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girls played the boys’ game of sex at their own risk, dupes if they objectified and victims if they didn’t.
    â€œYou didn’t seem to mind me when your dick was in my mouth,” she said.
    â€œI didn’t put it there,” he said. “And it wasn’t there long.”
    â€œNo, because I had to go downstairs and get a condom so you could stick it inside me.”
    â€œWow. So this is all me now?”
    Through a haze of flame, or hot blood, Pip’s eyes fell on Jason’s handheld device.
    â€œHey!” he cried.
    She jumped up and ran to the far side of the room with his device.
    â€œHey, you can’t do that,” he shouted, pursuing her.
    â€œYes I can!”
    â€œNo, you can’t, it’s not fair. Hey—hey—you can’t do that!”
    She wedged herself underneath the child’s writing desk that was her only piece of furniture and faced the wall, bracing her leg on a desk leg. Jason tried to pull her out by the belt of her robe, but he couldn’t dislodge her and was apparently unwilling to get more violent than this. “What kind of freak are you?” he said. “What are you doing?”
    Pip touched the device’s screen with shaking fingers.

    â€œFuck, fuck, fuck,” Jason said, pacing behind her. “What are you doing?”
    She pawed the screen and found the next thread.

    She slumped to one side, put the device on the floor, and gave it a push in Jason’s direction. Her anger had burned off as quickly as it had ignited, leaving ashen grief behind.
    â€œIt’s only the way some of my friends talk,” Jason said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
    â€œPlease go away,” she said in a small voice.
    â€œLet’s start over. Can we just, like, reboot? I’m really sorry.”
    He put a hand on her shoulder, and she recoiled. He took the hand away.
    â€œOK, look, let’s talk tomorrow, though, OK?” he said. “This was obviously the wrong night for both of us.”
    â€œJust go away now, please.”
    *   *   *
    Renewable Solutions didn’t make or build or even install things. Instead, depending on the regulatory weather (not climate but weather , for it changed seasonally and sometimes seemingly hourly), it “bundled,” it “brokered,” it “captured,” it “surveyed,” it “client-provided.” In theory, this was all very worthy. America put too much carbon into the atmosphere, renewable energy could help with that, federal and state governments were forever devising new tax inducements, the utilities were indifferent-to-moderately-enthusiastic about greening their image, a gratifyingly non-negligible percentage of California households and businesses were willing to pay a premium for cleaner electricity, and this premium, multiplied by many thousands and added to the money flowing from Washington and Sacramento, minus the money that went to the companies that actually made or installed stuff, was enough to pay fifteen salaries at Renewable Solutions and placate its venture-capitalist backers. The buzzwords at the company were also good: collective , community , cooperative . And Pip wanted to do good, if only for lack of better ambitions. From her mother she’d learned the importance of leading a morally purposeful life, and from college she’d learned to feel worried and guilty about the country’s unsustainable consumption patterns. Her problem at Renewable Solutions was that she could never quite figure out what she was selling, even when she was finding people to buy it, and no sooner had she finally begun to figure it out than she was asked to sell something else.
    At first, and in hindsight least confusingly, she’d sold power-purchase agreements to small and midsize businesses, until a new state regulation put an end to the outrageous little cut that Renewable Solutions took of those. Then it