She takes trips."

"Your mom was a trip," Skip said, "had that sarcastic way of speaking.

You do it better."

"Thanks a lot," Robin said. She blew her smoke at him and took a sip of wine.

"I rode a government bus down to Milan," Skip said.

"I don't know where my mommy was. This bus had heavy wire over the windows in case we got loose of our handcuffs and leg irons. Me and a half a dozen Hispanic brothers with needle tracks up their arms. I thought, The fuck am I doing with these dudes? Man, I'm political. I should be going to one of those country-club joints like where they sent those Watergate assholes, but I guess they thought I was ba-a-ad."

"You were," Robin said.

"I think it was blowing up the Federal Building that pissed them off."

"Yeah, but hell, the money they kept when we jumped bond, it would've paid to fix up the damage, wouldn't it?

Some of it." Skip was chewing on a breadstick, crumbs in his beard.

"Man, when they brought us up that second time, if they'd known even half the gigs I was into… I mean those years living underground."

Robin said, "Living out there with the great silent majority. I know why they're silent, they don't have a fucking thing to say. I got into shoplifting just for something to do.

One time I even stole a bra."

Skip said, "I was living in a commune near Grants, New Mexico, with these leftover flower children bitching at each other, bored out of my skull. I went up to Farmington and got the job as a TV repairman 'cause, you know, I always had a knack for wiring up shit. This one day I said to myself, Man, if you're a wanted criminal then how come you aren't into crime? That's when I moved to L.A. the first time."

"You ever look for your picture in a post office?"

"Yeah, but I never saw it."

"I didn't see mine either," Robin said. She leaned in closer, resting her arms on the table.