Midway through the diatribe Kendra stopped paying attention. She didn’t care so much for Bryan’s political opinions. Listening to him, she heard mainly his gentle, wishful parents talking. The innocence was unbearable. What did they want, she wondered? What was the point in complaining? They would never change anything. They were all too invested, too wholly dependent on everything as it currently stood. Bryan and his family would die without George Bush, and on some level they knew it.

“At least you can say these things here,” she broke in, finally. “In Russia, you can’t even talk like that. Bush is nothing. You know that, right?”

“He would be if he could,” Bryan said, losing none of his momentum. He was on a roll. He didn’t even realize she was arguing with him yet.

“You have no idea,” she said. “My dad talks about growing up in Russia. He couldn’t even laugh on the street. His mom wouldn’t let him. If the wrong person saw you laughing at something, you could disappear. Just gone. You can’t even compare.” If Bryan was going to mouth his parents’ history lessons, Kendra figured she could do the same. Her father might be a loser, but his vantage point from the bottom of the world’s heap gave him a certain, undeniable insight. At least he knew enough to blame himself for his own failures.

“Are you kidding?” Bryan said. The thought of minimizing the evil of George Bush was almost inconceivable to him.

“No,” Kendra said, enjoying her role as the hard-bitten realist between them.

“So I guess this is the ultimate,” Bryan said. “We’re really living the dream. The pinnacle of civilization.”

“Actually, yeah,” she said, and out of spite she might even have believed herself. “This is it.”

Bryan scoffed. “So this is it,” he mused scornfully. “Wow. That’s pretty cool.”

Kendra didn’t bother responding. The mannequins stood frozen in place, looking in all directions.

One thing they agreed on was that they were tired. They might as well go to bed soon. They returned the clothes to the racks and then piled some down jackets on the floor to serve as their bedding. The area was about as big as a queen-size mattress, and they used cashmere sweaters for pillows. Before lying down, Bryan set the alarm on his phone for a half hour before Nathan’s expected arrival so they could hide and then scurry out when he went into the back room.

They lay down. The space between them was narrow, but no body parts were touching. The sound of a heating duct kicked on, implying an elaborate system of pipes and passages in the walls. Bryan’s body heat was almost palpable. If something was going to happen between them, it was going to happen soon. They might have just had a fight, but Kendra was still willing.