“Is this a rock?” I asked.

“Couldn’t tell you,” the vendor replied, his eyes moving between my eyes and my hands.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I. Couldn’t. Tell. You,” he said, putting space between each word. Had I done something?

“Sorry, I’m just curious, where did you get these?”

“That’s enough curiosity for today.” He reached over and grabbed the thing out of my hand.

“What the—?” I said quietly in surprise.

He glared at me like I’d told him to go have sex with his mother. Then he put the rock down and said, “I think you’re done here.” For a blink, I thought maybe he recognized me somehow. The guy was giving off serious Defender vibes, so maybe he had seen a picture of me somewhere. But then, no, that’s not what this was. This wasn’t alien stuff, it was race stuff.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. I was mad about it then and I’m mad about it now, but I made my mind up a long time ago that it isn’t my job to get in a shouting match with every racist I meet. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t frustrated and angry and anxious and uncomfortable.

Fucking Carliversary. Fucking mysteries. Fucking racist rock guy. Fucking APRIL WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU! I went back to the vintage clothing place and rushed into the little curtained dressing room set up there and did my best to cry quietly.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to call my mom. I wanted to go home, not just to my Airbnb—I wanted to go home to Manhattan. I took out my phone and opened my contacts. My mom was at the top of my favorites, but next to Mom’s, April’s face smiled out at me and I let out a real sob.

It makes sense that I wasn’t able to remove her after she died, but I’d also left her there after she was just about as shitty as a person can be to someone who had done every goddamn thing they could think of to make their relationship work. Honestly, it’s embarrassing, and it isn’t even important to the story. I just felt like I needed to tell you because the moment I was losing faith in the world, I spent a solid five minutes just looking at that little face on my phone.

“Honey,” a soft voice came from outside.

“Yeah?” I said, louder than I’d intended.

“Are you all right in there?”

“Bad day,” I said.

“I’ve had some of those. You just let me know if you need anything, OK?”

I pulled my AirPods out and watched Andy’s video. It was good. He was a good guy. He was an idiot, and he was taking his responsibility too seriously, but that’s a lot better than the alternative. I felt better afterward. I wiped my nose and my eyes and realized that I did not have to lose this one. I had no idea if they mattered, but I was going to get those damn rocks.

ANDY

God was different post-Carl, and that was a big deal for a lot of people. But God had never been a part of my life, even when I was a little kid. I was raised in a secular household by a man and a woman who were both raised in secular households. There aren’t a lot of third-generation atheists in the world.

For a guy who was born an atheist, I had a lot of books by religious folks on my nightstand. I hated the whole “religion is the root of all evil” perspective that a lot of atheists (and, to be honest, myself not that long ago) professed. For me, it goes without saying that much of the dogma of many religions is harmful. Thinking other people will burn forever because they love the wrong person or worship the wrong god has done a whole lot of bad.

What I wanted was the part where people were asked to get together once a week to talk about how to be a good person and, like, hang out with their neighbors. It’s pretty amazing that apparently the only way to get people to do that is to invent an all-seeing, kindhearted sky dad who will be super disappointed/burn you for eternity if you don’t show up.

Then, on the other hand, I doubt anything short of the threat of eternal damnation would get me out of bed on a Sunday morning. The things I was doing, whether in real life or on the internet, I wanted to be a little bit like that. Thus, in addition to listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos from internet people, I’d started reading books by pastors and community organizers. This felt deeply weird, even a little like trespassing. But a lot of people were looking to me for guidance, so I wanted to get better at giving it. And now that April was gone, what I believed was that the same despair and frustration that was killing people had also been the root of what drove those guys to burn that warehouse down. My enemy wasn’t the people; it was the loss of identity and narrative people felt comfortable in.

There were also lots of people who were happy to help people indulge in that loss, and to give them meaning by giving them things to be afraid of. So I guess I did have some enemies. The people doing that didn’t seem to feel like phonies, so I figured, fuck your insecurities, as long as you’re better than them you’re doing fine.

Robin met me in the airport.

“How’s the book coming?” was his first question.

“It’s good to see you too,” I deadpanned. This had become a running joke. Robin had calculated that every time I gave a talk without a book for sale, I was losing between $5,000 and $20,000 of value. It was weird—I didn’t need more money, I didn’t even want more money, but I did feel bad not making money when I could. It’s not like someone else could come along and fill the niche of “books by Andy Skampt.” Only I could create that value, and I just wasn’t doing it.

You’d think that being on planes 150 days a year would free up a lot of time for writing, but instead it freed up time for listening to Reinhold Niebuhr audiobooks, watching leftist YouTube videos, and going through every single episode of Star Trek, from the original series to Discovery. Jason and I had been on a sci-fi kick on Slainspotting, and I had research to do.

“How was the flight?”

“Captain Picard stone-cold shot his own self.”

“Did that turn out OK?”

“It doesn’t seem like it would, but it did. It’s complicated.” I had taken out my phone to check on my IGRI stock. It hadn’t changed for hours, since, get this, the markets hadn’t opened in the US.

“Maybe you should write a Slainspotting book.” He seemed serious.

We took a cab into the city. Robin was really good at making it seem like he was a part of the machinery of the earth. Like he was just a thing that happened and you were grateful for his presence, which was a great attribute for a personal assistant/manager/agent. He was always there, always taking care of me, but never taking any of my emotional energy. Robin worked very hard to be no work for me. He didn’t want me to wonder how he was doing, partially because that would be something I’d have to think about, partially because I don’t think he wanted to think about it either. The result was that one of the people closest to me in the whole world was often, to my subconscious, barely even a person. We had been through the best and worst moments of our lives together, and yet, in the months after things started to take on a new and somewhat stable structure, I very rarely wondered how he was doing.

I had recently decided I was going to remember he was a human more. But then there was a mysterious book and a new girl and a bizarre penny stock and I had forgotten. But not for the whole car ride!