Dannie wasn’t going to come for him. She wasn’t going to have a change of heart. She’d probably found another kid to play around with. Arn knew the only reason he was still in New Mexico was he was hoping Dannie would come. Normally he would’ve quit this job by now. He would’ve been in the next state, Texas or Oklahoma. He had no energy for going back on the road, same as he felt no energy for the brown lifeguards in the red suits. New Mexico had been the first state he had not felt lonely in. Dannie had been his friend. Whatever else they may have been or not been to each other, they had become friends. There wasn’t a way for Arn to win except to know her again. Whatever cheap motives he’d had at the start, they’d died off. He’d had an ally and had lost her. He missed her skin and the way she rested one fingertip on her chin when she was about to explain something. He wanted to push his forehead against her cheek.
Arn turned a page of the huge poetry book and the next page was blank. There were no more poems. Arn closed the book and slid it to a far corner of the metal desk. Arn hadn’t known what any of the poems were about, but he’d enjoyed them. The poetry book was the only book in the observatory that wasn’t work-related, that wasn’t a radio manual or a history of space encounters. Arn had finished the whole thing, one thin, crinkly page at a time.
Arn saw now that he had been hoping all this time that someone was after him, the cops or a private detective or the enraged family of the man he’d slugged with the bat. He’d needed someone to be after him. On the run, he didn’t have to admit anything about himself. He was a deceitful orphan. That’s what he’d been afraid of being and that’s what he’d become. He’d had to keep moving, in part, to not get caught in his lies. They were lies of omission mostly, but you could get caught in those too. He had told Dannie she’d been his first, and that he’d never been to California. He’d acted unfamiliar with bars, unfamiliar with drugs. This was the part he’d played with all the women. Mystery was all he had. And false innocence. He didn’t have a self. Everything around him in the observatory was clean and hard, the buffed concrete floor and the metal desk and the molded plastic chair. Nothing had been chasing Arn, and it had chased him far enough. He went to the middle of the room and got down flat on his back on the floor. The concrete felt good against his arms and legs. Everything sounded different when you got down low and still. It reminded him of the vigils he’d been going to with Dannie. He wondered if she was still going to them. Arn was going to miss the boy, the way one missed peaceful places one had only seen in pictures. Some time in the past months Arn had learned that he could be still without hiding. You could just be where you were. He tapped his fingers on the concrete. The aliens were talking around us. They were holding lively conversations just beyond the reach of human surveillance.
Arn was trying to get fired so he’d be forced to leave the area, but he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t have the guts to simply quit. He was sabotaging himself, turning the machine off every night. The machine kept a record, of course. If the owner bothered to check, he’d know right away. But the guy probably wouldn’t fire Arn. He’d have a talk with Arn, something like that. He’d write Arn up, as if this were a real company with real policies and protocols. The owner’s main concern would be that they’d missed a transmission.
MAYOR CABRERA
A shop that sold musical equipment had been going out of business and he had bought five cases of those space-age tiles you could nail up that were supposed to soundproof a room and improve the acoustics. The guy who owned the shop hadn’t been one bit upset that it was going under. The guy had a brand-new tattoo, still under a bandage, and he kept lifting a corner of the bandage and admiring what was hidden underneath. Mayor Cabrera didn’t believe the squares could really soundproof a room, but they might dull sound, and Mayor Cabrera could make sure never to rent out the unit right next door. There were thirty rooms and he couldn’t recall the last time they’d rented more than half of them at one time.
It took him almost three hours and a whole canvas sack of roofing nails. His forearm was numb. The hotel room looked like it belonged on a UFO. Mayor Cabrera was doing the only other thing he could think of for Cecelia. Her car, and now this. He didn’t know how to be an uncle. He had no experience with it. He was trying to help her and he was also trying to win her over. She had thanked him, about the car. He’d seen her in town and she’d only spoken to him a moment but he’d sensed a softness toward him. She was like her mother. She could talk herself into being bitter, but it wasn’t in her heart. Mayor Cabrera put surge protectors in all the sockets and lined up some music stands against the wall. He dragged the desk out and brought in a big amp. Mayor Cabrera was working on a baggie of jerky and he had a couple more tallboys in his cooler. He was no longer the mayor of Lofte. He’d informed the board and they’d drawn up paperwork and he’d signed it. There would be a special election. Until then, the lawyer was in charge. Mayor Cabrera wasn’t Mayor Cabrera anymore. He was just Cabrera. Cabrera. The next time they held a council meeting, he wouldn’t be there. He was Ricardo Cabrera, private citizen.
He filled the closet with bottles of water and cans of ginger ale, fruit roll-ups, bags of popcorn. He dragged the mattress outside and then the box spring and when he went to move the bed frame he saw something underneath, on the floor. It was one of those magnetic travel chess sets. He opened it and it had all the pieces, all thirty-two. He knew what he’d do. He’d teach his sister-in-law to play chess, whether she wanted to or not. Most of their life together was in the past, but not all of it. Some of it was waiting for them, time waiting to be spent. They were family. They would play chess. Once she knew what she was doing, Mayor Cabrera would get a regular set, carved of wood, with pieces substantial enough to work around in your palm as you parsed out your next move.
Mayor Cabrera had once gone to Sun Studios in Memphis with his wife, and it hadn’t looked much better than this hotel room now did. They had a control room at Sun, but other than that it was about the same as this place. Mayor Cabrera began gathering his supplies and tidying up, the extra tiles and his beer cans and such, and was struck with a pang of pure fear. He couldn’t stall about Dana anymore. All the amends were in progress. There was nothing standing in his way now. He was a brother-in-law again and was becoming an uncle again and he had to find out what he was going to be to Dana. He deserved her as much as he ever would and she’d either want him or she wouldn’t. Nothing could make him pathetic now. He felt able to weather a hardship with dignity.
THE WOLF
The wolf scrambled up the loose rocks and out of the gully. He had returned to the house of the older woman and the girl, the house where he’d once heard the songs. The wolf stopped at the edge of the property and listened hard, as if trying to hear the drifting of clouds. The temperature was dropping. The wolf could feel it in his snout and behind his eyes. There was no space between the wolf and the sheer cliff of his ill mind. His saliva tasted like paper and his paws were stones.
A hard twig was barbed into the wolf’s side and he yanked it and then paced toward the chickens. The wolf pressed his muzzle to the fence and the chickens did not hustle about. They kept going about their pointless business. They weren’t afraid. They felt nothing for the wolf, considered him harmless. The chickens were skinny and their beaks and feet were the same color as their feathers. They stood with heads high, almost haughty. They were waiting for the next idiot scuffle to break out, for seed to be scattered. When death arrived, as it was about to, they would greedily scuffle over that too.