Alfonzo found he could hardly breathe. He managed only a whisper. “What did he sing? What was the message?”

The ocean came and went, almost touchable yet infinitely far away. The waves didn’t so much crash as relax into the beach. All along the waterline were bits of plastic, slime-coated bags indistinguishable from the jellyfish corpses that lay beside them. Vivi vibrated her subtle body.

29.

Alfonzo and Vivi found her friends whispering back in the kitchen. Roberto and Tania stopped and stared when they entered.

“So?”

“So, what?”

“What have you two been up to? Necking?”

“No! Someone’s got to bring him into our cult, right, Robbie?” Vivi said.

“Oh, good, so you’re becoming one of us?”

“One of us!” Tania yipped.

Vivi nuzzled her friends, and whispered something to Tania.

“We’re going to make dinner, if you want to help out.”

They’d been slow cooking appaloosa beans. Roberto was going to prepare a tagine the way he’d learned in Rabat.

Outside, darkness arrived with wailing wind. The season returned to its traditional form, and Alfonzo snuggled himself into Vivi’s sweater. They set candles around the dining room zone of the grand room. Cheap beer and wine and little bowls of herbs and nuts appeared. The animals gathered around the table. They made toasts to togetherness and the unknown. Conversation unspooled. Alfonzo felt embraced by the group.

“What is the task other than to mourn what we know but cannot bear to speak?”

“Well, true acceptance would require so great a change.”

“Of what we have become.”

“Hum.”

“It isn’t unsolvable if the Western bubbles change.”

“What will it take to change?”

“I don’t know, something deafening? Something almost silent?”

“Almost nothing at all.”

“I remember when one of Cappuccino’s friends commissioned an alchemist bird to make a rhodiola tincture. The alchemist promised it would show the future. Cappuccino took it with her stockbroker. He became obsessed. He kept going back to the bird to get more and more…”

“What happened to him?”

“He went insane.”

“Wasn’t he already?”

“Touché.”

“We’re all in the same boat whether we admit it or not.”

“A sinking one.”

“But also, we’re trying to know what we already know. If you think you’re exempt, you’re wrong. If you think the cities won’t sink. If you believe the system isn’t a death cult…”

“Have you heard about the mass beachings?”

“In the news they’re always reported as these mysterious anomalies,” Alfonzo offered. “Like, ‘The poor creatures are confused,’ or ‘Look at these evil beasts out to get us.’”

“The sea animal is not some mystical other.”

“Ice is melting into the sea.”

“These are the facts!”