Oh, she says. Me too. Eyes scanning the wall opposite. Neither of them moves toward the door. If Peter comes out here tell him I just can’t, you know, she says. Continuing a thought begun before his arrival, not directed toward him but aware of him, rooting him to the floor. Soft voice. At odds with her wide square face, her thick shoulders. Rocking slightly on the heels of her ballet flats, too big, in fact all of her clothes wrong for her, a white button-down gaping at the chest, black skirt wrinkled, tight, as if borrowed from a friend not quite her size. I mean, does it make sense? At all? Sitting in that … shitty room with their craft beers like they do every week, so ready to change the system. How? By—what, shopping at the nearest co-op? The people who think they’re in charge love this shit, okay. They are fucking laughing their asses off every time Peter buys an energy-efficient light bulb. She sticks her arm out, sudden, a packet of crackers in her hand. He flinches. You want this? She smirks. Someone gave me this shit like I want to eat it. Because it’s vegan. She rolls her eyes. Oh, well, in that case I’ll eat the whole fucking box, right? Never mind that what it actually is is garbage wrapped up in a piece of garbage that I’m supposed to enjoy while we all huddle down there in the dark like a bunch of fucking cockroaches, signing our little petitions begging Mr. So-and-So to please not let the frackers pour poison into our drinking water when the problem, the problem is that the idea of clean water in the first place is unimaginable. The environment is always already trashed. You look at a tree and it’s garbage and you look at the soil and it’s garbage, the air, the water, it’s just future garbage, all of it, so who is going to give a shit? Nature is a vacation, it’s boring, it doesn’t even exist. Do you realize that? It’s not even fucking out there, because no one can see it, and if you see it, I mean if you really think you know what the earth even is, if you think you’re a part of it, that you want to serve it instead of destroy it, then you are fucking crazy, okay? You’re a ghost trying to save a corpse. She rubs the scar above her eye, grimacing. He tries to say something but she puts her hand up without looking at him, head down, an exhausted animal listening to its own blood. Two days ago I saw a man step on a caterpillar, she says. And when I told him to watch out he looked at me, truly confused, like, What? And I pointed to the ground and the caterpillar’s guts were stuck to his shoe and he still said What. She shakes her head, narrowing her eyes on the door at the end of the hall.