Skip said, "I knew you'd be into something. Just don't tell me you've become a women's lib vegetarian lesbian, okay? I have beautiful memories of us in bed-and on floors and in sleeping bags, in back seats …"

Now Robin Abbott was smiling, sort of, agreeable without admitting anything: calm brown eyes gazing through the tinted glasses set against a pale fox face, her brown hair sleeked back into a single braid she would sometimes finger and stroke, a rope of hair, holding it against her breast in the cotton sweater.

"Your hair's different," Skip said, "otherwise…" He squinted at her and said, "The first time I ever saw you, Lincoln Park in Chicago, man, that was a long time ago. We were only-what, nineteen years old?"

"You were. I was still eighteen," Robin said.

"It was the Saturday before the start of the Democratic National Convention, August twenty-fourth, 1968." She was nodding, seeing it again.

"Lincoln Park…"

"Thousands of people," Skip said, "and I picked you out right away:

Why, there's a little Wolverine from the University of Michigan. Though I hadn't seen you at school before. You had on a tank top and you were holding up a poster that said, real big, FUCK THE DRAFT, waving it at the cops. I kept looking at you, your little nips showing in that thin material, your hair real long down your back. I said to myself, I think I'll score me some of that."

"Your hair was longer too," Robin said.

"Cops kept grabbing it, trying to hold you. We got away and I tied it up in a ponytail."

Skip said, "You think I don't remember that?" Touching his hair.

"I don't ordinarily wear it like this, but I did this evening."

Robin said, "I'd know you anywhere. Remember the first night? In the guy's car?"

"The cops pounding on it"-Skip grinned-"whole bunch of them wearing those baby-blue riot helmets. I look up and see these pig faces staring at me. Cop bangs on the window.