California(17)

A few months before Micah’s death, Frida had convinced him to come over. She told him Cal would be at work. They’d gotten drunk on the bathtub gin he’d brought in his jacket pocket. Micah had insisted they enjoy it in the alley below their unit, and Frida complied because she never got to see him and she didn’t want to scare him off. By then, her brother had become very particular about how he spent his time.

It was on that visit that Micah had told Frida the Group’s origin story. She hadn’t even asked; in her memory, he took a sip from his flask, leaned against the stucco wall of the neighboring apartment complex, and just started talking.

“A year after the quake,” he said, “some wealthy douche bags took their stupid Range Rovers or whatever and surrounded an ambulance. They wouldn’t let it south of Pico. Do you remember that?”

Frida didn’t. She wondered if this was more legend than history, but of course she didn’t say anything.

Micah went on: “Those *s said whoever was dying hadn’t paid for those services.” He snorted and passed her the flask, which she took, grateful. “They didn’t want to share, didn’t care about anyone but themselves.” He smiled then, his eyes glistening. “The Group was born right after that, to fight that kind selfishness, to keep people empowered.” When Frida said nothing, he said, “Or at least amused.”

“‘Amused’?” Frida said. “But how?”

“A couple of the founders were into theater and performance theory, shit like that. Their early stunts were a little silly—I’ll be the first to cop to that. Sure, maybe skipping around in a Mexican wrestling mask gets more attention than a regular old protest, but it’s hard to be taken seriously when you act like that. But, then again, maybe that’s what’s kept us from being shut down.” He paused. “Nobody saw us as a threat.”

Micah reached for the flask, and once Frida handed it to him, he slipped it into his jacket and said, “Time to go.” He pushed himself away from the wall, gave her a cursory hug, and left. Like that. She hadn’t told Cal about the visit, but she was drunk and cagey when he got home, and he’d guessed.

The Vicodin was bringing this all back vividly. She shook her head at August. “Micah wasn’t one of the Group’s founders, but, yeah, you’re thinking of the right people. He only got involved after he finished school. He didn’t have debts like the first members, but I guess he had that same…” She searched for the right word. “Anger?” Frida paused. “By then, you know, things were a lot worse.”

August’s blank expression suggested that, no, he didn’t know. “What about you?” he asked.

“Me? I wasn’t in the Group.”

A bird cried in the trees somewhere.

Usually, she was angry at her little brother for believing that strongly in the Group and its edicts: that money only poisoned people, that government was just bureaucracy, corruption, and oppression, that working wouldn’t save them, only engagement would. Micah was always using that kind of language near the end—engagement, engaged. The Group didn’t have a manifesto, or if it did she wouldn’t know; it was so secretive by the end. But some of the members acted like a single unified truth was leading them forward. How could her brother value that stupid truth more than the blood pumping through his veins, his own beautiful, delicate joints, the intricate machinery of his breath?

Frida sighed and glanced at the bra she’d given August, now slung over the side of the carriage. “If bras are so in demand, does that mean there are a lot of women out here? How far do you travel? How many of us are there?”

“You know I won’t reveal my route.” He laughed. “Besides, that bra you gave me is made of fabric and wire, both valuable. And those little metal clasps, those annoying things? Also in demand.”

“So it won’t be a bra anymore? Is that what you’re saying?”

August said he didn’t know for sure how it would be used.

“What if I followed you?” she asked.

“Too dangerous.”

She nodded. They had stayed put since their arrival here; the Millers had never ventured beyond the big lake four miles off. Everyone seemed afraid, and August had stoked that.

Normally, August was eager to pack up and leave, but she could tell by the way he lingered that he wanted to hear more about her brother.

“He’d been in love with an idea,” she said. That was true, wasn’t it? He wanted to rebuild L.A., neighborhood by neighborhood, and then he could do the same elsewhere. Not to make money, but to make the world livable again. Before he died, he’d helped set up the Group’s encampment near Echo Park. Every month more and more people were leaving for the Communities, but poor disheveled L.A. hung on. Micah thought the encampment was proof that people would be okay, even without money; anyone could come live there, he said, as long as they helped keep it running. He’d rebuilt housing, and the Group had spearheaded farming efforts in rambling, verdant Elysian Park; those fields needed crops, even Cal agreed on that. Rumor had it the Group would break into Dodger Stadium, too: the members would clean it up and make it a meeting place.

It all would have sounded idyllic if men with guns didn’t patrol the perimeters, if they hadn’t kicked out a bunch of residents who didn’t want to cooperate, taken their houses and clothing and anything the people couldn’t run away with on their backs. At least in Frida and Cal’s dark and cold apartment a few miles west they could say whatever they wanted about anyone. Cal, who was still earning a meager sum to run a garden, said that all the zucchini in the world wouldn’t lure him into their weird compound. “That encampment’s almost as bad as a Community, except the amenities are worse,” he’d said once. “Everyone there is giving up something. We just don’t know yet what that something is.”