“So am I. You should get another couple of hours if you can.”
Alone again, I settled back into my chair. Outside, the street was empty and stayed empty. Silence inside and out, until I heard more footsteps on the stairway. This time it was Geddy’s friend Rebecca, barefoot in a cotton nightie. Her skinny frame and halo of dark hair gave her the look of a Q-tip dipped in black paint. “Couldn’t sleep,” she explained when she saw me. “What with the noise and all.”
I asked without thinking, “And Geddy slept through it?”
“I guess so. We’re in separate rooms, remember?”
Of course they were: Mama Laura’s Protestantism wouldn’t countenance an unmarried couple cohabiting under her roof. Rebecca headed for the kitchen, and I heard the refrigerator door open and close. She came back into the living room with a glass of milk in her hand. “I put the rest of the carton in the freezer, where it’s still a little cold. But if this blackout goes on much longer you’ll have to start throwing away perishables. Mind if I sit?”
I did mind, because as long as she was in the room my attention would be divided between her and the street. But I couldn’t say that. I shrugged, and she sank into the big easy chair that used to be reserved for my father. “I guess you couldn’t sleep either.”
“I’m a light sleeper at the best of times.”
“Uh-huh.” She sipped her milk.
Outside, a car drove past. It didn’t stop. I watched until its taillights vanished around the nearest corner. “I apologize about the candles.”
“I’m not religious, and I’m not sentimental about yahrzeit candles. Though I still light one on Yom HaShoah, like everyone else in my family.”
“Big family?”
“It seems like it, when we get together for the holidays.”
“Have you introduced Geddy to them?”
She sipped her milk and wiped her lip with her wrist. “My Gentile boyfriend? Of course I have. They love him. There’s no problem, except with a couple of Orthodox cousins whose opinions no one takes seriously. An awkward moment now and then, no big deal.”
“As awkward as all this?”
“Well, maybe not quite. But Geddy told me what to expect, especially concerning his dad. So no shocks there. And I know how it is with families.”
I nodded and looked back at the window.
“Conventional families, I mean,” she said. “Your friend Trevor is cute, by the way. I like the way you are with him. There’s obviously some real love there.”
Her gaydar had surely blipped when Trevor came within range, and I wondered if she was making an unwarranted assumption about my relationship with him. But if so, so what. “Real love” was a fair call.
“Being in an Affinity must be like that. That’s what I think. I mean all these wonderful, complex relationships just spilling out of the air practically—a million possibilities, a million flavors of potential happiness. You were an early adopter, right? It must have been great back then.”
“It’s great now. Anyway, I thought you disapproved.”
“No, I totally get it! I mean I do disapprove, in a way, but I don’t disapprove of what an Affinity gives you.”
“So what do you disapprove of?”
“The fact that it’s in an Affinity. The fact that there’s a wall around it. All due credit to Meir Klein—he knew utopia isn’t one-size-fits-all. You could put a hundred people together and they could live better, fuller, freer, happier, more collaborative lives—but only the right hundred people, not a hundred random people off the street. So once you know what to measure and how to crunch the numbers, voilà: the twenty-two Affinities. Twenty-two gardens, with twenty-two walls around them. No disputing it’s nice inside, for anyone who can get inside. But think about what that means for all the people not included. Suddenly you’ve segregated them from the best cooperators. Which puts outsiders in a walled garden too, but it’s not really a garden, ’cause all the competent gardeners buggered off and the trees don’t bear much fruit. And a walled garden that isn’t a garden looks like something different. It looks like a prison.”
“Colorful metaphor, but—”
“And that’s not the only problem. You’ve created twenty-two groups—twenty-three, if you count those of us left out—with competing interests. The Affinities are all about cooperation within the group, not between groups. So, hey, look, a new world order, twenty-three brand new para-ethnicities and meta-nations, and what prevents them from going to war with each other? Nothing. Apparently.”
“We’ve done good in the world, Rebecca. TauBourse, for instance. It benefited a lot of people who weren’t Taus, directly and indirectly. As for war, we had people in high places in India and even a few in Pakistan, trying to prevent all the trouble.”
“And how’s that going?”
I shrugged and looked back at the window. A pair of headlights appeared at the end of the street, approaching. The vehicle behind them was big, but it was too dark to make out more than a boxy shape. It drove past without slowing or stopping. Then the street was empty again.
“I don’t think you’re down here because you can’t sleep,” Rebecca said. “I think you’re down here standing guard.”
“What makes you say that?”
“In addition to the way you can’t keep your eyes off an empty street?”
“What would I be standing guard against?”
“Het, I’m guessing.”
“And why would you think that?”
“Because your sister-in-law talks to Geddy, and Geddy talks to me. I know what Jenny’s situation is. I know how Aaron treated her, and I know what she means to do about it. I also know you’re helping her—Tau is helping her—and I know why. You think her video will discredit Aaron and maybe force him to step down before the vote on Griggs-Haskell. Win-win, right? Except for Het.”
I looked at her with fresh respect and a degree of wariness. Maybe Geddy had trusted her enough to confide in her. But I wasn’t Geddy, and I wasn’t sure I trusted Geddy’s judgment.
“Assuming any of this is true,” I said, “what’s your interest?”
“Personally, you mean? Or from the point of view of New Socionome?”
“Either.”
“New Socionome isn’t an Affinity. There’s no us and them. No single point of view. No consensus. It has no interests to advance, except to facilitate non-zero-sum collaboration. So the only opinion I can offer is my own. I think the Affinities are doomed whether Griggs-Haskell passes or not. Because they have a toxic dynamic. The sooner they fail, the better. I think Jenny needs to get away from Aaron, and I think she’s brave to want to out him as an abuser. Short-term, I approve of what you’re doing to help her. Even though it’s messy. I assume you’ve thought about what it’s going to do to this family?”
At length. I told her so. “But I believe it’s worth it.”
“For Jenny, you mean. And to do the right thing.”
“For Tau,” I said. “And to do the right thing.”
Rebecca asked me one more question before she carried a yahrzeit candle back upstairs with her: “Do you really think there might be Het people out there who want to hurt us?”
I wondered whether it was wise to answer her question. I didn’t want to confirm her suspicions or reveal more than she already knew. “Look at it from Het’s point of view,” I said. “They’ve kept a close eye on Aaron and they probably know at least a little about his troubled marriage. If they don’t know about the video, they may at least suspect Jenny of being a loose cannon. They also know the most direct connection between Jenny and Tau is through me. So any occasion that brings me into contact with Jenny is going to interest them.”