The man with the megaphone backed off. He watched the bodies rolling and reaching. He watched piles of bodies start kissing. He saw me over in the veranda and glanced at me for a moment, I suppose to see if I was the type to tell. And it seemed he decided no, because then he began to pick his way through the bodies and clothing and with nimble, practiced fingers lifted over fifty wallets from the stack, tossing them into his backpack. Sighs and grunts erupted around him as he threaded through the piles and then tiptoed away. He’d read me right; I didn’t say a word. It seemed, in its way, a fair exchange.
When I woke up, the lot was clear. No naked bodies, no police, just one leftover sock in the dirt, lit by the white disc of moon. I’d fallen asleep sprawled out on the porch with my scarf wrapped tightly over my head. It was cold out, but tiredness had overtaken me, swallowed me, as it sometimes did, and so I hadn’t gotten to see the marchers finishing, or getting dressed, or yelling about their wallets.
I blew on my hands. Stretched. The whole elaborate thing—from protest to empty lot—had done nothing but make me irritable. There were real deaths happening, after all. Hard to imagine from our dorm apartments and fifty-minute course lectures. And on a pettier and slightly more distracting level, I also didn’t like having stood, as always, so everlastingly, to the side. I was certainly not doing my share to help out the world in any way, and neither was I doing my share by having fun as a naked college coed. I was basically sleeping through all of it. Was I really a nothing-doer, an apathetic blob? Was Arlene right? She planned most of our weekend activities. She adopted the soldier and called the wife. She had sex with Fred. When people danced at weddings, I would stand on the side grimacing, but not because I did not want to dance. I just couldn’t seem to. Cousins and happy types would cheerfully grab my hands and draw me into the center, but even with that encouragement, with smiles like fields of daisies surrounding, I could only make it through half a song. The magnet inside the wall was too strong. I liked Julian, tucked in his documentary office; he was the perfect boyfriend for me, similar to that magnet—someone I could not touch but who, with a pull from beneath a surface, still kept me from the activities at hand.
This all left me so cold and cranky that I decided right then and there to make something happen, because it is always possible to make something happen, and there was no reason that I had to go home right then with my hands jammed in my pockets and say hi to Arlene and Fred all cuddled up warm watching late-night comedy TV with their hair so mussed and gleaming and not have participated in anything myself. It was this reason, and perhaps others I did not understand, that led me to turn to the front door of the house attached to the porch upon which I was standing, square my shoulders, and knock.
By then it was well after midnight. The same flicker of TV light still broke against the windowpanes, but I didn’t even know if the watcher was awake until he quickly bounded up to the door.
“Yes?” said the voice, through the door. A male voice: reedy, elderly.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “Did you see what happened?”
“Something happened?” He pulled back the flimsy curtains that covered the window in the center of the door. He was an older man, probably close to sixty-five. Whitish hair. Bushy eyebrows that could’ve commanded authority but on his face brought to mind squirrels and hairbrushes. He could’ve been my grandfather, except my grandfathers were robust men, who strode through the world and stepped on people, including both of my parents.
“A hundred people were robbed right next to you,” I said, through the glass. “While having sex.”
“Robbed?” He looked startled. “Here? Sex?”
“While you were watching Law & Order,” I said.
He let go of the curtain and opened the door. He was shorter than I was. Although I was female and he male, I felt very clearly that I was the threat in this situation.
“Did someone call the police?” he said. “Are you a student?”
“No police,” I said, waving behind me, at the dark emptiness. “I’m a student.”
He stared. He was observing me as keenly as I was observing him. I could see the observations floating through his face, him observing, me observing him observing.
Finally he asked, “Would you like to come in?”
He didn’t seem scary, and the house looked warm. He led me through the living room. It was inviting, with the flat-screen TV nestled above the fireplace and lavish plants in metal holders marking the corners, everything tidy and clutterless, but not in an oppressive way. In the kitchen, he put on a kettle without asking, which I appreciated. It seemed we both understood that if I didn’t like tea I just wouldn’t drink it.
The kitchen had pale-green tile and light wooden cabinets. I made a note of the placement of the knife block, just in case.
He prepared a Japanese barley tea as my hands and cheeks thawed.
“I lived in Kyoto for many years,” he said when the water was ready, pouring the mugs full. “And I drank this every day. Not the same here. There, it’s fresh, roasted. Here, it was packed long ago. Whispers.”
He tilted his head to the sitting area, by the window overlooking the empty lot.
“They’re building a new house there, supposedly,” he said, handing over my mug. “It’s been three years.”
We sat down and looked out the window together, at the leftover sock.
“That’s where it happened,” I said, taking a sip.
“They all had sex?” he said.
“A hundred of them.”
“And then?”
“The guy stole their wallets.”
“What guy?”
“The guy who told them to have sex on Mother Earth as a war protest.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding.
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“Not a thing.”
“I fell asleep,” I admitted.
We sat and sipped, the warm tea spreading through my chest. Barley tea. It felt good to be doing something. Not that I was quite sure what I was doing. I tried to think up an interesting question to ask him, maybe about his childhood, or his first love, or if he’d fought in any war, when he turned to face me, his squirrel eyebrows up. By then most adults would’ve launched into their usual list of annoying questions—my major, my plans for the future, my hopes and dreams—but he just raised a hand and poked at the air between us, as if to poke those questions aside.
“Was it a good episode?” I asked.
“Of?”
“Law & Order,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’d seen it before.”
He poked again at the air between us. Raised his hand, dusted the air aside, put his hand down. Waited. Raised his hand again, pushed at the air, put his hand down again.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to laugh.
When he did it again, I raised my hand back. While he dusted the air on one side, I dusted the opposing side. I pushed some air at him. He smiled. Pushed it back.
“Could you do me a favor?” he asked.
“Depends,” I said.
He indicated upstairs with his chin. “I need a lightbulb changed in the guest room,” he said. “You’re taller than I am.”
It was true; I was. I looked at the flight of stairs past the kitchen, the dim light above. It was a small two-story house, probably two bedrooms upstairs, one his, one guest. No sign of a cat, dog, or any other resident. A lightbulb. It was, by all accounts, dumb to go upstairs in the house of someone I did not know, especially a male stranger’s house at one in the morning. With everyone nearby fast asleep. That said, I still felt that if anyone were at risk, it was actually him; I’d trusted what I’d read about following my own fear instinct, and instead of feeling fear, what I felt was a slight thrill or even a flicker of aggression, like I might harm him, like he should be cautious about inviting me up.