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saw, for this woman gazed so powerfully, she was such a watcher, that her watching hit you like a
physical force, and Nadia felt a thrill being seen by her, and seeing her in turn.
The cook was, of course, an expert in food, and over the coming weeks and months she introduced
Nadia to all sorts of old cuisines, and to new cuisines that were being born, for many of the world’s
foods were coming together and being reformed in Marin, and the place was a taster’s paradise, and
the rationing that was under way meant you were always a little hungry, and therefore primed to savor
what you got, and Nadia had never before delighted in tasting as she did in the company of the cook,
who reminded her a bit of a cowboy, and who made love, when they made love, with a steady hand
and a sure eye and a mouth that did little but did it so very well.
• • •
SAEED AND THE PREACHER’S DAUGHTER likewise drew close, and while there was some resistance by
others to this, Saeed’s ancestors not having undergone the experience of slavery and its aftermath on
this continent, the effects of the preacher’s particular brand of religion diminished this resistance, and
with time camaraderie did too, the work Saeed did alongside his fellow volunteers, and then there
was the fact that the preacher had married a woman from Saeed’s country, and also that the preacher’s
daughter was born of a woman from Saeed’s country, and so the pair’s closeness, even if it prompted
unease in some quarters, was tolerated, and for the pair themselves their closeness carried both a
spark of the exotic and the comfort of familiarity, as many couplings do, when they first begin.
Saeed would seek her out in the mornings, when he arrived for work, and they would talk and
smile sidelong, and she might touch his elbow, and they would sit together at the communal lunch, and
in the evenings when their work was done for the day they would walk through Marin, hike up and
down the paths and the streets that were forming, and once they walked past Saeed’s shanty, and he
told her it was his, and the next time they walked by she asked to see the inside of it, and they went in,
and they shut the plastic flap behind them.
The preacher’s daughter found in Saeed an attitude to faith that intrigued her, and she found the
expansiveness of his gaze upon the universe, the way he spoke of the stars and of the people of the
world, very sexy, and his touch as well, and she liked the cut of his face, how it reminded her of her
mother and hence her childhood. And Saeed found her remarkably easy to talk to, not just because she
listened well or spoke well, which she did, but because she prompted him to want to listen and speak,
and he had from the outset found her so attractive that she was almost difficult to look at, and also,
though he did not say this to her, or even care to think it, there were aspects of her that were much like
Nadia.
The preacher’s daughter was among the local campaign leaders of the plebiscite movement, which
sought a ballot on the question of the creation of a regional assembly for the Bay Area, with members
elected on the principle of one person one vote, regardless of where one came from. How this
assembly would coexist with other preexisting bodies of government was as yet undecided. It might at
first have only a moral authority, but that authority could be substantial, for unlike those other entities
for which some humans were not human enough to exercise suffrage, this new assembly would speak
from the will of all the people, and in the face of that will, it was hoped, greater justice might be less
easily denied.
One day she showed Saeed a little device that looked to him like a thimble. She was so happy, and
he asked her why, and she said that this could be the key to the plebiscite, that it made it possible to
tell one person from another and ensure they could vote only once, and it was being manufactured in