Piece of Heaven

Filler from The Taos News: Full Moon Facts The full moon is the phase of the Moon in which it is fully illuminated as seen from Earth, at the point when the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the Earth. The full moon reaches its highest elevation at midnight. High tides. Names for the August and September full moon: Full Red Moon, Full Green Corn Moon, Full Sturgeon Moon. One It was a good thing for Placida Ramirez that the moon was full when she set her house on fire at three o'clock in the morning that August night. Because it was the moon, shining like a searchlight through her bedroom windows, that had awakened Luna McGraw. Technically, it was a dream about her long-gone father that yanked her out of sleep. It was worries about her daughter's arrival tomorrow that kept her awake. But the moon, so coldly white in the summer sky, took the blame. Dragging on a pair of shorts beneath her sleeping shirt, she got up to make some coffee. It would make her mother crazy to know Luna was making coffee in the middle of the night. Why not a cup of tea? Something soothing and relaxing? Not her style. Once upon a time, she would have poured a hefty measure of gold tequila into a water glass and sipped that. A part of her still wished she could. At least coffee had some bite. Measuring out Costa Rican Irazu into her new Krupps grinder, she counted out the seconds to twenty-one. Perfect grind for a latte. Perfect grind for her, anyway. The world was entirely too full of coffee nazis these dayscoffee was about individual taste, and no one should let anyone else tell her what to like. She liked hers strong enough to stand and walk by itself, with steamed milk and a pound of sugar. As drugs went, it wasn't bad. Also, a good latte took some detail work. The measuring. The grinding. Now she pressed the grounds, the color of good earth, into a tiny metal basket, and clicked on the machine. While it was heating up, she poured one-percent milk into a giant ceramic mug and waited, yawning, for the steam to be hot enough to make a froth. The actions and the smell of coffee eased some of her restlessness, and she found she could stand there with one bare foot over the other without twitching too much in nicotine withdrawal. Or wondering why it had suddenly seemed like such a brilliant plan to quit smoking right now, when her daughter was coming to live with her for the first time in eight years. Maybe, she thought with resentment, it would be better to try again in a few weeks, when there wasn't so much at stake. But of course, Joy was the reason she had decided to try. The reason she could stick with it for a few more days. Joy hated cigarettes and Luna hated feeling like such a failure in front of her daughter. Not smoking seemed like a gesture of earnestness. And really, she needed to quit anywayeverybody had to quit, right?it stunk and made you wrinkle faster and it was bad for your health, and it was nearly impossible to go out and have a long, lazy dinner with anyone these days unless you wanted to keep a patch handy, which was almost as sick in its way. Primary reasons, she said to herself, an old habit. A note taped to her cabinet said it: smoking stinks. Never mind dread diseases or wrinkles. She hated the smell of cigarettes on her body and in her hair, in the air and on her hands. Yuck. The way things smelled mattered to herperfumes and incense and flowers, herbs and morning on the desert. Coffee brewing in the middle of the night. The machine started to gurgle, and she stuck the steamer into the milk, bringing a fine foam to the top, then poured the finished espresso into the mug, added three packets of turbinado sugar, and stirred it all together. Now what? There was a button that needed sewing on her best blouse. A novel, lying facedown on the kSamuel, Barbara is the author of 'Piece of Heaven' with ISBN 9780345445674 and ISBN 0345445678.