The Oregon Experiment (29 page)

“With my nose back, I’m afraid I’ll get depressed if I don’t jump into my career. I need to feel vital. I need friends. Otherwise, Sammy’ll suffer for it.”

“I know,” he said. “I know.” There was an unopened bar of lavender chocolate in the kitchen cupboard.

“I’m thinking I should maybe do the bicoastal thing.” She wiped her tears, then stared at her wet fingertip. “Get an apartment in New York. Not to move, just a pied-à-terre so I can work again.”

He slowly pulled back from her. She’d lost her mind.

“It’s for Sammy.”

“You know damn well it’s not for Sammy. It’s for the other one, the—” he stopped himself before speaking the words he’d only ever thought—“ghost baby. You refuse to allow yourself to feel good. You can’t even celebrate our perfect baby and our new life as a family because of a burden from half your life ago. You insist on punishing yourself. That’s neurotic. Truly, you’re out of your goddamn mind.” Until he saw her face—withdrawn but alert—and heard Sammy’s cry, he didn’t realize he was shouting.

When he started up the Honda, the Norah Jones CD came on with her romantic anticipation of midlife crisis. He turned it louder, set the wipers on Delay, and headed downtown. At the corner, a police car—no blue lights or siren—roared past and Scanlon followed, a little heavy on the accelerator. When he got to Lewis and Clark, he looked up and down the oddly deserted street, the pavement black and wet, mist shining silver in the streetlights. As he turned toward the courthouse and drove along Central Park, a figure shot in front of him. He slammed on the brakes as the
hooded man punched down on the front of the car and rolled on one hip up and over the fender, then sprinted off between two houses. Scanlon was just getting his breath back when two cops ran out from the trees and held up on the sidewalk, bent over and huffing. He hit the gas.

Courthouse Square was a mess. Sixty or eighty protesters stood out in the rain, two of them holding up sticks supporting each end of a banner made from a white bedsheet, the black ink so wet and runny that whatever the message had been was now illegible. Cops in full riot gear formed a line across the square, keeping the demonstrators in one corner. The building was covered with red splashes.

He drove past Starbucks where a crew protected by two cops was already installing plywood over the broken windows. He pulled up to the curb across the street, the idling car a little too warm, so he turned off the heat. With the wipers on low and Norah Jones crooning, he powered his window halfway down, the cool mist fresh on his face. The workers slid sheets of plywood off a pickup and screwed them in place. Where did they get it, he wondered? Do Starbucks and the Gap keep a supply on hand in case the anti-globalists attack? And were the carpenters always on call? Eight o’clock at night and they were already on the job.

He’d left the house angry, and now wished he’d controlled himself. Maybe he should have finally admitted he was jealous of the ghost baby—of the power he had over Naomi—and of the boy in Vermont who’d knocked her up. Many times over the years Naomi had mentioned nonchalantly, or so it seemed to him, that she wasn’t at all surprised when she got pregnant because she and the old boyfriend had panted helplessly in the grip of a passion that obliterated reason and precaution—doing it in cars and garages, slipping out to the milk room between dinner and dessert and doing it again in the time it took her grandmother to make coffee, leaving hot dogs and baskets of vinegar-soused fries half-eaten to do it on the restroom counter, then returning to their table to savor the greasy food before doing it once more in the great outdoors.

He was jealous, in part, because of the tangled thread leading from Naomi’s stupefying lust all those years ago to her unavailability today. Yes, he missed having sex with his wife—was
that
so perverse?—but there was more: he wanted the closeness back, the shared life, as when Naomi would coach him to discern whether the acidity in a certain
chaumes
leaned toward tart or lemon, and he would describe the cream and mustiness, and it would be as if their noses and brains and tongues were entwined. He
wanted them to complete each other; he wanted to not feel abandoned by some “bicoastal thing.” But he also wished he hadn’t used the word “neurotic,” or pointed out that in New York State a married couple living apart for six months (or maybe it was a year) could be granted, on grounds of abandonment, an automatic divorce.

At first he thought the cop in front of Starbucks was waving but then realized he was being waved along, so he pulled ahead and turned the corner. Safeway was open, lights blazing out the windows and flooding the parking lot. Shoppers wheeled carts full of groceries to their cars. It seemed like any other night.

Yet small groups of shadowy figures hustled along in the darkness, cutting down alleys and looking over their shoulders, looking like they had someplace to get to. He cruised by the Green & Black coffee shop, one of Douglas’s anarchist hangouts, and when he saw the smokers huddled under the awning out front, he parked in the gravel lot. He’d been there only twice and mostly remembered that the owner was skinny as a heroin addict, with blotchy tattoos smeared over thick veins worming his forearms, black jeans, black T-shirt, and gaunt. Keith Richards gaunt.

The rain had gotten heavier, and approaching the smokers crowded under the awning he quickened his pace. He sometimes liked the smell of cigarette smoke, especially out in the rain, sparking good memories of junior high and summer camp. But when they saw him coming, everyone at the door turned away and most conversation trailed off. Still, it didn’t occur to Scanlon to be scared. This was Douglas. Jefferson Avenue at nine o’clock on a Wednesday. It wasn’t New York or Boston or Philly.

The death metal inside was blaring, and everybody yelling over it. The urgency in the air was electric, amped up with thrashing guitars and the injustice meted out to Panama. Scanlon leaned into the galvanized metal counter, scratched up with street names and anarchy symbols, and asked for a coffee.

From the tall stainless steel urn behind the counter—
This urn is a pipe bomb
crudely stenciled and spray-painted across the front of it—the owner, whose name Scanlon now remembered was 13½, drew out a cup and took his money.

Finding Clay hadn’t been what he’d had in mind when he came in, but now it seemed likely. Scanlon stood by a brick pillar scanning the café, thinking he spotted him, but it was someone else. If he’d come in here with a description—thin and pale with black clothes, a shaved head, piercings
and tattoos—there were at least twenty of them with minor variations: blue and purple hair, mohawks gelled up into spikes, chains and safety pins stuck in their clothes. Soon enough they were all watching him, and he evaluated his own clothes: Scanlon was, safe to say, the only patron wearing a cream-colored Patagonia Gore-Tex jacket with a red fleece lining, easy-fit Levis, and suede urban hikers with purple laces and a Nike swoosh.

His eyes found Clay’s at a corner table but then Clay turned away, his head twitching. Definitely him. Scanlon took a slug of coffee and moved through the crowd, the sour reek of soggy shoes and damp, dirty clothes. And was it his imagination, or did everyone in the Green & Black smell faintly of gasoline? “Hey, Clay,” he said when he reached the table, where he sat shoulder to shoulder with five or six others.

“This guy would be perfect,” Clay said to his companions. None of them had a coffee, or anything else.

“You
know
this good citizen?” said a stocky guy in a black vest that was open in the front as if to display his strong bare arms and chest.

“You see the bright clothes,” Clay said, “the happy face. It would be a little better if he was wearing a red Gap hat, but this dude could walk right through that line of cops tonight, hurl a device through the courthouse window, and nobody would even notice him. He blends into the background. He’s wallpaper. He’s Muzak.”

“Could I have your autograph?” the one in the vest said, then he turned to the others. “Do you have any idea how much we could sell Barry Manilow’s autograph for?”

A rare smile spread across Clay’s face, exposing the hole where he was missing a tooth.

“Are you a game-show host?” one of the girls said.

“Or a cop?” another asked.

“Nah,” Clay said. “He’s good people. A professor.” His head twitched. “His wife’s a friend of mine.”

Slapping his bare chest, the stocky one said, “I’m Flak.” He pointed around the table. “This is Ohm, Rebecca, and Entropy.”

“Is Naomi with you?” Clay asked.

Scanlon shook his head, narrowing his eyes.

“Hey,” said Rebecca, no older than fifteen, “you’re the professor who was on the news.”

Scanlon smiled.

“He was on tonight,” she told Flak, “saying we should do some protests about Panama. Do some damage.” She turned to Scanlon. “My father said you should be strung up by your balls.”

“Wait a minute.” Scanlon held up both hands. “Nothing I said could be interpreted as a call to violence. I only said that radical acts are often provoked by clearly unfair political actions, which Panama’s sentence certainly is.”

“True dat,” said Flak.

“True dat,” said Entropy, a big girl, tall and overweight. At first Scanlon thought she was in her twenties, but now realized she wasn’t more than a year or two older than Rebecca.

“The thing is,” Flak said, “this tells us the fucking corporate capitalist system knows it can’t survive. A twenty-three-year sentence is the act of a desperate and frightened government. They know they’re crashing, and they’ll violate their own laws to hold on as long as they can. On the one hand, this is a dark day, and our brother is martyred. On the other hand, it proves the system knows it’s evil to the core, that it’s in its last days. So we should celebrate.”

“Celebrate,” Entropy suggested, “by burning some more SUVs.”

“Not worth it,” Flak said, crossing an ankle over his knee. The sole of his black boot was torn away enough that he could reach in and scratch the bottom of his foot. With his other hand he pointed at the coffee cup. “Could I have a sip of that?”

Scanlon was taken aback, but handed it over.

Flak took a careful sip, smelling, savoring. Then, looking up at Scanlon, his eyebrows raised, he pointed to Clay.

“Sure, sure,” Scanlon said.

Flak passed the coffee on. “Anyway,” he said, “it’s much safer to roll mothballs into the gas tank, which totally cooks an engine. Overheats so bad the pistons melt. Torching those SUVs, it had a big wow factor, but wasn’t worth it. Really fucking stupid.”

Clay took a slow sip. Giving the cup to Rebecca, he sneaked a glance at Scanlon, and their eyes met.

“Does everyone want a coffee?” Scanlon said.

“You buying?” Flak asked.

Scanlon nodded, rising from his chair.

“You should know,” Clay said, backhanding Flak’s shoulder, “he’s buying you coffee so he can pick your brain for a book about anarchy.”

“That’s fine,” Flak said, then turned to Scanlon. “I want a cut of the proceeds.”

“An academic book,” Scanlon said, shaking his head. “There’s really no money to be made.” Even as he said this, he hoped it wouldn’t prove true of his own book.

“The coffee’s the down payment,” Flak said.

“Go ahead,” Clay said. “Prostitute yourself.”

Flak turned to him like he was going to say something but then punched him hard in the chest. “What’s wrong with prostitutes?”

“The most honorable profession,” Entropy said.

“The
oldest
profession,” Rebecca corrected.

“Victimless,” Flak said. “Just leave people alone.”

“Nobody’s stopping you,” Clay said.

“This,” Flak pronounced, “demonstrates the difference, girls. Clay’s the idealist, and I’m the pragmatist. And don’t I seem happier?” He spread his arms wide, then patted his chest. “Black,” he said to Scanlon. “A large one.” Then the girls chimed in—coffees for all.

When he got back to the table with cups on every finger, Clay was gone. “Where’s the idealist?” he asked.

“Gone off to bring down the system,” Flak said. “He’s an impatient boy. But the cops aren’t feeling lenient tonight, and I don’t feel like sleeping on a cement floor in a crowded jail.”

“I heard the cops are waiting until everybody gets here,” Entropy said, “and then they’re going to test one of those noise machines. The frequency that makes people sick.”

Flak pulled earplugs from the front pocket of his vest. “They won’t bring
me
down.”

“They used it on the Iraqis,” Rebecca said. “They already know it works. This’ll be the first time they use it on Americans.”

“Bullshit,” Flak said. “They used it in Seattle. These big satellite-looking trucks pulled up, and then the ringing in my ears was like the morning after you’ve heard a band, and then it felt like I had the flu.”

“They probably put something in the food,” Rebecca said. “They’ve infiltrated Food Not Bombs just about everywhere.”

“I don’t believe it,” Flak said. “They don’t need to waste time poisoning our minestrone soup when they’ve got brown noise.”

“I saw those trucks in Seattle,” Scanlon said, “but I didn’t have any reactions.” He knew the rumors on the street: Frank Zappa had discovered brown noise, the sound frequency that makes people need to shit. The FBI stole it from him and cranked it up so you get a headache and nausea, too.

“They point those things at anarchists,” Flak countered. “Not at professors walking arm in arm singing ‘Kumbaya.’ ” He paused so everyone could laugh. “Trust me. Somewhere in Douglas this very minute, those trucks are parked under cover.”

“It’s very messed up,” Entropy said.

Flak rolled his lime-green earplugs between his fingers and poked them in his ears, then pointed at each side of his head and shouted, “Pragmatism. Patience. Ride it out. I don’t need to shit. Do you need to shit? Anybody feel the need to shit?”

“Daria thought that kid was in the FBI,” Rebecca said. “The one with the socks.”

“This kid,” Flak said to Scanlon, pulling out the earplugs, “he’s dressed like the professional homeless. Okay, fine. There’s a lot of them on the street, but he’s a little old for it, and one day when he pulls off his boots to shake out some dirt, Daria notices he’s got little sailboat flags all over his socks. Little red and white yachting flags. So Daria’s like, ‘Where’d you get the fucking socks, Rotor?’ and he’s like he just got ’em out of a clothes box, but then next time she sees him he’s got different socks, so after that everybody’s real cold to him, and a few days later he’s gone. That’s over a year ago.”