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the right social conditions, it would flourish. Jenny had not until now received any evidence of her own genius, but Rupert said she was only nineteen and should give it a chance. When Jenny was seven, one of her foster parents had taken her to a dentist in Sioux Falls, and in the waiting room there had been a large tank full of tropical fish, brilliant, darting things full of light and life, and there was a tiny statue of a mermaid in it that seemed to open a little pirate chest at intervals, when a mass of bubbles would emerge and go glittering to the surface. Jenny had been transfixed and had thought at the time that no heavenly joy promised by the Disciples of Christ Sunday school could match actually being that little mermaid, spending the hours opening the pirate chest, surrounded by brilliant fish. And now here she was.
    She took a breath, jackknifed her long body, and plunged downward into the deep. The fish scattered before her, hundreds of fish, she had no idea how many. Scotty knew; he kept careful records of birth, growth, and death, part of the ecological balance. Jenny had little interest in that part of it, although she knew the names of the main kinds: discus, like enameled dinner plates, a dozen varieties of cichlids with bright flowing fins, clusters of solemn angelfish, headstanders streaked with crimson, clouds of tiny jewel-like killifish, golden dorados, the jagged metal flash of hatchetfish: and also, swimming slowly in a tight group, looking like thugs outside a candy store, a substantial school of red-bellied piranhas. These were Rupert’s special pets, which Jenny thought was a little weird. They were also the only beings in the compound that got red meat, for Rupert would go out at dusk every day when he was in residence and fling bits of dripping offal to them from the crest of the waterfall hill and watch the water boil as they thrashed in their blood frenzy. Scotty said they were perfectly harmless unless you were bleeding or moving in an erratic fashion, although what a piranha would think erratic was something she did not know, nor did she believe that anyone else knew. She tried to avoid them on her swims, for she didn’t trust them nor the look in their beady little eyes. She’d known guys with that look.
    Still, here she was in the better-than-heaven, the little mermaid in the clear water, far from Iowa, in Miami, with plenty of sex and food and a place to stay where they didn’t hassle you, and something important to do in life. The Earthly Paradise: one of Rupert’s phrases, and it was true.
    The important thing was saving the tropical rain forests, which was why Rupert had gathered them all together in his house, so they could all live in an ecologically sensitive way, giving an example to the world, and forging a political movement. Jenny did not see that they were doing much forging. The community spent a lot of time—the Professor excepted—sitting around naked or half-naked, smoking superior marijuana and discussing what it was okay to eat or use, depending on whether the product was ecological or not, and they spent a lot of time recycling; the total trash produced by the six of them, plus guests, didn’t fill a shoe box a week. The forging part was mainly her and Evangelina Vargos, who lived off the property, going out nearly every day inthe brightly painted VW bus, setting up a table in some public place, and trying to get people to take folders and sign petitions and contribute to the Forest Planet Alliance.
    Jenny’s secret was that she snuck food to the fish, disturbing the ecological balance Scotty so diligently (and irritatingly) sought. The fish were allowed to eat only plant and animal matter derived from the garden plot fertilized by water and sludge sucked up by the solar pump. What she fed them was thus beyond un-kosher—bread balls made from toxic loaves purchased on the sly from the Winn-Dixie and secreted in various hidey-holes around the property. Now she