Part 13 (1/2)
”Hi,” he said.
She looked up, startled. Then her face grew rosy and she smiled. ”Abhay! I'm so glad you're here!”
He was surprised she could p.r.o.nounce his name, after only hearing it once. She was very pretty, with her cheerful smile and blue-green eyes.
She closed her book and stood up. ”I'll get another chair.”
”No, let me.” He put out his hands, as if to prevent her from exerting herself on his behalf.
”It's fine,” she said. ”Have a seat. I'll be right back.” She was wearing jeans shorts and a sleeveless top, and her limbs were long and fit. She trotted up the stairs into the house. In a moment she came back down with another lawn chair. ”Ellen's inside,” she explained as she unfolded the chair and sat down. ”She can't study outside. She says it's too distracting.” Kianga had to shout over the noise of the traffic from the freeway. ”Listen, the guy I wanted you to meet tonight couldn't show up. But he says you should come by his office tomorrow for an interview.”
Abhay sat down in the chair she had vacated. ”What kind of job is it?”
”My friend Justin is using inheritance money to start a new environmental organization in town. I know him from Green Party meetings. He's a good guy. Really intellectual. You reminded me of him, so I thought you two might be a good match. He needs help with just about everything. You'll get to learn all about running a nonprofit organization.”
This was starting to sound good-better than he'd expected. ”What's the organization?”
”It's called HOPE. It stands for Humans Off of Planet Earth. It's a population organization. He asks people to sign voluntary pledges to get sterilized. The idea is, humans need to stop taking over the planet.”
Abhay laughed. ”It sounds kind of ridiculous.”
”I thought so, too, at first. But I can see the appeal of something like this. The organization takes a logical point to an extreme, and that can be helpful sometimes to wake people up and help them consider all their choices. Childlessness is certainly a valid environmental choice, although personally, I think humans are part of the plan.”
”What plan?”
”The plan of existence.” She held out her hand, palm up, and waved it in a slow arc in front of her. ”G.o.d has put us on this earth for some reason. Or if you're not comfortable with the word G.o.d, think of it this way. Humans evolved on Earth for a reason. Mother Nature created us. Life created us. We're here.”
”G.o.d didn't ask us to destroy things,” he said. ”Mother Nature can't be happy that humans are polluting the water and air, and burying nuclear waste in the earth. Even most humans didn't ask for so much of Earth to be paved. It was a few industrialists who made those decisions for all of us.”
”I knew you'd be great for this job! You totally get it. Justin will love you. Listen, I've just got to finish this chapter before rehearsal.”
Abhay sat silently while Kianga read. The sky was starting to dim. He s.h.i.+fted his chair so he faced away from the highway, and looked over the tops of the houses to the wispy clouds drifting slowly across the sky. After several minutes, a long-haired guy with a guitar case slung over his back walked up the sidewalk and over the lawn to where they were sitting. ”Hey, cutie,” he said, and leaned over to kiss Kianga on the lips. This must be her boyfriend.
”Abhay, this is Preview,” Kianga said.
”Preview?” Abhay must have looked puzzled because the guy said, ”I made it up to remind myself you always have another chance. Even this life isn't the final life. So if I think of my whole life as a preview, it helps keep me cool.” He smoothed the air with a flattened hand.
Preview's long brown hair was matted in places. It didn't look like he'd combed it in ages. Perhaps he was in the middle of an attempt to create dreadlocks.
”We met Abhay at the fountain yesterday.” Kianga stood up and folded her chair. Abhay did the same, and they all went inside, where several stools had been set up in the living room. Preview perched on a stool, balanced his guitar on his thigh, and started strumming. A man arrived with a set of bongo drums draped around his neck. He was brown, with short stubs of hair all over his head. He kissed Kianga, who was sitting on a stool shuffling through pages of music.
Abhay backed away. He felt like a fifth wheel. He wondered if Kianga invited all men to kiss her. Ellen appeared behind him and whispered, ”Sit down here.” She had set up two chairs in the dining room, so they could look into the living room and be out of the way.
The rehearsal was irritating. Kianga and the two guys seemed unsure about whether they were a folk group, a reggae group, or a rock-and-roll band. Kianga had a beautiful voice: clear, true to the note, and unaffected. But her melodies were often drowned out by frantic drumming or guitar riffs.
Every so often Abhay glanced at Ellen, and noticed her gaze on him. She smiled, and he smiled back. As the sky grew dark outside the windows, Abhay wondered what this job with HOPE would be like.
The next day, during his lunch break from the bookstore, he rode his bike west, crossing over Interstate 405. The address turned out to be an old apartment building. Abhay wondered if he was in the wrong place, but he locked his bike, changed his s.h.i.+rt so he wouldn't be too sweaty, climbed the stairs, and rang the doorbell.
A white man in his forties or fifties, slim and bald, opened the door. His face was creased, as though it had been folded up for a long while. He neither smiled nor held out a hand. ”I'm Justin Time,” he said. ”Come on in.”
Justin Time. Was the man serious?
Messy stacks of papers covered every available surface: a large round table in the middle of the room, a lone filing cabinet, smaller tables lining the walls, and the floor. Not what Abhay expected from an innovative, new environmental group.
”As you can see, I need a lot of help. Sit down here.” Justin moved a stack of papers off a chair. ”What we're doing now is cataloging the damage that has been done to Earth because of the human population explosion. There is so much information out there, and people are just blind to it. Blind.”
Abhay nodded. ”I agree.” He was glad to meet someone in alignment with his own point of view. A large cobweb hung in the corner near the window, which let in a bit of light around the closed venetian blinds. He tried to push away the suspicion that Justin was not quite all there mentally. Maybe he was merely a bit eccentric.
”I've been collecting policy proposals, newspaper articles, magazine articles for years. And now I'm ready to launch my organization. My goal is to persuade all the males of our species to undergo a voluntary vasectomy. Women are included, too, but mainly I focus on men, because one man can do a lot of damage. Once people realize the destruction we're causing, I think this solution will become self-evident.” Justin had a strange, clipped way of talking, and he didn't seem to like making eye contact. ”Anyway, I thought I'd start you off with this.” He lifted a stack of booklets from his side of the table and handed them to Abhay. ”This organization does a book every year of planetary health indicators. Every one of the negative indicators can be tied directly to humans overrunning the planet. I want you to look through these and figure out how to organize it for the Web site.”
Abhay realized this wasn't an interview. He had apparently already been hired.
”I'll pay you in cash at the end of every week,” Justin said. ”I don't see that we need to get the government involved with this-do you?” Justin raised an eyebrow at him.
Abhay was startled. That was his gesture, raising an eyebrow when he wanted to make a point. Was he going to end up like Justin someday? ”I can't stay right now,” he said. ”I've got to get back to my other job.”
”When can you come over?”
Abhay wasn't sure he wanted to get involved with Justin and his strange organization. He hadn't imagined working in someone's messy apartment. Yet, Abhay loved to read, and he was sure to learn something. ”What are you planning to do once you get everything summarized and organized?”
”I want you to help me write grants. Publicize the Web site. Set up radio interviews. Write articles. You're getting in on the ground floor.”
Abhay nodded. The goal of the organization was odd. And yet, when Abhay thought about it, it made sense. People needed to stop breeding. It was such a simple solution. A population decline would mean fewer farms turning into housing developments. And those farms in turn could then be restored to their original habitat: prairie, forest, wetland.
”Did you get a vasectomy?” Abhay asked.
”Absolutely. After my son was born twelve years ago, I realized what I had done. I saw that I had caused another being to enter the planet, which would result in more pesticides being applied to the soil and water. More rain forests felled to graze cows so my son could eat at McDonald's. And if he has children of his own-which I hope he does not-I will have created a self-perpetuating cycle of destruction.”
”So you don't think anyone should have any children at all?”
”No. Do you?”
Abhay s.h.i.+fted in his seat. ”I don't know.”
”Incremental change hasn't made a dent,” Justin declared. ”We need to do something drastic now. Here.” He pushed over to Abhay a piece of paper that looked like a certificate, with a scalloped edge and embossed decorations. ”This is the pledge.”
Abhay read silently: I, ________, pledge not to have any (more) children to add to the earth's burden. I volunteer to become sterilized in order to prevent further destruction of the earth's fragile web of life.
”You can keep that,” Justin said.
”Do I have to sign it before I start working?”
Justin hesitated. ”I don't want you to feel coerced. Once you learn what's really going on, you'll sign it on your own.”
As Abhay biked back to the bookstore, he decided to go ahead and work with Justin, at least for the time being. Even though the man seemed odd, and even though Abhay recoiled from the thought of working in that dusty, dim apartment, no one else had articulated so clearly Abhay's own point of view about the world. He'd always heard that it was good to get in on the ground floor of something, and here was his chance. It made sense to take it.