A Million Heavens

by John Brandon

  REGGIE

  His room in the afterlife was now roughly the size of his old bedroom in his parents’ house, but with the piano and the bureau and the guitar reclining in its stand the place was cramped as a closet. Reggie didn’t even pace anymore. He leaned against the walls. He didn’t want to think of his room as a cell. This place wasn’t prison and had nothing to do with prison. He believed this place had nothing even to do with laws, earthly or biblical, and whether Reggie had broken them. The floor had grown colder and Reggie had given up resting down where his mat used to be. Now he curled up on top of the bureau. With concentration, he could get the noise in his head to dull without the need of whistling or humming, but in time his concentration always gave out. He thought of the desert mornings, so obvious and refreshing. He thought of sleep, of open spaces.

  He thought, at long last, of Cecelia, of the way she frowned when happily surprised and smiled when disappointed. He never could’ve done it consciously, but some wise part of him had kept him from dwelling on Cecelia until now. Some conservative branch of him had saved her for an emergency, and that’s what Reggie was in the midst of. That, or the afterlife was now directly controlling Reggie’s memory. The afterlife had broken Reggie down emotionally and now was giving him the comfort of a friend. Cecelia was an ace being played.

  Before Reggie had met Cecelia, he’d never imagined an audience for his songs, but in time he’d begun judging their quality purely by her reaction. She was adorable and admirable in a way that made Reggie long to protect her rather than exploit or impress her. Not that she needed much protection. She seemed to wish at times to be gullible and thoughtless, but she wasn’t. Reggie thought of her tiny pale feet curled up under her when she sat and played guitar. He thought of her sandpaper elbows. The way her face was somehow sharp and soft at once. He thought of their first meeting, at a concert held in the biggest auditorium on campus. About thirteen people had shown up. A woman with buzzed hair had played a deeply resonant wind instrument as tall as she was and a man with braids to his waist had accompanied her on xylophone. The two were married and both worked at a college on the West Coast. Their music sounded like it had been born deep in a mystical woodland. They were unfazed by the comically sparse crowd. They’d played three or four lengthy songs and then bowed and wheeled off their instruments. Reggie had noticed Cecelia during the show, sitting up straight and paying unwavering attention, a lock of hair wrapped around her finger, brow furrowed. When the show was over she remained in her seat and so did Reggie. He watched her as she kept gazing at the stage, empty now. Everyone had left the auditorium and Reggie felt like he would’ve waited all night for her to make a move and finally she gathered up her satchel and sweater and sidestepped into the aisle. Reggie hurried to get next to her and she wasn’t a bit startled by him. He told her his name and she said hers. When they got outside she handed Reggie her bag to carry and then he walked her toward the parking lot. There was a feeling that nothing had to happen, that they didn’t have to banter about the concert or identify things they had in common. They walked past the fountains in quiet, part of the hushed soundscape of the campus night, and when they reached Cecelia’s car Reggie handed over her bag and thanked her, not knowing what for, and she shook his hand but not like men shook hands—she took one of his whole hands in both of hers and just stood there with it a moment like she was going to tell him something about his future. Reggie was thinking he had to ask for her phone number but for some reason he couldn’t. He’d let her adjust her rearview mirror and back out and drive off. The next time he saw her was the first day of the next semester, in a class on early-twentieth-century painting. After class they had lunch together at a place with good stromboli and finally they talked and talked like old friends, breaking a long-standing silence between them, getting up for refills of soda and sipping on them deep into the afternoon.

  Reggie thought of a night months after that, the only time he’d come close to kissing Cecelia. They’d been walking through the museum on campus, not paying attention to the art but enjoying the sequestered atmosphere, and a storm had rushed over Albuquerque and knocked out the power at the university. The backup lights had clicked on, barely bright enough to walk by, and Reggie and Cecelia had sat on the floor against a bench, the marble incredibly hard underneath them, feeling like the only two people in the world, or at least in the city, feeling safe in the cloistered caverns of the museum. Reggie had sensed his opening, sensed that at that moment Cecelia would have no grounds or strength to resist his advances.

  Sitting on the bureau with this feet dangling down, Reggie felt relief for the first time since he’d died. He felt himself giving in.

  SOREN’S FATHER

  He spent an entire day with Gee, and though he could tell he was enjoying himself there was nothing he could do about the feeling that anything that happened to him while his son was in a coma didn’t truly count. There could be no milestones, no further tragedy. That could’ve been why he was enjoying himself, he had to consider, not because he was so taken with Gee but because when he was with her reality was suspended. If Soren’s father was killing time, that wasn’t fair to Gee—if he was using her to speed along the dead stretch of time that would end only when Soren awakened. At the moment, though, he felt powerless against Gee. He wanted to see her, for whatever reason. He wanted to be around her. And anyway, he told himself, they’d met because she’d written a stranger a letter. They hadn’t even kissed yet. Soren’s father was analyzing things, which for someone unpracticed felt like overanalyzing, and maybe he was grateful to Gee even for that, for giving him a matter to overanalyze. Soren’s father was good at simple thinking, and his situation, simply thought of, was that time needed to be spent and some ways of spending time were preferable to others and Gee, well, she was pretty damn preferable.

  They spent the whole day together and she took him to a studio she kept about halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The studio was farther from the clinic than the restaurant house had been, and maybe Gee was aware of that. Maybe she was expanding his range little by little. The studio was full of roadrunners Gee had made. They were mostly glass and had oversized heads and spindly legs that made them look like they were going to pitch forward. Gee said that was part of the art, the fact that whoever looked at them was forced to imagine a big crash and a floor full of shards to tiptoe around.

  They went to an outdoor restaurant with a bunch of space heaters and Gee got Soren’s father to eat raw fish, tuna that had been cubed up and that you scooped with grainy crackers. Soren’s father was surprised Gee had convinced him to eat the tuna and more surprised that when she asked him how business was going, he came right out and told her. He told her that he’d lost a driver and didn’t have the pep to search for another one right now and so instead he was selling one of the trucks. He was going to lose part of his territory to a competitor.

  Gee took a swig of some pomegranate juice she’d ordered and swallowed hard. “So you think you might lose the whole thing? The whole business, in time?”

  Soren’s father guffawed. “Hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he said.

  “Happens all the time. Lose one business, start another one. This is the United States.”

  “Doesn’t happen all the time to me.”

  “Maybe you and I are meant to throw in our lot together.” Gee let out a triumphant little laugh. “I have an idea for a restaurant I’ve been holding on to. Maybe I’ve been waiting for a partner. Maybe we’re supposed to change each others’ lives. Maybe a plan is underway that won’t be revealed until it’s complete.”

  Soren’s father tried to look amused.

  “I think you have more talents than you give yourself credit for,” Gee told him. “Might be time to use them. Maybe when Soren wakes up he’ll have an even better father than before.”

  Soren’s father had no idea if Gee was serious about the restaurant idea. He did know he didn’t care for her suggesting he hadn’t always been the bes
t person he could where Soren was concerned, the best possible example for his kid. That probably wasn’t how she’d meant it, though. She was concerned about him, was all. Soren’s father had no idea how well he knew Gee. He felt like a charmed snake, and like it must be for snakes, most of the charm resided in the charmer’s lack of fear. Soren’s father was only half-charmed, though. He wasn’t a healthy enough snake to get fully charmed. The sun was very bright and the heaters were close and low. Soren’s father reached for his water glass but all he had left was ice.

  CECELIA

  She did not wake her mother. Usually, on days Cecelia went to campus, she got up early in order to have time to get her mother up and out of bed. Her mother would argue against having the blinds opened. She would argue against the making of toast. When Cecelia left the house, she would do so dragging the fresh, oppressive knowledge that whatever she accomplished that day—wherever she went, whoever she met, whatever she learned—her mother was at home listlessly tossing feed out the back door, subsisting on crackers, listening to preachers.

  The morning of the first day of the new semester, Cecelia skipped all this, so when she was pulled over crossing the Albuquerque line, she couldn’t resist the thought that she was being punished for neglecting her mother. She saw the lights behind her and heard the loudening siren. She drove a couple blocks, making sure she wasn’t going to cry unexpectedly, but she was nowhere near crying.

  She turned into a plaza anchored at its ends by a battery store and a place that sold dirty magazines. She sifted through the glove box for her registration, then applied some lip gloss, killing the time until the knock would come at her window. She wasn’t going to crane her neck. She collected some trash into a pile on the passenger seat, fished a nickel out from under the console.

  Here he was. Cecelia wound down her window and handed out her license and registration and her proof of insurance, which she wasn’t sure was still valid. The cop was a picture of freshness. He looked like in the past hour he’d gotten a haircut, a shave, a shower, his uniform pressed, nails clipped, shoes shined.

  “Know why I pulled you over?”

  Cecelia could see the cop’s breath. It probably smelled minty. He was standing up straight, way above her.

  “I’m not intoxicated. I know I wasn’t speeding and I know I wasn’t littering. I’m not trafficking any Mexicans. I didn’t rob a bank.” Cecelia pulled her seatbelt away from her with her thumb. It didn’t really snap back.

  “Is this the route you’re going? The smartass route?” The cop’s tone was not contentious. He wanted to have pulled Cecelia over for her own good.

  “Is it because my car’s a total piece of shit? Is it not roadworthy?”

  The cop wasn’t making a move to run Cecelia’s license. He was holding her information on his metal clipboard. “It’s your brake light,” he conceded. “The left.”

  Cecelia looked back in that direction.

  “You have to get it fixed,” the cop said. “It’s non-optional.”

  Cecelia found the cop’s eyes with her own and listened.

  “So, the question is where are you going to get it fixed? Do you have a place you go to?”

  “Not anymore. I used to but he moved.”

  “I can recommend one: Thomas Imports, up on Paseo Del Norte.”

  “Thomas Imports.”

  “If you promise me you’ll go there, I won’t write you a ticket.”

  “I promise, then.”

  “When?”

  “How much does it cost?” Cecelia said.

  “Less than a ticket.”

  “Not for me, because if you gave me a ticket I wouldn’t pay it.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “Lack of funds. And I guess lack of interest.”

  The cop smirked. A guy exited the dirty magazine shop weighed down with several bursting bags, like he’d been to the grocery store. Cecelia and the cop watched him until he was around the corner.

  “Look,” the cop said. “If I tell them you’re coming, they’ll replace it at cost—couple bucks. I’ll tell them Cecelia’s coming in this afternoon.”

  “Okay,” said Cecelia. “Thanks.”

  “Paseo Del Norte, west of Transom. Thomas Imports. Big blue sign. I’m going to call them.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “They’ll tell me if you don’t show, and I’ve got your information. The light needs to be fixed before the other one goes out and somebody hits you.”

  “I get it.”

  “There’s really nothing more dangerous than driving without brake lights. People get hurt. I’m making sure you understand.”

  “I do. Fully.”

  The cop nodded. He wrote something down, then handed Cecelia back her license and papers. He was happy with himself. He patted the top of Cecelia’s car sportily and went back to his cruiser, where he made a show of calling someone on a cell phone.

  Cecelia stayed where she was. She wasn’t going to pull out first. And she wasn’t going to the mechanic on Paseo Del Norte. It wouldn’t only be the bulb. It would be fuses and wires and the whole electrical system. The mechanics would compile a list of all the things mortally wrong with Cecelia’s car. They would make her aware of every danger. It was that, but also she wasn’t going to the mechanic on Paseo del Norte because she didn’t want to accept a favor from some scrubbed cop. She hoped never to take another favor from a person who considered himself good. The world was full of goody-goody jerks and Cecelia did not aspire to inclusion in their ranks, nor did she wish to be fodder for their goodness.

  She reached into her school bag and felt around for the inside pocket. She found what she was looking for—the twenty-five dollars she’d taken from the kid with the internship. She rubbed the bills in her fingers. She was never going to spend these bills. She would keep them close, for strength. She saw why she’d been pulled over. It wasn’t because she hadn’t woken her mother, it was because she’d trespassed and stolen this money. The world didn’t want her stepping out of line. It was reacting. Warning her. This cop and Nate were on the same side—all authority, all rich kids, all whom luck favored. Cecelia had engaged them and they weren’t going to let her get away with it.

  She looked back and saw the cop still sitting there in his car. He was writing, listening to his dispatcher. Cecelia would wait him out. If he didn’t have to hurry off somewhere, neither did she. She’d read a book or something. But she didn’t even need a book. If she could sit at the vigils for hours on end, she could outwait this cop. She didn’t need to invent a task, didn’t need to keep cleaning her car’s interior or organizing her glove box. Cecelia was the best vigiler, and this cop was only good at being good. Every week there were fewer people outside the clinic because none of them were as ready as Cecelia was to be absent from their regular lives. Cecelia couldn’t wait for the next vigil, to see how many more had dropped out. She didn’t miss her mom. She’d never missed her uncle. She didn’t need television or home-cooked meals. She didn’t miss making music. She didn’t miss being a conscientious student, didn’t miss any of the old versions of herself she’d left behind. The only thing she missed was no longer in the world.

  Cecelia saw the cop pull a computer out from his dashboard and type something into it. He took a gulp from a water bottle and replaced the cap. She’d be late to class if necessary, but she wasn’t going to leave first. She rolled down her other window, the passenger window, and let cold pass through the car. She repositioned herself, pulling her legs up into the seat, seeing what was across the street—a big open yard of stone birdbaths. They were endless, like a photograph of crops. Acres of them. There were no birds anywhere. A thousand baths and not one bird. The baths were bone dry. The sky was empty.

  THE GAS STATION OWNER

  He was training new employees, two of them, to be co-mangers and co-clerks and co-stockers and co-janitors. The last time the gas station owner had an employee was five or six years ago, a kid whose father owned a car dealership
in Santa Fe. The kid had been carrying on a feud with his old man. He hadn’t talked much but he showed up on time, until he hadn’t shown up at all and the gas station owner never heard from him again. He hadn’t even come back to get his last check. Probably he’d proven his point to his father and the two of them had made up and he was talking someone into a sunroof that very moment. Now the gas station owner had these two sisters, not babies but young—both, they informed the gas station owner, engaged in a correspondence course that would certify them as librarians. They’d be leaving at the end of July. They’d be done with their coursework and would be off to do internships. The internships could be in New York. They could be in Miami, Los Angeles.

  “Yeah,” the other replied. “Or they could be in Las Cruces.”

  The gas station owner assured them he’d be back in a month or two. He apologized for their scant training. The sisters were from Golden. They had been hired on as waitresses in Lofte’s restaurant just a few weeks ago but business was falling off by the day and the diner couldn’t keep them. They were relieved to have these new jobs. They were eager for the chance to organize, to be in charge. The gas station owner gave them a number to call if there was a problem customer.

  “Take Sundays off,” he told them. “Unless you don’t believe in taking Sundays off. In that case, open on up.”

  He held out a list of vendors, complete with shipment sizes and frequency. The skinny sister leaned forward and took the paper, then handed it to the other.