A Million Heavens (9 page)

“You probably won't be as happy to hear I've decided I'm going to
use our old songs for my new band. I'm having tryouts this weekend and whoever I pick, I'm going to teach them our songs and we're going to perform them live for pay. As part of a new, currently unnamed band. Just to be clear.”

“You mean
Reggie's
songs.”

“Since you're on sabbatical or whatever, and I don't suppose Reggie needs them for anything.”

“You mean you're going to steal Reggie's songs because you can't write your own.”

“Call it what you like.”

“I am. I call it stealing.”

“I could justify taking the songs until the cows come home. Anybody can justify anything. It's what separates us from animals. It's a waste of time, though, isn't it—sitting around justifying when there's so much to be done? It's not easy starting a band, you know?”

Cecelia felt frozen up inside, but she heard herself talking. “There's got to be a way I can stop you,” she said. “Legally.”

Nate snorted. “You won't do that. You won't get a lawyer. Reggie didn't have the songs copyrighted or anything.”

“Copyrighted?”

“Yeah, that's what you do if you're smart. You copyright intellectual property.”

“You're an evil person, Nate. I know that's not news to you. I'm pretty disgusted I was ever in a band with you.”

“You needed my capital and hustle. Power, I call it. You needed my power.”

Cecelia didn't say anything. If she had said something, she would've expressed her wish that Nate had died, not Reggie. She wasn't going to say something like that. It was true, of course. If someone had to get in a bad car accident, it should have been Nate.

“You didn't have to quit,” Nate said. “I'm not going to be penalized because you don't feel like playing anymore. I invested a lot.”

Cecelia's heart wouldn't slow down. The only victory she could salvage,
at the moment, was not letting Nate know how badly he'd upset her. She was telling herself, almost in a chant, that she wasn't going to let Nate have the songs without a fight, but right now she wanted to appear calm, merely disappointed. She wasn't going to get a lawyer, true, but she also wasn't going to do nothing. Nate would probably get the songs, she could already see that, but she wasn't going to let him out of this unscathed. She was tired of being above things, of putting up with things. She saw that there were people who attacked and people who got attacked, and that the only way to keep from being a victim, like Cecelia perpetually was, was to do some attacking.

Once a month he went to visit a professional lady named Dana. Dana was semi-retired. She had a few steady clients and rarely tried a new one. Dana was the only woman Mayor Cabrera wanted. He certainly didn't want a young woman. Dana had short, straight hair and prim little feet that Mayor Cabrera liked to hold in his hands. She was always wearing a different pair of glasses and when she laughed she straightened her back and crinkled her nose. She didn't laugh a lot. She always seemed vaguely pleased but if you wanted her to laugh you had to earn it. Mayor Cabrera dreaded the day Dana would say she was quitting the business and he would have nothing to look forward to, nothing bright to think about while he passed the hours at the motel. He shouldn't think about her quitting, he knew. These monthly jaunts were meant for relaxation, not fretting. It wasn't only being with Dana in bed; it was getting out on this empty, pebble-shouldered road and absorbing the slaps of the rushing air, doing something that might be wrong, something strictly for himself. It was skipping dinner and accepting one of Dana's cigarettes and staying up until the stars faded swapping stories.

Mayor Cabrera was driving in the opposite direction of his worries, away from Lofte, where more and more people seemed to sense the town was going under. People were sniffing it on the wind. Some would move away, get
out while the getting was good, and this would accelerate the town's demise. The lifers, the ones who'd raised children in Lofte, would stay. They'd expect Mayor Cabrera to work a miracle. They'd think that since he had reddish skin and smelled earthy, he'd know how to fix everything. But the only fix was money, and no one had any. The truth was the town had been in decline for twenty-five years. Longer. Denial was the only defense against it, and denial was finally running low. Maybe Mayor Cabrera would work a miracle. Maybe Ran and his followers would move to Lofte.

The old racing grounds loomed up, nothing left but two sets of weathered bleachers staring each other down over a weedy flat. Mayor Cabrera remembered when they'd raced dogs, even horses. Now the place was a ruin. Compared to other ruins it was brand new, but it was a ruin. Mayor Cabrera was still five minutes from Dana's villa and he felt his worries losing steam already, their urgency flagging. He felt his neck loosening up, his breaths filling his whole chest. When he was with Dana, he felt that being alive was enough. Being alive was an achievement and a reward and an end in itself. Maybe that religious group would come to Lofte and save the town and maybe they wouldn't. What if they spurned Mayor Cabrera and went elsewhere, to Oklahoma or wherever? Would he have another date with dana? Yes, he would. What if the motel went under? Would he still get to press his mouth against Dana's ear? Yes, he would. No matter what happened, nothing was going to stop him from sitting up with Dana after the rest of the world was asleep, Mayor Cabrera peacefully spent, a happy cliché, nursing the tart gin drinks Dana mixed and telling and hearing of times before he and Dana had known each other, enjoying the old stories all the more because he was in a story that moment.

Sometimes he jogged, like a person concerned with health, and sometimes he slowed to a despondent shuffle. His laps didn't mean anything but that didn't seem like a reason not to do them. On the bar one day he noticed a box, a slim green box sitting there where a drink would've sat if Reggie ever
drank. He opened the box and a harmonica was inside. He took the harmonica in his hand and turned it in the weak light, the instrument winking at him. It was more lustrous than the bar implements and it was the perfect weight. Reggie breathed neutrally into it and it produced a whimper.

Reggie carried the harmonica back over where the piano and guitar were and set it down in its own space on the floor. Here was something else, sitting up on the body of the piano—a framed picture. Reggie turned the picture toward him and took it in. His chest felt crowded. It was a picture of a house but more importantly it was a picture of a yard. Mr. Dunsmore's yard. He was a friend of Reggie's parents who lived down the street. When Reggie had gotten old enough and realized what he wanted to do for a living, this man had given Reggie reign over his almost-acre. The deal was that Mr. Dunsmore would not pay Reggie, but Reggie had an unlimited budget to put toward the property. Mr. Dunsmore added Reggie's name to his tab at the nursery. Mr. Dunsmore had never had a son, just a string of daughters, and he taught Reggie to play chess and taught him some things about grilling. Mr. Dunsmore tried to let Reggie win at chess, but Reggie had no aptitude for the game. He wasn't strategic and didn't like to think about more than one thing at a time.

Reggie leaned against the piano and examined the picture, picking over the landscaping choices he'd made like someone picking friends out of an old graduation photo. This yard was his masterpiece, his pride. A yard wasn't like a song; it wasn't catching lightning in a bottle. A yard was like a person. It could grow distinguished. It could be dragged down by its flaws. Mr. Dunsmore would let the yard go now. He wouldn't let anyone lay a hand on it. The yard was surely in disrepair already, but in this photo it was perfect: hemmed at each side by hand-watered ironwoods, a smoke tree hiding the shed, arrow-straight pathways through the blackbrush, an agave guarding the porch steps, pebbles of cloud-gray surrounding the garnet pumice in the flower beds. Reggie could smell each plant. He remembered the smell of Mr. Dunsmore's deck shoes and remembered the perfume Mr. Dunsmore's youngest daughter wore, home on weekends from school down in Las Cruces.

Reggie was letting it happen again. He was being manipulated, his emotions guided and coaxed. Someone wanted him to think about Mr. Dunsmore and his yard. Reggie looked at the bureau. He'd stashed the chorus program and the belt buckle from his uncle in the top drawer. He looked at the guitar and harmonica. The bar had appeared. Before all that, the library. Of course, the piano. It had been here waiting on Reggie when he arrived and it was still waiting. Reggie slid the picture of Mr. Dunsmore's yard out of the way and folded his top half forward onto the piano, resting his cheek against the wood. It looked grainy but was slick as a car hood. Reggie closed his eyes and went limp. He was supposed to write songs. That's what he was being nudged and nudged toward. It was songs.
He
wasn't waiting. Whoever was in charge was the one waiting. Whoever was in charge had been trying to tease songs out of Reggie, to trick him into writing. That was it. Reggie had a talent and someone wanted to exploit it or exhaust it. Reggie wasn't waiting, he was being held captive. The instruments weren't meant to comfort him. They weren't hospitality. Even the afterlife wanted something from you. The only thing of value you had left.

Reggie took the picture of Mr. Dunsmore's yard and placed it in the top drawer of the bureau with the other items. He stood in front of the open drawer. There was something bubbling up in him that he'd rarely felt in the living world. It was anger. Anger at injustice. At powerlessness. He picked up the harmonica and squeezed it almost hard enough to break it. Inspiration was being engineered in Reggie. He was a cow and his udders had been getting massaged since the moment he arrived. Reggie tipped his head back and gazed up into the inscrutable low sky that constituted the roof of his quarters. He wasn't even sure he had more songs. What if he didn't? Reggie wondered if the songs were a simple bribe—his music in exchange for a pleasant eternity. Maybe heaven was like a third-world country, you had to grease a few palms. Reggie had died free of debts and he didn't owe anyone anything now. He wasn't going to be bullied. He hated a bully. His anger was everywhere, in his organs. He felt that something inside him had been wound and wound as he completed lap after lap
around the main hall and now that something was spinning loose. That's how he felt on the inside but he concentrated on keeping his outward bearing calm and deliberate. It was easy to forget, until something reminded him, that he was being watched, and he wanted whoever was watching to be startled by what he was about to do. He put a shoulder to the bureau and gently moved it away a few paces and then carried the guitar in its stand to a safe distance. He ran his hand over the piano and then hoisted and propped its heavy lid. He got hold of the bench and raised it over his head. It felt neither heavy nor light, same as the harmonica had felt to Reggie, same as a good gun had always felt, back in life. Reggie sidled around and gathered his breath and brought the bench down with all the force he could muster into the innards of the piano, and a sour shout filled the room. Reggie felt good about what he was doing, relieved, after walking in circles for ages, at the physical decisiveness of the action he was taking. He disentangled the bench, drawing moans from the piano, and posed with his weapon above his head before crashing it down over and over into the delicate workings of the colossal instrument, splintering the soundboards and bashing loose the bass strings and then the treble strings and jarring the bridges loose at painful angles. The red leather of the bench was scuffed and in two places torn open. Reggie was sweating lightly. He took a couple more whacks and then tossed the bench into the piano, where it rested on top of the rubble it had created, legs sticking into the air.

She opened her passenger door and reached through the car and pushed open the driver's door, which was still broken and was going to stay broken, then she walked around and got into the driver's seat and rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Crossing campus, she'd seen a flyer Nate had pinned up. He was calling his new band Thus Poke Sarah's Thruster. His tryouts were in two days. Cecelia opened her window and reclined her seat, not ready to be in traffic. She looked at the white sky, the sun stuck up there like the bottom of a pail. She hadn't done anything about Nate,
hadn't taken any action, hadn't begun to figure out what action she could take. She was afraid, was the truth. At times her anger felt stronger than her fear, but other times she felt paralyzed. And sometimes she wondered if it was Nate she was angry with or if she was fed up with the whole world and frustrated with herself. She had too many enemies. She needed to find some mindless courage. People said bullies were cowards but that wasn't true. It was the victims who had no courage. And she'd only been Nate's victim since she'd refused to keep on with the band. Before that, she'd benefited from his single-mindedness and from his resources. She'd been afforded the chance to perform music, to play Reggie's songs for people who lived to hear them. Maybe in a weird way Cecelia missed Nate. She missed the gigs. She missed the band's following, roughly a dozen fans who'd been committed enough to seem deranged. The twelve fans had been nervous around Reggie but spoke easily to Cecelia and Nate. They treated Cecelia and Nate like they were fans themselves, fans that got to play in the band. These people were overqualified community college types who showed their devotion by holding their heads against the speakers during the upbeat songs and solemnly swaying, eyes shut, during the slow numbers. They wore gloves to the shows—driving gloves, brightly colored mittens, fingerless gym gloves. They had a way of intimidating strangers who wandered into the venues. Nate had tried booking gigs in secret, with little or no publicity, but there was no escaping these fans. They had told Cecelia and Nate that if Shirt of Apes ever had T-shirts or bumper stickers or key chains made, the items would be rounded up and destroyed. The items would be confiscated and burned.