Freaky Deaky

"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."

"Where are they now?" Greta said.

Robin and Donnell were at the Gnome on Woodward Avenue, a new-wave Middle Eastern restaurant that featured jazz, the McKinney brothers on piano and bass.

Robin suggested it, her apartment was only a few blocks away. Donnell knew the place from bringing Mr. Woody here now and again; the man not caring too much for the lamb dishes, but ate up the way the brothers performed on show tunes. Donnell arrived a half hour late, picked up a scotch and Perrier at the bar, waved to the McKinneys and joined Robin, waiting in a booth with a glass of red wine, playing with her braid. He let her tell him, with three cigarette butts in the ashtray and another one going, she just got here; then felt her looking him over as he sipped his drink and settled in, letting his gaze wander over to the sound of mellow jazz.

She said, "I hope you have more to say than the last time we were together. Remember, in the bathroom? You watched yourself in the mirror… I suppose to see what a good time you were having." She said, "When I called today, the first time, did you have any idea who it was?"

"Yeah, I knew."

"You did not."

Donnell said, "Girl, I'm being nice to you. How long I can manage it is something else. I do remember us being in the bathroom. Only I ought to tell you, that wasn't the last time I had any pussy, understand? I've had some since then. Now we have that out of the way, you tell me what we come here for. See, I have to get back home soon, case Mr.

Woody wakes up in the dark and don't know where he's at."

Robin said, "Yeah, but have you done it in a bathroom since then?"

Donnell said,-"Shit," and had to grin at her. He took a sip of his drink.

"Let's get to it. Tell me you setting the bombs or somebody else?"

"You remember Skip?"

"Which one was he?"

"Kind of a biker type with a ponytail."

"Look like a bum. Huey P. Newton's lawyer had a ponytail and that man was wealthy. Yeah, I remember Skip.

He's the one done the bombs, huh?"

Robin gave him a nod.

"What happened to the one today?"

"We'll get to that. First I want to know about Skippy.

Where's he at, hiding someplace?"

"We'll have to get to that, too," Robin said.

"After I called this morning, did you present my demands to Woody?"

Donnell smiled a little.