The Leftovers

Falks. Not when they’d come this far together, when her due date was only ten weeks away. The least he could do was stick it out until the baby came, make himself useful in any way he could.
    *   *   *
    THE MANDRAKE was a basement coffee shop on Mount Auburn Street that was one of the main gathering spots for Barefoot People in Harvard Square. Like Elmore’s in the Haight, it was owned and operated by people in the movement, and seemed to do a brisk business, not just in herbal teas and whole-grain muffins, but in weed and mushrooms and acid as well, at least if you knew the right person to approach, and the correct way to place an order.
    Tom got a chai latte from the blissed-out kid behind the counter—the staff wore shirts that read, NO SHOES? WE LOVE YOU! —and then scanned the crowded room for a place to sit. Most of the tables were occupied by Barefoot People, but there were a handful of average citizens and slumming academics scattered among them, outsiders who had either wandered in by mistake or enjoyed the nostalgic contact high that came from being in close proximity to Grateful Dead music, face paint, and unwashed bodies.
    Eggy waved at Tom from his table in the back corner—his bald head was impossible to miss in that sea of hirsute humanity—where he was engaged in yet another marathon backgammon session with Kermit, the oldest Barefoot Dude Tom had ever met. An unfamiliar blond girl around Tom’s age was the sole spectator.
    “Yo, North Face!” Eggy called out. “Kill any caribou?”
    Tom gave him the finger as he pulled up a chair. He took lots of ribbing at the Mandrake about the winter gear he’d borrowed from Terrence Falk, which was several cuts above the thrift-store crap most of the customers wore.
    Kermit gazed at Tom with the bleary fascination of the permanently stoned. He had long, greasy yellowish gray hair that he liked to groom with his fingers when he was deep in thought. Rumor had it that he was a former English professor at B.U.
    “You know what we should call you?” he said. “Jack London.”
    The bestowing of nicknames was serious business at the Mandrake. In the few weeks he’d been hanging out there, Tom had already been dubbed Frisco, Your Excellency, and, most recently, North Face. Sooner or later, he thought, something would have to stick.
    “Jack London.” Eggy murmured the name, testing it on his tongue. “I like that.”
    “I read a story by him,” said the girl. She looked like a part-timer, round-faced and healthy, with the biggest bullseye on her forehead Tom had ever come across, a green-and-white swirl the size of a beer mat. “In high school English. This guy in the North Pole keeps trying to light a fire so he won’t get hypothermia, but the fire keeps going out. And then his fingers freeze, and he’s totally fucked.”
    “Man versus Nature.” Eggy nodded sagely. “The eternal conflict.”
    “There are actually two versions of that story,” Kermit pointed out. “In the first one, the guy survives.”
    “So why’d he write the second?” the girl asked.
    “Why, indeed?” Kermit chuckled darkly. “Because the first version was bullshit, that’s why. In his heart of hearts, Jack London knew that we can never build a fire. Not when we really need to.”
    “You know what’s gross?” the girl asked cheerfully. “The guy wanted to kill his dog, cut it open, and warm his hands inside the guts. But by the time he tried to do it, he couldn’t even hold the knife.”
    “Please.” Eggy looked a bit queasy. “Could we not talk about this?”
    “Why not?” the girl asked.
    “He’s a dog lover,” Kermit explained. “Hasn’t he told you about Quincy?”
    “I just met her last night.” Eggy sounded indignant. “What do you think, I meet someone and immediately start blabbing about my dog?”
    Kermit directed an amused glance at Tom, who knew all too well how often Eggy talked about Quincy, a two-hundred-pound mastiff who’d wandered off after the Sudden Departure and hadn’t been seen since. Instead of a wallet, Eggy carried a small album containing about a dozen photographs of the big dog, often in the company of a tall, unsmiling woman with scraped-back hair. This was Emily, Eggy’s departed fiancée, a former graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government. Eggy didn’t talk so much about her.
    Kermit reached for the dice. “It’s my turn, right?”
    “Yup.” Eggy pointed to a white blot on the middle bar. “I