“Charcoal’s ready,” Mickey announced.
Until she moved to L.A. for graduate school, Christina had lived her entire life in the Midwest. As she stepped out the sliding door to the patio of their first floor apartment, she repeated her daily pledge to never take the weather for granted.
It was a perfect night: warm but not hot, dry but without any wildfires to cloud the area with smoke. The oleander bushes behind her building were covered in pink and white flowers. With the sliding door open, there was nothing to separate indoors from outdoors. No screen was needed; the paucity of mosquitoes in L.A. was a touch of divine grace.
Mickey leaned over a miniature Weber grill, stirring the red-hot coals with a stick. Christina handed him a platter of raw chicken breasts that she’d marinated in a spicy Mexican adobo sauce. It was a family recipe that both she and River enjoyed growing up.
The threesome kicked back in plastic chairs on the patio drinking ice-cold diet soda from colorful picnic cups, and Christina felt content. Despite the occasional irritation—or trip to a police station—she enjoyed living with her cousin. And Mickey was such a regular fixture at the apartment that she’d grown fond of him, too, though a boyfriend of her own would be better. Mickey had a good sense of humor, and he was handy with a grill. She could forgive a lot in a man who cooked.
“How’s work, Chrissy?” River asked.
After the accident that ended her tar sand project, Christina had felt some genuine sympathy from her cousin. Before, River seemed to take for granted that her studies would automatically lead to graduation in about six years. Christina’s obvious distress when her thesis project collapsed must have forced River to recognize the challenges and unpredictability her cousin faced in her quest to earn the title “Doctor.”
“Things are looking up,” she said. “Dr. Chen signed an agreement with another sponsor, Bactofuels, to make up the grant money we lost from CaliPetro. That means he can keep paying me, and—,“ she couldn’t resist the jab, “—you can keep a roof over your head.”
“What do they want for their money?” Mickey asked.
“Photosynthetic bacteria that they can use as factories to manufacture enzymes.”
“Photo who?” River said.
“Photosynthetic. Like, photosynthesis? As in, plants and the bottom of the food chain and all that?”
River gave her a blank look.
“Geez, River, you’re a college graduate! Don’t they teach science at Claremont Pitzer?”
Mickey snickered. “Not in the Gender Studies field group, they don’t.”
“Maybe I should rent some episodes of The Magic School Bus for you,” Christina said.
“Don’t be a jerk, Chrissy. Not everyone is a science nerd,” River said.
She bit her tongue, remembering that while she might not approve of River’s educational choices, her cousin was every bit as smart as she was.
“Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert the energy of sunlight into the chemical energy of food. It’s the basis for almost all life on earth. Photosynthetic organisms make food, and then they become food for other life forms—plant-eaters—and on up the food chain to meat-eaters.”
“Like us,” Mickey said, flipping a boneless, skinless piece of poultry over the coals.
“The bacteria I’m working with, E. coli, are more like animals than plants. They need to eat to survive. But Dr. Chen put the genes for photosynthesis into them, and now they’re green and can make food from sunlight, like plants do.”
“Are those the bacteria in the X-car?”
“They’re not in the car, but they make the fuel for the car. We also designed them to convert sunlight into isobutanol. That’s an alcohol—related to ethanol—and it makes a great fuel for diesel engines.”
“And it’s eco-friendly, right?” River said.
“It is when it’s made this way. When my photosynthetic bacteria produce isobutanol, they take CO2 out of the atmosphere. When the fuel is burned, CO2 is released but it just replaces what the bacteria took out. It doesn’t add to global warming.”
“Cool,” River said.
Mickey stoked the charcoal and picked up an alternative newspaper River had laid on the table.
“But we still have a lot of work to do,” Christina said. “The bacteria make isobutanol but we have to feed them. Sunlight alone doesn’t work—not yet.”
“That’s good for you, though, because you need a research project.”
“I guess so.”
“I hope you figure it out, Chrissy,” Mickey said, suddenly animated and waving the newspaper. “This gasoline bullshit can’t go on forever. It’s bad enough that the oil companies are getting rich while wrecking the environment with their drilling and spilling and carbon emissions. Now they’re bleeding the little man by watering down his gas!”
He slapped the newspaper in front of them, pointing to an article titled, “Jefferson Park Station Sold Bad Gas.”
Jefferson Park?
Intrigued and a little worried, Christina skimmed the text. According to the report, a number of cars that had filled up at an independent gas station in the Jefferson Park neighborhood broke down and suffered costly engine damage because the fuel had been diluted.
“The nerve of some people!” River said.
“Let me see that,” Christina said, snatching the paper to read the whole article.
The owner of the station denied tampering with the gasoline, and said that testing of his underground fuel tanks would prove the gasoline was fine. He blamed any problems on the decrepit condition of his customers’ cars.
“Strange,” was all Christina said, though she was thinking a good deal more than that.
“I mean, did this guy think he could get away with it?” Mickey said. “Did he think because his customers were poor, no one would notice? Aaah, he probably will get away with it. I bet the cops won’t even shut him down. Neil oughtta blow his tanks, too.”
A razor-sharp glance flew from River to Mickey, and Christina watched his face turn beet red. He mumbled something and turned away to fuss with the grill. River smiled and folded up the paper, but it wasn’t a real smile. Christina had seen enough family photos to recognize River’s fake camera grin.
“That’s such a shame,” River said lightly. “By the way, did I tell you about the civil rights march I’m organizing next month?”
“What do you mean, ‘blow his tanks, too’?” Christina said slowly.
Mickey kept his back turned. River took on a glazed, deer-in-the-headlights expression. Christina felt the blood drain from her face. She recalled the two-thousand-year-old words of Judas Iscariot. The one I will kiss is the man.
Was she breaking bread with her betrayers?
“It wasn’t an accident?” she whispered.
They shook their heads and acted confused. “What wasn’t?” River said, but River was a terrible liar.
“The accident with my tar sand project—it wasn’t an accident?” Christina said, the volume of her voice rising with her growing fury. “Somebody—what did you say, Noah? Neil?—he blew up my experiment? You know who destroyed my experiment?”
“Chrissy, we—“ Mickey began.
She didn’t hear a word. “Are you out of your minds? Did you tell him where it was? Oh, God,” Christina smacked her forehead, “I told you the test site was in Jefferson Park. I think I even pointed it out to you once. Is Neil one of your ecoterrorist friends? What did you do?”
She was shrieking now, her normally even temper boiling like the surf in a hurricane.
“I knew those people you hang out with didn’t approve of my project. But I never would’ve thought… How could you?”
Tears flowed down her cheeks. To think that her loved ones were traitors was a hundred times more painful than the sabotage itself. River and Mickey—or their “friend”—had committed an act of violence against her and her sponsor. By using information she gave them, they’d made her an unwitting accomplice. What would Dr. Chen do if he knew? Could he ever trust her again? Might she lose her position at the university?
Would River and Mickey go to jail, only this time for real?
Torn between vengeance and fear, there was no way to sort out her feelings—or decide what to do—while the guilty parties were sitting at table with her.
“Get out,” she said.
“What?” River said.
“I said get out, both of you. Get out of this house. If you’re not gone in five minutes, I’m calling the police and telling them everything.”
“But—“
“Just leave. I mean it. Mickey has a place somewhere, doesn’t he?” She buried her face in her arms, her anger morphing into a plea. “Go away.”
She didn’t look up until the sound of shuffling feet quieted, and the front door had clicked shut. Then like a disconsolate child, she went to her room and curled up on the bed with her head sandwiched between two pillows.
One of their friends sabotaged my experiment. They betrayed me.
Before leaving, Mickey had taken the chicken off the fire and neatly arranged it on the platter. All night the perfectly cooked meat lay there spoiling, and feeding the flies.