“Random question,” I say. “Do you know the name Canliss?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“It’s not someone we went to school with?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“No reason,” I say. “Forget it.”
She shrugs. The chef in her apron is singing, opera, something from Marriage of Figaro, I think. A new group wanders in, three boys and two girls, all of them in matching bright orange shirts and sneakers, like they’re some sort of athletic team, and they’re arguing, loudly but not angrily, about the future of humanity: “Okay, let’s say that everybody’s dead but ten people,” says one of the men. “And let’s say one of them opens a store…”
“Capitalist pig!” interrupts one of the women, and they all crack up. The heroin addict’s forehead hits the table with an audible thunk.
“Hey. You should come back to Concord with me,” I say suddenly to my sister. “After I settle this case. We’ll hole up in Grandfather’s house. On Little Pond Road. We’ll share resources. Wait it out together.”
“Wish I could, big brother,” says Nico, amused, eyes dancing. “But I gotta save the world.”
Jordan slips through the flap of the grub tent right on time, as good as his word, Ray-Bans and shit-eating grin firmly in place. He’s written Julia Stone’s information on a tiny slip of cigarette paper, which he slides into my palm like a bellhop’s tip.
“She’s on R&R,” he says cheerfully to Nico, who says, “No kidding?”
“What’s R&R?” I say.
“One of the—whatever they call them. One of the grand committees,” Nico says.
“Okay,” I say, looking at the paper. All it says is what he just told me: Julia Stone. R&R. “So where is she?”
Jordan looks me over. “Do you have some kind of philosophical or moral objection to thanking people for things?”
“Thank you,” I say. “Where is she?”
“Well, it’s tricky. R&R meets in a series of rotating locations.” He lifts his sunglasses and winks. “Kinda top secret.”
“Oh, come on,” says Nico, lighting a fresh cigarette.
“Why are you looking for her?” asks Jordan.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Really?” he says. “You can’t? You came this far for this tiny piece of information, and you’re not prepared to barter for it? How are you gonna do when it’s cannibal time, and you’ve gotta negotiate with Caveman Stan for a bite of the baby?”
“You’re such a dick, Jordan,” says Nico, exhaling.
“No, no,” he says, “I’m not,” and he turns on her, suddenly serious. “You come to me for information, because you know I can get it. Well, how do you think that happens? Information is a resource, the same as food, same as oxygen. Geez Louise!” He throws his hands in the air, turns back to me. “Everybody just wants, wants, wants. Nobody wants to give.” He drops his cigarette in the dirt, jabs me in the chest. “So. You. Give. You’re looking for Julia Stone. Why is that?”
I stay silent. I keep my arms crossed. I’m thinking, no way. I’ve got most of what I want, and I can figure out the rest on my own. I stare back at him. Sorry, clown.
“There’s a man looking for her.” Nico, mumbling, looking at the dirt. “A former state trooper.”
“Nico,” I say, astonished. She doesn’t look at me.
“The trooper is in love with the girl. My brother is trying to find him. For the guy’s wife.”
“No kidding?” says Jordan thoughtfully. “See? That’s interesting. And… and…” He looks me up and down, his mouth slightly open, eyes squinting, like I’m a manticore or a griffin, some exotic species. “And why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I’ve had enough of this. I’m ready to go. “Because I told her that I would.”
“Well, well.”
He gives me the rest of the information I need: R&R stands for Respect and Restraint, and they are meeting in Kingfisher room 110, a big lecture hall. They’re meeting “right this exact second,” as a matter of fact, so I better hurry up. I stand and Jordan takes Nico by the elbow and murmurs in her ear. “You’re staying with me, right? Because we have big fun things to discuss.”
“Henry?” Nico’s eyes are bright again. She reaches up and pats me on the cheek. “See you in a few?”
“Sure,” I say, swat her hand away.
I’m close—I’m this close. I start to go, and then I stop. “Nico? What’s in that duffel bag?”
“Candy,” she says, and laughs.
“Nico.”
“Dope.”
“Really?”
“Handguns. Human skulls. Maple syrup.”
She cracks up, they both do, and then they’re walking away arm in arm, the two of them slipping through the front flap of the grub tent and off into the crowded campus. Nico Palace, ladies and gentlemen. My sister.
3.
Lining the approach to Kingfisher Hall are stately oaks, flanking the pathway, upright and orderly as a praetorian guard. They’re strung with banners, primary colors and simple bold fonts, each announcing an extinction or near extinction: the Justinian Plague, 541 A.D. Toba supereruption, 75,000 years ago. The Permian Extinction. The K-T Boundary Extinction… on and on, a parade of pandemics and catastrophes and species genocides festooning the approach.
In I go, into the building itself, into a spacious and sunlit atrium with a vaulted ceiling, then down a long hallway lined with bulletin boards, somehow untouched, still offering grants, scholarship money, internship opportunities for engineering students.
When I push open one of the big double doors to room 110, my immediate impression is that here we have another party, an auxiliary of the ongoing festivities on the main quad. It’s a big lecture hall, packed and noisy, citizens of the Free Republic relaxed and at ease in their varied costumes, from track suits to tie-dye to what appears to be an adult-sized set of My Little Pony feetie pajamas. People hollering or engaged in intense conversation or, in one case, stretched out over three seats, asleep. As I pick my way as inconspicuously as possible up the raked tiers of seating in search of an empty spot, I count at least three ice-packed coolers, full of small unlabeled glass bottles of beer.
It is only when I have found a seat, in one of the very last rows, that I can focus my attention on the front of the room—and the young man standing with his back to the crowd, naked to the waist with his hands tied behind him with a length of bungee cord. Across from him, seated at a folding table on the shallow stage, are two men and a woman, all of approximately student age, all wearing serious, intent expressions, huddled together and whispering.
I settle into my seat, cross my long legs with difficulty, and watch the stage. One of the three at the table, a man with glasses and a head of wild curly hair, looks up and clears his throat.
“Okay,” he says. “Can we get quiet?”
The man with hands tied shifts nervously on his feet.
I look around the room. I’ve seen plenty of trials—this is a trial. The curly-haired man asks for quiet again, and the crowd settles down, just a little bit.
She’s in here. Somewhere, in this crowd, is Julia Stone.
“So we’re down with the decision to proceed?” says the woman at the center of the little triumvirate on the stage. “Can we go ahead and just by voice vote reaffirm the provisional authority of R&R over maintaining safety and peace in our community. Everyone?”
She looks around the room. So do the other two judges, the one with the hair, and the third, the one farthest to the right, who has a small pudgy face and a turned-up nose and who looks to me no more than eighteen years old, if that. Most of the audience seems to have little interest in the proceedings. People keep talking, leaning forward in their seats to poke a friend or back to stretch. From where I’m sitting I watch a man rolling what will be, if completed, the largest marijuana cigarette I have ever seen. Two rows up from me a couple is vigorously making out, the female partner shifting as I watch into a full straddle atop her companion. The guy on my right, a sallow figure with hairy forearms, is absorbed in something he’s got in his lap.