“My disgusting pet?”
“That gassy dog.”
“Oh, the dog,” he said, and waved his hand dismissively. “That isn’t a pet. He just lives with us. Pets are little slaves we maintain to convince ourselves that we can be kind to animals, while every other part of our lifestyle promotes the extinction of animal life. You know what’s the most disgusting part of this pet mythology? Paying hundreds of dollars for a purebred while thousands of strays are killed every year in pounds. Anyway, Sledge can come and go as he pleases.”
“But you feed the dog,” I said, “and he’s living in your apartment. Isn’t he your pet in practice, if not in theory?”
He threw back his head and laughed generously, showing the diminishing spray of freckles down his pale neck. “You’re sharp,” he said, “and I like that. You stand outside of things, and observe them, and form rapid judgments. I like that too.”
This didn’t exactly strike me as a compliment. I felt tired then, and annoyed with myself. “It’s just. .” I said, my voice dwindling. He leaned closer to hear me, and I could feel, beneath the general heat of the air, the more specific warmth generated by the closeness of his skin to mine. “You know, I keep looking for Wylie, and he won’t talk to me, and I don’t know why. I’m sorry.”
Angus stood up and pulled me to my feet. We stood there for a second, holding hands, mirrored, swaying a little. “Don’t apologize for anything,” he said.
Inside the apartment, Irina was up and nursing the baby again. Angus went to the kitchen and poured water into his Nalgene bottle, which he handed to me and stared until I drank. Then he nodded — pleased with himself, it seemed— and turned to Irina. “Who’s coming today?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Stan and Berto for sure. I don’t know about Wylie.”
“No one ever knows about Wylie,” Angus said, and winked at me. “Maybe he’ll be at the thing tonight. Do you have the maps?”
“Yes, hold on.” Irina reached into the sling, somewhere underneath her baby’s butt, and pulled out a folded, creased piece of paper.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and was conspicuously ignored. Sledge came over and sadly licked my ankle. I found a shallow dish in the kitchen and gave him some water, which he drank in great sloppy mouthfuls. Then I spent a while nosing through the cupboards, which were stocked with neatly labeled plastic containers: rice, dried beans, lentils, oatmeal. There was enough food to keep a group going for weeks, as long as they didn’t mind eating the bomb-shelter diet. I remembered Wylie badgering our dad for more Nilla wafers when we were hiking, which in an attempt to guarantee good behavior were withheld until the last possible moment. I guessed he’d put Nilla wafers behind him by now.
I wandered into the bedroom, where Irina had been napping. At least this room held ordinary signs of habitation. A single cot draped with a sleeping bag sat against the back wall, underneath a window whose blinds were drawn. On the foot was a supply of cloth diapers, a jar of talcum powder, a box of baby wipes. The air smelled of baby: part dirty diaper, part No More Tears shampoo. I pulled up the blinds and looked into the backyard of another apartment complex, where a motorcycle was leaning on a rusty kickstand underneath a green archway that made it look like some kind of shrine; morning glories composed the arch, their blossoms twisted and closed, all the vines sagging in the afternoon heat, everything drooping and listless and dry. I turned from the window and opened the closet, which was empty. There were no pictures anywhere on the walls, no clothes thrown in the closet or on the floor, no tracts or manifestos, even. Aside from the traces of Irina and Psyche the apartment was desiccated, stripped of the invisible currents that people bring to a place they live. It was clear that Wylie didn’t live here anymore — at least not in the way that I defined living.
Back in the living room, Angus and Irina were sitting cross-legged on the floor, examining maps and muttering like spies.
“Are they metal or plastic?”
“Metal.”
“Pop-ups or shrub?”
“Pop-ups.”
This went on for some time. I stood behind Angus and peered over his curved back at a diagram that showed a long pipe with a spring curling around it, housed in some larger casing. The parts weren’t labeled, and I had no idea whether the thing was a carburetor or a bomb.
“What’s the earliest we can go?” Angus said.
“Gerald would know.”
“Who is Gerald, exactly?” I said.
“A friend of ours,” Irina said. She was crouching on the floor with her bent knees splayed out to either side, the baby asleep on her chest, her face inexplicably radiant. I couldn’t believe she was actually comfortable.
“Stan and Berto were supposed to be here already with his information,” Angus said.
“Who are Stan and Berto?” I said.
“Friends of ours,” Irina answered sweetly.
I sighed. “You guys have a lot of friends.”
Without saying anything Angus reached behind his back and wrapped his hand around the bare skin of my right ankle. It was so quick that I actually gasped a little bit. I could feel his dry palm, even the calluses, and as he peered over his shoulder I met his light-blue eyes. Then he broke into another wide smile and said, “We’re friendly people.”
The door opened and two guys walked in without knocking or even saying hello. They both looked familiar, so I must have seen them at the meeting. One looked like a wide receiver, with a muscular hairy chest he was flaunting under a tight white tank top. The other was short and older, a gaunt, gray-faced man whose shorts hung slackly on his skinny hips.
I stepped in front of Angus and Irina and stuck out my hand. “Hi, how’s it going? I’m Lynn.”
“Stan,” said the wide receiver. “This is Berto.”
“Yo,” said Berto.
Stan set a backpack down on the floor and pulled out a plastic bag. “Supplies,” he said.
These turned out to be peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off, which Stan offered around in a cursory manner before he and Berto devoured them. Aside from Psyche, Sledge, and me, everyone was huddled around the diagram, nodding.
“Gerald says earliest tee-off is ten-fifteen,” Berto said. “Get it?”
“Right.”
“I still think we need to have a name,” Berto said. “I was talking about this to some other people at the meeting, and they agreed with me.”
“Go work with them, then,” Stan said, and when Berto scowled at him, he scowled back. “The name doesn’t matter.”
“Can’t claim responsibility if we don’t got a name.”
“We don’t need to claim responsibility.”
“They’ll think it’s just a bunch of fucking kids.”
“Maybe we are a bunch of fucking kids,” Angus said.
“That’s bullshit,” Berto said angrily. “And not all of us are kids, man.” He reached into the bag and took another sandwich, shaking his head.
“No name, no claims,” Angus said decisively. “Nothing matters but the action itself.”
“What about, like, Citizens for Environmental Action? CEA,” Berto mused, waving his sandwich in the air.
“Berto, let the name go.”
“You’re right, it’s kind of bland. Okay, what about Earth Now? Kind of like Earth First, but different.”
“Tell me what you guys are planning,” I said.
“Excuse us,” Angus said. He stood up and pulled me by the elbow into the kitchen. My back was against the fridge, and his face loomed close to mine: his red hair, his pale skin, all those freckles. “Do you understand that I’m doing you a favor?” he whispered.
“No,” I whispered back.
“Wylie will be here, okay? He’ll be with us tonight. So just tag along with the crowd.”