A Friend of the Earth Read Free Page A

father left me, went to Andrea and Teo and my wild–eyed cohorts at Earth Forever! (Never heard of it? Think radical enviro group, eighties and nineties. Tree–spiking? Ecotage? Earth Forever! Ring a bell?)
    It takes me that long minute, mulling things over and delaying the inevitable in the way of the old (but not that old, not with all the medical advances they’ve thrust on us, what with our personal DNA codes and telomerase treatments and epidermal rejuvenators, all of which I’ve made liberal use of, thanks to Maclovio Pulchris’ generosity), and then I figure what price dignity, jerk off the boots, stuff my socks deep in the pointed toes of them and roll my pants up my skinny legs. The water creeps up my shins, warm as a bath, and I tuck the boots under my slicker, tug the beret down against the wind and start off across the lot. It’s almost fun, the feel of it, the splashing, all that water out of its normal bounds, and the experience takes me back sixty–five years to Hurricane Donna and a day off from school in Peterskill, New York, splash and splash again. (And people thought the collapse of the biosphere would be the end of everything, but that’s not it at all. It’s just the opposite – more of everything, more sun, water, wind, dust, mud.)
    I’m standing under the jury–rigged awning (steel plates welded to steel posts set in concrete), trying to balance on one bare foot and administer a sock and boot to the other, when the door flings open and two drunks, as red in face and bare blistered arm as if they’ve been baked in a tandoori, trundle out to gape at the rain. ‘Shit,’ the one to my right says, and I’m squinting past him to the bar, to see if Andrea’s there, ‘may as well have another drink.’ His companion blinks at the deluge as if he’s never seenweather before – and maybe he hasn’t, maybe he’s from Brazil or New Zealand or one of the other desert countries – and then he says, ‘Can’t. Got to get home to’ (you fill in the name) ‘and the kids and the dog and the rats in the attic … but fuck this weather, fuck it all to hell.’
    I take a deep breath, dodge around them, and step into the restaurant. I should point out that Swenson’s isn’t the most elegant place – elegance is strictly for the rich, computer repairmen, movie people, pop stars like Mac – but it has its charms. The entryway isn’t one of them. There’s an empty fish tank built into the cement block wall on your immediate right, a coat rack and umbrella stand on the left. Music hits you – oldies, the venerable hoary inescapable hits of the sixties, played at killing volume for benefit of the deaf and toothless like me – and a funk of body heat and the kind of humidity you’d expect from the Black Hole of Calcutta. No air–conditioning, of course, what with electrical restrictions and the sheer killing price per kilowatt hour. Go straight on and you’re in the bar, turn left and you’ve got the dining room, paneled in mismatching pine slats recycled from the classic California ranch houses that succumbed to the historical imperative of mini–malls and condos. I go straight on, the bar teeming, Shiggy glancing up from the blender with a nod of acknowledgment, some antiquated crap about riding your pony blistering the overworked speakers.
    No Andrea.
Ride your pony, ride your pony
. My elbows find the bar, cheap
sake
(tastes of machine oil, brewed locally) finds me, and I scan the faces to be sure. I even slide off my glasses and wipe them on my sleeve, a gesture as habitual as breathing. Replace them. Study the faces now, in depth, erasing lines and blotches and liver spots, pulling lips and eyes up out of their fissures, smoothing brows and firming up chins, and still no Andrea. (Swenson’s, in case you’re wondering, caters strictly to the