Alyx's apartment had acquired a new layer of existence: that of a temporary headquarters for lives under reconstruction. Lily was still on the sofa-bed, but no longer as a refugee. She had established a small camp: her abandoned beekeeping sketchbook, a few folded sweatshirts, and a quiet determination that had replaced the desperation of the raccoon era. Her new, self-imposed mission was to find "her passion." The problem was that her passion seemed to change every other day.
"—I could be a life coach. A marine biologist. Or a slam poet!—" Lily enumerated, pacing back and forth in front of Alyx's canvas, which now had robust scaffolding and a few lines suggesting the silhouette of a building under construction. "—A beekeeper? No, not a beekeeper. Maybe... singing in a punk rock band.—"
Alyx, sitting on the floor with her sketchbook, traced soft lines. She wasn't drawing anything concrete, just practicing the movement of her hand, the fluidity. "Sounds like your passion is not having to work at Big Wave Luau," she commented without looking up, her voice flat but not cruel.
It was a fact.
Lily stopped. "It's humiliating. Today, Ted and Robin went. Robin said 'mahalo' without irony. It was... traumatic." She sank to the floor next to Alyx. "Ted said they need an assistant at his office. It's my only way out."
Alyx finally looked at her. Ted's world: architecture, male egos, rigid structures. Lily there would be like a hummingbird in a foundry. "And what would you do? Design styrofoam trees?"
"Something like that, but it's a real job. In an office with people who wear shoes." Lily picked up the silver earring that Alyx had left on an improvised coffee table and twirled it between her fingers. "I need to start building something, Alyx. Like you." She pointed at the canvas.
Alyx resisted the urge to say that her "construction" was fragile—scaffolding over an abyss. Instead, she nodded. "Just remember one thing: in offices, the toys of big kids aren't called toys. They're called 'egos.' And you don't put them in a time-out corner if they misbehave."
Lily smiled a smile that Alyx knew all too well: that of someone who had just had a dangerous idea. "Noted."
While Lily prepared for her foray into the corporate world, Marshall waged his own academic battle. His Constitutional Law professor, Dr. Lewis—a woman with a sharp gaze and a recent divorce—was grading with a vindictiveness that seemed personal. Marshall was desperate.
"It's a C-! On my own summary!" he complained at McLaren's, showing the paper stained with red ink. "She says my 'oral presentation was sloppy.' I didn't even open my mouth! It was a written paper!"
Barney, who had been listening with unusual interest, leaned forward, his eyes shining with a hunter's glint. "Let me see if I understand: forty-something woman, recently divorced, grades attractive young men harshly... Friend, you're not facing a doctor. You're facing a cougar."
"A what?" asked Ted, distracted by the plans for his pink marble phallic monster.
"A cougar! A solitary feline, mature, at the peak of her predatory power, seeking fresh meat." Barney rubbed his hands together. "And this cougar has something you want: an 'A.' And I have something she wants: this." He pointed at himself with an obscene smile. "It's the oldest trade in the world. I offer you a pact: I will tame the cougar, and you'll get your grade. Everyone wins."
Marshall looked at him with horror. "Barney, no! She's my professor. It's... sacred."
"Nothing is sacred in the pursuit of knowledge, Marshall. And of an 'A.' Accept the challenge."
Marshall, stunned by his C- and the prospect of an entire semester under Dr. Lewis's tyranny, didn't protest forcefully enough. And for Barney, the lack of a firm "no" was an enthusiastic "yes."
"Let the hunt begin!" Barney announced and left the bar with the determination of a Victorian explorer.
Lily's first day at the architecture office was a study in contrasts. On one side was Mr. Druthers, a bull with a tie who saw giant penises where there were only clumsy architectural designs. On the other was Ted, cowed, designing styrofoam trees under his boss's scornful gaze.
Lily observed, and what she saw, she didn't like. Druthers humiliating Ted over the green of the trees. Druthers belittling his work. Druthers treating everyone like... spoiled children.
That afternoon at Alyx's apartment,
Lily was full of indignation. "He's a bully, Alyx! A bully with a scale model of his own insecurities in the center of the room. And Ted just stands there taking it."
Alyx, who was trying to mix a new color for her canvas (a bluish grey that reminded her of the city at dawn), listened. Her experience in trading told her that bullies in power rarely fell to a frontal challenge. "And what do you plan to do? Give him a kindergarten lesson?"
The glint in Lily's eyes was the answer. "Something like that. In kindergarten, when a child misbehaves, you take away a toy, and they learn that actions have consequences."
Alyx put down the brush. "Lily, he's not a five-year-old. He's your boss. And Ted's."
"That's why he needs the lesson more than anyone," Lily replied with a conviction that came directly from her own post-San Francisco collapse. She was projecting her need for justice, for order, onto the chaos of Ted's office. "Besides, I have a plan. An anonymous note full of poetic justice. I'll call it... Aldrin Justice."
Alyx felt a chill. It wasn't a premonition of the future; it was the recognition of a pattern. When Lily became obsessed with "fixing" something, the results were unpredictable and often explosive. But she also saw the fire in her friend's eyes—a fire that had been out for months. Was it her place to put it out?
"Just make sure," Alyx said, choosing her words carefully, "that justice doesn't turn into revenge, and that Ted isn't the one who ends up paying the price."
Meanwhile, Barney's "hunt" had borne its first fruits. He had presented himself to Dr. Lewis as "Luigi, an Italian exchange student" and had received a rejection so direct and icy it almost gave him frostbite. But Barney saw a challenge, not a rejection. "She's a first-class cougar. With claws. I love it," he confessed to an increasingly nervous Marshall.
"Barney, please, stop. My conscience can't take it. Better a C- with honor than an 'A' obtained... like that."
"Like what? With courage? With ingenuity? With the sweat of my... back?" Barney adjusted his collar. "Fear not, Marshall. By the next tutoring session, I'll have the feline tamed."
Marshall wasn't so sure. And Alyx, learning about it through his messages ("Barney is in 'cougar' mode. My GPA is at stake. Help."), responded with her new economy of words: "The only justice in exams is studying. Everything else is Barney."
It was useless. The pieces were in motion: Lily with her clandestine "justice," Barney with his carnal "diplomacy," and in the middle, Ted and Marshall, about to become collateral damage in their friends' redemptive missions.
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