Except for his parents’ home. Helplessly Jim thinks of it. They moved into the little duplex when Jim was seven. He and his dad played catch in the driveway. One time Jim missed an easy throw and caught it in the eye. They threw balls onto the carport roof and Jim caught them as they rolled off. Dad set up a backboard. He painted an old bike he bought for Jim, painted it red and white. They all went for a trip together, to see the historical museum and the last acres of real orange grove (part of Fairview Cemetery, yes).

The junk of the past, the memory’s strange detritus. Why should he remember what he does? And does any of it matter? In a world where the majority of all the people born will starve or be killed in wars, after living degraded lives in cardboard shacks, like animals, like rats struggling hour to hour, meal to meal—do his middle-class suburban Orange County memories matter at all? Should they matter?

It’s ten P.M.; Jim has an appointment soon. He clicks the car on, puts it on the track to Arthur Bastanchury’s ap.

Chapter 74

74

So Jim turns around and tracks back up the freeway. Somewhere over Costa Mesa he decides what to do. “Oh, man.” He picks up his car’s phone, calls Arthur. His heart stutters at the same frequency as the ringing phone: Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring! Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring!

“Hello?”

“Arthur. It’s Jim. I can’t make it to your house in time to leave for the rendezvous. I’ll meet you there at the parking lot where we get the boxes.”

Silence. Curtly Arthur says, “Okay. You know the time.”

“Yeah. I’ll be there then.”

Back onto Newport Freeway, north to Garden Grove Freeway (typing instructions into his carbrain), out west and off at Haster, under the City Mall’s upper level.

Dim world of old streets, gutters matted with trash.

Dead trees. Garbage Grove.

Old suburban houses, boarding a family per room.

The streetlights not broken are old halogen: orange gloom,

An orange glaze on it all.

A roofed world. The basement of California.

You’ve never lived here, have you.

Hyperventilating, Jim looks around him for once. Parking lots, laundromats, thrift shops: “You had to go to Cairo to see this!” he shouts, and for a moment his resolve is confused; he feels like invisible giants are aiming invisible giant firehoses at him, battering him this way and that in a game he knows nothing of; he can only hold to his plan, try not to think anymore. Stop thinking, stop thinking! It’s time to act! Still his stomach twists, his heart stutters as he is buffeted about by contrary ideas, contrary certainties about what is right.…