A Friend of the Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

greasy
sake,
the best the house has to offer. (Have I mentioned that grapes are a thing of the past? Napa–Sonoma is all rice paddies now, the Loire and Rhine Valleys so wet they’d be better off trying to grow pineapples – though on the plus side I hear the Norwegians are planting California rootstock in the Oslo suburbs.)
    â€˜He never knew what hit him,’ she’s saying, chasing me down with her eyes. ‘His son told me they found the thing – it was the size of a golf ball – embedded in the concrete in the basement, still smoldering.’
    I’m in awe. Sitting there over my
sake
and a plate of cold fish, holding that picture in my head – a soft–boiled egg! The world is a lonely place.
    â€˜Ty?’
    I look up, still shaking my head. ‘You want another drink?’
    â€˜No, no – listen. The reason I came is to tell you about April Wind – ’
    I do everything I can to put some hurt and surprise in my face, though I’m neither hurt nor surprised, or not particularly. ‘I thought you said you wanted to see me for love – isn’t that what you said? Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression was you wanted to, well, get together – ’
    â€˜No,’ she says. ‘Or yes, yes, I do. But the thing that got me here, the reason I had to see you, is April Wind. She wants to do a book. On Sierra.’
    I don’t get angry much anymore, no point in it. But with all I’ve been through – not just back then, but now too, and who do you think is going to have to track down the Patagonian fox and the slinking fat pangolins on feet that are like cement blocks? – I can’t help myself. ‘Idon’t want to hear it,’ I say, and somehow I’m standing, the carpet squelching under my feet, the whole building vibrating under the assault of another gust. My arm, my right arm, seems to be making some sort of extenuating gesture, moving all on its own,
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
‘She’s dead, isn’t that enough? What do you want – to make some sort of Joan of Arc out of her? Open the door. Look around you. What the fuck difference does it make?’
    She’s a big woman, Andrea, big still – in her shoulders, the legs tucked up under her skirt, those hands – but she reduces herself somehow. She’s a waif. She’s put–upon. She’s no threat to anybody and this isn’t her idea but April Wind’s, the woman who talks to trees. ‘I think it’s a good idea,’ she says. ‘For posterity.’
    â€˜What posterity?’ My arm swings wide. ‘This is your posterity.’
    â€˜Come on, Ty – do it for Sierra. Let the woman interview you, tell your story – what’ll it hurt?’
    Everything compresses to rush into the vacuum inside me, the winds dying as if on the downstroke of a baton, the rain taking a time–out, the mop finally prevailing at the door. Andrea is standing now too, and we’re a matching pair of the young–old, as rejuvenant as any couple you’d see in New York or Paris or in those TV ads for transplants, poised over the table as if we’re about to sweep off across the floor in some elaborate dance routine. ‘What’s it in for you? A finder’s fee?’
    No response.
    â€˜And how
did
you track me down, anyway?’
    There’s no malice in her smile – a hint of smugness, maybe, but no malice. She holds up her fingers, all ten of them. ‘The Internet. Search for Maclovio Pulchris and you’d be amazed at what turns up – and as far as what’s in it for me, that’s easy: you. You’re what I want.’
    I’m stirred, and there’s no denying it. But I’m not taking her home with me, never, no matter what. I’m grinning, though – a grin so glutinous you could hang wallpaper on it. ‘You want to go to a