Seize the Night

pumping through my veins.
    To poets but also to those whose stomachs curdle at the mention of poetry, birds in flight usually evoke thoughts of freedom, hope, faith, joy. The thrum of these pinions, however, was as bleak as the keening of an arctic wind coming across a thousand miles of barren ice, it was a forlorn sound, and in my heart it coalesced into an icy weight.
    With the exquisite timing and choreography that suggests psychic connections among the members of a flock, the double ring of birds fluidly combined into a single ascending spiral. They rose like a coil of dark smoke, around and up and up through the flue of the night, across the pocked moon, becoming steadily less visible against the stars, until at last they dissipated like mere fumes and soot across the rooftop of the world.
    All was silent. Windless. Dead.
    This behavior of the nighthawks had been unnatural, certainly, but not a meaningless aberration, not a mere curiosity. There was calculation—therefore meaning—in their air show.
    The puzzle resisted an easy solution.
    Actually, I wasn't sure I wanted to fit all the pieces together.
    The resultant picture was not likely to be comforting. The birds themselves posed no threat, but their bizarre performance couldn't be construed as a good thing.
    A sign. An omen.
    Not the kind of omen that makes you want to buy a lottery ticket or take a quick trip to Vegas. Certainly not an omen that would make you decide to commit more of your net worth to the stock market. No, this was an omen that might inspire you to move to rural New Mexico, up into the fastness of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, as far from civilization as you could get, with a hoard of food, twenty thousand rounds of ammunition—and a prayer book.
    I returned the pistol to the holster under my jacket.
    Suddenly I was tired, drained.
    I took a few deep breaths, but each inhalation was as stale as the air I exhaled.
    When I wiped a hand across my face, hoping to slough off my weariness, I expected my skin to be greasy. Instead, it was dry and hot.
    I found a penny-size tender spot just below my left cheekbone.
    Gently massaging it with a fingertip, I tried to remember whether I had knocked against anything during the night's adventures.
    Any pain without apparent cause is a possible early signal of a forming lesion, of the cancer that I have thus far remarkably escaped. If the suspect blemish or tenderness occurs on my face or hands, which are exposed to light even though sheathed in sunscreen, the chances of malignancy are greater.
    Lowering my hand from my face, I reminded myself to live in the moment.
    Because of XP, I was born with no future, and in spite of my limitations, I live a full life—perhaps a better one—by concerning myself as little as possible with what tomorrow may bring. The present is more vivid, more precious, more fulfilling, if you understand that it is all you have.
    Carpe diem , said the poet Horace, more than two thousand years ago. Seize the day. And trust not in tomorrow.
    Carpe noctem works as well for me. I seize the night, wringing from it all that it has to offer, and I refuse to dwell on the fact that eventually the darkness of all darknesses will wring the same from me.

9
    The solemn birds had cast down a dreary mood, like feathers molting from their wings. I walked determinedly out of that fallen plumage, heading toward the movie theater where Bobby Halloway was waiting.
    The sore spot on my cheek might never develop into a lesion or a blister. Its value, as a source of worry, had been solely to distract me from the more terrible fear that I was reluctant to face, The longer Jimmy Wing and Orson were missing, the greater the likelihood they were dead.
    Bordering the northern edge of Dead Town's residential district is a park with handball courts at one end and tennis courts at the other.
    In the middle are acres of picnic grounds shaded by California live oaks that have fared well since the base closure, a playground with swings and jungle gyms, an open-air pavilion, and an enormous swimming pool.
    The large oval pavilion, where bands once played on summer nights, is the only ornate structure in Wyvern, Victorian, with an encircling balustrade, fluted columns, a deep cornice enhanced by elaborate millwork, and a fanciful roof that drops from finial to eaves in shingled scallops reminiscent of the swags of a circus tent. Here, under strings of colored Christmas lights, young men had danced with