Cecelia still hadn’t received another song. They’d stopped. She could finally settle in to whatever she was going to feel toward Reggie, toward his memory. When he’d died, she’d felt cheated, and then she’d gotten a bunch of him she hadn’t expected. She was going to miss him, but she didn’t feel as shortchanged. The songs had given her so much practice missing Reggie, she now felt equipped to do it on her own. She hoped Reggie was in that placid place she’d imagined, near the sea, that place with gently bobbing docks and like-minded strangers.
She pulled into the clinic parking lot, the concrete like carpet under her new tires, the clouds disappearing as they crossed the moon. She parked and walked over to the spot where she always sat. After a few minutes, the other woman appeared in her sleek white car. She came over and sat close but not too close to Cecelia and settled in. Cecelia watched the woman gaze into the black yonder above the clinic building. The woman didn’t look at Cecelia at all. Cecelia felt doubt. She felt that this woman could outlast her. This woman was better at existing than Cecelia was. This woman was putting forth no effort. She’d lost her boyfriend and it hadn’t fazed her. She was preoccupied in a way that could only aid her endurance. She was present only physically, and didn’t seem to even realize that Cecelia was competing with her.
Cecelia squirmed so she was facing away from the woman. She tracked a cloud all the way across the sky, and then another. Normally, at the vigil, the world seemed to slow down around Cecelia, but tonight she was the one who felt slow. She felt way behind. She’d been trying to be a jerk and had been succeeding. She’d been a jerk on many fronts, but with her mother especially. Cecelia was mad at her, but that didn’t give her the right to avoid the woman like the plague. The world might have been rotten, but her mother wasn’t. Cecelia was acting like because she was younger than her mother she shouldn’t have to be the adult. What did being an adult have to do with anything? What was an adult anyway? Some people could locate their spirit when it was wandering lost in the hills. Some people could line their unruly energies up single-file and march them. Cecelia could, her mother could not, but what was Cecelia marching toward? She rested her face in her palms. She should’ve started a new band by now, writing her own songs. She should’ve gotten another job by now. Months were going by — months that had every right to be memorable. Cecelia wasn’t advancing her life. She did not want any more songs. She didn’t want more of the fucking things. She wanted to be okay with her mother and to be able to relax at the vigil. There was a happy self in her and she’d been doing everything she could not to find it.
DANNIE
At the clinic, Dannie’s thoughts were clear. At home, her mind was mush already, soft around the edges. At home she was leaving milk out on the counter and finding it hours later. She was missing her TV shows and putting jeans in the washer with pockets full of gum. Dannie hadn’t told anyone she was pregnant. In her belly was the start of a person who would one day make small talk, who would one day make an effort to eat more servings of fruit, who would have to choose a shampoo out of the hundreds, who would drink coffee on trains.
A cat pawed up to Dannie and the other vigiler, the college girl. Dannie had no idea how many more weeks this girl planned to stick it out. Dannie didn’t know what she’d do if she were the last one. It was a responsibility Dannie didn’t want. She didn’t want to be alone and she didn’t want to be the one who let the vigils lapse away. The cat approached the girl and Dannie watched her make no acknowledgement. It was a Siamese cat, but something else was mixed into it. It had the look of an orphan, bored and wily.
Dannie felt childish in this girl’s presence. She needed to be an adult now, but she had no confidence that she was. Dannie had grown impatient because she hadn’t gotten what she wanted from Arn right when she’d wanted it, because everything hadn’t happened according to her timetable, and so she’d run him off. She hadn’t been capable of simply being happy and enjoying him. Dannie was supposed to have been the grown-up in the relationship, was supposed to have known what was good for her and what was good for Arn. She didn’t know what was good for anyone, and now she was going to have a little son or daughter to guide. She was missing Arn’s presence in her future child’s life, she understood, but she was also missing the way his breath wheezed when he slept, not quite a snore, and she missed the ropey muscles of his arms and his belly and the way he never gave away his mood with his voice, and Dannie missed Arn’s wise, patient innocence, which she thought she could use about now.
The wind gusted and Dannie watched the girl pull up her hood and tug the drawstrings. She had precise fingers. She could do sign language or construct toys. The tepid winds reminded Dannie of the Santa Anna winds. Maybe they’d made it all the way across the desert. Maybe that’s how the gulls had made it here from the coasts, riding bands of destined air. Dannie felt antsy. Her scalp felt hot.
Fucking Arn. Dannie still hadn’t told her old friends she was pregnant and it was because she didn’t want to pretend she preferred being alone, like it had been her plan to use some dope for his sperm and the plan had worked splendidly. She didn’t want to have to describe Arn, or make up some fake guy in order to avoid describing Arn. She was angry at him for not coming back, angry with herself for not going after him. She’d been telling herself he was in the wind. She’d been telling herself he was hardened against her, through with her. But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was missing her too. Maybe he was cursing her this very moment. Arn was another thing Dannie had lost, but what if she hadn’t lost him yet? The course of her adulthood had been charted by quitting, and maybe she needed to not quit on Arn, to not quit on something she’d lost but go get it back. Maybe she needed to go find the best part of her life instead of worrying about what other thing she would lose next.
ARN
He had taken to shutting the screens down for hours at a stretch, sometimes all night, and starting them up again minutes before the owner arrived at dawn. He was tired of humoring the owner. The government had an observatory of its own, immeasurably more powerful, rows and rows of dishes a hundred miles to the west, like some huge gleaming sand crop. This job made Arn feel toyed with. He’d worked at warehouses where products were stored, factories where products were made, a bar where drinks were served, a winery that didn’t produce wine but at least might’ve served as a front for criminal enterprise. This observatory had no function whatsoever except to tickle the fancy of the owner. Aliens were not attempting to communicate with us. They weren’t. And if they were, they could. It wouldn’t matter whether or not we had wired bowls propped up on the desert floor. It wouldn’t matter if some idiot were sitting the graveyard shift.
Arn was back to sleeping in his truck bed, and it wasn’t so bad this time of year. It wasn’t freezing or hot. Arn didn’t feel safe sleeping under his topper, but people weren’t safe anywhere. Bad luck and aliens — if they wanted you, they’d find you. Arn had a membership at a YMCA in an Albuquerque suburb so he could shower. He sat out at the pool sometimes. There were tan lifeguards in bikinis, but they didn’t do much for Arn. The weight rooms were full of fathers. They were all faking being good fathers like Arn was faking being a regular guy who wanted to stay in shape. Not one person Arn saw seemed genuine. Now and then he shot hoops, only when he found the courts abandoned and could shoot in solitude. Just like at the church compound back in Oregon.