Logan walks up East Wash and joins the masses protesting Scott Walker’s anti-union bill. She wears the University of Wisconsin Teaching Assistants’ Association t-shirt that her neighbor ran over sixteen times with his Prius. The glitter puff paint across the shoulders contrasts the grease: Don’t Trample Our Rights in rubbery gold. She questions whether trample is really the right word. A semi passes too fast in the right lane, and it’s not exactly trampling by. 

She really should be in the grad art studio working on her miniatures, waiting for her adviser Helga to offer truncated advice on her Victims of Violent Murder. The set fell flat, and she needs guidance for her next series.  

“More hair,” Helga said last week, of Lizzie Borden’s father. But Logan didn’t know whether she meant head hair or back hair, so she beefed up both, trimming her own bangs for the job. Yesterday Helga raised a thinning eyebrow at the hedgehog Andrew Jackson Borden had become. 

Ever since the protests started on Valentine’s Day over a week ago, Logan has visited the capitol building every day. Here are actual teachers about to have their pay slashed. Here are firefighters and policemen who will be disenfranchised. She’s amazed by how many protesters are gathered, sacrificing every activity they care about to stand in the cold in support of rights. All this political unrest is relevant. She’s having a relevant experience, apart from her art. She strains to seize onto it, to absorb the chanting and bustling and blur of bodies, to feel deeply embedded in this world, even as people brush past without clocking her. 

“Walker is a weasel,” she chants with the crowd. “Not a badger.” 

For the first time in her year in Madison, Logan identifies with the beast’s stocky build and skunk pelt. Badgers are no longer the impish, bobble-headed cartoon on game day sweatshirts. Now they’re vicious, valiant creatures markered on homemade placards and banners and sketched on the cheeks of the children of public workers. The copper badgers that crest the balconies of the capitol building have leis around their necks, blood brushed on their lips. A clerk from the Animal Husbandry Department brought a live badger to the protest yesterday, hoisted the hissing beast in a cat carrier above his head. Logan dodged the heat of its breath. 

She climbs the marble staircase to the capitol as snow starts to fall, collecting ticklishly on her nose and the tips of her ears. Outside is frigid, even with the warmth released by thousands of angry Wisconsinites. 

The interior of the capitol building is dark and echoy, the floor so shiny that her foreshortened form skates ahead of her. At a supply station, kids distribute tissue packets and gauze and travel-sized tubes of ointment. A couple protestors were dragged from the building last night when the police shut it down at midnight. One or two may have sustained a friction burn. But the fluffy heaps of gauze seem gratuitous. No one here has been tenderized by a billy club or pressed into the floor with a boot. The police are chubby and smug, leaning against glazed walls, and most of the protesters are middle-aged white parents. This is the most excitement Logan has ever encountered, but a peace has settled over everyone. Three years ago at the Republican National Convention in St Paul, Logan’s girlfriend at the time, Margaret, was shoved into the pavement by cops, her nose bruised and her cheeks filled with buckshot gravel, her wrists knotted into plastic handcuffs, despite her press pass. When Margaret returned to New York, Logan turned the damaged wrists over, tracing the dents. The marks excited and scared her. That police brutality could afflict white, dumpling-shaped Margaret. Margaret, who’d attended Harvard, who owned hermit crabs. 

But here the protestors are red-cheeked neighbors of jolly German descent, not the balaclava-shrouded teens Margaret chased with a video camera across a frozen, blocked-off highway. Police probably come in their pants for protestors like this. But Logan almost hopes for a turn: Police horses kicking her face. Blood in the snow. It’s sick, but she wishes for an experience as raw as Margaret’s. 

Logan passes a circle of bongo drums and a man describing his fourth grade science teacher through a megaphone.

“Mrs. Partridge-Hable showed that baking soda and vinegar make foam, okay? The foam sizzled. It was, like, surprising foam. That’s what teaching is about: surprising foam. Do we want to lose our teachers?”

Voices from every cranny shout, “No!” 

Logan goes upstairs. Last night, she received her first crit from Helga in months. Logan had tried to keep it cool, but her hands shook as Helga entered her studio. This was why she’d quit her job in New York as the personal assistant to an abusive filmmaker. Here was the individualized attention she’d been promised.  

Helga leaned down over the Victims of Violent murder, necklaces dangling. Her sheafs of dry red hair brushed the scalps of the figurines as she perused. She examined Sharon Tate and Abraham Lincoln and the pack of Columbine students. She lifted Haley Gibbins, the only member of the set who wasn’t famous, an elderly woman killed by her adult son for inheritance money, and turned her small, stiff body over in the light. The ice pick through her heart was slender, arching perfectly out of her body, the glint of the metal painted with a brush of feathery yellow.  

Helga squinted at the point of juncture of the pick. Logan was proud of how she hadn’t gone overboard with blood. There was only the thinnest ruby doughnut around the pick’s point of entry. 

Helga nodded, frowning. Logan couldn’t help but admire the subtlety of Haley’s posture: back arched, hand curling into a claw. Logan had concentrated so hard on channeling Haley’s pain, that moment, just before death, of recognizing that her killer was her own son, that her life was over for a bit of money that he’d get one day anyhow, the chill of the ice pick slipping between organs, parting flesh. 

Helga sniffed. She set the unlucky mother back down. “What, exactly, does this series mean to you?” 

Logan was delighted to be asked. She’d prepared a response, a whole speech, if necessary. “I was reading The Stranger.”

“Why.” 

Helga’s eyes were flat and gray; this wasn’t a question. The book, yes, was for stoned undergrads. But if Helga could just hang on, Logan could get to something. “And there’s the part where the guy is, like, waiting to be executed. And he’s thinking about how he doesn’t understand how it’s possible that everyone isn’t all the time thinking about people on death row, how it’s been revealed to him as only the most urgent and important experience in the world, the only experience worth talking about.” Logan touched Haley’s head, tilting the figure so she caught the glint of fluorescent light. “And of course it’s all about the selfishness of the individual. Like of course the worst thing that’s happened to each of us feels like the worst thing that’s happened in the world.” Margaret, coming home after St Paul, a bruise in a yellow ring around her chin, had been unable to tell Logan what had happened. She’d glided through their apartment, eyes aimed far away. Logan had felt horrible for her, had cleaned her wounds that were already sterile, had bought her a special ice helmet for the jaw bruise that was barely tender anymore. She’d tried to draw her out, asking questions about how the cops had caught her, and what they’d said, and how many people were in the cell, and how she felt, was she scared, was she angry, was she in pain. Margaret had shared a few tidbits: like how every officer had told her his name was Mike, his badge number 1234, smirking at her when she asked. How the toilet was in the center of the cell and sprayed everyone when someone flushed. But, at most of Logan’s questions, she fluttered her eyelashes and fell silent, which frustrated Logan. “Why can’t you tell me more?” she asked, “we’re supposed to be close,” until Margaret started to hate her, until their relationship eroded into nothing. Helga was still listening, eyes glittering in the bright studio light. “But it’s not just that selfishness. It’s also real, of course. Being killed is the worst human experience, you could argue, whether you die by the state or by your son. So I decided to dig into that experience. If execution is the worst thing that can happen to anyone, why not go there. Someone has to face it, right? And why not me? I have enough privilege that it’s not too painful for me to take on.” Logan had felt a kind of peace landing on the topic of murder, which was unquestionably a worthy subject. Until she started producing the figurines, and found herself struggling to connect. But hopefully Helga couldn’t see that. Logan had artistry, that had to be obvious. 

“But how does the theme relate to your experience?” Helga tapped her chest with a click, like bone had grown over her heart. 

“Well, I haven’t been killed.” Logan tried to deadpan the words but they came out sort of lonely and baffled. “I mean, obviously. And I haven’t killed anyone.” 

“Right,” Helga said, waiting. 

“So what you’re saying is that the project doesn’t have personal importance.” 

“Exactly.” Helga’s wrinkled chin dipped as though as a period to her visit.

“But does that matter?”

“Not necessarily.” Helga lifted Haley again, turned her to examine her haunted eyes. “But in this, case, yes. When the work is inert.” 

Logan longs to be better, longs for her next series to inspire more than a snort. Maybe her execution was too cold, maybe she couldn’t find a way for the suffering to shine through brightly and realistically. Maybe it was offensive to coopt the pain of others for her own art. Probably trying to feel the feelings of other people at all, especially other people who had suffered more than Logan had ever suffered, was not a radical act of empathy but a disgusting exercise in appropriation. Maybe it was offensive to have made the victims dolls because that minimized their humanity. She was horrible to Margaret, she knows that now. She’ll focus on being a better person in all ways. That’s why she’s here at the protests.

The second floor of the capitol is less crowded but louder, as the shouting from downstairs bounces off the balconies and columns and archways that lead to the domed ceiling. Between the shifting bodies and the scrawled placards, the World Peace Now! Logo—a TV splitting into doves—appears on a sweatshirt on the far side of the doughnut-shaped level, bobbing by like a ghost. The host of the radical TV news show World Peace Now! is Margaret’s boss and idol, Glad Montener. Glad’s deadpan news voice returns, her fingers wandering over copy. Logan hadn’t realized how famous Glad was while she was dating Margaret, but now she’s fascinated that she ever came so close to such a renowned political figurehead. Though Logan used to be dismissive of all things WPN!, her involvement in the protests has made her proud of her connection. Glad led Margaret to her fulfilled, meaningful life. 

A teen breezes through with boxes of macaroni and cheese pizza, Madison’s specialty. The lid of the top box is propped open, the wheel of cheese on cheese exposed. The macaroni noodles sink into the mozzarella like worms. 

“They’re, like, from Egypt,” the kid says. 

“Wait, really?” Logan says. “I thought they were from Ian’s Pizza.”  

“No, man. Like, they were ordered from Egypt.” 

“Oh,” says Logan, though that makes even less sense. 

“Pretty cool, right? I guess we, like, inspired the Arab Spring.” 

Logan doesn’t know much about Arab Spring, which is humiliating for an ex of a WPN! producer, but at least she knows that it started before the Wisconsin protests. Still she can’t believe that anyone in Egypt is taking time to order pizza for Madison. 

Logan feels awkward accepting the pizza, because the food is donated to keep people in the building, and she hasn’t been here long enough to get hungry and want to leave. But the fatty, soft cheese is too much not to savor. She’s so busy wolfing pizza that she almost bumps into Margaret. 

Logan is so startled that she drops the remains of the macaroni slice, grease splattering on a bedroll someone has unfurled in premature preparation for the night ahead.

“That’s, like, my safe space,” the owner of the bedroll says, but he speaks wistfully, like he would’ve been disappointed if no one befouled his area.  

Margaret sweeps the oily eye of her video camera past Logan. The red light is on and Logan wonders if the dropped slice will make the B-roll. Maybe in five or ten years when people are protesting mountaintop removal or fracking or Israeli settlements, an intern will knit together crowd shots and there will be Logan’s shocked face, the roiling bodies the pizza. 

The owner of the WPN! sweatshirt stands behind Margaret, a lanky, bored kid. Margaret passes him the video camera. Logan wonders if they’re dating, if she’s gone straight, has found someone who wants to travel with her. Of course she’d choose someone nonthreatening like that, a boy with such a pretty face, twenty at most. He packs up the camera like a small, precious body and then, softly nodding, backs into the crowd. 

If Logan moves fast enough, Margaret won’t notice her. Margaret wouldn’t expect to see her here. Throughout their relationship Logan faked her interest in WikiLeaks, the Zadroga bill, weapons manufacturing. She was too interested in partying in Brooklyn to care, hated dwelling on pain. Ever since she moved to Wisconsin, though, she’s missed being close to news that matters. And now she has the chance to be involved, a chance that’s spread over her neighborhood in the form of tens of thousands of protestors, almost like they were sent to make her care, finally, about injustice.

Heading to the studio every day since the protests started, Logan would imagine the looming moon face of Glad Montener telling her to check the protests out, to be there, to witness. Glad’s always talking about Rosa Parks and the people’s prerogative to assert themselves at the ground level. 

The unions need someone to stand and shout, someone to hold a sign. Logan enjoyed making her sign and t-shirt as ugly as possible. She likes that the protest doesn’t require her artistic skills, that all it needs are the most basic elements she can offer: her body and voice. They’ll feed her and disinfect her hands to ensure she stays installed in the building. And though the protest can get silly, she loves being borne along by the masses, body odors mingling, eating what everyone else eats and washing her hands with the same soap. Conveying the same message, smiling to strangers.

“Logan,” Margaret says, stepping from the crowd.

“You’re in Madison,” says Logan. 

“Sorry,” Margaret says. “I was going to text you in a sec.” 

“No you weren’t.” 

Margaret furrows her brow. Worried-cute is her favorite expression, and it suits her. There’s an endearingly rodenty quality to her face. “I figured I’d run into you. And look. I was right.” The corner of her mouth jumps. Margaret must have thought she could get in and out without seeing Logan, probably assumed Logan was too selfish to attend the protests, that she could get in and out, sparing herself the pain of having to look into the face that rejected her. Logan visits Margaret’s Facebook sometimes: a field of depressing white dotted with earnest links to petitions. 

“I’ve been coming every day,” Logan says. “Lots of people working hard. I’m happy you could make it.” She puffed out her chest. For once, she could welcome Margaret into a space of progress.  

“Have you slept over? We’re interviewing people who sleep over.” 

Margaret knows Logan can’t sleep in alien situations. She never agreed to go on Margaret’s business trips, even to cool places like Brazil, Egypt, Alaska. There’s no way she’d sleep on the floor of a municipal building, surrounded by bongo drums and mason jars of kombucha. 

“That’s my sleeping bag,” Logan says. Just because she doesn’t stay here all night, or even all day, doesn’t mean she’s doesn’t deserve credit.  

“Really?” Margaret peers dubiously at the sack where Logan’s pizza fell. Its owner sways to the tinny voice of Justin Bieber.

Logan should have picked a tidier bedroll. Or at least an empty one. “Sure.” She slumps down. She lands on her side, her ankle smearing in spilled pizza. The bedroll’s owner grins placidly, knowingly. 

Margaret squints and sighs. “How do you find the environment after hours?” 

The domed ceiling rises above her, inlaid with filigree and a ring of casement windows. She strains to feel abandoned air sweep around her. “Quiet.” 

“Yeah?” Margaret hovers the tip of a pen over a notebook. The notebook looks like a prop, like the pad a journalist might use in a movie.

“Too quiet,” says Logan. “Like a prison where everyone else has escaped.” 

Logan thinks that sounds nice, but Margaret stuffs the notepad in her messenger bag. “Do you want to get out of here, actually? Have a coffee?” 

“Sure.” Logan is eager for an excuse to step off the bedroll, which exhales the odor of man. “If you really want to leave. I mean, I thought this was your thing.” 

“It is why I’m here.” 

When the video Margaret took of her own arrest appeared on YouTube, generating thousands of hits the first day, tens of the thousands the first week, but then bottoming out long before half a million, to Logan’s secret pleasure, Margaret acted as though she didn’t even like the attention. Sometimes Logan reported the new counts and Margaret didn’t even care. Not even when she reached the number that qualifies you for advertising. Not even when Hugo Chávez mentioned her in a press conference. Logan sliced Margaret’s name out of the commanding speech and offered it for Margaret to use on her voicemail (“You have reached the voicemail of MARGARET GRUBER”) but Margaret didn’t even want that. 

Margaret shifts the heavy bag strapped to her shoulder. Her flesh dents around the weight. Logan wishes she had a heavy bag, too, to symbolize the weight of her work in Madison. The last time Margaret knew her she was still working for Dean. Margaret never criticized Logan’s job buying plants and returning sunglasses for the moderately successful but incredibly rich filmmaker—had only compassion for how he treated Logan like a dog who could fetch or stay—but the comparison was so obvious she didn’t have to. Now Logan is here doing her own work. She’ll tell Margaret about it. Then Margaret will have to respect her. 

Logan leads Margaret away from the capitol building, walking quickly even when the crowd threatens to swallow Margaret whole. Though Margaret is shorter and bears a hefty pack, still Logan is proud to navigate the crowds more adeptly. 

When they finally emerge onto clear, sunny, sidewalk, Margaret says, “Well, that was something, right?” Logan can’t tell if she’s being condescending. She was in Egypt for the Friday of Anger. “Where do you want to go? I could seriously use some caffeine.” 

Margaret never used to abuse caffeine, alcohol, or drugs. The Spiral of CAD, she used to call it. Whenever Logan forgot and offered her chocolate or penne al a vodka, all Margaret had to say was SoCAD as a reminder.

Logan suggests the teashop by the studio. Half because it’s where she goes all the time and the name, Sentimentali-Tea, pops easily from her mouth. But she also wants to bring Margaret close to her work. Even if they don’t enter the studio, the subject of Logan’s art will more fluently arise. 

They order tea that’s supposed to taste like cake but really tastes like grass after a rainstorm. They pretend to enjoy it, taking tiny sips and wrenching their grimaces into smiles. Margaret orders a latte, too. 

“So no more SoCAD?” Logan asks. 

“SoCAD?” Margaret pronounces the word like it’s in another language. She’s bull shitting, which is unfair.

But after that, everything goes fine. Logan asks about their New York friends and Margaret tells her Henrietta is still doing roller derby, though she didn’t qualify for all-stars. Jenna is still an assistant editor at Chronicle, but now she’s a special assistant instead of a plain one. Pauline applied to grad school but wasn’t admitted. 

“Grad school where?” Logan asks.

“Grad school everywhere. Like, everywhere.” The corner of Margaret’s mouth tugs up in a smile. Pauline is so drippingly earnest that you can’t help wanting her to fail. But as soon as Logan smiles back, Margaret frowns. “It’s actually sad.” 

“What about Annie and June?” As soon as Logan left, New York she felt so far away. She’s described the feeling to her fellow grad students as getting off a drug. When you’re in New York, you can’t imagine another way of life. But as soon as you detox from missing it, you can’t believe you ever lived like that.

“I don’t know,” Margaret says. “I haven’t been in touch.” 

“Really?” Though Margaret was the one with the long hours and early deadlines, she planned their social calendar. Logan would’ve been content to roll around at home. Just thinking about Margaret’s soft, naked body gives her a jolt of wet heat. She wonders if they can’t arrange something like that today. 

Margaret shrugs. Her shoulder blades rise out of her soft body and Logan remembers the swell of her belly and breasts. Sometimes Logan sends a palm down her own chest and doesn’t like what she feels. Like she’s too hard, too skinny. That sounds stupid, but it’s almost like she’s not built to last long. 

Then she remembers the boy with Margaret back in there, in the crowds, his pretty eyes and delicate chin. “How old is he?” 

Margaret blinks. “Who?” 

Logan rolls her eyes. Margaret is playing it too smooth. “You know. That kid.” 

“You mean Saeed?” 

Maybe she met him in Egypt. She’s been back a couple times, according to Facebook. 

“Why do you want to know how old he is?” Margaret looks legitimately confused, as if Logan asked what his blood type was.

“Don’t be embarrassed.” Logan dabs at the doughnut of tea her cup has left on the table. She pulls water from it in beams, forming a hollow sun. 

“He’s seventeen, I think? Or eighteen. Dalton has this new program.” 

“Ew, Margaret. That’s horrible.” Though she feels for the kid, there’s a tickle of pleasure. Margaret’s always acting like this smug, good person. It’s too much. If she’s done something vile, at least that proves she isn’t perfect.  

“What are you talking about?” Margaret’s cheeks go red, her eyes narrowing. 

Logan shakes her head in disgust. “And you were always such a prude.”  

A corner of Margaret’s mouth springs up but she forces it down. “Hey. I wanted to use that toy.” 

Margaret had held out the package, hands shaking. Logan shouldn’t have said no. That was cruel. “Toys are vanilla.” 

Margaret rolls her eyes. “Whatever, Logan. Anyway, please tell me. What does Saeed’s age have to do with my sexual preferences?” 

She would have given it up by now if she were really sleeping with him. Margaret’s main strength is not subtly. “Never mind.” 

“You’re so weird,” Margaret says with pleasure, like she’d forgotten. 

So no one is in the way. Logan can bring Margaret home if she feels like it. Not that a teenager would have posed much threat.

“So,” Logan says, leaning back in her chair. “How’s Glad?” She feels like she’s asking a friend about her cute older brother, disguising her hunger for information. But ever since the protests started, Logan can’t stop thinking about Glad and what it means to have a hero. Glad was why Margaret applied for the WPN! job straight after Harvard, why she accepted the long hours and stressful work, the business trips without per diems, the life that fills her now. Margaret came home with new stories every day. Glad proved a difficult and rewarding boss. She pushed Margaret to research and edit at inhuman speeds, sometimes shifting the concept of the show moments before airtime. She held Margaret accountable for events that broke while she was sleeping, quizzing her as soon as she walked in the door, hair frazzled and clutching take-out chamomile. But at the same time, Glad was more accessible than Margaret or Logan had imagined. She took Margaret to dinner and provided a single hotel room when she could afford it. Margaret spoke like a lover about Glad’s lank gray hair and facial palsy and long, kind fingers. Logan wasn’t impressed then but, since the protests, she treasures the old stories about how Glad ate only nuts and refused to fix the broken S-key on her laptop, which sliced her fingertip whenever she tapped the exposed pedestal. In some way, Glad had been the other woman in their relationship. 

But now Margaret rolls her eyes. “Can I not think about her for, like, five minutes?”  

“Wait. What do you mean?” 

Margaret shakes her head and sips her latte, breaking the striated head of foam. “Four years of bathroom negotiations. It gets old.” 

Before Glad went live each day, she dry-heaved and raked her hair in panic. A staff member would have to join her in the bathroom and convince her she’d be okay, that she had a fan base, that she was helping the world. Glad would shudder and vomit, push her thumbs into her crow’s feet in an attempt to iron them out. Margaret was called in more and more frequently as her tenure lengthened. Though Margaret joked about the duty, she was honored. Now, though, her voice is affection-free. 

“But come on,” Logan says. “She’s her own person.” 

“You start to feel used up.” Margaret spreads her stubby hands on the enamel. “I mean, for a while it’s okay. And then you’re like, this again?” 

“She’s neurotic.”

“How neurotic can you be, for how many years, before you get it together?” 

Logan wants to explode at Margaret. She can’t treat a brilliant old woman with disrespect. She calms her breathing. She doesn’t know why she’s so upset about this. It’s not like she met Glad more than once. But it’s sad to see Margaret’s fire drain, all that affection and passion that defined her. 

“You love Glad,” Logan says weakly.

Margaret lifts the soft wedge of her shoulder. “I should be able to stomach her for another month.” 

“You’re leaving? What? But you love WPN!” Before Margaret worked at WPN! all she talked about was WPN!, how much she admired the show, who she knew there, how she could get a referral. When she was promoted to Multi-Media Producer, Margaret was the happiest Logan had ever seen her. 

“I found out about this new thing.” Her eyes light up and she leans across the table so far that her sleeve drags in the tea. “This new idea about how to best help the world.” 

Margaret must have found some other news show that’s somehow more liberal than WPN!, that more correctly espouses ideals of democracy, that boasts more thorough protest coverage. She can’t imagine anyone who’s more of a modern day saint than Glad, but she supposes someone could be out there. But the idea is something about money. And working for a bank. 

“Wait,” Logan says. “You want to get a job at an investment bank?” 

“No, no.” Margaret brushes a finger over her taut cheek. “I already did.” 

“What?” Toward the end of college, the banks set up a career fair in Harvard Yard. A couple of their friends met with representatives, for fun or to tell them they were full of shit. One of Logan’s friends took a job at Morgan Stanley. She said it was only for a few months, just to pay off loans, and she stuck to her plan. She works in foreign aid now. But, at the time, Margaret insisted Logan cut the girl off.

“She’ll make eighty thousand a year giving faulty loans and mortgages,” Margaret had said. “She’ll rob the middle class.” 

Logan had no idea what Margaret was talking about, but then the economy crashed and it turned out she was right. 

“I went to this talk,” Margaret says. “And it turns out the way you can help the most isn’t by working for some skanky operation.” 

“WPN! isn’t skanky.” 

“Whatever.” Margaret closes her eyes. “The operating budget is like, miniscule. We run on the backs of interns and volunteers. Like Saeed. Free labor. It’s skanky. I know the message is good, that it’s important to cover what’s not getting coverage, but there are more efficient ways.” 

In the video of Margaret’s arrest, the first shot is of the skinny backs of teens storming the highway outside the convention center. Margaret’s breath is wild against the microphone. Then a rumble stirs up behind her, like the ocean. Margaret turns and there are the cops, a dark block of them, bearing down. The camera cracks into the pavement and Margaret screams, “Dude, what the fuck?” Pain pulses through her voice, the crush of a body losing control. Margaret was embarrassed, wanted to load the video without sound. “I never said dude.” Though she obviously had, Logan wanted to believe her. Margaret had never said dude in their five years together. 

“What about the video?” Logan asks. Margaret must stand by that. 

“People can still watch it.” Margaret shrugs. “If they want.” 

“But doesn’t the bank check your arrest record?” 

She laughs. “They think it’s funny. They call me Inmate Twelve.” 

“What? Why twelve?” 

Margaret frowns. “I don’t know. Who cares?” 

She plans to donate forty percent of her salary to an organization that distributes mosquito nets for the prevention of malaria. Some website ranks the charity as the most efficient way to save lives.  

“I know it sounds bad,” Margaret says. “But people are starting to realize that instead of pretending you’re doing good and really doing what statistically amounts to nothing, you should make as much money as you can, so long as it doesn’t make you miserable, and then you donate it.” 

Logan always assumed that, when she became a famous artist, she’d donate a bunch of money to charity. She’s embarrassed, but she’s always kind of believed that the future, famous her, donating, justified the current her doing nothing. “Wouldn’t working at an investment bank make you miserable?” 

Margaret shrugs. “Not really.” 

 Logan sees the sense, on some level. But she can’t square Margaret in a suit. Margaret at a shiny circular desk. Margaret with bros slapping her back as they stroll to luncheons. Margaret has all she could hope for with Glad and a job that gives her purpose. She doesn’t have to struggle like Logan. 

But Margaret can’t stop babbling about the bank, which has some responsible practices, or so she claims. She tells Logan about the office on Wall Street, eighty stories up with glass windows. 

“Think of the view.” 

The view in their old Bed-Stuy apartment, where Margaret must still live, was a brick wall three feet away, pigeon shit on an air conditioner and a discarded turkey baster on the asphalt at the foot of the airshaft.  

Margaret names a couple guys from school that work at the bank. Logan’s heard of one of them, recalls rosaccea and floppy hair. Not exactly the bro type, but still. 

But there’s an idea for Logan’s next set of miniatures: tiny anonymous protestors from each of the great protests in American history. The Vietnam War. The LA race riots. The Seneca Falls Convention. The Iraq War. Wisconsin. The figures won’t be based off real people, will purposefully be no one who ever existed, because protesters can be anyone in a way almost no one else in America can be anyone. Logan will fashion each with the exactitude of an imaginary individual. They’ll boast more detail than any of her miniatures yet. Perhaps she’ll even experiment with molding the faces from flesh-hued silicone, for rubbery authenticity. She’ll paint in moles, birthmarks, tiny scars, a ballpoint note blurring on the palm of a hand. 

She stands. “I’ve got to get back to work.” 

Margaret looks up, then back into her tea. Now’s her chance to ask Logan about her work, but she doesn’t. That’s shocking. Because so what if Margaret got the job after college that helped save the world and Logan’s job just helped some selfish, half-successful dick brain? So what if Margaret’s going to buy three thousand mosquito nets in the next twelve months, while Logan spends hours shading in the bruising on the bashed head of Lizzie Bordon’s father? At least Logan is interested in what Margaret’s doing. At least she’s asking questions. At least, on a micro level, she’s a half-decent human.

◆

Leaving the teahouse, Logan is tempted by the roiling bodies outside the capitol, the fire chief with his megaphone on the hillock at the South Entrance. But she keeps walking. 

The light is off in Helga’s studio, but so what.  

Logan hunches over her desk and carves a mold. By midnight, she pours the silicone. At one in the morning she eases the head from the rind of plaster. She studies the shape of Glad Montener’s half-deflated face, her high forehead and strong jaw. She’s just a ghost face still, a flesh mass, featureless. She’s not part of the protest series—the idea has dulled since leave the café. Logan was interested in the protests, she’s felt some small sense of purpose in joining them, but, sitting on this aluminum stool in her studio, she has to admit she’s been faking it, hasn’t managed to sink into the world of the protest the way she should. So maybe the way to start is here, with Glad. Margaret’s hero, decommissioned. A person that meant everything to another person, at least once, the way Margaret and Logan never meant so much to each other, the way Helga will never mean so much to Logan. Logan looks into the empty eye sockets and pictures Glad in the bathroom, crying. Unsure whether she can go on. Unsure if it’s worth it.