These Dreams of You

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Even as her older brother listens to glowering black rappers on their way up the river, Sheba remains besotted by the limey spaceman in the dress and make-up from thirty years ago. She sings his songs all the time; and mostly because he’s the annoying new obsession of his new sister, Parker cannot abide the man. Songs about electric-blue rooms and sons of the silent age drive him batty because they don’t make any sense: “Seriously?” he wails in the car at the CD. “Turn it off!”

The small studio from which Zan broadcasts was discovered in what everyone believed was the Añejo’s storage space. There was a microphone, sound system, disc player. The bar’s owner, Roberto, explained, “Canyon had a station once, to the extent anyone could get a frequency in these hills,” but that lonely frequency has been as unoccupied as the canyon’s repossessed homes. “I have this idea,” Zan said to Roberto one day, “I’ll play music a few hours a night, do a little show — it will be a way to advertise the bar.”

“Do a little show?” Roberto said. “Don’t you have to have a personality for that kind of thing?”

“I have a personality,” Zan said evenly, “don’t you worry about my personality. What about a license?”

“A license?” laughed Roberto. “For what?”

“To broadcast?”

“It’s the canyon. License? We don’t need no stinking license.” A few CDs lay scattered on the floor. “But what about the music?”

“Don’t you worry about the music, either,” said Zan.