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Cottage named Greta. Her full name was Greta Deane and I liked her very much. She wore her hair at an angle across her head. She was tall and slender and she spoke in a funny way that made everything she said sound like a question because her voice went up at the end. The other girls in Peace Cottage didn’t talk to me or even notice me but Greta Deane was very friendly and called me “Stretch” sometimes maybe because I’m tall. Also at assemblies she’d come right up to me and shake my hand like a man. Another thing was that she liked spending time with the animals in the fields which most other villagers did not. She especially liked cows. She once told me they were very sensitive like people and they spoke to her. What they mostly said, she told me, was, “We’re here as meat.”
    I raked the lawn and thought of Mike’s low voice moving around the apartment with the girls in it. I thought of his mouth slowly opening to show his wet yellow teeth. I hoped Greta Deane wasn’t hearing him. I hoped she wasn’t seeing his mouth. I hoped he wasn’t making “baa” sounds at her.
    A while went by though I’m not sure how long and then suddenly Mike appeared again. He smiled at me and he touched me on the shoulder and in a softer voice than usual he said I had “passed the test with flying colors” and that “a shitload of good stuff will happen” as a result.
    I said nothing, and we continued clearing the grass until he told me we were done. When I got back to my cottage, staff hadleft a note saying that my brother would be coming to visit the next day and that I had the day off and should be ready. This gave me something else to think about other than Mike the Apron and I thought about being a little boy growing up with a brother until I went to sleep.
    TEN
    E VEN THOUGH HE DOESN’T COME VISIT ME THAT often and this sometimes makes me sad, my brother tries to call me on the phone almost every week. Often these calls are interrupted by his wife or his children or his work. Nate is an Environmental Accountant. I’ve heard him say many times to different people, “Environmental Accountants are in it for the green,” and laugh. Nate taught me the word “eco.” He has an eco-car and an eco-house. He goes on eco-vacations and he says the word “planetary” a lot. But Nate also told me that all he does all day is think about money for a living. Sometimes when he calls me I can hear a flat, hitting sound in his voice and then he usually apologizes and says that “work is choking me out.” Whenever he says that I think what I’m hearing is the actual sound of money in a person’s body, a stacked, walking machine of nickels and dimes called “my brother.”
    The next morning after getting the note I was sitting in my bedroom waiting when I looked out and saw a red rental carwith Nate in it expanding in the window. The car crunched on the gravel and I got up and went outside to meet him.
    â€œTubes!” he cried, getting out and standing up, smiling. “Tubes” is my family nickname.
    â€œHi,” I said.
    â€œAll hail the conquering Tubester!” he said and reached forward to hug me. I don’t like when people touch my hair or clap me on the back but I like when they hug me. I like when they hug me really hard. I like when they crush me to their chest and build a wall around me that I can’t escape.
    â€œCan we go out to lunch at the Pilgrim Diner?” I asked as soon as he let me go.
    He laughed and said, “Good old Tubes. Of course we can. But let me look at you first.”
    He held me by the elbows.
    â€œLooking pretty sharp, you old jailbird,” he said.
    I was wearing brown pants and a white shirt that Raykene had recently bought me on a “shopping run.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œAnd am I mistaken or have you dropped a pound or two?”
    â€œI weigh