The door opened suddenly. Delaney jumped. It was Soren. He was wearing a headband, indicating he’d attempted exercise. “Joan here?” This, too, was a ruse. He knew where she was at all times.

  Soren and Joan had lived together for just over a year and it was clear that she loved him as a roommate and that he loved her romantically and unrequitedly. Joan knew he loved her but pretended she did not, and he knew he could not act on his feelings unless given some overwhelming signal. He did not get such a signal from Joan, who said often, aloud, that she would never date anyone at the company, given the complications—even though the Every had recently begun encouraging such arrangements, seeing Every unions and marriages as somehow strengthening the fabric of life on campus.

  Soren opened the fridge. “What are we thinking tonight? Can you eat with us?”

  Delaney was supposed to be adhering to her med-eval diet but was allowed three cheat meals a week.

  “I can eat here,” she said.

  “You think Joan’s home for dinner?” Soren asked. Though he tried to toss the sentence over his shoulder, it was freighted with limitless longing. How can I live with this person I love? he was asking. Wouldn’t it be so easy for her to love me back? Why not do the easy thing?

  Joan expressed no need to date, and only occasionally referred vaguely to a longtime college boyfriend. She told embarrassing stories about herself, her frequent flatulence and persistent body odor, none of which Delaney knew to be true, and all of which made Joan more appealing.

  Just then she burst through the door. “Who wants to smell a stanky lady?” she asked, and rushed over to Soren, who was cutting bell peppers, and pressed herself against his back. She was cruel to him this way—so familiar and physical. She raised her bare underarm and thrust his head into it. “You like? ¿Te gustas?”

  Soren turned away, continued his cutting, but his body language encouraged her to stay. She jumped up on the counter next to him, interlocking her legs and letting them knock against the cabinet.

  “You’re a sexy man, Soren,” she said. She reached for his bicep and squeezed. “These muscles, when you chop—they make me crazy. Delaney, don’t you think Soren should wear tighter clothes?”

  Delaney refused to aid the torture. She looked to Francis, who was facing the wall, murmuring.

  “Francis, did you want to talk to everyone?” she asked.

  He raised his index finger, his back turned.

  “Is this about the service projects?” Joan asked. “Didn’t you get the memos?”

  “I did,” Delaney said. She’d scanned one of the messages, which announced If You See It, Solve It—a month of commitment to social justice. “Ten Ways to Engage” were listed. Send a smile to a cause you like; send a frown to an agent of injustice … Everypersons were encouraged to find, analyze, address and fix a societal shortcoming, and in short order.

  “A month?” Soren said. “Too easy.”

  Delaney was surprised, actually, that service would be introduced now, after Bailey’s death. Service had been Bailey’s purview—even if pursued sporadically. He had attached himself to certain causes, and would, for two months or so, highlight the work, the injustice, and then, just as quickly, lose interest.

  “Francis?” Delaney called out.

  Finally he turned around, finding Joan’s eyes first. His look was annoyed and intimate, as if the two of them were aligned somehow—parents exasperated by their two children.

  “Okay,” he said. “I was actually clarifying the objectives with the Gang of 40. So I’m sorry if I kept anyone”—he meant Delaney, but didn’t look her way—“waiting. You probably know the general parameters of the service suggestion. The new wrinkle is that pods are being encouraged to take on projects together, to work quickly, nimbly, and to deepen our interpersonal bonds. I took it upon myself to volunteer us to take on what I think is one of the thornier but most pressing issues affecting not only society, but our immediate surroundings—the houseless persons’ encampments on the perimeter of the island.”

  “Oh hell,” Joan said.

  Delaney’s heart leapt. If there was any place the relentless hubris of the Every would be revealed, it was this.

  XXXI.

  The next evening, after dinner, Delaney led Francis, Joan, and Soren to the island’s outer ring, where a few hundred tents and shanties sat rippling in the winds that howled through the Golden Gate corridor.

  “This seems ill-advised,” Soren said. “Don’t you think we need permission?”

  “We’re anamolizing,” Delaney said.

  “We’re filming?” Soren asked.

  “We should,” Delaney said, and Soren turned on his cam.

  They approached the front gate, a periwinkle sunset to the west hinting at a warm and windless dusk. But immediately after passing through the fence, they felt the Bay’s assaulting gales. Delaney turned east, and they walked along the perimeter path, with the hillside homes of Berkeley and El Cerrito glowing gold in the distance.

  “I don’t remember us coming up with a plan,” Francis shouted over the wind. “Was there a plan but I didn’t hear it?”

  “No plan needed yet,” Delaney shouted back. “We’re just listening today.”

  They approached the first few dwellings. One was a squat sky-blue camping tent, facing a far bigger one, tall enough for a person to stand up inside. A woman’s figure within took notice of them.

  “Hello?” she said. A long yellow cigarette extended from her hand. Delaney hadn’t seen a cigarette in weeks.

  “Hi,” Delaney said. “Excuse us. Do you have a minute?”

  Francis placed his hand on Delaney’s arm, as if horrified by the question. She shook herself free. The woman stepped out of the tent. By her build and posture, Delaney guessed her to be about forty, though her face, sunburned and largely toothless, appeared far older.

  While Delaney took her in, the woman did the same with her four visitors. “What are you all wearing?” the woman asked. “Ramón, come out. Wake up.” She banged her flashlight on the smaller tent, and cigarette ashes fell onto her hand. She brushed them off with her free hand and took a long drag.

  A shadow in the smaller tent sat up.

  “Who’s out there?” he asked.

  “Some people from the Every,” she said to him. She turned back to Delaney and the group. “I’m assuming? From the clothing.”

  “We’re from there, yes,” Delaney said. “I’m Delaney.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows in faux-deference, and extended her hand, as if Delaney might kiss it. “Charmed, I’m sure!” she said, and laughed hoarsely. Then she used this same hand to bang on the tent again. “Ramón, get out here!” she roared.

  Now a second figure emerged from behind the larger tent. He was an imposing man, well over six feet and built like a longshoreman. He had a graying beard and wore wire-rimmed glasses.

  “I called for Ramón, not you,” the woman said. Delaney realized the woman hadn’t given her name yet, and wondered if it would be rude to ask.

  “I’m not invited?” this new man said. “I’m sorry for my friend’s lack of manners. I’m Victor. She’s Glynnis. Ramón’s inside and too hung over to move with any …” He looked into Ramón’s tent, as if the right word might be inside. “Alacrity,” Victor said, and he extended his hand.

  Delaney took it, and Victor shook hers earnestly. Joan and Francis made no movement to physically engage with Victor or Glynnis. Soren, farthest away, now stepped forward and shook Victor’s hand, and for Soren, Glynnis performed a brief curtsey.

  “Is this about the body last week?” Victor asked. “We told the other team what we saw. And it was down the shore a bit, so we weren’t even the main people that found it.”

  “No, no,” Francis said. Finally Delaney understood. There had been another suicide, another body in the Bay. Of course the tent-dwellers on the perimeter would see the corpses washing ashore.

  “Don’t you guys usually throw yourselves off that one building?” the man inside the tent—Ramón—asked. “Algo Mas?”

  “I’m sorry,” Victor said. “His manners.”

  “Usually can tell when it’s an Everyperson,” Glynnis said. “From the clothing.” She pointed her cigarette at Francis’s bodysuit.

  “You know what Algo Mas means?” Ramón asked. “I always wondered if any of you people knew. Something more. It means something more. Did anyone know that?”

  “Again,” Victor said. “I’m sorry.” To the tent he said, “Either come out or shut up, Ramón.”

  “They can’t tell us to leave,” Ramón said. It seemed clear he didn’t plan on joining them outside. “Public shoreline.”

  “We’re not,” Delaney said.

  “Not our purpose at all, sir,” Soren said.

  “How about telling your people to stop drowning themselves?” Ramón said. “It’s pretty fucked up.”

  “For the last time, I’m sorry about my friend,” Victor said, and banged on Ramón’s tent. “And what brings you to the ring of shame?”

  “We’re actually here to see how we might help,” Francis said.

  “Do you have money?” Ramón asked from within his tent.

  “Shush,” Glynnis said to him.

  “Normally I would offer you a tour,” Victor said, “but there’s been trouble in certain quarters, a few squabbles over turf and resources, so I’d propose we stay here to chat. Does that sound agreeable?”

  Delaney glanced at her group, who seemed greatly relieved to not have to venture further. “That’s fine,” she said.

  “I would offer you all a chair, but we only have the one,” Victor said, and indicated a large overstuffed recliner. The recliner had cup holders built into each arm, and each was filled with a billiard ball—the 9 and the 3, as far as Delaney could tell.

  “We’re really just here for fact-finding,” Delaney said. “Just to listen, really. To see if there’s a way we could be of use.”

  Joan cleared her throat and Delaney turned to her. Joan shrugged, unsure or unable to articulate her complaint.

  “Well, that’s very kind of you,” Victor said.

  “Are they wearing wetsuits?” Ramón asked from behind the walls of his tent.

  “Shh,” Victor said in his direction, and turned back to Francis. “I’m sorry. He knows better. He was quite a surfer in his day.”

  “Give us money!” Ramón sang out. “You have money, and we need money.”

  “They’re not giving us money, shithead,” Glynnis said.

  “Or homes!” Ramón yelled.

  “Again, I’m sorry,” Victor said. “Ramón is right in that we’re unhoused, and would appreciate being provided housing of some kind, but I’m assuming that’s not in the cards?”

  “We’re looking to help with a durable solution,” Francis said.

  “Homes would be durable!” Ramón said. He was ignored by all.

  “Where do you get food?” Soren asked.

  Delaney looked to Soren, thinking his question crude. But in his eyes there was a compassionate outrage that made the question plain and logical.

  “Can I take this one?” Victor asked Glynnis. She threw up her hands. He pivoted to Soren. “The official food banks require us to come to them, at which point we’re provided meals. But how do we get off this island and to one of the food banks? It’s a conundrum.”

  “So why—” Francis began.

  “Why do we live out here, apart from such services? Good question. The answer is that despite the winds, this is quieter, cleaner, and far less plagued by crime. Here we can live without the other troubles associated with urban life. The catch of course is food.”

  “Money buys food,” Ramón sung from his tent. His voice was a very pretty alto. “Give us money!”

  “So we rely on three sources of food,” Victor continued. “The first you might call scrounging. Once every two or three days, a few of us make their way into the city via the subway, stopping at a dozen known spots where restaurants and grocery stores are willing to give to us what they otherwise might throw away. These scroungers bring their takings back and we distribute it.”

  Soren paced back and forth along the waterfront. The injustice of the unhoused seemed to have just hit him this day.

  “The second way,” Victor said, “is through the guerilla food banks you may have heard about. The ones in TrogTown. They’re not sanctioned by the city, but every so often, they come by with a truck or van and unload whatever food they’ve been able to assemble.”

  “Their food sucks,” Glynnis said. She watched Soren’s pacing. “Is he okay?”

  “And the last way?” Francis asked.

  “Cardboard signs,” Ramón said.

  “The third way,” Victor said, clearing his throat, “is from simple panhandling-and-purchasing. For example, Glynnis here might beg for cash from the commuters and tourists near the Ferry Building, and she might take home fifteen to thirty bucks on a good day. With that we buy whatever else we need. Kerosene, for example, for the grill.”

  “And drugs,” Glynnis added.

  “Right,” Victor said. “As you probably can surmise, many of the residents of this ring of shame are addicts.”

  “So if we gave you money, it’d just go to drugs,” Joan said.

  “And booze!” Ramón yelled.

  Victor smiled grimly at Joan. “Well, yes. We eat food here, and we try to stay alive, and many among us also use drugs and booze. So cash would inevitably go to those two things. Food to stay alive, and the servicing of our vices. That and the occasional blanket or tarp.”

  There was a long pause. Seven humans stood and sat in proximity to one another, and no one knew what to say, for the sadness and intractability of the situation overtook them all. Then a light appeared in Victor’s eyes.

  “Now, I realize that there are liability issues that preclude the Every from providing meals to us,” he said. “And I know that simple cash handouts would likely be seen as treating the symptoms, and not solving the problem.” As he spoke, his eyes rested briefly and warmly on each of the Everyones’ faces.

  Francis nodded vigorously. “Well said,” he said.

  “Thank you, Francis,” Victor said. “And if I know the Every, you all are problem solvers. After all, if you weren’t problem solvers, how could you have built such an imposing empire in such a short time?”

  Francis leaned closer to Victor, with what appeared to be unexpected affinity. Victor removed his wireframed glasses, cleaned them on his shirt, and reinstalled them on his wide face.

  “You know what?” he said. “I’m just thinking aloud here, but there are so many governmental and nonprofit services out there in the digital realm, and often we don’t know about these services, and can’t access them, because we don’t have the technology.”

  “Web-based services,” Francis said.

  “Precisely,” Victor said. “As you know, most of these services are best accessed digitally—updated information about offerings for people in our situation, food-access programs, drug-rehabilitation projects. And as you know, the job market really requires internet access. Without it, we’re further disenfranchised.”

  “I know this sounds like an inane question,” Delaney said, “but none of you out here have phones or …” She had a sense of where Victor was heading and wanted to make sure he got there.

  “Laptops and phones, no,” Victor said earnestly. “But imagine if we did!” He turned his palms upward and looked to the sky. He was good, Delaney thought. “Being able to scroll through new employment listings, even possible housing opportunities … Well, that would be transformative.”

  “Francis,” Delaney said, “I would think someone with your seniority and pull might be able to pilot a program to provide meaningful help here.”

  Delaney watched Francis think. He was nodding, working out the logistics, the numbers, picturing himself accepting humanitarian awards from the Every, the city, the White House. She caught Victor’s eye, and was sure he knew her gambit.

  “Victor,” Francis said, and seemed to relish the radical generosity enshrined in his knowing and repeating the unhoused human’s name, “do you think that this technology—laptops, for instance—would help you all get back on your feet, and even maybe leave this island, this ring of shame, in your words?”

  “Francis,” Victor said, taking his glasses off again, and looking deeply into Francis’s black ferret eyes. “There’s nothing that could change our lives quicker than having the technology to access web-based services and communicate via text and email to providers of help and agency.”

  Now Francis was standing on his tip-toes. He seemed inclined to hug Victor, thanking him in advance for the Nobel he’d just won, but decided against such extensive contact. “Victor, we’ll keep talking,” he said. “I’ll come back with news. Good news, I bet.”

  “I’ll be here,” Victor said, and bowed deeply.

  It did not take long. Delaney had never seen—no one had ever seen—Francis work so hard and with such passion. For a week he used every spare moment messaging Gang of 40 members, city supervisors, sending innumerable unanswered messages to Mae.

  “He’s so cute, all this activity,” Joan said. “He hasn’t had an idea in a decade.”

  It did seem likely Mae would take notice. As Francis’s project became known—and known as Ring of Opportunity, Francis’s idea—there was a general buzz on campus about turning the embarrassment of the encampment into a triumph.