“Why did you ask about prison?” I said.
“Oh, no reason.”
“Most people don’t bring up prison without some reason,” I said. Irina shrugged, and the baby lifted her head and said, “Guala guala,” still asleep. Irina smiled. “She is practically obsessing with gorillas.”
“You were telling me about prison.”
“Nobody’s in prison,” she said firmly, and hoisted Psyche onto her chest. She was sitting cross-legged, and for the first time I noticed that her legs were unshaven, brown with hair down to her ankles, and her toes had thick, curved nails. She reminded me of some fairy-tale creature, part human, part animal, who lives in the woods.
Then Psyche woke up and moved a tiny curled fist to her mother’s breast. Irina unbuttoned her pajama top and looked up at me. “Does this bother you?”
I shook my head.
“I am glad of that,” she said, starting to nurse the baby. “Some people we know, they do not like to see the baby.”
“They don’t like babies?” I said. “What’s their problem?”
“It’s because of VE. I’m not adhering.”
“What’s VE?”
“Voluntary extinction,” she said. “No breeding. That’s what they call me. The breeder. Not Wylie or Angus, but some of the others.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” I said slowly. “That’s crazy.”
Irina shrugged and cupped the back of Psyche’s head in her hand. The baby was sucking dreamily, one hand resting gently against the exposed breast, her eyes closed. “It’s actually the opposite of crazy,” Irina said. “It is totally logical. The logical consequence of thoughtful people observing our world. If you think that humans are destroying the planet, Lynn, and the population is growing too fast, then it only makes sense not to procreate. Trying to slow things down is everyone’s responsibility. VE begins at home.”
In a way, I thought, this made sense. If you believed that overpopulation was an ecological crisis, why would you bring a child into the world? And if you believed that most people’s lives were ruined by unnecessary materialism, then it made sense to share an empty apartment with a handful of like-minded people. And yet, I thought, looking at the baby cradled in Irina’s arms, they were crazy, too. “Jesus H. Christ,” I said.
“You keep saying that,” Irina said sadly, “but I don’t know why.”
I smiled at her then. She seemed like the most innocent person I’d ever met. “Who’s Psyche’s father?” I asked again.
She smiled at me shyly, then blushed deep crimson. “It’s no one you know.”
“Are you sure?”
“You are afraid it’s Angus,” she said suddenly. “It is not. And it is not Wylie, either, in case you are wondering that.”
Now it was my turn to blush. “Okay,” I said.
Psyche had stopped nursing and was fast asleep.
“Do you know,” I said, trying to sound casual, “when Angus is getting back?”
“Oh.” Irina looked surprised. “I thought you had arranged the plan to meet him here. He’s coming back today.”
I felt strangely contented, hanging out in the bare apartment with Irina and her child. We could hear the building rise slowly into life, the banging of doors and the starting of cars, an early-morning argument downstairs.
Irina told me about meeting Wylie, and this version of her life story was less mythological than the one about being transported by a nature special. She had arrived in Albuquerque, a little over a year earlier, but she was homeless. Her dreams about a new life had slipped so far from her grasp that she couldn’t remember how she’d come to hold them in the first place.
“I was also,” she said, “having a little problem with the drugs.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“Many kinds. The social worker said I had a diversified appetite.”
I looked at the baby, who had rosy, healthy skin and an appetite confined, from what I’d seen, to Irina’s milk.
“So. I was living out of the dumpsters. And I met these people, these boys, who were also living out of the dumpsters. We were always meeting at these same dumpsters. The ones behind the pizza restaurant by the school are good, and also behind the grocery store. But these young men are doing this by their choice. It was like a whole new idea to me, do you see? A whole new meaning of life. I thought, maybe I am not just a drug-addicted person. Maybe I can believe in something also.”
There was a pause.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You are thinking, Jesus H. Christ. But this is what happened. And then Wylie, he helped me go away from the drugs, and he let me stay here whenever I wanted to, and the rest was easy. I have learned so much since I have met these people.”
“Okay,” I said. I stood up to stretch, and I was in the middle of a big one — arms above my head, stomach exposed— when Angus opened the door and saw me.
“Hello, stranger,” he said, and his voice warmed me like the sun.
Then my brother, Stan, and Berto came through the door behind him, their skin and clothes smeared with dirt and sweat. Sledge went into a welcoming frenzy, leaping up on each of them and licking their faces and stinking bodies. I felt the same way the dog did. I was being released from my calm existence in my mother’s condo, from the days of boredom and good behavior. I caught Wylie’s eye and said hello as Angus and the others carried backpacks and milk crates into the apartment and dropped them on the floor.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Looking for you,” I said, “like always.”
“Yeah, right,” he said, glancing at Angus.
I blushed for the second time that morning, strongly and with conviction. I’d really taken to shame, it seemed. Then I looked over at Irina; she smiled as if she understood, and I felt better. “Where have you guys been, anyway?”
“Bisbee,” Wylie said.
“What the hell’s in Bisbee? And please don’t say ‘Bisbee.’”
“It’s just a place we like to go,” Wylie said, and rested his skinny hand, for the briefest moment, on my shoulder.
The group convened, cross-legged, on the floor. It was daylight now, and through the open windows I could smell freshly laid asphalt from some distant driveway.
Angus clapped his hands.
“The time has come,” he said, “for the next plan.”
I was more curious than I would have expected to hear what new instance of extreme behavior they’d invented this time.
“No way, man,” Berto said, to my surprise, his gray, hang-dog face even more ashen than usual. “The time has come for breakfast, man, if you know what I’m saying.”
Angus put his hands on his hips. His clothing was in tatters: his jeans had holes, his white T-shirt had holes, even his socks had holes. Through the tears in the fabric his pale skin glowed. I wanted to go over and touch it.
“Is this how everybody feels?” he said.
Everybody nodded.
“I can cook breakfast if you bring me some supplies,” Irina said from the counter, where she was perched with the baby in the sling.
“All right, then,” Angus said. “The time has come for breakfast.”
So the morning began all over again. Angus left and returned with a backpack crammed full of fruit and eggs and bread and sausages, which Irina cooked over the propane stove. People showered, more quickly than I’d thought possible, and some even rummaged around by their sleeping bags for clean clothes.