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liberated from abusive domestic situations.” He gestured at a footbridge. “The timbers used in our interior were reclaimed from long-ago shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. No tree was harvested for the building’s renovation.” What a relief! Although the place must have had the carbon
footprint of a small county. Arctic evening be damned, it was mai tai weather in here—sultry and humid, with fertile scents percolating from a tropical jungle of potted trees that ringed the dining area.
    A sky-blue parakeet landed on an aqueduct as we turned a corner. “Bikes, not bombs,” it urged. Moments later, we arrived at a spacious table with one other diner. And as I recognized him, I reeled from a strange mixture of ecstatic relief and moral outrage. “Paulie Stardust” was apparently Henry Pugwash—the youngest, smartest, and most obnoxious of my three smart, older, jackass cousins. No doubt he was behind everything that had happened that
evening—including those awful thoughts about losing my mind. Muttering into his cellphone while skimming the news on his iPad, he nodded absently as I took my seat. “What’s up, Pugwash,” I murmured. No one calls him Henry (including his brothers and parents) because he just looks so … 
Pugwashy
. All of five foot six, he’s always been chunky. And he has dark, narrow-set eyes under this dome of coal black hair that always manages to
contort into something like a bowl cut, regardless of how it’s styled.
    The host unfurled my napkin for me as I took my seat. “Tonight’s special is a grass-fed, free-range Wagyu petite fillet. It’s sourced from an agrarian coöperative that’s run by differently abled ranch hands. Waitstaff will bring you some Hopi blue corn piki bread shortly. Meanwhile, you may wishto examine our butter list.” He handed us two heavy cards that were no doubt repurposed strike posters from a hemp factory.
They listed twenty separate butters, broken down by region and species of “milk-giver.” “The
beurre du jour
is a clarified preparation derived from Tibetan yak milk,” he added.
    “I’ll just have the whale burger and panda ears again,” I said. I caught the host stifling a chuckle as he left, and savored the low-rent thrill of a tourist making a Buckingham guard smile.
    “Dude, that’s sick,” my cousin snapped, setting down his phone. “The most sustainable restaurant in town, and you’re making jokes about our ecological crisis.”
    I was tempted to ask him what was so ecological about sustaining a little patch of Singapore in wintry Manhattan—but I let it go. My cousin’s a master of progressive rhetoric and loves to lure moderates (
fascists
, as he calls us) into political debates. He invariably wins these with a deft mix of data, wordplay, and self-righteous sloganeering. At heart, though, he’s a true social Darwinist, and his other hobby is protecting his prodigious wealth
from government attempts to tax and redistribute it. He’ll never admit it (above all to himself), but Pugwash really only dallies on the Left because he’s heard there’re some easy chicks there.
    “So, how’s business?” I asked. Although I was dying to learn about Carly and Frampton, I couldn’t let him know this, or he’d be sure not to mention them until dessert.
    Before he could answer, a smug cockatoo landed on the back of the empty chair next to him. “Go solar!” it demanded.
    An instant later, something swooped in low from the far side of the restaurant, grazing the hair of a waiter as itzeroed in on our table. It landed on the back of Pugwash’s chair, then swatted the cockatoo on the beak with a muscular wing. The smaller bird tumbled backward, and fell almost to the ground before fluttering off jaggedly, like a dazed housefly. The newcomer was twice the size of all the other birds. It was mostly yellow, with a stark
white face and chest, and a black targetlike pattern around its left eye. “Pieces of
EEEEEEIGHT
!” it cawed.
    “Holy