That Lalitha nodded in submissive agreement to this, rather than sulking, made the situation clearer. She was still begging and Walter still withholding. And he was in his natural element, his personal fortress, when he was allowed to speak abstractly. He hadn’t changed at all since his years at Macalester.

“The real problem, though,” Katz said, “is free-market capitalism. Right? Unless you’re talking about outlawing reproduction, your problem isn’t civil liberties. The real reason you can’t get any cultural traction with overpopulation is that talking about fewer babies means talking about limits to growth. Right? And growth isn’t some side issue in free-market ideology. It’s the entire essence. Right? In free-market economic theory, you have to leave stuff like the environment out of the equation. What was that word you used to love? ‘Externalities’?”

“That’s the word, all right,” Walter said.

“I don’t imagine the theory’s changed much since we were in school. The theory is that there isn’t any theory. Right? Capitalism can’t handle talking about limits, because the whole point of capitalism is the restless growth of capital. If you want to be heard in the capitalist media, and communicate in a capitalist culture, overpopulation can’t make any sense. It’s literally nonsense. And that’s your real problem.”

“So maybe we should just call it a day, then,” Jessica said drily. “Since there’s nothing we can do.”

“I didn’t invent the problem,” Katz said to her. “I’m just pointing it out.”

“We know about the problem,” Lalitha said. “But we’re a pragmatic organization. We’re not trying to overthrow the whole system, we’re just trying to mitigate. We’re trying to help the cultural conversation catch up with the crisis, before it’s too late. We want to do with population the same thing Gore’s doing with climate change. We have a million dollars in cash, and there are some very practical steps we can take right now.”

“I’d actually be fine with overthrowing the whole system,” Katz said. “You can go ahead and sign me up for that.”

“The reason the system can’t be overthrown in this country,” Walter said, “is all about freedom. The reason the free market in Europe is tempered by socialism is that they’re not so hung up on personal liberties there. They also have lower population growth rates, despite comparable income levels. The Europeans are all-around more rational, basically. And the conversation about rights in this country isn’t rational. It’s taking place on the level of emotion, and class resentments, which is why the right is so good at exploiting it. And that’s why I want to get back to what Jessica said about cigarettes.”

Jessica made a beckoning gesture, as if to say, Thank you!

From the hallway came the sound of somebody, Patty, moving around the kitchen in hard heels. Katz, wanting a cigarette, took Walter’s empty coffee mug and prepared a plug of chew instead.

“Positive social change works top-down,” Walter said. “The surgeon general issues his report, educated people read it, bright kids start to realize that smoking is stupid, not cool, and national smoking rates go down. Or Rosa Parks sits down on her bus, college students hear about it, they march in Washington, they take buses to the South, and suddenly there’s a national civil-rights movement. We’re now at a point where any reasonably educated person can understand the problem with population growth. So the next step is to make it cool for college kids to care about the issue.”

While Walter held forth on the subject of college kids, Katz strained to hear what Patty was doing in the kitchen. The essential pussiness of his situation was coming home to him. The Patty he wanted was the Patty who didn’t want Walter: the housewife who didn’t want to be a housewife anymore; the housewife who wanted to fuck a rocker. But instead of just calling her up and saying he wanted her, he was sitting here like some college sophomore, indulging his old friend’s intellectual fantasies. What was it about Walter that so knocked him off his game? He felt like a free-flying insect caught in a sticky web of family. He couldn’t stop trying to be nice to Walter, because he liked him; if he hadn’t liked him so much, he probably wouldn’t have wanted Patty; and if he hadn’t wanted her, he wouldn’t have been sitting here pretending. What a mess.

And now her footsteps were coming down the hallway. Walter stopped speaking and took a deep breath, visibly bracing himself. Katz swiveled his chair toward the doorway; and there she was. The fresh-faced mom who had a dark side. She was wearing black boots and a snug red-and-black silk brocade skirt and a chic short raincoat in which she looked both great and not like herself. Katz couldn’t remember ever seeing her in anything but jeans.

“Hi, Richard,” she said, glancing in his general direction. “Hi, everybody. How’s it going here?”

“We’re just getting started,” Walter said.

“Don’t let me interrupt you, then.”

“You’re all dressed up,” Walter said.

“Going shopping,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you guys tonight if you’re around.”

“Are you making dinner?” Jessica said.

“No, I have to work till nine. I guess, if you want, I could stop for some food before I leave.”

“That would be extremely helpful,” Jessica said, “since we’re going to be meeting all day.”

“Well, and I would be happy to make dinner if I didn’t have to work an eight-hour shift.”

“Oh, never mind,” Jessica said. “Just forget it. We’ll go out or something.”

“That does sound like the easiest thing,” Patty agreed.

“So anyway,” Walter said.

“Right, so anyway,” she said. “I hope it’s a really fun day for everybody.”

Having thus speedily irritated, ignored, or disappointed each of the four of them, she proceeded down the hallway and out the front door. Lalitha, who had been clicking on her BlackBerry since the moment Patty appeared, looked the most obviously unhappy.

“Does she work seven days a week now, or what?” Jessica said.

“No, not usually,” Walter said. “I’m not sure what this is about.”

“It’s always about something, though, isn’t it,” Lalitha murmured as she thumbed her device.

Jessica turned on her, instantly redirecting her pique. “Just let us know whenever you’re done with your e-mail, OK? We’ll just sit and wait until you’re ready, OK?”

Lalitha, tight-lipped, continued to thumb.

“Maybe you can do that later?” Walter said gently.

She slapped the BlackBerry onto the table. “OK,” she said. “Ready!”

As the nicotine coursed through Katz, he began to feel better. Patty had seemed defiant, and defiant was good. Nor had the fact of her dressing up escaped his attention. Dressing up for what reason? To present herself to him. And working both Friday and Saturday nights for what reason? To avoid him. Yes, to play the same hide-and-seek that he was playing with her. Now that she was gone, he could see her better, receive her signals without so much static, imagine placing his hands on that fine skirt of hers, and remember how she’d wanted him in Minnesota.

But meanwhile the problem of too much procreation: the first concrete task, Walter said, was to think of a name for their initiative. His own working idea was Youth Against Insanity, a private homage to “Youth Against Fascism,” which he considered (and Katz agreed with him) one of the finer songs that Sonic Youth had ever recorded. But Jessica was adamant about picking a name that said yes rather than no. Something pro, not contra. “Kids my age are way more libertarian than you guys were,” she explained. “Anything that smells like elitism, or not respecting somebody else’s point of view, they’re allergic to. Your campaign can’t be about telling other people what not to do. It’s got to be about this cool positive choice that we’re all making.”

Lalitha suggested the name The Living First, which hurt Katz’s ears, and which Jessica shot down with withering scorn. And so they brainstormed the morning away, sorely missing, in Katz’s opinion, the input of a professional P.R. consultant. They went through Lonelier Planet, Fresher Air, Rubbers Unlimited, Coalition of the Already Born, Free Space, Life Quality, Smaller Tent, and Enough Already! (which Katz rather liked but which the others said was still too negative; he filed it away as a possible future song or album title). They considered Feed the Living, Be Reasonable, Cooler Heads, A Better Way, Strength in Smaller Numbers, Less Is More, Emptier Nests, Joy of None, Kidfree Forever, No Babies on Board, Feed Yourself, Dare Not to Bear, Depopulate!, Two Cheers for People, Maybe None, Less Than Zero, Stomp the Brakes, Smash the Family, Cool Off, Elbow Room, More for Me, Bred Alone, Breather, Morespace, Love What’s Here, Barren by Choice, Childhood’s End, All Children Left Behind, Nucleus of Two, Maybe Never, and What’s the Rush? and rejected all of them. To Katz, the exercise was an illustration of the general impossibility of the enterprise and the specific rancidness of prefabricated coolness, but Walter ran the discussion with an upbeat judiciousness that bespoke long years in the artificial world of NGOs. And, somewhat incredibly, the dollars he planned to spend were real.