LITMIR.BIZ

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over gravel. In the distance, the same dog barked every few seconds. He waved hello to a neighbor who was raking back the drapes on his living room window. The air was warm, like he was walking through his own breath.

      Ernest headed for the field house, cutting across the park’s lawn, which glowed a darker green in the twilight. A long time ago, the park had been a gas manufacturing plant. After the plant closed in the 1950s, it was gifted to Prairie Park. By the mid-1960s, the suburb (which liked to call itself a “village” in its self-promotional literature, as if all the roofs were thatched and the women balanced gourds of water on their heads) had converted the area into a small park.

      Ernest could smell the cut grass, so clean it seemed edible. He remembered a few years ago when patches of the park’s grass inexplicably died. The park district employees fed it with fertilizer, white perlite balls as big as berries, in an effort to revive it. Ernest asked them why they didn’t return the park back to its native grasses. They looked at him like he was some possessed dust bowl minister proposing an exorcism. Glorified crabgrass was out of the question.

      In the field house, Ernest found the Earth Day committee mingling and sipping coffee. Most of them were businesspeople or fellow environmentalists from the neighborhood volunteering their time, but a few of them were fellow paid consultants, like Ross, who also brought his sharp-faced wife, Marcy, to all the meetings. She was a caterer and usually handled the food and drinks. After Ross poured his coffee at the side table, he turned and gave Ernest a rousing shoulder clap as if Ernest had just told him an uplifting story. It was Ross’s way. His love of backslapping—just men, never women—was part of his masculinity recipe, combining equal parts vigor with physical affection.

      “How’s it going, Ern? I’m almost scared to ask, but how’s that spaceship?”

      “How much time do you have?”

      “At least you don’t have this.” Ross pulled up his sleeve to reveal an inflamed rash on his forearm and hand. The skin looked freshly burned with oozing red pustules.

      “What happened? Poison ivy?”

      “Nope, an allergic reaction after visiting my brother at his furniture manufacturing plant. He’s working with some family of ours in Indonesia, importing and exporting. Hey, do you know how much glue and chemicals and flame retardant are all over your couch?”

      “Ah, yes, flame retardants. I once tried to find a couch that didn’t have them. Long story short: they all do.”

      Ross grimly shook his head as the men pulled out chairs to join the circle. Now that Ernest was here, the meeting could start. He kicked it off on a high note: “So what’s on everyone’s dream list for next year’s party? What would we love to see at the event? Sky’s the limit for now.”

      “Booths from some of the best restaurants in Chicago,” Marcy said.

      “Good, what else?”

      “What about some roller coasters?” another member suggested.

      He politely wrote it down in the notebook.

      “I know,” Ross said with a gleam in his eye. “What about some kick-ass music? Something that could really draw a crowd!”

      Some names were tossed out: Chicago, for obvious civic pride reasons; Earth, Wind, and Fire, because someone had seen them at a benefit lately (likely while drunk and highly suggestible). Ernest scribbled down all the suggestions while watching for a reaction from Jean, his prickly boss from Prairie Park’s department of cultural affairs, but he couldn’t gauge her blank expression.

      “The right live band could draw a big crowd,” Ernest ventured, “but would it just attract a bunch of party people who don’t care about the cause?”

      “But if we educate even ten percent on the issues, it’d be worth it.”

      Jean spoke up: “Let’s get a killer live band. Great suggestion, Ross!”

      Ernest inwardly grimaced. He should’ve been more enthusiastic. Why not? What, he didn’t like music?

      Jean wasn’t done. “Let’s have a big booth from Demeter Foods. Have we reached out for a sponsorship yet? We should go after them for platinum. Their logo would look great on the banners.”

      “I don’t know,” Ernest said.

      Jean frowned. Of course she would love Demeter. She had the eco-affluent look down pat: expensive hiking gear worn for everyday life, eighteen-karat gold earrings hammered by indigenous people toiling in a mountainous enclave somewhere, and a short, elegant hairstyle that saved time for more heroic tasks. But he always suspected her convictions were partially rooted in some liberal fashion ideal. If Jean couldn’t wear beautiful, expensive things that displayed her magnanimous care for all the world’s peoples and its land, would she still be as committed?

      “Are we sure this is who we want at platinum?” Ernest said. “They are pretty corporate, after all.”

      “What do you mean? Don’t be thrown off by the nice floors or the decent Pinot Noir selection. It’s still the real deal.”

      “But what about Karen’s?” Ernest asked. He’d been a devoted shopper at the tiny health-food store for years now, hunting through the cramped aisles for the latest take on carob—carob carrot buns, carob power nuggets, carob milkshakes, shredded carob, the possibilities were endless.

      “Still there,” Jean said dismissively “looking tired as ever.” Then remembering herself: “And of course we welcome her involvement as always. But she can’t afford platinum level; you know that, Ernest. If we want a big headliner for the music, the platinum sponsor needs to be in place ASAP.”

      He nodded and took a sip out of his cup. “What is this coffee, by the way?”

      “You haven’t tried this yet?” Marcy said. “It’s from Ghana.”

      “By way of Demeter,” Jean added wryly, winking at the others.

      “Ghana? It’s delicious,” Ernest said, holding out the cup in front of him. “Too bad it had to be served in Styrofoam.”

      “It’s all the field house has,” Marcy said, trying to quell any defensiveness in her voice, but it was always so hard with Ernest, the vigilante.

      Cynthia liked to take walks at dawn. This morning, she was especially motivated to escape her tension-filled house, but she couldn’t find her keys. Probably nothing would happen if she left the door unlocked—and she would’ve done that twenty years ago without hesitation, young and without children and almost defiantly trusting of the world—but she’d long ago trained herself out of recklessness that had no tangible rewards. If it had a reward, different story, which was why she happily justified driving twenty miles over the speed limit whenever she was running late. And speeding gave her a jolt, to thread the needle on the expressway with expert control.

      Dressed in a faded fleece pullover, Cynthia wandered across the thick Persian rugs in all the rooms on the first floor, looking for her key chain. She made a note to tell the Polish cleaning lady, who vociferously chewed tiny pellets of sugar-free gum, to take better care vacuuming next Friday. Immediately she knew she wouldn’t say anything, because all of their conversations devolved into semi-comic, semi-excruciating exchanges as Ewa pretended to understand what Cynthia was saying and Cynthia pretended that Ewa wasn’t faking comprehension. Just as well, Cynthia thought. She always preferred to avoid pointless conflict. She scanned the surfaces of the living room’s heavy oak furniture, ran her hands over shelves packed with books and knickknacks, but the keys still eluded her.

      In the kitchen, she rifled through the breakfront, the surface piled with yellowing magazines—the Nation, the Whole Earth catalog, Gourmet—splattered in canola and grape seed oil. The kitchen, and to a lesser degree the entire house, smelled of recipes past—ginger, garlic, rosemary, and the tangy odor of compost from Ernest’s specially ordered box

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