He goes back inside. I’m sorry I can’t come to the protest. Peter waving his hand. No worries, farmer. Next time. Tiny broken veins in Peter’s cheeks, his nose, loose stomach stacked above his belt. People age out of radical activism, he had said once. They move on. But not Peter. Xie looks around the room; there is no way to know who is here to learn how to make vegan mac and cheese and who is here to build a bomb. Jo in the car saying, Don’t worry, we’ll represent. You know the researchers get the mice pregnant just so they can cut the babies out of them while the mothers are still alive? Leni in the back with Xie, her boots in his lap, no seat belt, cheek cradled against her palm. Jo, could you just not talk about that right now? Why not? It’s what they do. They put them on these tiny crosses, I mean they literally call them cruciform, and they pin their legs— And Leni half shouting, as mad as she ever gets: We know! We just spent two hours watching it on the stupid video! That look in her eyes the same as in those of so many of the people in the meetings, a mixture of hurt and fury, everyone sick with what they read, see, feel. Knowing you could break into a lab and fuck with shit all you wanted but there would always be more people who thought it was okay to drive a knife into the belly of an animal than there were those who knew it was wrong. Did it hurt, he asks P., in bed, touching the neck of the body, between the fourth and fifth vertebrae. Did it hurt knowing you would die or was it a relief. P. doesn’t answer, lying beside the bones, the light settled all over, gold on silver on gold. Impenetrable. Supreme. Xie takes the jaw of the body between his teeth, gentle: you will never get over this taste, part earth, part air, P.’s hand on your cheek, bridging flesh to bone with a spirit belonging to neither, free, and for a moment you can believe, surrounded by the beloved, that death has never visited any body for long.