The Missing Person by Alix Ohlin Page B

residential water use while giving tax breaks to corporations whose water use was massive in comparison. We were groundwater overdrafting, taking more out of our water account than we had. In China the water table was dropping by a meter a year. The Nile Valley was drying up. The Athabasca Glacier was receding. The Aral Sea was gone. The Ogallala Aquifer that extended through the West had been overpumped for decades. Half the world’s wetlands had been destroyed in the last century. The Yangtze, Ganges, and Colorado rivers rarely flowed all the way to the sea because of upstream withdrawals. Pollution was decimating freshwater fish species, twenty percent of which were endangered or extinct, and causing at least five million human deaths a year from disease. The world was rife with appalling scarcity, and people unwilling to face it.
    These two had an array of statistics, and a familiarity with geography, that far exceeded mine, as well as a kind of fervor I’d seldom encountered after sophomore year of college. When Stan said that people were guilty of cynical and craven acts, he glanced at me, and I almost flinched; but then he looked back at Angus and went on to say that they planted desert shrubbery while insisting on hour-long showers every day. Soon everything would be ruined—most things already were ruined—and it was all our own fault.
    â€œThe world is going down the drain,” Angus said, and laughed. But as they talked on and on, Stan flexed his significant arm muscles as if he wanted to pummel some sense into each water delinquent, one at a time. He predicted there was going to be a war over water. He said there
ought
to be.
    Who knows how long we sat there? The conversation was circular; Irina’s songs never ended; the dog whimpered and chased something in his sleep. Then my brother walked into the apartment—panting, flushed, bent beneath the weight of a massive backpack, carrying two six-packs of beer under each of his scrawny arms—and everybody fell quiet.
    Without acknowledging anyone, Wylie set the beer down on the floor and slipped out of the backpack, which hit the floor with a clank of metal. Pine needles and other leaflike matter nested in his hair. He was wearing the same camp T-shirt he had on the night before, and smelled bad even from where I sat.
    â€œI brought beer,” he said.
    â€œWhere’d you get all that, man?” Berto said.
    â€œStole it from some frat boys,” Wylie said, grinning, “then ran like hell.”
    â€œExcellent!” Berto stood up to give him a high five, and the tension in the room visibly dissipated. Everybody started drinking, including Irina and me. After a terse hello, Wylie acted as if I weren’t there at all. Every once in a while Angus came over and put his arm around me or touched my shoulder, and I watched for my brother’s reaction, but there wasn’t one.
    â€œHey, Wylie, what do you think about this list of names I’ve got?” Berto asked, and they immediately plunged into a deep discussion of semantics and philosophical resonance and educational or promotional value. Irina and Stan disappeared and eventually came back with a bag of apples, a round of cheese, and several loaves of bread. The food wasn’t bagged, and I didn’t ask where it had come from.
    As I was eating, Angus brought me another beer. “You’re biting your lip,” he said.
    â€œHe’s ignoring me.”
    â€œMaybe you make him uncomfortable.”
    â€œI haven’t said anything!”
    â€œMaybe that’s the problem.”
    â€œWhy’s he so weird?” I said.
    Angus laughed as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
    â€œYou’re not very patient,” he said. “I like that.”
    I sighed. “I’m starting to think you’re not very discriminating.”
    â€œHey,” Wylie called from across the room. I expected him to be looking at me