house that always stank of the elk stew her uncle liked to drop off on the doorstep. Chickens. TV. Elk stew. Cecelia squinted. It was the middle of the night but she could see everything around her, like the whole cemetery had moved off and left a shadow of itself. The upholstery was sagging from the roof of Cecelia’s car and she reached and pressed it back into place.
With the loss of Reggie, Cecelia had lost her band. She had been in a band and now that band did not exist. It was no more. No more rehearsal. No more arguing with Nate, the drummer. No more going to the tragic little gigs. Cecelia’s ears would ring no more. She would sing no harmony. She wouldn’t wear that men’s dress shirt with the wide collar that she always wore to shows. Was it a big deal, no more band? She couldn’t tell. Was school a big deal? Or the shell her mother was retreating into these days? Cecelia was a dormant guitar player. She was probably a dormant daughter.
The upholstery sagged down again, and this time Cecelia pushed it back in place with both hands, pressing upward on the roof of her car and pressing herself down into her seat. She pressed until her arms began to quake.
REGGIE
The piano sat in the center of what Reggie was calling the main hall. The room was spacious, but still the piano dominated it. The piano looked disapproving, dauntingly formal, like pianos often did in unfamiliar places. The instrument was ancient and well kept, of a dark but faded wood, and its bench was upholstered with leather the color of a radish. There was no ceiling to the hall Reggie was being kept in, or else it was too lofty to be seen. The place was blanketed in uniform shadow. It seemed alive, the hall, or at least not dead. If Reggie held his breath there was true quiet, pure of electricity running its course, of insect industry, of breezes.
Reggie had a mat to lie down on, even though he didn’t sleep. He rested, like a great fish might. There was no way to track time, so Reggie rested when he felt tired of not resting. He remembered real sleep, back in life, black and hard and oblivious to everything but dreams. He remembered waking full of unhurried purpose. His mat was right down on the floor, like a monk or a drug addict. It smelled worn and tidy.
After Reggie had been in the hall what felt like a couple weeks, a library appeared. It didn’t contain a desk, so it was a library rather than a study. It was attached to the main hall but the light was cleaner in the library, bright enough to read comfortably. Reggie didn’t read, though. He sat bolt upright in the library’s grand, creaky chair, which was covered in the same red leather as the piano bench, and flipped backward and forward through the ornate volumes, listening to the pages and smelling the bindings. He didn’t have what it took to read one of the books. It wasn’t a crisis of energy; it was that Reggie knew none of the books could help him. Reading a book seemed local and desperate. And the fact that people had sat down and written the books instead of doing pretty much anything else with their time on earth — taking a walk with a friend, eating chocolate, tinkering with a weed whacker in an oil-smelling shed — made Reggie sad. The thought of all the songs he’d written made him sad. All any writer could do was either document what was known or speculate. Reggie didn’t need to imagine a different world because he was in one. He didn’t want to celebrate or complain about the world he’d been snatched from, which was now so fathomable. It was easy for him to see now that the living world had always given him what he needed. This new place had no idea what to do with him. He sat in the big chair and ran his fingers over the rough cloth of the book covers. He shuffled through the pages with his thumb, picking out random words. When he needed to break the quiet, he snapped the books shut.