I hadn't even thought about Alec in all of this. He was so passive, so accepting of everything, that I tended to take him for granted. If he didn't say anything, then I assumed everything was all right. Except Alec hardly ever said anything.

"What do you mean?"

"That kid needs to learn how to interact with other people. He's very withdrawn."

"You're right about that. I just haven't had the time to . . . "

"And you never will. There's never enough time, Jim."

"Okay." I threw up my hands in a gesture of surrender. "What do you suggest?"

"I recommend that you put yourself and your kids into the Living Game at least three times a week."

"You're kidding."

"Not at all. If you want, I'll make it an order. I'll prescribe it as necessary to your mental health, and you'll have to be there. I want you and your kids to participate in this community. At least one of those nights, I want you assisting in the management of the Game."

"I don't need that cr-stuff."

"Neither do I. Neither does B-Jay. And we play every night. It makes a difference for the kids, Jim."

I sighed. "You play real dirty, lady. What time should we be there."

"Yep," she agreed. "And I get results. Be there at seven-thirty. Wear comfortable clothes." She turned back to her keyboard, then stopped and looked at me again. "Oh, you still want to put up worm fences, don't you?"

"Huh? Yes!"

"All right, look. Betty-John and I were discussing the idea again last week, when the charms came down. I agree with you that it's a good idea, but B-Jay doesn't want to spare the manpower; but if you're willing to put them up yourself, I'll talk to B-Jay and we'll push it through at the next Directors' meeting."

"Birdie, one person alone can't install a worm fence-"

"I was getting to that. I can probably talk B-Jay into letting you have one and a half helpers."

"One and a half?"

"Jack Balaban and Dove. Don't make a face. Dove can be your gofer. And Jack's a good worker. Take Tommy out to help you. He needs some strong role models anyway."

"But Jack and Dove?"

"Your bigotry is showing, nigger."

"Uh, sorry. I'll give it a try."

"You do that. You might do some growing up."

I walked away from Birdie's office feeling better. Not a lot, just a little.

Because she was right about almost everything she had said. She had only missed one point.

I wanted to make love with Tommy as much as he wanted to make love with me. But I was ashamed of the wanting. And I was ashamed of my shame.

If I wasn't a part of Jason's world any more then I couldn't follow its ways. But I didn't know if I could be part of this world either.

I wondered how long I could keep holding him off before one night I gave up and gave in.

The Living Game was something Betty-John had invented for the children. And for the rest of us too.

The assumption was-as B-Jay explained it-that because of thc plagues and everything else, we had all forgotten how to live. We were all so busy lost in our various griefs and trying to survive at the same time that we were everywhere else but here. "Some of us are lost in the past and some of us are just lost. And some of us are elsewhere, but damned few of us are living in the present."

It was B-Jay's theory that we needed to relearn, that we had to be retaught. Only there weren't any classes in how to be a human being, in how to be alive. "It's like the instruction book that you didn't get when you were born. Except you did-only everybody else has piled so much bullshit on top of it, you can't tell what's real and what isn't any more."

She sounded a lot like Jason in that moment, but I knew what she was trying to say, so it was all right.

"The way we learn things as kids is by playing with them, trying them on and seeing if we like how they fit or not. These kids haven't had a chance yet to play at life. They've been too busy living to learn how to live." B-Jay's idea was to ease the kids into the larger responsibilities of the world by turning it all into a game.

In a way, it wasn't that much different from some of the exercises we'd done in the Tribe, in the circles. And at the same time, it was very different. Jason's games had been about playing. B-Jay's games were about winning.

For example, Jason had once said, "Everybody hug. Hug everybody else. The job isn't finished until you are complete with every person in the circle. You must start hugging and you can't stop until you feel at peace." That exercise went on for hours. It's possible to hug someone and still not be with them completely. Jason's instructions were to hug each person until you could be with them completely. But Betty-John played the game a different way: "Okay, let's divide into teams, and let's see which team can give out the most hugs. The team that gives the most hugs wins."

I suppose that comparing them like that makes it seem that B-Jay's way was the wrong way, was somehow more mechanical and obligatory-a kind of prostitution of the act. But Jason was working with people who were alive and awake and ready for the next step. Betty-John was working with children, some of whom bordered on the catatonic; she was still trying to wake them up into their own lives.

Jason's people knew how to communicate. B-Jay was still trying to establish communication and for B-Jay, at this moment, hugs and kisses were the most powerful and direct form of communication. Quantity was more important than quality, because she was trying to overlay some very powerful anti-survival programming with a new set of responses, particularly the all-important competitive ones. Winning was everything and repetition was the way you stamped the lesson in. There weren't enough adults to take care of all the children, so the children had to be taught to be their own adults and take care of themselves, and they had to learn it fast. The compassion and the lovingwell, they could learn it later. If there was a later.

There were too many children and not enough resources and never enough time. We had to make it work anyway, because there wasn't any alternative. Looked at like that, Betty-John's approach seemed the only rational and appropriate one. So what if it was hard and competitive and mechanical? It worked. Sort of. It let us survive.

Anyway.

We played the Living Game.

Sometimes it was about how many dishes we could wash or how much laundry we could fold or how much litter we could pick up. It was never about doing chores. If some of it didn't get done, nobody said anything. It wasn't about chores, it wasn't about work. It was about winning. It was always about winning. Sometimes Betty-John or Birdie would talk to us about "winning the other war, the grown-up war."

"Nobody ever won a war by accident," Betty-John would say. "Winning isn't a habit. It's a commitment. It's a way of life. Vverything you do-whether it's washing the dishes or sweeping ihc floor or picking up litter-is a game to be won. It's not a problem. It's not a chore. It's not a burden. It's an interesting challenge, with a definite goal. When you accomplish the goal, you win. This is the game: get yourself addicted to winning. That's the only way we're going to win the big war. We have to learn how to win all the little battles between here and there. I promise you, washing the dishes and picking up after yourselves and cleaning your plate and raking the leaves-all of it is all part od winning the big war.