"What does that mean?"

"Why're you so picky? Can't I feel sorry for him?"

"I guess if you want to," Chris said, reaching into his inside coat pocket.

"I didn't get a proposal of marriage, but I didn't do too bad." He brought out Woody's check and handed it to Greta.

"Twenty-five grand, for cleaning out his swimming pool."

Hi, it's me," Robin's voice said.

Donnell said, "It is, huh?"

He stood at the desk in the library. Mr. Woody, over watching Arnold Schwarzenegger killing dudes with his big two-hand sword, hadn't even looked up when the phone rang.

"Are you all right?"

"Just fine."

"I waited for the six o'clock news before I called. You want to tell me what happened?"

"I'll tell you something," Donnell said, "but not on the telephone."

"Great, I was hoping you'd say that," Robin's voice said.

"Can we meet?"

"You want to take the chance, we can."

"What does that mean?"

"Girl, I don't have nice things to say to you."

"I'll bet you a million dollars," Robin's voice said, "you change your mind." and Greta were in his dad's king-size bed with both the gooseneck lamps, mounted above the headboard, turned on: Chris reading Robin Abbott's May-August 1970 journal, Greta reading photocopied material from various Donnell Lewis case files. She told Chris her first husband never read in bed, he watched TV. Then corrected that.

"I

mean the only husband I ever had." Chris said, "Uh-huh."

He had on a pair of his dad's reading glasses, and she felt she was seeing another side of him. Greta looked over one time and said,

"Excuse me, do I know you?" About eleven thirty he went out to the kitchen and brought back two cans of beer. Greta looked at him in his underwear and said, "You have scars on your legs," sounding surprised.

"What in the world happened to you?" He got back in bed and told her about the old Vietnamese guy standing on the hand grenade, Greta sitting up chewing on her thumbnail, not saying a word. He finished and she kissed him, her eyes moist. They kissed some more and Greta asked Chris who did he think he was, Woody Alien? Woody was always making out in bed with Diane Keaton or somebody with his glasses on. In movies, anyway. They let it happen and made love, trying to take their time but then hurrying to get there. While they were drinking their beer Greta said, "Whenever you feel like showing me your scars, you can."

Then after a few minutes she said, "Here your glasses, Dad," and they got back to reading, feeling at home with each other propped up on their pillows.

They would tell each other about parts they were reading.

Greta said Donnell Lewis had been arrested fourteen times but only went to prison once. She asked Chris, "You ever hear of being charged with creating an improper diversion? Violation of ordinance NH. 613.404."

He was selling Black Panther newspapers in downtown Detroit when he spotted a couple of undercover detectives watching him. So he pointed to them and told everybody that came by to look out for the pigs. He also called them fascist buffoon fools. The detectives said they were watching for pickpockets and when Donnell revealed their identity, that was the improper diversion. Three other times, while he was selling Black Panther papers, he was arrested for resisting and obstructing.

Once he had to go to Detroit General to get ten stitches in the top of his head. The arresting officer said Donnell ran into a wall trying to avoid arrest.

He was in a store collecting money for their kids' breakfast program and was arrested for attempting to commit extortion. The charge was reduced to soliciting for a charitable organization without a license.

He was arrested another time for malicious destruction of property, painting Free Huey Newton on the side of the Penobscot Building.

"Who's Huey Newton?"

"The guy that started the Black Panthers."

"How's the journal?"

Chris said, "I'm up to the rock concert at Goose Lake, two hundred thousand people. Robin says, "Fifteen-dollar admission a bummer.

Should be a free concert. The promoter, a smart-ass youth-culture rip-off artist, asks if we give our newspapers away free… Dope scene unreal.

Trash bags of Jamaican carried by strolling vendors. Organically grown mescaline. Blotter acid goes for a buck.

Medics report bad trips, but not many. Strychnine poisoning. What else is new?"

" "Did you take dope?"

"I smoked pot and ate marshmallows for a few years.

Listen, Robin says, "It's private property, no pigs allowed.

But they infiltrate. Beware of guys with short hair wearing dime-store beads, Bermuda shorts and tennies. I kid you not. Everything but a sign that says HI, I'M A NARC." Here's Woody. This is good.

"Woody's case of champagne lasts a half day. He has booze in the limo and is completely smashed at all times. Woody's pissed. Went to the lake and couldn't get any chicks to take off their bathing suits. Even offered them money." Listen to this.

"Hope I don't end up bailing Woody out of the kindness of my heart."

" He looked over at Greta looking at him.

"You think she did?"

"It doesn't say."

"She must be almost forty now."

"Yeah?"

"It just seems weird."

"Here's what she thinks of Mark," Chris said. "

"Nice bod, but spoiled, can be quite bitchy with others but will lick my hand to get me to look at him. Susceptible to bullshit I haven't used since junior high." Here's the good part.

Robin says, "We put up a sign on the limo, TOTAL FREEDOM NOW! that brings TV guy with camera crdw. Smart-ass TV guy asks, Freedom from what? I give him stock response.

Freedom from everything, man. Freedom from government, freedom from misery, from hunger, etc. etc. through anarchy. Smart-ass TV guy calls me a Marxist. I tell him, No way. He says, But you're preaching Marxism, aren't you?

Zap answer: If Marx says he wasn't a Marxist, why should I call myself one? You want labels, man, we want change.

Chairman Mao said to seek truth from facts and it will bring on perpetual revolution. Can you dig it? It's here, man, and it won't go away."

" Greta was still looking at him.

"Did everybody talk like that?"

"I think she was putting the guy on," Chris said.

"You'd hear students yelling "Smash the state," and some of them were serious, not just turned on by the excitement.

I was in Washington, there must have been a half million people in the streets, all protesting the war and you could feel it. We knew we were right, we had to be-so many people together… I mean you could really feel it."

"But you went to war," Greta said.

"I was against it," Chris said, "because it didn't make sense. But I still wanted to know what war was like."

He was aware of sights and sounds from that other time, strange ones, glimpses of Khiem Hanh and the smell of wood smoke, glimpses of Woodstock too, beads and headbands and dirty jeans, the smell of grass, the rain, faces with glazed smiles…

"I try to remember the way it was," Chris said, "and I get it mixed up with the way it was shown in movies, with the hippies so much wiser and laid back than the straights. Except in the Woodstock movie where the young guy says, "People who are nowhere come here because they think they're gonna be with people who are somewhere." And the guy's dopey girlfriend doesn't get it.

She says, "Yeah, well, like there's plenty of freedom. We ball and everything…" She was being used and didn't know it. You saw so much of that. All kinds of dumb kids taken advantage of by guys pretending to be gurus or Jesus, they had the hair, the beard. Or some asshole who called himself the Pussycat Prince and wore flowers in his hair and played a flute. All of them with that smug, stoned grin, like they knew something you didn't."