The Rent Was Cheap

The first commune he stayed at called itself The Light of Seven Suns. They were tucked in the Catskills, a cluster of cabins nailed together from scavenged lumber and half-believed dreams. Rent wasn’t rent; it was “shared contribution,” which meant you gave fifty bucks and agreed to chop wood twice a week. For him, that was perfect. He didn’t care about the mantras or the bonfires or the leader, a soft-eyed guy named Malachai who spoke like he was permanently stoned.

Everyone wore white linen. He wore jeans and a flannel, and no one seemed to mind. Nights were filled with chanting and drumming, mornings with herbal tea so bitter it felt like chewing bark. The deal was simple: keep your head down, sleep in a bunk, eat the beans and rice, and don’t ask too many questions.

The problem came when Malachai started insisting on “energy donations.” Cash, jewels, whatever you had. “Money is just fear, and we must purge it,” he told the group one morning, sunlight burning through the cracks in the wooden hall. People lined up with envelopes. He stayed in bed, pretending he was sick. The next day, he was gone, walking down the road with his duffel bag.

The second commune was in New Mexico. They called it The Infinite Mother. This one was mostly women, or at least women who had decided men were a disease and men who pretended to believe them. He’d stumbled onto them at a Greyhound station. One girl in a long dress offered him a ride if he promised to “serve the Mother.” He nodded, because what else do you do when someone offers free transportation?

They lived in domes made from sandbags, shaped like something out of a sci-fi movie. Meals were vegan stews cooked in massive cauldrons. Everything smelled of sage. There were rules about eye contact: men were not supposed to initiate it. That was fine with him; he liked keeping his eyes down.

But then there was Claire. She was from Vermont, maybe twenty-three, with crooked teeth and a way of laughing like she didn’t believe in silence. She worked the communal gardens, dirt always under her nails. One evening, she slipped him a jar of homemade mead and whispered, “Let’s get out of here, just for a night.”

They lay under the desert stars, the sand still warm beneath them, the coyotes singing in the distance. She told him she used to study nursing before she came here, before she decided the world was poisoned. He told her he didn’t believe in anything except cheap rent. She laughed until her eyes watered.

For a week, they were inseparable. Then came the “Cleansing.” The women gathered in a circle, chanting about the death of patriarchy, while the men were made to kneel and confess their “sins.” He kept his mouth shut until one of the elders pulled him by the hair, demanding repentance. Claire’s face was unreadable in the firelight. That night, he packed his bag. She didn’t follow.

The third commune was the strangest. The Kingdom of the Now lived outside Portland, in an abandoned motel painted neon blue. The leader was a woman named Harmony who claimed she had been abducted by aliens three times and was here to prepare Earth for “the Merge.”

It was more urban squat than commune: graffiti on the walls, mattresses on the floor, incense mixed with mildew. They ran a juice stand out front to make money. He worked the stand sometimes, blending kale and ginger for tech bros on their lunch breaks.

The nice thing about this one was that nobody cared what you did as long as you didn’t steal their weed. Harmony gave endless lectures in the old ballroom, pointing at diagrams of cosmic portals drawn in Sharpie. He tuned out most of it. He was just there for the free bed and the sense of being part of something, even if it was insane.

One night, Claire showed up. He didn’t recognize her at first; her hair was shaved, and she wore a black hoodie instead of flowing dresses. She saw him before he saw her, walking toward the juice stand like nothing had happened.

“Guess we both ended up here,” she said, and it was like no time had passed.

They shared a room for a few weeks. She’d changed, harder somehow, but the laugh was still there under the surface. They talked about escape plans, including Seattle and maybe Alaska, but neither moved. It was easier to drift, to let Harmony’s madness cover them like a reckless outburst of paint on canvas..

The end came when Harmony announced that the Merge was imminent, and everyone had to surrender their phones, wallets, and identities. People cheered. He looked at Claire. For a long second, he thought maybe she’d stay. Then she shrugged, like she’d known all along, and grabbed her bag.

They left together this time, walking down the highway at dawn, the motel shrinking behind them.

They didn’t call themselves a couple. They didn’t talk about the future. They just moved, bus stop to bus stop, cheap motel to borrowed couch. Sometimes they fought; sometimes they laughed until they couldn’t breathe. Once, in a small town diner, she took his hand across the table and said, “You know we’re just running from everything, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But at least we’re running cheap.”