The Roxy, around a corner from the Castro’s main drag, was self-consciously unselfconscious, a literal hole in a ply-board wall that, once evening had settled in, was only visible to those who knew that they were looking for a small door with ROXY scrawled on it in Magic Marker. But there was nothing magical about the Roxy.
When Rachel entered, she was faced with the strings of multicolored Christmas lights that decorated the cramped place year-round. Revolutionary posters adorned the chipped walls—Ché, Rodchenko, and HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY UNTIL THE LAST BUREAUCRAT IS HUNG WITH THE GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST. The bar was a short, sticky affair, and the table where young Nathan pulled at his flimsy goatee and talked into his phone wasn’t much cleaner. He ignored her as she settled down, saying angrily, and cryptically, into the phone, “Bitches is as bitches does!” Then he ended the call and said nothing. Rachel waited.
Beth, the bartender who had recently shaved the left side of her head during a long LSD weekend, brought over a glass of house red—she knew by now that Rachel never touched beer. “Thanks,” Rachel said, and Nathan finally came out of his funk.
“Jay’s fucking around.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Rachel.
Beth, who hadn’t left yet, laughed. “You didn’t know? There’s no warm place Jay’s dick hasn’t been.”
“Fuck off.”
Beth shrugged and wandered off. She was an interesting figure who had earned her own short paragraph in Rachel’s report. Bartenders, she’d come to believe, served as nexus points for the movement: discreet and knowledgeable, they sometimes acted as gatekeepers. If someone like Beth was impressed by you, she could make an introduction to the real movers and shakers in the underground. Not the kids she’d ended up with.
Nathan scooped up his beer, and when he said, “I’m getting wasted tonight,” Rachel decided against asking how that was any different than every other night.
By the time Gary and Layla arrived, Nathan was on his third beer. Between gulps, he’d tortured her with an endless parade of his hopes and dreams, and how he’d poured so many of them into Jay, the grizzled daddy bear who’d opened up a whole new world that Nathan, back in St. Louis, never could have imagined. Rachel consoled because, as she’d learned over the last month, this was her way in with these young revolutionaries—she was their maternal sounding board, her quiet acceptance succeeding precisely where their own mothers had failed them.
Layla pulled up a chair as Gary collected drinks from the bar, and Nathan finally blessed the table with silence. He well knew that Layla, like Beth, would offer no sympathy. It was a detail Rachel had already noted in her report—the females of the West Coast radical scene were a hard bunch.
“Peter’s got a great place for tonight,” Layla announced.
“Why do we have to go anywhere?” Nathan asked. “I’m comfortable.”
“Then stay,” she told him. “I want to visit wine country.”
“Wine country?” Rachel asked, interested. Their other nighttime squats had all been within fifteen minutes of the city.
“Sonoma. Supposed to be ridiculous. An estate.”
Even Nathan looked interested, but as they were preparing to leave his phone rang. Flustered, he answered it, and by the time he hung up he was in tears. “It’s Jay. Go on, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Suit yourself,” said Layla.
“Good luck,” Rachel mouthed to him.
Layla drove, using handwritten directions to send them north, and when they crossed the Golden Gate and pushed into Marin, Gary, in the back seat, brought up the raging debate over healthcare that had been ushered in with Barack Obama’s inauguration last year. “Fucking compromise will screw us in the end. Single-payer is the only way to take care of a country.”
Layla pointed out that such a move would drive half the country nuts.
“Until they realize they benefit from it,” said Gary.
“And how long’s that gonna take?” asked Layla, joining a swarm of brake lights as the traffic thickened. “Personally, I don’t give a shit how they feel.”
The conversation went on, but Rachel didn’t bother joining in. She looked out the window at the passing towns, half obscured by redwoods, and tried to measure their progress up the peninsula toward the open fields of California’s vineyards as dusk settled in. She thought about what she’d learned about Peter. Serbian mafia? She didn’t see it, or maybe she was just taken in by her own prejudices. She thought back a few days to when Layla first had brought him to the Roxy. She’d noted his muted yet untraceable accent, the little signs of Old World manners, and the way he could dismiss a disputed point with a wave of his hand and a quiet, “Nah.” They’d been discussing something that she could no longer remember, because when he broke in and soliloquized memories of what came before were obliterated, and all she could hold onto were his words:
“We’re looking at the end of five thousand years of progress. It had to happen eventually, because humans aren’t made for long-term thinking. Hey, our short-term thinking has served us pretty well. It got us iPhones and a trip to the Moon. But what we’re faced with is the boundary of human ability. The old philosophers knew it, knew we’d burn ourselves up. And these reminders of our limitations are coming at us from all directions. How the internet has turned against us. How capitalism’s orbited back to the feudal ideal, but the peasants will no longer take it. The planet itself is coming to get us, drowning island nations and beating the shit out of our infrastructure. I mean, a civilization that still pisses on people of different colors—people who look different or speak differently? How are we any better than the polar bears, or the pigeons?”
And that was when she knew that Peter Kožul—or, whoever he really was—was someone to be watched, someone who might end up with his own appendix in her steadily growing report. She decided to give Layla’s merry band a little more time.
It took an hour to reach the address, which led to the end of a country road and an open iron gate. The driveway stretched long and straight through vineyards just starting to flower, and as they drove Gary perked up, oohing at what he could still make out in the gathering darkness. The drive culminated in a circle, where Peter’s Jeep was parked in front of a mock-gothic monstrosity two stories high. Tall windows, stone details, and unnecessary points adorning the roof. And at the open front door, a bottle of Shiner in his hand, stood Peter.
“Well, how the fuck do you like this,” Layla said as she parked.
Climbing out, Gary said, “I like.”
Peter—tall and dark and wearing the blazer and polished shoes of the real estate agent he claimed to be—welcomed them to mi casa, waving them inside. When Rachel approached, though, he put his large hands on her shoulders and, without hesitation, kissed her fully on the lips. “Suzie. You’ve got to see the bedroom upstairs.”
She smiled and kissed him back.
He looked over her shoulder. “Nathan?”
“Romantic troubles.”
He rolled his eyes and led them all inside.
Through speakers deftly hidden throughout the house, she heard a male voice intone a strangely somber poem and immediately recognized the D.C. punk band Nation of Ulysses. A whine of feedback, then the steady groove of “N-Sub Ulysses”:
They’re all talking about the round and round
But who’s got the real anti-parent culture sound?
The music clashed wildly with the Victorian décor, the corridors lined with oversized classical paintings, and the long stairs that headed up to bedrooms.
Peter told them, “Drinks and food are in the kitchen, and don’t worry about making a mess. The owner died a month ago, and it’s already been sold to some Chinese investment firm that’ll collect the keys next week. I need to run and make a call. Do exactly as you like.”
He didn’t have to tell them twice.