Better Food for a Better World. Erin McGraw

animal. She shifted her hip an inch further from Sam’s arm.

      “Right. It’s not that I don’t love you, too.” He shifted and dangled his foot over the edge of the bed, letting Vivy hog the hot mattress. For a minute he entertained the notion that their arrangement on the bed was symbolic—Vivy spread-eagled, claiming three-quarters of the available space, Sam crowded to the very edge and hanging on. Then he let the thought go. Too hot to get mad, and way too hot for an argument. The thermostat was set at eighty, the lowest temperature they could afford, but somehow the house felt hotter than that.

      Sleep loitered miles away. In a minute Sam would ask Vivy to turn off the bedside light, but for now he contented himself watching her study her scribbled-over list of acts. Occasionally, she inserted a question mark or an arrow. The list ran to three pages, a census of peculiar entertainments and rarefied skills. She’d told him about some band she’d picked up as a favor to Fredd, a band she said was going to make their fortune, but they weren’t coming to Natural High. Instead, she had dug up acts he’d forgotten they’d ever heard of, and she caroled around the house every time she unearthed another magician or clown or acrobat. In just two months she had contacted almost all on their old list, and took for granted that Sam would be as delighted about this undertaking as she was.

      To be fair, at first he had gotten a bang out of the whole thing. He and Vivy went out for a celebratory drink the day she located Sir Smokes, a guy they’d first discovered in 1979 on a street corner in Sacramento wearing a leather vest and breeches, eating cigarettes as fast as people would light them for him. When Vivy finally tracked him down again, he was busking only a block away from his original corner. “Actually, he was hard to find,” she said now. “No phone.”

      “Now that you’ve found him, what are you going to do with him? You can’t have a cigarette-eater play an ice cream store,” Sam said.

      “I feel better knowing where he is. Who would have thought he’d still be alive?” Looking distracted, Vivy drew another arrow. “We personally saw him eat whole packs of Camels and live to tell the tale. He’d play huge at colleges. He’s the triumph of the individual over corporate America.”

      “He’s a nut.”

      “A nut with an esophagus made out of cast iron. I wonder what else he can eat.”

      “No Marlboros—he said they didn’t have a good balance of flavors.”