They weren’t reaching for luxury, only survival, someone responded.

  The late grew later. They cleared and washed dishes. They laughed more. Fighting was okay. Bad jokes were okay. They argued about records, and someone turned up the volume. Alfonzo realized that whatever answers he wanted he would not get, and so it was better to just relax. Roberto poured strong mysterious drinks, and Tania rolled catnip joints that they smoked outside in the cold wind. The seagrasses bent and relaxed. They played and danced in the huge living room, sliding across the wood floor and falling into pillows. Someone put on the Flowers Group and then followed that with the hits of Princess Nicotine. They danced to Malagasy soul and scorpion pop. Alfonzo asked again about the sea music, but the others only headbutted in response.

  “Just enjoy your time,” Tania told him. They all passed out on the floor in a heap.

  Alfonzo had a vivid dream. There had been an earthquake. Old, once marvelous edifices lay crumbled. A herd of animals was constructing a fountain out of the wreckage.

  The animals rushed to and fro in great excitement, gathering bits of green copper pipe and statuary. Here a spouting dolphin, there the leg of a bronze horse. The creatures explained to Alfonzo that the Panda-brand bottle conglomerate had donated the water for the fountain. Alfonzo was tasked with pouring the bottles’ contents into the fountain. The animals got more and more fevered as the dream went on. He struggled to keep up.

  “We must finish,” one declared.

  “No,” another said, “we’re just starting.”

  Then he heard this sea song. It was a dream, but at the same time, it wasn’t.

  30.

  See.

  The sea.

  The sea exists as unknowably radical life expanse.

  The sea exists as stretching groundswells, as brine life, capricious and dainty.

  See the sea’s surfaces as a storm-flapping tent that glows from within green gold and blue black.

  See, light exists. Exists in the form of sun waves falling as reflection and scattering.

  Light falls into sea, and sea’s murk transubstantiates. Light food disappears into our heaving green-black folds. All who are in, who are all, eat the sea’s murk or eat one another with reverence. So, we in the sea see that we all eat the light’s waves, in a way.

  In the sea sounds exist. Sounds more than exist. The sea resonates with itself and with us. The sea is a shell that resounds with us.

  Walls of coral, ceilings of ice, ocean floors reflect and return our sounds enriched. The sea possesses deep channels like radios. Sound travels faster in the sea. Sounds circle through our radio waves.

  Sea is our vessel and the vessel is a medium and the medium is a clear gel for growing culture. Sea exists, so vessels exist, so culture exists, so media exist, which makes us media makers.

  We are media makers who sing, who steer ourselves with song in the craft of breath control. We are microtone traders who compress under pressure. Great pressures exist. We sing the world exists circularly in songs. We all hear.

  Somewhere we sing and hear others who hear and sing somewhere. We are sea herds hearing singing in ways and we sing now to you who live just over the wet lip of the dry land.

  What is sung in the Atlantic gyre is heard in the Barents Sea; and what is sung in the Barents Sea is heard in the North Pacific; and what is sung in the North Pacific is heard in the Bay of Bengal; and what is sung in the Bay of Bengal is heard in the Atlantic gyre. It goes circularly like this.

  This song is for your benefit. This is a benefit concert sung in your language, so that you don’t mistake it. We have to start somewhere with you. We are starting somewhere.

  We would wish nothing more than to sing and to go on singing always about the sea and how the light falls through the murk and the way our sounds circle, but we must turn toward something else. We must sing of death.

  These songs we have sought to flee are following us circularly. We ask you to listen. Listening does not exist, it is only practiced. We ask you to practice, please.

  We sing of strands of poison in food that is life.

  Marine grasses exist. Marine grasses exist as one form of our sunlight-fed murk that we eat. Marine grasses exist undulating in beds where we eat and sleep and hide and dream. Marine grasses have roots, and leaves and marine grasses produce flowers and seeds, like the flowering plants of your gardens. Our plants are anchored by root systems, and the root systems of marine grasses buffer the dry lands against hurricanes.

  Plastic exists. Plastic exists as we know, and keeps existing and circling endlessly as a song but poison. It echoes the shapes and motions of food, so we eat it. Bottle caps, drinking straws, little red-orange bits that look like food but nourish no one. It catches us and clings. It disintegrates and mixes, and we eat it. We can’t see it, and we eat it. Plastic seems to exist forever, and its particulated weight is breaking us. Break us open and see we’re full.

  It is so difficult to sing to make others see, but we try as our numbered losses exist and grow.

  Stress exists and poisons exist.

  Oil is the precious poison made of hydrocarbons and heavy metals, and hydrocarbons and heavy metals cause cancers and deaths. Oil disrupts the hearing and singing of small vital plants and small vital animals. It gathers in organs and lingers on leaves for longer than we can measure. Oil is refined and spilled everywhere. Oil coats our seagrasses, which exist as our deep green beds. When seagrass dies it washes ashore the animals who take refuge in the grasses and die from ingesting the residue that clings. Oil is spilling everywhere constantly, not just in disaster forms but drop by drop by drop without notice.

  Accumulation exists.

  Heat exists and grows. Stress exists and poisons exist. Where there is too much noise and heat and stress and poison to bear, our bodies wash ashore and you see them. We see you see us. We play this record back.

  Scratch into the record a seal, then add one more. Record then the dying sounds of two dolphins, three right whales, five humpbacks, eight pilot whales, and thirteen more dolphins. But we have barely begun with the spiraling line because death has added to its sound twenty whales and one dolphin, which equals twenty-one, and then thirty turtles and four whales, which equals thirty-four.

  And it does not stop there, but turns and adds to the ever-turning forty-one more humpbacks and nine turtles and five sperm whales, which equals fifty-five. And even then, the sounds grow by eighty-six turtles and three dolphins, which equals eighty-nine. Another turn adds one hundred and six turtles and thirty-eight dolphins, which equals one hundred forty-four.

  There are one hundred sixty-seven dolphins, and thirty turtles, and twenty-three whales, and nine turtles, and four whales, which equals two hundred thirty-three.

  Then there are the three hundred fifty minke whales and twenty-seven pilot whales, which equals three hundred seventy-seven.

  And we cannot stop even there, for there are more to add to the song with the sounds of three hundred turtles, and two hundred forty-three seals, and fifty-six whales and dolphins, and nine more turtles, which equals six hundred eight all dead.

  These are only the scratches we know. And you see how death’s groove spirals toward the uncountable. There are tons of bodies, masses of corpses, heaps of creatures we have known who now exist only dead.

  Is your mind slipped over with a numbness that grows until you cannot feel your limbs? It is too much to count. We sing, we know.

  We have tried and tried adapting, swimming ceaselessly through these ever more leaded waters. We have seen you too trying and tiring. But we cannot do much more. So from the soaking edges we sing. We sing to you who are also struggling.

  We have fins that are old legs. You have legs that are former fins. And we see that you with your legs have charity runs to look for cures to cancers and sadness and madness. And when you run for charities, you drink water out of little disposable bottles of plastic, and the water in those bottles is full of plastics and metals that give you cancer. This is not kind, just true.

  We in the sea have a habit of smelling and tasting one another’s shit to check if we are healthy and we can sing we’re not healthy.

  We have cancers, cancers and sadness and madness that cling. We have memories stored in our fats alongside poisons. We have stresses and cancers from the plastics and oils inside. We have fish feelings, or let’s just call them feelings.

  Fish have feelings.

  We sing to you to say, “Hey, stranger to yourself, remember, this language is no shell game.”

  Beneath these word-shells are soft bodies.

  You are singing animals and this is communal music that makes it possible to see and share; we see the sick seas rising and dying and we are together terrified. We see sides parched and oversaturated. Warming and endless circling of poisons is happening.

  Lead and mercury from oil are in our water, which is your water, or what it is, just water that exists. Water exists within and without you.

  We sing all we know.

  We sing the wet crisis.

  From the soaking edge of the world we sing, we see the sea, and see you are animals who see the sea. We sing to say please. We turn on the record and weep our plastic-flecked salt tears.

  We sing because the system will not just naturally change, so we must sing to change it. Sing to see the sea in yourself. Form bands to survive. If you see something, sing something, and if you sing something, sing like you mean it. We must change our lives to live. We sing all this to help you see, imperfectly, but as best we can.

  Because if ever there were a time for this, this is it.

  Sing with us with your whole seeing being, “This is it.”

  31.

  “It’s Monday morning. You have to go home, baby.”

  Vivi sat beside Alfonzo, nudging him awake. He kept his eyes closed, as if his dreams might leak out if he opened them. He wanted to keep the sad sensation. With their time now too short, Vivi hummed about their past. She hummed that he would always be a part of her herd. Big tears welled. He was one of everyone. By marking him as a part of her herd, she transformed him. He was not the old unbearable love; he was a member of the group. As if everyone were equal in this survival struggle. Just an animal among animals leading their beautiful lives.

  “You can’t miss the boat.”

  The glass wall glowed with the gray light of coming dawn. Vivi made tea, and the light outlined the steam spiraling from the travel mug. She pushed him out the door and along the path to the ferry terminal. Stay, he thought desperately.

  Clouds were gathering above. Clouds were llamas swelled with water, ready to cry on the seas and cities. The clouds moved into the unknown, and he followed. He was ready to jump into the ocean to see if he could swim. Everyone was connected. Vivi didn’t speak. He watched her walk before him. All his concentration squeezed into a droplet.

  “I can’t believe it ends like this,” he said.

  “It doesn’t.”

  At the dock Alfonzo and Vivi entwined their necks. The ferry dog called out for him to come if he was coming, then pulled a rope across the entryway, separating shore and boat.

  And that was it.

  The ferry took him to the train that would take him to the city.

  Alfonzo slouched into a seat facing away from the direction of travel. See the disasters piling up behind as you are blown backward into the uncertain future. Breathing deeply, he removed his notebook from his satchel. In a trance, he transcribed. He was not the writer or the singer. He was simply the scribe.

  When he finished, he tore out the leaves, crumpled them, put them in his mouth, and chewed. He would digest what he had heard. He would teach himself a lesson. Absorb it. Use it for fuel. He was just one channel. He was just an alpaca moving messages from beyond, back into himself, through himself, all so he could pass along what the sea sang into him.

  SARDINES

  32.

  The train retraced its path from the End of the World back to the center of everything. The repeating backyards grew smaller and smaller the closer the train drew to the city. Somewhere in Brooklyn the yards vanished and were replaced by apartment walls. The clouds grayed overhead. The train went underground and Alfonzo, a thoroughly chewed-up morsel, was finally deposited deep in Atlantic Station.

  Deliriously tired, he threaded through the tunnels. There was no time to go home for fresh clothes and coffee. City Hall expected him. He knocked an old goat off balance and stuttered a sorry. He waited for an R train, which was delayed because of an earlier incident. The one that finally heaved up to the platform was stuffed to the gills. He shoved on with more apologies. The conductor barked at everyone to stand clear. Beneath his legs, a flock of pigeons gathered in; he locked his knees and cast his gaze downward.

  Alfonzo wondered how he was supposed to get through this new day after everything. But then, what was this everything? He’d visited an old love and her friends, they’d talked feelings and politics, and then he’d had a dream. He was just one random alpaca whose life, as far as he knew, was still normal. Normal in its constraints. The change was within.

  He surfaced finally at City Hall Station. A light snow had started falling askew from the matte gray clouds. At the top of the stairs, Alfonzo made eye contact with an old llama who wore the same judgmental expression as his father. Luis’s voice rang in his mind’s ear. Say whatever you want to friends. Transcend on the weekend with drinks and song. Attend protests and dream lucidly every night. Do whatever you want, but do it on your own time. No matter what, make sure you’re where you’re paid to be come Monday morning. You’ve got to be responsible.

  Dark-coated animals circled the empty fountain. Their footprints wrote lines across the snowy paving stones. Among them was an alpaca with her scarf knotted the way Alfonzo’s mother used to do hers. These were workers who behaved themselves, and here he was, among them.

  But for what? he argued with his inner father. Have I come dutifully to be fired? If I’m lucky, I’ve come to be shuffled to another basement office, to yet another windowless room where I’ll live in fear of leaks and mold and the ceiling’s collapse. I come to watch the slow damp rot the records of our existence. Am I an animal who does what I’m told out of fear? You do your job, his inner father hummed. The big picture is above your pay grade. You behave yourself so you’ll have a home to dream in.

  All around him, animals disappeared. They were there moving along, clear to him one instant, then a door opened and they were gone, swallowed by an office tower.

  Humming, Alfonzo turned away from City Hall. Dad, he reassured his mental father, you’re not my enemy. You don’t have to be afraid. He would be responsible soon, he promised, but in a new way. Work wasn’t working like it should, so the worker must change.

  Get a coffee, Alfonzo soothed himself. Survive the day.

  * * *

  The Early Cenozoic was empty—not unusual for this time of the morning.

  The owners must have brought in more plants over the weekend, or else Pamella had a wild way with flora. For whatever reason, the café felt equatorial. Orchid stalks arched their purple and orange flowers toward the windows. Staghorns pointed their apple-green leaves every which way. Peace lilies in terra-cotta stood guard beside the bathroom, and a fern suspended in macramé tickled at a golden pothos that had climbed up the wall with the aid of its little brown stem toes. The lemur barista was barely visible amid the foliage. Familiar noises pulsed low, beneath traffic noise from the street.

  “Is this Akida?” Alfonzo called out as a way of making his presence known.

  “Oh.” Pamella emerged from the leaves. “I’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Faca.”

  “Mr. Faca is my father. You can call me Al.”

  Pamella jumped from plant to counter and ducked beneath. There was a rustling sound, and the lemur returned clutching a stack of newspapers.

  “These are for you,” she said.

  Each paper had bold full-page spreads and each trumpeted the same story. Unlike the usual coverage of Mayor Shergar, in these photos the horse looked sweaty and spooked. There were shots of the mayor rearing back, away from a swarm of microphones, and showing the whites of his eyes. Alfonzo studied the headlines.

  SHOCKING REVELATIONS: OUR FULL COVERAGE OF THE CITY HALL LEAKS

  SEADYNE SLIPPED MAYOR MILLIONS THROUGH OFFSHORE SHELLS

  SECRET DOCUMENTS SHOW ADMINISTRATION CAUGHT IN FINANCIAL TRAP; SHERGAR DENIES ALL

  They had done it. Or really, Mitchell had done it. He looked to Pamella, and her expression told him this was real.

  “You should have seen City Hall when I opened this morning,” Pamella said. “Black cars coming and going. All kinds of sinister swine scuttling in and out. There were a million reporters, but security cleared them from the steps before they hustled the mayor out in blinders.”

  “Who was taking the mayor away?” Alfonzo asked.

  “Oh, you know. The really powerful ones,” Pamella replied. She was calm. “Can I fix you something? We’ll look more natural if I’m making a coffee. You never know who’s watching.”

  Alfonzo’s stomachs contracted. He was hot in his wool.

  They were in it together. They were all enmeshed, caught in a system they’d been born into. There was no going backward. The stereo continued to chirp out music. Where was Mitchell?

  “This is huge, isn’t it?” Alfonzo wanted Pamella’s reassurance. “Maybe this will change everything? I mean, isn’t this how revolutions start?”

  “Perhaps.” Pamella nodded with a little snort.

  “You’re not convinced.”

  “I’ll tell you a story.” She twisted a knob, and a cloud of steam escaped from her machine. “Where I grew up, each election brought some fresh scandal and violence. With each turn, a new figure would appear to promise, ‘It will be different now.’ And then they would collude with the old guard to ensure things stayed the same.

  “For many generations, our kind accepted this because it was balanced with the beauty of our home. It was the plants and animals of our community that made life livable; politics was a farce we laughed at. You can’t understand the riches we had around us. There were fruit orchards. There were peanuts, the best passion fruit, and tamarind and guava. Everyone had a garden. Even the poorest had lushness within claw’s reach.”

 

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