‘My life flashed past like lightning.’

We have no happiness. There’s no such thing. It’s only something we long for.—colonel alexander vershinin

Saturday afternoon I spent on the couch—sometimes dozing, sometimes speaking a few words—with my father. He was watching a futebol game, but I did not care to know whether it was live or archived or who the principle teams were. Pai didn’t say anything about Chris. When my mother came home after dinnertime, my parents disappeared into their bedroom, and I disappeared into mine.

I had slept too much during the past three days. In fact I didn’t feel tired at all, yet sleep could spare me from spending the night with my thoughts. My attic room was unusually warm and sticky, and too many wisps of hair stole out of my ponytail and stuck to the sweat on my face. I flung off the covers. A few minutes later I picked them off the floor, tucked them back around the mattress, and slithered beneath them. I took off the socks that I usually wore to bed. I opened my window to the cold April mountain air. I walked the perimeter of the runner on the floor four times. I shivered and closed the window. Finally, back in bed, I dropped into an uneasy slumber—

Chris was in Albuquerque, but he wasn’t at his parents’. He walked along a wide street under a rapidly darkening sky. Every couple seconds he was illuminated—all of his features in sharp relief—as if by lightning. His destination was before him—a white and blue triangular building with a half-lit sign in front of it. The moveable letters read, “downtown inn, cabl tv, free local calls”. It wasn’t safe. I knew this, and I tried to tell him, but he shook his head at me. “Enough with the criticism, Bekah!” he told me. “This is my town.”

I sat on a hard wooden bench in a dim adobe building. Before me was an altar covered in antique lace—above it, Christ hung on His cross. Blood dripped from His forehead where the crown of thorns touched His skin.

“I am not even a Catholic anymore,” said a woman sitting very close to me on the bench, “but I estill come to San Antonio’s when—I can pray better here, I think.” Her round, pleasant face was crowned with grey curls. She smelled like oranges and chilies.

A gunshot rang out in the distance. The fleshy women in cotton dresses two rows in front of us crossed themselves. Another crack echoed in the dusk. Cold sweat prickled on my back. A priest was making his way through the sparsely populated benches, putting his hands on each worshipper’s shoulders and muttering a quick blessing. I squirmed in my seat, unsure of what I would say should he come to me. Three more shots were fired in quick succession.

The woman beside me spoke again, “My grandson would always play a game when we heard—that.” She leaned closer to whisper, “Listen, that was not a gunshot—the giants in the sky are bowling.” Smiling, she asked me, “Now, m’ija, what did you hear?”

“Um,” (I thought, This is weird.), “maybe someone got their calendar messed up and is celebrating the Fourth a little early?”

My companion shook her head, “That is not estrange enough. My grandson once joked that an artist named Nigel installed forty-seven iron esquirrels’ estatues on his lawn and now they attract lightning.” Another loud bang rattled the miracles pinned to Saint Anthony’s banner.

“It’s not raining.”

“Oh, m’ija, you are—what did Gabriel say?—cramping our estyle.”

My face must have changed, for the woman hurried to assure me that she meant no disrespect. After a moment I asked her, though my voice was hoarse and she had to lean close to hear me, “Gabriel Delatorre?”

Tears sprung into her gentle eyes as she nodded. “My grandson was an angel on earth, and now he is an angel in the espirit world[1]—I’m sure of it.” She worried my hand, “Again I find someone who knew him!”

I tried to take my hand back as I shook my head, “No—not really—I . . .”

“It is the sound of a thousand abuelitas clicking their knitting needles together at the same time,” suggested a raw male voice behind us. Of course, it was Christian Miles.

“Why the bus?” I whispered to Chris. A reeking bearded white man across the aisle eyed my chest and licked his lips. We rattled down 12th Street in a colorful vehicle that said “abq ride” on the sides. The last time Chris was here, the buses were called SunTran.

The bus came to a screeching halt, and Chris put his arm out to prevent my head from slamming into the seat in front of me. “You’re not used to public transportation, are you?” he chuckled.

“Well, we don’t have public transportation in Joshua’s Ravine, and your sister drives me around Provo.”

From a second-story balcony I saw six sets of heads and shoulders in a dazzling concrete courtyard. I smelled doughnuts.

“You are a lot stupider than everyone says, Crash. Whaddya think, eh, Nacho?” one of the heads said.

The head that might have been Nacho’s let out a string of profanity that had no apparent meaning. Nacho’s arm swung out and punched another of the young men in the group.

His groan sounded familiar. “Chris!” I shouted, but there was nothing I could do. I was awake in an attic bedroom in Colorado. It was Sunday. Early bluish light trickled into my room.

* * * *

Family wards are never comfortable for a person between adolescence and marriage, and mine was no exception. After three hours of interrogation, I was considering hanging a sign around my neck next time: “Yes, BYU is great. No, I’m only visiting my family for the weekend. Yes, I’m still studying theater. No, I don’t have a boyfriend right now. Yes, I am getting ready for finals in two weeks. Yes, finals are tough.” My only consolation was the memory of my parents showing Ruth off whenever she visited home during her first year at BYU–Idaho. Nothing could have been worse than that, and I had the third child’s luck in escaping it.

In Relief Society we learned about strengthening our eternal families. Sister Muños, who had taught me in Mia Maids,[2] remembered to add “and our roommates”, but I still felt guiltily bored.

Lunch at home was a little scarce, since no one had done any sort of shopping for a while. I was rather eager for Chris to come and take me back to Provo so I could get back to real life.

We had agreed on four. He came at four-thirty, looking none the worse for wear. Chris didn’t offer any information about his time in Albuquerque, and I didn’t solicit any. Our return drive was as silent as the outgoing, except Chris had picked up a few more CDs in New Mexico. Somewhere near Monticello I decided that Kill Them with Kindness was my new favorite of the moment. By Price I’d changed my favorite to London Calling.

Something had changed, or I had changed. The air lay differently on my arms—less franticly. I longed to know how . . . and why. As we chased the sun across the leonine desert, I felt Chris watching me out of the corner of his eye. When I set my jaw and stared straight out of the windshield, I even sensed him turn to look at me. I never returned his look, and we shot up the interstate.

In the condo living room Marianne and Derek sat serene, two whole inches of space between them, yet the air was disturbed, as if they’d suddenly moved a moment before I entered the room. They smiled and said they’d missed me. Graça wasn’t back from Charlie’s yet. On my desk was a note from Marielise Kimball:

Rebekah—

We were sorry to miss your smiling face in Relief Society today! We read from Elder Nelson’s conference talk. Don’t forget Enrichment on Thursday at 7:00 in the Clubhouse! We’re going to learn how to cope with stress, and we’ll have COOKIES!

Nothing had changed. The same classes loomed on the morrow. The same clothing hung in my closet. The same bed beckoned me with a promise of lethe.

I sighed aloud in the empty room.

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[1] spirit world—where spirits go after death to await a bodily resurrection

[2] Class of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls in the Young Women organization