He thinks about going over to talk to the girl, see what her story is, but he wouldn’t know where to start. And he’s running late anyway.

For the last few weeks Kierk and Carmen have spent the majority of time within one square mile of each other, moving about. If you tracked their movements across the map of Manhattan, they would appear like figure skaters always crossing the other’s tracks, entering a store as the other exits, taking parallel paths down neighboring avenues, making X’s of parks. Now they converge again.

“. . . because that’s exactly what we at SAAR care about. Sometimes it’s like everyone is always putting these things into boxes, into causes, that they care about. But that’s really problematic. ’Cause it’s all intersectionally connected.”

“We should have brought Alex. He’d love this.”

“He’d have died laughing . . .”

“—and so I just wanted to thank everyone here for fighting against all the intersectional institutionalized forms of oppression like animal research.”

“Wow. So amazing. I love it. Totally non-problematic. And with that I think we’ll wrap it up because we’re running over time. This was a really good meeting. We’ll pick a few of the visiting speakers that use animals. Focusing on primates like poor Double Trouble, but also like, cats and rats. We’ll narrow it down next meeting and protest those. Alright. Till next time everybody. Stay out of the heat.”

“Hey, Allen?”

“Oh yeah, excuse me, hey, Carol. And Jim.”

“I just wanted to ask: is it really enough? Just to disrupt some speakers? I mean, what about doing something more real? More impactful? Something that sends more of a statement, you know? That this kind of oppression is so unacceptable.”

“What I think we’re trying to say is that she and I are getting a little restless—”

“A little bit fed up.”

“—yes, a little bit fed up, and we are kind of thinking about how to implement something big, considering that Carol has access to the neuroscience department on campus. You grok? We’ve got an ‘in’ at the department.”

“ Really? How?”

“I’m doing an independent study with one of the professors in the building. Who’s like, a psychologist. But I have building access because she lets me work in the EEG lab. So I have access.”

“Wait—you never said you were a science student.”

“Um, no. Not at all. I’m a sociology student but I need research credits and um, it’s human psychology so it’s not that bad.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Like, obviously humans only.”

‘Uh-huh.”

“But I really do have access.”

“Hey, I mean, I can feel that you two are serious. I can see that. I think that’s great. But we’ve already got stuff covered. See, we’ve already got someone on the inside in that department.”

“You do? I don’t recognize anyone from here . . .”