When his uncle Ernie had first gotten him his job, Mitchell was just out of college with a dual degree in zoology and political science. He’d changed his major too many times, from history to prelaw to wildlands management to landscape architecture. He talked his dad’s ears off about a class on wetlands. Mitchell then wondered if perhaps journalism or radio might suit him, but he thought his voice sounded funny recorded, so he switched to animal psychology. He loved to think about how everyone thought. He took a class on modern government, which led to a political science minor. His advisers threw up their paws. “Just make up your mind and stick with it,” they said. School was like playing musical chairs against himself. He liked the circling and the songs, but as the semesters kept coming and going the seating options diminished. In the end he had his butt in only two places, and that felt like some kind of victory.

His consciousness was scattered, unformed, and disobedient. He used to believe without real proof that the system worked. Anyway, the government seemed to work well enough. Mitchell followed his uncle’s advice when it came to work and spent most of his time outside the office thinking about friendship and romance. But through the experience, his sense of injustice intensified, and through romance that sense found a language.

Mitchell’s work took him through kitchens and dens, onto fire escapes, and into the utility rooms of the five boroughs. He heard stories of pit bulls with sledgehammers patrolling a building’s halls in an effort to scare tenants out of a rent-controlled apartment. Animals left without running water or working toilets. He saw with his own eyes black mold and hanging wires and stairs without railings. He saw building after building with signs that read PLEASE CONTACT SEADYNE INC. FOR INFORMATION ON ONGOING RENOVATIONS. He wrote report after report that vanished into the pneumatic tubes, never to receive a comment or a work order. Mitchell got frustrated. How do you fight City Hall from within its many-organed body?

Was it love at first sight with Pamella? Mitchell had never been a romantic in that way, but there was a flash, a coup de foudre. Soon after they met at The Early Cenozoic, he told her she was beautiful and that he wanted to protect her from all predators.

She shook her head at that offer.