Who was just a man. A man with a gun. Another man with a gun.
And yet. She’d read all the science backing up his letters, the books by Frans de Waal and the hard-to-find articles by Adrienne L. Zihlman. The thrilling truths Travis was uncovering about the bonobos were true. Maybe he himself didn’t matter at all. What mattered was the research that confirmed her belief in human goodness. How could that be foolish?
Lily retrieved the manila folder from her tent and clicked on her flashlight. She knew exactly which letter she wanted to reread. He’d written it many years ago.
Dear Lily,
I wonder why I stay. The stomach ailments. The wars. The wrenching grief each time we can’t save a bonobo. But I have a theory. I need to see it tested. And this is the only place where that can happen.
The question is this: Can humans ever live together in peace? It hasn’t happened yet. For centuries, despots have ransacked as much of the planet as they can. It goes on and on and on. The only thing that changes is the skill with which these madmen plunder. They keep developing technologies that allow them to take more resources and more lives. Leaving people with less and less.
Okay, that’s the historical model. But history is only a few thousand years old. What if we used a biological model instead?
Consider evolution. Organisms with successful traits reproduce more. They pass along the successful traits. Over time, a larger and larger percentage of the population has these traits. Right?
What if compassion and altruism turn out, over time, to be successful traits? They do in fact exist as traits, whether successful or not, right now. People cooperate all the time. Even the everyday activity of driving on freeways takes an extraordinary amount of cooperation. Of course there are exceptions, but the vast majority drive in the correct lanes, use turn signals, follow the rules that we’ve all agreed upon.
Bonobos are great at compassion and altruism. They give a helping hand to sick members of their communities. They share food. They share lovers! I’ve told you all the stories. And here’s a fact that no one disputes: we’ve descended from them as closely as we’ve descended from the more conflict-driven chimpanzees.
What if these inherited traits of love are the ones that drive our evolution? What if, in the long, long run, the warlike people tear each other to pieces and are less successful at reproduction? And the people who have learned to cooperate and make peace are in fact more successful at carrying on? Evolution is a slow but mighty creep toward survival. It’s in our genes. It can take thousands and thousands of years. This is not something we would be able to detect in history. Probably not in our lifetimes. But I need to know it’s possible, and these creatures, my sweet bonobos, give that to me. That’s why I stay. For the hope. For the reminder that I possess genes that are nudging me in the right direction.
The evolution of love. It’s possible, Calla Lily. It is.
Love,
Travis
24
Vicky couldn’t believe her good fortune. Starting from scratch was like designing a virtual world for a computer game. Even better, the tools and resources available to her were not the usual ones. She got to play with a whole new set of challenges.
The neighborhood around the Oakland airport had been built on landfill. During the earthquake, the ground rolled and boiled like wet mud. Actually, it became wet mud. Navigating the now buckled streets was difficult. There were known routes for getting just about everywhere, and these were always congested, even though, of the diminished population left after the earthquake, an even smaller number had cars. Gas had to be bought on the outside, and at exorbitant prices, but some people did buy it. As much as she hated exercise, buying another bicycle—she’d given her old one to Lily—had been a good idea; she could pedal roads that weren’t passable by car.
Some of the buildings in Vicky’s new neighborhood had withstood the liquefaction, but most had at least popped out their windows, and others lay in ruins. Even so, the neighborhood had an odd tidiness. The streets and sidewalks had been picked clean. People scavenged every scrap of metal, every loose chunk of asphalt, every last piece of glass. Even the makeshift homes, car bodies, and foundation chunk huts had swept entryways and airtight cooking chimneys.
Vicky lived in a small stucco building that used to house four apartments but was now half rubble. The flight of stairs to the second floor was in one piece, free-floating, flanked on either side by caved-in walls and jagged arms of rebar. As she climbed, she could look right down into the bottom two apartments. People had cleared out the central spaces but could do nothing about the giant holes overhead. Both rain and sun soaked what was left of the rooms. Vicky inhabited the only intact apartment in the building, a small second-story studio. She had a door with a lock, four walls, and a ceiling.
At the sound of a forceful and sustained knock on her exterior door, Vicky held very still. She did not answer. You just never knew what people wanted, and friendly visitors would call out with a voice greeting, so you knew who it was and what they wanted. So far, she’d allowed no one in her studio. Most people were amazingly cool, but she had a lot of valuable equipment in here, not to mention the chairs. Caution wasn’t exactly her forte, but she was trying to heed her sister’s most recent warning. “Just be safe,” Lily had said. Vicky had cracked a joke, of course, but Lily was right. Anyway, she was having way too much fun to spoil it by letting some asshole steal her computers and chairs.
The pounding on her door intensified.
Who could it be? Vicky wished the pull of curiosity weren’t so great in her makeup. Was inquisitiveness a genetic trait? She’d have Lily ask her bonobo researcher.
Oh, what the hell. The guy wouldn’t let up and she was curious to find out who was so interested in gaining access to her apartment. She could handle whatever. So she called out, “Who is it?”
“Me!”
Vicky pulled open the door to find Lily, gripping her bicycle, on the free-floating precipice that was her entryway.
“Lily! Welcome! Hi!” She grabbed her sister’s arm and pulled her in, then shut and locked the door. “Why didn’t you say it was you? Welcome to my humble abode!” Lily looked quizzically dubious, so Vicky launched right into a tour of her one room, pointing out the high points and improvements.
The walls were cracked, but she’d stuffed the bigger cavities with newspaper. The lone window had busted out, but she’d put up plastic sheeting with duct tape. The Time-Life chair fronted a plywood-and-cinder-block desk, and the clear plastic Bubble chair lolled up against a corner of the room. The other chairs were shoved and stacked against the wall opposite the window. Vicky opened the only interior door and showed her the cramped toilet and shower stall.
“Here, let me open the window for some fresh air.” Vicky ripped down the top half of the plastic sheeting and showed Lily how she’d super-glued large jagged pieces of broken glass all around the window’s exterior frame to discourage intruders.
“Even the electric works,” she bragged, pointing out a long outlet strip plugged into the wall.
Lily gestured at the husks and innards of several computers strewn about the studio. “What’s all this stuff?”
“I’m working,” she stage-whispered. “Have to be a little circumspect, though. I don’t really want the world to know I have all these electronics in here. Clients would kill me if I lost their data. I tell them I have a shop. Ha ha. I hire people to do the pickup and delivery. Makes it look like I got a whole sophisticated operation.”
“Right,” Lily said and almost rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, my price is right. And people know I’m good. I’m back in the black. Making good money. How’re things at Joyce’s? Have you talked to Tom?”
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Are you?”
“Travis came by the church.”
“Hot diggity! The bonobo!
”
“He’s actually a man, not a bonobo.”
She enjoyed how Lily flushed red, the way her voice deepened and quavered. Vicky imitated her. “He’s a maaan.”
“Stop it.”
“You slept with him!”
Lily huffed in annoyance.
“Hot diggity! How was he?”
“I didn’t sleep with him. I’m still married, you know.”
“Still?”
“Tom’s seeing Angelina. Remember her?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Shit, was Lily about to cry?
“He’s always so über-virtuous. I’m just kind of shocked.”
“Well, that’s something. Shocking you.”
“Who’s Angelina?”
“Five years older than me. Last name Hudson.”
“I think I remember her. She was a senior when I was a freshman. Tits so big she sort of waddles when she walks?”
“Uh huh. Makes a weird clucking sound in the back of her throat.”
“Yes! God, I remember that! What do you mean, ‘seeing’?”
Lily made an exasperated face. She’d managed to suppress the tears, anyway. Maybe Vicky should hug her?
“So that’s why you came out to California.”
“No! It didn’t start until—” Vicky saw Lily realize that she had no idea when it had started. “I came out here to see if you were okay.”
“And yet, here he is. The bonobo researcher. And now you’re single!”
“Vicky, it doesn’t feel that good. Being single. Breaking up with Tom.”
“Speaking of sex,” Vicky said. She tapped a metal box sprouting colorful plastic-sheathed wires. “I met someone. I’m doing this job for a ‘restaurant’”—Vicky used her fingers to make air quotes—“that opened near here. More like a glorified food cart. Gotta admire folks working with what we got. Anyway, they have awesome food. Big hunks of meat and roasted everything. I think they’re shooting urban deer! People do have to eat. It’s just the next step after the street markets. Gives new meaning to the term ‘free enterprise.’”
Lily shook her head, looking very censorial.
“Faith, sister. Hang in. We’re going to be in Fat City again real soon.”
“Don’t you miss Sal?”
Now this really was irritating. Her married-for-decades sister could almost fuck some dude who studies apes in the Congo, but she was supposed to miss a woman she’d been with for not quite two years and with whom, by the way, she’d broken up.
“So I was about to tell you about this babe. She’s the owner of this new ‘restaurant.’” Vicky let out a low huff. “I’d say Sicilian or something. Her, not the food. Big mane of black hair with red highlights. Dark skin with lots of soft dark hairs on her forearms. Faint little mustache. And—” She used her hands to shape a full figure, followed by a whistle. “Then this husky voice that just begs for—”
“Shut up, Vicky.”
“What?”
“You told me that Sal likes you for who you really are. You had a real relationship. Whoever this ‘babe’ is, you don’t even know her. Get real here. We’re in the middle of a crisis. It’s time to know who your family is, who your friends are. Your real ones.”
Vicky stood very still in the middle of her assemblage of computer parts and plastic sheeting, duct tape and antique chairs, watching Lily talk, waiting her out. Her words were a squall that would pass.
“Sal liked you.”
“You’re not okay about the Tom thing, are you?”
Lily paced to the door, as if she were about to leave, but then turned quickly. “‘The Tom thing’? He’s been my husband for fifteen years.”
Vicky wagged her head, trying hard to be a helpful listener. She’d much rather do that than endure lectures about Sal.
Lily dug in. “Look. We need a concrete plan. It doesn’t help to live in a fantasy world. I know you’re brilliant. I know you can debug or program anything. But brilliance isn’t enough anymore. This is the age of survival.”
Vicky snickered.
“Okay, fine,” Lily said, grabbing the stem of her bicycle.
“No, no, no! Don’t go! I’m sorry. I’ve just never seen you like this. It was the ‘age of survival’ part.”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing really. I—” She got interrupted by an airplane sheering the sound waves. An Air Force fighter plane filled the view from the window, soaring skyward. When the quiet resumed, Vicky started to finish her thought, but another flying object, a yellow jacket, zipped right into the open half of the window.
“Shit.” Lily patted her pockets. “I left my epinephrine in the tent.”
“Tent?”
The wasp flew directly across the room and landed on Lily’s cheek.
“Don’t move,” Vicky said. As the yellow jacket crawled up Lily’s cheekbone toward her eye, it was as if Vicky could feel its tiny legs tickling her own face.
Vicky lunged, her hand performing a cross between a caress and a punch, abrupt and snappy, and scooped the yellow jacket off Lily’s cheek. She carried it in her closed hands to the window and freed the little stinging terrorist. She taped the plastic sheeting back over the window.
“Thank you,” Lily said quietly.
“You’re welcome,” Vicky said.
“I have to get to the church and it’s a long ride back across Oakland and Berkeley.”
“Okay. Thank you for visiting.”
“I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m dandy.”
“I want you to apologize to Sal and move back to Berkeley.”
So Lily had an agenda. Vicky could see it in the way she held her mouth, twisted off to the side. Sal. Berkeley. Leading to what? Lily thought she was being shrewd, introducing a few key starter steps.
Clearly Lily had forgotten about the sticky issue of Gloria. Not to mention her spouse and head of the neighborhood association, that snake Paul. Moving to Berkeley would be like jumping into a live-action computer game; every physical move she made would have to be calculated to keep from getting in either of their paths.
Hey, that was kind of a good idea! She could design Gloria as a playboy bunny, big hair and tits, and Paul as a writhing serpent. Vicky tried to kill the smile tugging at her mouth.
“I mean it,” Lily said, all parental. “You know I’m right.”
“My house has been repossessed.” Vicky was proud of having thought of a practical answer.
“I know. We’d need to find another place to live.”
Acquiescing would probably be the easiest route through this little bog. “Okay.”
“Weak response. We’ll talk about this more later. I’m going to be late.”
“Okay. Call me.” Vicky held an imaginary phone to her face.
The second Lily left, Vicky, deflated, got downright sad. She walked around her studio, touching her computer parts and chairs, trying to regain her sense of adventure.
It was Sal. Why did Lily keep insisting on bringing her up, as if Vicky had some sort of choice in the matter?
Wait. Maybe Lily was right. Maybe she did have a choice.
Maybe love could be like a computer game, too. Maybe there was a formula. Or a set of defining criteria. You figure them out, and you win.
Vicky sat down at one of her computers and brought up a spreadsheet. No, that was too confining. She could design a game, but that would take weeks.
See, that was the problem with love. It slipped out of all the ordinary parameters. It refused to be programmed. She usually told herself that love wasn’t real. It was just a biological reaction to some human needs. Whatever.
But maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was real. A th
ing in the room. A thing in her body, even. Was it possible that love truly existed, maybe more than any other thing? But how could something that couldn’t be measured be real?
Here was a new idea: maybe love couldn’t be measured or quantified, but it could succeed if you followed certain regulations. Hadn’t Sal been telling her that all along? Vicky opened a simple word processing program and tapped out a list. “Communication. Kindness. Honesty.” And seriously, the main thing girls wanted—who didn’t know this?—was to be the only one. Maybe it was a stupid rule. But it did have a simple correlating behavior. She picked up her phone and sent a text canceling her date with the Sicilian babe. She might lose the restaurant account, too—and how rational was that?—but the risk was exciting. If love was a game, another kind of challenge, maybe she could handle being in it.
It wasn’t until Vicky emerged from this intriguing train of thought that she remembered the word “tent.” She ran out the door and looked in every direction, but Lily was long gone.
25
Lily awoke at daybreak, as she did every morning, to birdsong. Most of the voices twittered and chirped, with some doing entire melodic riffs, but there was one strange whooping bird that she always heard. Its voice started low, climbing smoothly to a crescendo. It sounded nothing at all like any bird in Nebraska.
She climbed out of her tent into a blue day caressed by a soft breeze. Coyote brush—scrappy chest-high plants, small but sturdy, with fibrous branches and deep green leaves—covered the hillside. Soon they would bloom, bringing bees. The air had a pungent herbal scent, a mix of snake and rabbit and sage and grass, bay leaves and dust.
Lily secured her camp, which meant zipping up her tent, and rode her bicycle up to the main fire trail. When she got to the place where a locked chain-link gate interrupted the fence, she braked and stood straddling the bike. Just up the hill she could see the toolshed.
The Evolution of Love Page 16
