The Neon Mender

If LA Kush Cake is your strain, this is your sign: the Neon Mender. The far end of the old Boulevard at dusk, the lift raised beside the tallest sign on the street, its tiers glowing pink, and you holding the new tube up in one hand, waiting for the sky to turn the right blue.

If LA Kush Cake is your strain

You notice what has gone out. Not the obvious things: the one dark petal on the pink palm, the star with a point missing, the sign at the end of the street that everyone stopped looking at years ago. Other people stop seeing a broken light after a week. You never stop seeing it, it bothers you a little more every evening, and sooner or later you go up and fix it.

You work slowly, then all at once. Most of your job is waiting: for the glass to cool, for the truck to start, for the sky to turn the exact blue that makes a tube look as if it had always been lit. You don’t mind waiting. You hum while you do it, usually the same note as whatever sign is nearest, and you can tell from a block away which one is about to go.

At your best you give a street back its evening. Because of you the diner looks open again, the motel looks like somewhere people go on purpose, and the old dance hall looks as if it is about to have a party. Nobody thanks you, because nobody knew anything was broken. You would rather be the reason than the story.

Your flaw is your own porch light. It has been out since spring. You have a box of spare tubes in the truck and a bench that could relight half the city, and you keep meaning to get to it. The people who love you have stopped mentioning it and started leaving the hall light on.

What you need is a warm dusk with no wind, a lift that starts on the second try, one dark sign that nobody else has given up on yet, and somebody down on the street to wave when it catches. Give you that, and the Boulevard gets its blue minute.

Your hour: The blue minute after sundown
Your place: The bucket of the lift, forty feet up
Your object: A curved glass tube
Your tempo: Slow, then all at once
Your weather: A warm dusk with no wind
Your flaw: Your own porch light

Your people

The Night Courier (Sour Diesel)The Night Courier rides under signs like yours on the other coast and has never once looked up. He has never once gotten lost, either, which is what a good sign is for.
The Aurora Keeper (Northern Lights)The Aurora Keeper waits for her sky to light itself; you light yours by hand, one tube at a time. She calls that cheating, you call hers luck, and you both stay out until it is done.
The Mountain Elder (Hindu Kush)The Mountain Elder keeps a pass where the only light is the moon. You send her descriptions of pink, she sends back descriptions of snow, and you agree about almost everything.

Things you say

Nobody looks up until it’s out.
Pink any time. Indigo waits for the blue.
If it hums, it’s alive.
A dark tube is just a sign holding its breath.
Tomorrow, maybe.

A scene from your world

The top tier

The Neon Mender parks the lift truck under the tallest sign on the Boulevard at ten to seven, when the sun has just gone behind the hills and the palms are still holding some of it. The truck is older than he is, cream and indigo, with a boom that unfolds in three stiff stages like someone getting up from a deep chair. He climbs into the bucket with the new tube held across his chest in both gloved hands, the way you would carry something asleep.

Everyone on the street calls the sign the Cake, though it was built for a dance hall and has never advertised anything sweeter than a Saturday night. Three rounded tiers, stacked, outlined in glass: rose on the bottom, cream in the middle, indigo on top. The bottom two still light every night. The top tier has been dark for eleven years. People stopped looking up at it a long time ago. He never did.

Forty feet up, the Boulevard lies out below him like a ruler laid toward the sea: motel, diner, roller rink, laundromat, palm, palm, palm. Their signs are pictures, not words. A pink palm tree. A diver in mid-air over a pool. A star with all its points. A small indigo rocket that has been leaving the motel roof every night since before he was born and has never once gotten anywhere. He knows all their notes. Every sign hums, and every sign hums differently.

He fits the tube into the top tier, bracket by bracket, and makes the connections. Then he waits, because indigo is the hardest color to switch on. Too early and it looks like a smudge against the sky; too late and it just looks like the night. There is one minute after sundown when the sky turns exactly the blue of the glass, and in that minute an indigo tube does not look switched on so much as remembered.

The sky goes. He flips the switch.

The top tier catches with a soft click, flickers twice and holds. And all down the Boulevard, as if they had been waiting to see whether it would, the other signs brighten a little: the palm, the diver, the star, the rocket on the motel roof. A cook comes out of the diner wiping her hands. Two kids on bikes stop in the middle of the street. In the window of the motel office an old woman lifts one hand, and he lifts his back.

He stays up there until the glass settles into its note. Then he lowers the boom, stage by stage, and drives home along a street that looks like somewhere people go on purpose. His own porch light is still out. Tomorrow, maybe.

The Boulevard

The Boulevard: Straight as a ruler from the hills to the sea, lined with palms, motels and one of every kind of shop. At dusk it is the brightest street in the city, and nearly all of that light was fixed by hand.
The Cake: The three-tiered sign at the far end, built for a dance hall, rose and cream and indigo. Nobody remembers what it advertised. Everybody calls it the Cake, and everybody has a reason.
The lift: A cream-and-indigo truck with a three-stage boom that unfolds like someone getting out of a deep chair. It starts on the second try, every time, which on the Boulevard counts as reliable.
The bench: At the back of a shop that used to mend typewriters. Every tube is bent warm, by hand and by eye, over a full-size drawing chalked on the floor.
The blue minute: The one minute after sundown when the sky is exactly the color of indigo glass. Pink can go on any time. Indigo waits for this.
The hum: Every sign on the Boulevard has its own note. The Mender tunes them by ear and can tell from a block away which one is about to go.