The three of them stood on a point just north of Swami’s, leaning into the storm and marveling at the spectacle. Marta was bouncing a little in place, stuffed with energy, totally fired up; she seemed both exhilarated and furious, and shouted at the biggest waves when they struck the stubborn little cliff at Pipes. “Look at that! Outside!” She was soaking wet, as they all were, the rain plastering her curls to her head, the wind plastering her shirt to her torso; she looked like the winner of some kind of extreme-sport wet T-shirt contest, her breasts and belly button and ribs and collarbones and abs all perfectly delineated under the thin wet cloth. She was a power, a San Diego surf goddess, and good for her that she had gotten hired by Small Delivery Systems. Again Leo felt a glow for this wild young colleague of his.
“This is so great!” he shouted. “I’d rather do this than work in the lab!”
Brian laughed. “They don’t pay you for this, Leo.”
“Ah hey. Fuck that. This is still better.” And he howled at the storm.
Then Brian and Marta gave him hugs; they were taking off.
“Let’s try to stay in touch you guys,” Leo said sentimentally. “Let’s really do it. Who knows, we may all end up working together again someday anyway.”
“Good idea.”
“I’ll probably be available,” Brian said.
Marta shrugged, looking away. “We either will be or we won’t.”
Then they were off. Leo waved at Marta’s receding truck. A sudden pang—would he ever see them again? The reflection of the truck’s taillights smeared in two red lines over the street’s wet asphalt. Blinking right turn signal—then they were gone.
It takes no great skill to decode the world system today. A tiny percentage of the population is immensely wealthy, some are well-off, a lot are just getting by, a lot are suffering. We call it capitalism, but within it lies buried residual patterns of feudalism and older hierarchies, basic injustices framing the way we organize ourselves. Everybody lives in an imaginary relationship to this real situation; and that is our world. We walk with scales on our eyes, and only see what we think.
And all the while on a sidewalk over the abyss. There are islands of time when things seem stable. Nothing much happens but the rounds of the week. Later the islands break apart. When enough time has passed, no one now alive will still be here; everyone will be different. Then it will be the stories that will link the generations, history and DNA, long chains of the simplest bits—guanine, adenine, cytosine, thymine—love, hope, fear, selfishness—all recombining again and again, until a miracle happens
and the organism springs forth!
Charlie struggled to his feet and stood next to his bed, hands thrown out like a nineteenth-century boxer.
“What?” he shouted at the loud noise.
It was not an alarm. It was Joe in the room, wailing. He stared at his father amazed. “Ba.”
“Jesus, Joe.” The itchiness began to burn across Charlie’s chest and arms. He had tossed and turned in misery most of the night, as he had every night since encountering the poison ivy. He had probably fallen asleep only an hour or two before. “What time is it? Joe, it’s not even seven! Don’t yell like that. All you have to do is tap me on the shoulder if I’m still asleep, and say, ‘Good morning Dad, can you warm up a bottle for me?’”
Joe approached and tapped his leg, staring peacefully at him. “Mo da. Wa ba.”
“Wow Joe. Really good! Say, I’ll get you your bottle warmed up right away! Very good! Hey listen, have you pooped in your diaper yet? You might want to pull it down and sit on your own toilet in the bathroom like a big boy, poop like Nick, and then come on down to the kitchen and your bottle will be ready. Doesn’t that sound good?”
“Ga da.” Joe trundled off toward the bathroom.
Charlie, amazed, padded after Joe and descended the stairs as gently as he could, hoping not to stimulate his itches. In the kitchen the air was delightfully cool and silky. Nick was there reading a book. Without looking up he said, “I want to go down to the park and play.”
“I thought you had homework to do.”
“Well, sort of. But I want to play.”
“Why don’t you do your homework first and then play, that way when you play you’ll be able to really enjoy it.”
Nick cocked his head. “That’s true. Okay, I’ll go do my homework first.” He slipped out, book under his arm.
“Oh, and take your shoes up to your room while you’re on your way.”
“Sure Dad.”
Charlie stared in his reflection in the side of the stove hood. His eyes were round.
“Hmm,” he said. He got Joe’s bottle in its pot, stuck an earphone in his left ear. “Phone, give me Phil … Hello, Phil, look I wanted to catch you while the thought was fresh, I was thinking that if we introduced the Chinese aerosols bill again, we could catch the whole air problem at a fulcrum and either start a process that would finish with the coal plants here on the East Coast, or else it would serve as a stalking horse, see what I mean?”
“Hmm, good idea Charlie, I’d forgotten that bill, but it was a good one. I’ll give that a try. Call Roy and tell him to get it ready.”
“Sure Phil, consider it done.”
Charlie took the bottle out of the pot and dried it. Joe appeared in the door, naked, holding up his diaper for Charlie’s inspection.
“Wow Joe, very good! You pooped in your toilet? Very good, here’s your bottle all ready, what a perfect kind of Pavlovian reward.”
Joe snatched the bottle from Charlie’s hand and waddled off, a length of toilet paper trailing behind him, one end stuck between the halves of his butt.
Holy shit, Charlie thought. So to speak.
He called up Roy and told him Phil had authorized the reintroduction of the Chinese bill. Roy was incredulous. “What do you mean, we went down big-time on that, it was a joke then and it would be worse now!”
“Not so, it lost bad but that was good, we got lots of credit for it that we deployed elsewhere, and it’ll happen the same way when we do it again because it’s right, Roy, we have right on our side on this.”
“Yes of course obviously but that’s not the point—”
“Not the point? Have we gotten so jaded that being right is no longer relevant?”
“No of course not, but that’s not the point either, it’s like playing a chess game, each move is just a move in the larger game, you know?”
“Yes I do know because that’s my analogy, but that’s my point, this is a good move, this checks them, and they have to give up a queen to stop from being checkmated.”
“You really think it’s that much leverage? Why?”
“Because Winston has such ties to Chinese industry, and he can’t defend that very well to his constituency, Christian realpolitik isn’t a coherent philosophy and so it’s a vulnerability he has don’t you see?”
“Well yeah, of course. You said Phil okayed it already?”
“Yes