Макс Брукс: Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

Denial is an irrational dismissal of danger.

Phobia is an irrational fear of one.

I’m glad I was rational then, especially when everyone else didn’t seem to mind. Yvette even got this sympathetic smile on her face and said, “How unfair is it to leave California earthquakes for this.”

We all laughed, until the next tremor happened—the human one!

That was when Mostar showed up.

The old lady I saw in the window earlier. Not Ms. Or Mrs. or Mostar Something. Just “Muh-star.” She came in late, apologizing that she’d been distracted in “the workshop” and needed the extra time to let the tulumba cool. That’s what her dessert was called. Tulumba. A big plate of what looked like cut up churros under a syrup glaze. We already had desserts. The Durants brought them along with their salmon: some honey-dribbled apple slices right from their tree and gluten-free artisanal ice cream with local berries. I was looking forward to comparing it with my nightly fix of Halo, especially when everyone else had warned me how good it was. Mostar must not have gotten the message. Or didn’t care? Dan didn’t care that there was more dessert. He tore into the tulumbas. He must have had, what, five? Six? Chomping and moaning with each one. So gross.

I politely took one. I could already smell the fried dough. I don’t even want to think about how many calories. Maybe that’s why almost no one else took any. The Boothes said something about animal butter. The Perkins-Forsters mentioned Palomino’s gluten allergy. That was kind of inconsiderate of Mostar to do that. She must have known about all these dietary restrictions. Maybe that’s why Reinhardt only had one as well. I would not have expected that, given how he looked. Sorry. Body shaming. But seriously, given how he plowed through everything else, I figured he’d join Dan in a total snarf-off. Instead, he just nibbled at the edge of one. Polite and chilly. You could feel the room temperature drop.

“Eat.” Mostar plopped down at the end of the table. “Go on, put some meat on those bones.” She’s like this old-timey stereotype nana, right down to the foreign accent. What is that? Russian? Israeli? A lot of rolling r ’s.

She’s really short, shorter than Mrs. Boothe, who I think only comes up to my forehead. Maybe five feet or less? And built like a barrel, like if someone threw a dress on a keg. Her olive skin is wrinkled, especially around the eyes. Wrinkled and dark. Raccoon-ish, like she hasn’t slept in a year. Is that mean? I don’t want to be mean. Just an observation. Her eyes were pretty though. Light blue accented by the dark circles. Her hair was silver, not gray or white, and tied back in a bun.

Her whole energy was really different from everyone else’s. Like if the vibe of most people in the room was slow, wavy lines, she’d have this hard, sharp bounce. God, I lived in SoCal too long.

But really, everything about her was hard, the way she moved, the way she talked. She kept staring at me, watching me peck at her dessert. Everyone else was looking at me. It felt kind of weird, like how I reacted to her tulumba somehow had this deeper meaning. I know I’m reading way too much into this. You told me to trust my instincts, but really, I started feeling so uncomfortable that I lost my appetite.

Tony must have sensed it, God bless him, because he rode to the rescue with a full intro of Mostar. “We’re so lucky,” he said, “to have a world-famous artist in residence.” Glass is her medium and she’s been sculpting in it for years. That was where he’d met her, at an exhibition at the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle. Yvette added that she had been on her way to lead a “crystal yoga” session when they just happened to see her exhibition. Seamlessly, Tony wrapped up the story by explaining that he’d proposed an “epic collaboration” between the two of them: a full-scale model of her hometown, wherever that is, that would be completely 3-D printed.

That’s a big thing for Cygnus, perfecting a 3-D glass technology that is “leaps ahead of Karlsruhe.” [9] The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which has pioneered the process of 3-D glass printing by embedding a silicon base with polymer nanoparticles. I thought I’d be bored by this conversation. Dan’s college phase taught me more than enough about 3-D printing. But Tony’s enthusiasm was hard to resist, the way he talked about Mostar’s project being a “game-changing win for everybody.” Cygnus displays their new breakthrough, Mostar gets to live in paradise rent free, and the world will eventually get to see a resurrected piece of history.

“Which is the subject of my new book,” Reinhardt cut in, “resource conflicts of the 1990s.”

Resource conflicts?

I wasn’t sure how that subject fit into what we were discussing, and why Mostar’s hometown needed to be “resurrected.” I also wasn’t sure if probing too deep was appropriate for the dinner table. I didn’t want to trigger Palomino. While I was wrestling with the choice, Mostar took it away by waving her hand at Reinhardt. “Oh, these nice young people don’t want to hear about all that.”

Then she turned to me and asked, “So how did you get here?”

I got a little nervous at that, my jaw muscles stiffened slightly. I thought maybe if I could distract her with just my story, she wouldn’t ask about Dan. I tried to talk about my job but it was just so boring. No, I’m not putting myself down again. I like what I do and I know I’m good at it, but who wants to hear about a CPA at a wealth management firm in Century City? I tried to focus more on my connection to this place. Everyone knew and loved Frank, and Mr. Boothe (who used to work with him) told me that he’d been the one to encourage Frank and Gary to move up here when the place was being built. Bobbi shook her head sadly when she said, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out with them.” But then Yvette added happily, “But we got you in the conscious uncoupling.”

That lightened the mood again, until Mostar ruined it. I guess I can’t blame her. I mean, why wouldn’t you ask? She didn’t know. No one did. It’s just small talk, getting-to-know-you stuff. It’s the standard question. “And what do you do?”

My gut tightened when she turned to Dan. The words seemed to roll out in slow motion.

“And-what-do- you -do?”

Dan just looked up from his plate, got that squinty, lemon lick look. He talked about how he’s an “entrepreneur in the digital space.” That usually saved us in L.A., probably because nobody really cared about anyone else but themselves. Even here, everyone just nodded and seemed ready to move on. But Mostar…

“So, you don’t have a job.”

The whole room got silent. I could feel the skin of my face. What do you say? How do you reply?

Bless you, Tony Durant.

“Dan’s an artist, Mosty, just like you and me.” He smiled, tapping his temple. “How much of our process takes place up here, unseen, untimed, and definitely unpaid!”

Carmen jumped in with, “Did you get paid for all your sculptures before they were done?” which garnered a nod and meek “yeah” from her wife.

“There’s paycheck work and there’s project work.” Vincent shrugged, which prompted Reinhardt to talk about how Europeans have a much more balanced sense of identity than Americans. “Across the pond, who you are isn’t just what you do.” It was a little confusing given that he was actually saying this to a European (I think) but I really didn’t care. I was so grateful to everyone for coming in and saving the moment. Maybe a little too much, because Tony now swerved back to a more neutral stance. “Mosty’s just trying to understand Dan’s journey, albeit in her own unique way.”