Toni had been the one to tell Micah and Cal about the Group. It was during her visit to Plank, after they’d gone to the street fair. Her cousin had eaten two funnel cakes and a fried candy bar, and as soon as they pulled onto campus he’d opened his door to throw up a murky soup that made Toni ask if she should call someone for help. To Cal’s delight, the boy had shaken his head and stumbled away, leaving the two roommates alone with the girl every other Planker was dying to talk to. Or at least smell. Someone had whispered it was jasmine oil she wore; someone else had seen her shampoo bottle in the upstairs bathroom. “Peppermint bark,” he’d reported, and the news was whispered from one ear to the next.
In other circumstances, Cal probably wouldn’t have given Toni a second glance, but this was Plank. No female students. No Internet porn. No neighborhood girls to fantasize about. Not even a female professor since he’d started. Sometimes it felt like Cal’s desire would eat him alive; he fell in love with trees, a certain horse, a washcloth in the farmhouse bath. Not that masturbation helped. That was just the body, turning inside out.
Toni was short and athletic, no breasts to speak of, her long brown hair tied into a ponytail at the top of her head. She seemed to like Cal, but only in the way you might like a boy you were babysitting: because he said funny things and went to bed on time. With Micah, she was different. Cal could tell by the way she laughed at Micah’s jokes, and the way her voice went higher when she addressed him, as if she wanted to sound more feminine. She seemed to drink in everything he said.
The three of them were leaning against the car, staring at the stars. Toni had asked Micah to point out constellations, and the only reason Cal was still there was because Micah didn’t know shit about stars and had said so.
“I hope my cousin won’t get you in trouble for going to the fair,” Toni said to him.
Micah nodded. “For that stunt? Definitely. We’ll probably have to clean up goat poop for three weeks straight.” He was lying, of course, but Toni didn’t need to know that.
“Reminds me of some friends I have in L.A. In Echo Park. They’re always pulling these crazy stunts,” she said.
She and Micah commenced a conversation about neighborhoods and geography that, at the time, didn’t make sense to Cal. He had looked back up at the stars, and the stars behind those stars, and then at the farmhouse. He thought he saw Plankers, perched at their windows, watching them.
“Anyway, my friends do this thing,” Toni said, raising her voice a little. She wanted to bring Cal back into the conversation, he realized.
“They call themselves the Group,” she had said.
“The Group?” Cal repeated.
Micah crossed his arms.
Her friends had created it, Toni explained; she’d met them while hitchhiking from Seattle, her hometown. “Or maybe they aren’t the founders. It’s all very nebulous,” she said. “It’s a performance group, but with a political edge. They do some amazing, thought-provoking stuff, and so far they’ve managed to get away with it. It’s probably because people aren’t sure who they are, but everyone loves their stunts.”
Micah had uncrossed his arms by then. “What kind of stuff do they do?”
“It’s better if you see for yourself. Get to a computer,” she said, “and look them up.”
She and Micah were standing closer now. Cal knew when to make himself scarce. He interrupted their conversation to thank Toni for taking him to the fair. “Have a nice night,” he’d called as he walked away, but they weren’t listening.
That night, Cal slept in the stable beneath a blanket that smelled like hay. He never thought he’d see Toni again, and he didn’t think his roommate would, either. But after that, Micah found a way to get off campus and to a computer and learn about the Group, and he and Toni started a correspondence.
Cal preferred not to think about the rest of that semester. How Micah began reading Guy Debord and a slew of other French writers, then some anarchists Cal couldn’t keep track of. There was even a small blue book written by an anonymous committee of writers and, predictably, the continual rereading of Marx. And then, who knew what else? Micah began asking others at dinner, “What do you believe in?” He was excited about returning to his hometown and seeking out the Group. “How will you make money?” Cal had asked once. Micah shrugged as if the question, and Cal’s pragmatism, bored him.
After they’d both moved to L.A., Micah invited Cal to a meeting of the Group. Cal had told himself he wasn’t interested in the Group’s stunts. He wasn’t, but he also didn’t want to see Toni. Not that he carried a torch for her or anything; it was just that he didn’t want to feel like a little boy around her: blushing when she spoke to him, feeling jealous when she paid attention to anyone else. Cal didn’t know then that Toni and Micah would become an item, and that she and Frida would become friends. Frida had no idea they’d met Toni at Plank; Micah and Toni had asked Cal to keep that secret, for reasons that Cal didn’t think too much about. But every once in a while it was hard not to ask himself the uncomfortable question: if Toni had been interested in Cal back at Plank, would he have joined the Group instead of Micah?
Now, Cal couldn’t stop imagining Toni marching onto the Land, unannounced. She had disappeared from L.A.; maybe she would reappear here, just as Micah had. Cal and Frida would have a chance to find out what had happened to her.