She went into the diner and no one knew anything for sure. They’d heard of the observatory. They knew it was around. They knew where a defunct chemical plant was. They knew where someone had tried to start a museum for vintage cars. Dannie had been southwest and southeast and so she headed as close to north as she could. She’d covered hundreds of miles of road that all looked alike. What had seemed like the same mountains looking down on her with pity. The same dazed sky. The same tumbleweeds blowing halfway across the desert and then halfway back. There were two soda bottles rolling around in Dannie’s floorboard, a banana peel, a cracker box. The bacon was gone. In her purse, a mess of scribbled, contradictory directions. Lipstick. Vitamins.
It was as dark as it was going to get, an advanced phase of dusk that wouldn’t give out, and Dannie had been driving farther away from her home and then closer and then farther, the roads seeming absolutely random in their paths, her mind more lost than her car, when the unbroken field of disappointing wilderness Dannie’s eyes had been skimming for hours was intruded upon by a squat brick mail receptacle. Dannie knew she’d found it. She knew right away she’d found the observatory. She’d harassed luck until it had wanted nothing more to do with her. She’d turned the day’s bad luck to good with pure doggedness. Before she’d even heard the crackling buzz of the elaborate generator set up under a wooden pavilion about a hundred feet off the road, she knew this was the place. It was either the observatory or the end of her looking for the observatory, and she knew it was both.
Most of the observatory, as Dannie had predicted, was underground. The building was painted a faint green color that was somehow ugly. Green in the desert was always pretty, but the observatory was not. She’d turned in next to the little mail house and soon there’d been fence posts but no fence. There’d been a power line from the electrical source. There’d been a soft dirt road that had turned into a hard dirt road that had become a concrete drive, and then she had seen the pickup, and then she’d seen the big lone dish. Arn’s truck in sight, real as her own hand. She took her time. She left her car door open and took slow steps into the dusk air. She touched Arn’s door handle and looked all around at the bristly shrubs and broken boulders. The sky had no edges. She wandered toward the building, toward the only visible entrance, not quite wanting to turn her back on Arn’s pickup. The door to the observatory wasn’t locked but was extremely heavy. Instead of a knob, it had a leather strap you wrapped around your hand. Dannie had to yank the door a crack and put her foot down. She used her shoulder to force the door open and slip through, and once inside all she saw was a narrow staircase that descended steeply. The steps were covered in metal studs that were meant for traction but only made Dannie’s footing unsure. There was sound coming from the walls. As Dannie grew closer to the bottom of the stairs, a smell like undrinkable water wafted toward her. She came onto flat ground in a plain room that made her think of a newspaper office if you took out the desks. She knew Arn was here. There wasn’t anywhere for him to hide. She saw Arn’s table over near the controls, saw his water jug lying empty on its side, saw the big poetry book. She went over and righted the jug and sat in Arn’s chair. There was a black screen with green cloudy light spread across it. It was like a weather screen, but for sound instead of rain. The green cloud was shapeless but you could tell where it was going. Dannie wondered what would happen down here if a message came through, whether alarms would sound, if the screen would start flashing.
Dannie heard something behind her. She rose and spun around to see Arn standing there, brow furrowed, hands empty and down by his sides. There was a light directly above him, and it turned his hair auburn and his face shadowy. He looked scandalized, confused. His wiry arms hung limp. Dannie came around the chair and took a step toward him. She thought maybe she could smell him, his wholesome, hale musk. The bad water smell had faded from the room. Arn was so still he didn’t seem to be breathing, but Dannie could hear something. The noise was Arn starting to cry, and it was the sweetest thing Dannie had ever heard. He sniffed deeply. A fat tear ran down his cheek and then another. He seemed not to be able to move, so Dannie went to him. She didn’t embrace him, just took him by the hand and by the shirt. He’d withheld a lot of tears and Dannie wanted to see them roll. This was more than she could’ve expected. She wanted to see Arn’s face betray things it had never betrayed, while his body held still.
They were in the bed of the truck, cozy under the topper. Arn had given himself the night off — a personal night, he called it. There had to be stars out, but Dannie couldn’t see them. Tomorrow she and Arn would go and find a place to live together, a new place. Dannie had had enough of the condo. Arn had pieces of poetry for her, from the book inside. There was a kinsman took up pen and paper, to write our history, whereat he perished, calling for water and the holy wafer, who had, till then, resisted much persuasion.
“I want to learn how to drive stick tomorrow,” Dannie said. “I used to know how.”
“You still know how. It’s one of those deals like riding a bike.”
“Is it?” Dannie said. “I like things like that. Things you can’t lose even if you try to.”
Dannie gripped Arn by his forearm. She would tell him about the baby in the morning. She wasn’t afraid to tell him; she was excited to. But she wanted all his attention tonight. She shouldn’t have to share him tonight.
CECELIA
She was the only person in the parking lot. She felt exposed. She was in physical danger, an immediate physical danger that any lone girl would be subject to in this part of town, and also she was in spiritual danger, because the fact that her stubbornness had won out didn’t mean she was tougher than the other vigilers. It probably meant she was weaker. She’d wanted this boy to be better than the world because she hadn’t wanted to deal with the world, hadn’t wanted to deal with Reggie’s death, but Soren was the same thing Reggie was, a young person who’d run into bad luck. People had talents. What both Reggie and Soren should have had a talent for was sticking around. They hadn’t been so talented at avoiding comas and car accidents.
Cecelia shuddered. She looked up at Soren’s window, which was dim but not as dark as the windows on either side. She hadn’t brought enough clothing. Spring was arriving, but Cecelia had never been cold like this. The blacktop felt like a sheet of ice under her legs. She was too aware of her position in the universe. She was sitting in the shadow cast by the planet she lived on. She was in the center of a wilderness on that planet. Cecelia didn’t know how to stop vigiling. She would be here next week, she knew. She was not authorized to give herself permission to quit. Better or worse, right or wrong, she’d be here next week. Danger or no danger.
No one was breathing near Cecelia, no one shifting on their haunches. The clinic was dead, no one coming in or out, no lights turning on or off. The few cars in the lot must’ve belonged to the nurses. There wasn’t even any wind. The vigils were always quiet, but this was different. There were no trucks roaring by up on the interstate, no lizards scratching about. Cecelia began to hear all the songs Reggie had written since he’d died. She wasn’t hearing them one at a time. Her mind was gathering them up like a shepherd after a storm, calling the songs to her. The old man diving for the girl’s little shoes. The young man digging the river. The birth of clouds. The streets that could be terrifying one day and cozy the next. Foreign countries and outer space. The fast tender songs and the slow mean ones. Cecelia had only ever thought of herself missing Reggie, but Reggie had been missing her exactly as much. He’d been figuring his way out of his own trouble. He had not been trying to help Cecelia with these songs, she saw. He’d just been missing her more than he missed anything else. He would miss her always. Cecelia heard all the songs at once and heard them each clearly, until one by one they reached their ends and by degrees the quiet returned.