“Do you want to?” Eagle asked.
“Do you?” Val asked.
Unlike Strawberry, Val didn’t ask questions about Eagle’s ethnicity. Maybe Val knew it, and maybe she didn’t. But she did know—and immediately accept—the fact that Eagle had mixed parentage.
“Sometimes I don’t mind whites,” Eagle said. “Pammy’s good people.”
“Yeah,” Val said. “I’m beginning to understand that about Pammy. Although my muscles are calling me a liar right now.”
And Eagle finally understood. Val had been in the beginner’s exercise class or, as Eagle called it, Injury Heaven. She’d treated more beginners for sprains and broken bones than everyone else in the gym combined.
“So you were a cop?” Eagle asked, looking at the shirt.
Val gave her a bitter unreadable smile.
“Too young to be retired.” Eagle ran her gaze over Val, then realized that this woman’s frailty could have had several causes, including a great physical trauma. “Injury force you out?”
“Injury, yeah, you could say I got injured.” Val laughed, only this time the sound had no mirth at all. Bitter, again. “Cop, no. Married to one. Once.”
Eagle frowned. That was a strange way to put things.
“He’s dead.” Val’s voice had gotten even flatter. Eagle’s heart went out to her, and Eagle’s heart hardly ever went out to anyone.
They stared at each other for a moment. The conversation had probably reached its natural end, and for that, Eagle felt another pang.
Val looked down. Then she shrugged once as if she were having a conversation with herself.
“Um,” she said, suddenly sounding unsure. The caution in her voice surprised Eagle. She hadn’t expected it. “I know this is…I mean…would you like to…have lunch?”
Then Val looked up, almost as if she expected Eagle to say no.
Eagle would have, too, if it weren’t for Val’s tone. And the fact that Eagle was hungry, which surprised her, given the stench in the alley.
But it really wasn’t hunger that made her consider Val’s suggestion. It was the way Val was looking at her, worried and hopeful at the same time.
That woman was as damaged as Eagle, just in a different way. Eagle felt the pull of a kindred spirit again and wondered if she would be better off ignoring it.
“Most of the places around here are hippie enclaves,” Eagle said, hoping that might give her an out.
Val shrugged one shoulder. “We are in Berkeley after all. That Caffe Mediterraneum has good coffee.”
“They put shit in their coffee and call it European,” Eagle said.
“It is European,” Val said, and then laughed, a real laugh this time. “There are other places too.”
“Other places would be better,” Eagle said, unable to believe she was negotiating a lunch date, but unable to stop. “How about Robbie’s?”
“The place that the Beats used to hang out at?” Val asked. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Eagle’s eyes narrowed. “You know more about Berkeley than you initially let on.”
Val shrugged. “I read the wrong things before coming here. I knew about the Beats and the quality of the campus. I had no idea that the community was in such turmoil right now. I just thought I was coming to a place where I might feel at home.”
“Do you feel at home?” Eagle asked.
Val’s eyes narrowed. Then she slowly shook her head.
“I don’t,” she said. “Although I’m not sure I would feel at home anywhere anymore.”
Eagle thought about that statement. Too much truth for a Monday afternoon.
“Yeah,” Eagle said. “I hear you.”
She straightened up all the way, looked at her left hand covered in slime, and thought about going back into the gym to wash it off. If she went back inside, she would never leave. Pammy would want to settle what had happened, maybe update her on that stupid fucking hippie-freak girl.
“Okay,” Eagle said. “Let’s go see if we can hear the echoes of Ginsberg howling.”
Val grinned at her. And together, they walked out of the alley and onto the street.
14
Val
The sunlight seemed brighter than I expected after the dimness of that squalid little alley. I let out a small breath, still a bit surprised at myself for venturing into such a dicey place.
But I hadn’t given it a second thought. I had glanced down the alley, like I always did when I passed it, looking for him or men like him, and instead, I had seen a woman in slow collapse.
I recognized that slow collapse. I’d done it a lot these past seven months. You think you’re fine, and then you realize you’re not, but you do your best to stay upright, even though your legs are refusing, your head feels muzzy, and you can barely breathe.
If you end up on the ground, well, then it takes a long time to get back up. But if you can remain upright, you’re okay, at least for a short time.
I hurried into the alley without even checking the shadows around the garbage cans, and caught the woman by the waist before she sank onto the wet concrete. It had smelled like that wetness was dog pee. There were dogs everywhere in this city, and no one bothered to take care of them, which irritated the hell out of me. If I were a dog person—and I wasn’t—I would have been pulling dogs away from their drugged-out owners. I probably would have had to have my own damn doggy halfway house or something. But I didn’t, although I did seem to have a thing for strays.
People strays.
Like this woman, Eagle. Now, she was striding beside me, powerful, seemingly strong. Her back was straight, her brown eyes took in everything around her. She was nothing like the woman I had found cratering in the alley, and yet, she was the same person.
The strong woman was her cover. Like I used to have a cover.
Or maybe it was her real self, and the broken part, which had appeared in the alley, just needed to heal.
Eagle had naturally straight black hair, cut short, and flat, arresting features. Her skin wasn’t as dark as mine, but it wasn’t white either. Her shoulders were broad for a woman, and she kept a pace that nearly exhausted me.
Or maybe the class had exhausted me. I had done all I could to keep up, but I really wasn’t good at any of it. I managed two push-ups, legs and back straight, before collapsing on the mat. I jumped rope for what seemed like forever, but it turned out to be only a minute before I had to stop and catch my breath.
It would’ve been completely embarrassing if it weren’t for Joan and some of the other women, who were having the same troubles.
The streets were crowded, even more crowded than they had been this morning. It was a little after noon, but the time shouldn’t have made as much difference near campus as it would have in a more businesslike setting.
And no one could accuse this part of Berkeley of being businesslike. Even though I was only in a t-shirt and shorts, I felt dressed up, compared to the fringe, blue jeans, and bare male chests around me. The girls all wore their hair long, held back (if at all) by woven headbands, and many of them wore bikini tops that left little to the imagination.
Bicyclists passed us, dressed in brown fringed pants with fringed vests, their bare feet extended outward. Eagle clearly had a better sense of self-perseveration than I had, because she moved aside to prevent being hit by those extended feet. She gave the cyclists a glare that should have melted them into the pavement.
Not that they noticed.
I was learning, though, that the hippie types who hung around this part of Berkeley didn’t notice anyone. And they stank. Unwashed clothes, unwashed bodies, patchouli oil, incense, and marijuana—although (honest again) I wasn’t sure whether the pot hit I was getting was coming from the hippie cyclists or from Eagle herself.
It looked like she was using pot to send herself into oblivion, the way some people used alcohol. The way I thought about using alcohol in those weeks after the last surgery. But, in those dark days, I had known if I di
d drink, I would have been lost forever.
Eagle and I reached Telegraph, and it was full of people, unlike yesterday. In fact, a large crowd gathered around the entrance to Robbie’s Cafeteria at the end of the block. Someone I couldn’t see was playing the bongos, and someone else I couldn’t see was playing a guitar badly, and some wispy-haired strung-out white girl was singing—or maybe she thought she was singing. She was making singing-like sounds, anyway.
Dogs sat on the edge of the crowd, and for a half second, I wondered if they were going to howl. Which made me smile, since Eagle and I had just discussed Ginsburg’s poem “Howl.”
I was about to start quoting from it as I turned to her, changing the words to reflect the dogs, when I saw her expression. Her eyes had narrowed, her mouth thinned, and she leaned forward somewhat aggressively. She was spoiling for a fight—and oddly, that didn’t bother me.
I glanced across the street, at Caffe Mediterraneum, which was closer than Robbie’s Cafeteria (and had better food). Usually the hippies gathered in front of Caffe Med, but today there were only a few, and they were sitting on the sidewalk. Everyone else had moved down to Robbie’s, probably to watch the performances.
I touched Eagle’s arm. “I hate to tell you this, but Caffe Med looks more promising.”
“Fuck, of course it does,” she said. “Because that’s the kind of day I’m having.”
She said that last in a matter-of-fact manner, not self-pitying at all. The anger that had been in her face a moment ago was gone.
She shrugged, pivoted, and crossed Telegraph in front of two motorcyclists and a Volkswagen bug. All three of them zoomed by her as if they hadn’t seen her or simply didn’t care.
A tambourine and a harmonica had joined the bongo-guitar-singer mess. I hurried kitty-corner across the street, watching for traffic, unlike Eagle, heading toward Caffe Med. It took up a good part of the entire block, its gigantic striped blue-and-white sign, painted on the building itself, dominating this part of Telegraph. A billboard for Smirnoff Vodka perched precariously on the roof of the building, sunlight glinting off the metal struts.
The billboard was how I noted Caffe Med in the first place. The word Smirnoff in neon had shown whitely on the stripes below, making the word Mediterraneum look almost alive. And then I had looked down and noticed the European espresso makers lining the window. I hadn’t seen those since I took a trip to Italy in my junior year of college.
We walked around a young white man with long brown hair held back by a woven bandana. He leaned against the wall between the House of Leather shoe repair shop and the café, his dirty, naked feet resting on a blanket with some crudely made silver earrings and spoon rings displayed on it. Next to him, a woman wearing a bikini top and short shorts sat cross-legged in front of a woven blanket with her wares on it. She was clearly the source of the headbands, and I could see why. They were exquisitely woven of good materials and lovely vibrant colors, priced at less than a dollar each.
I would have lingered, except that Eagle had already marched into the Caffe Med.
As usual, I had to go through a thicket of sad-looking dogs to get inside. One rather ragged mix with curly white fur had managed to sneak past the door, and was sitting behind a middle-aged man’s legs, eating the remains of a pink cupcake off the pebbled linoleum floor.
One table, completely covered with dishes, looked unusable. The only other open table was near the stairs. Eagle went to it, cleared off some dirty coffee cups, and put them on the dirtier table without a qualm.
“I’ll order for you,” I said.
She looked up. “No need,” she said. “I got it.”
I let out a small sigh. What was it with everyone here, assuming I had no money at all? I probably had more money than all of them, maybe put together.
“Just tell me what you want,” I said. “You guard the table. I’ll let you know how much it is, and you can pay me.”
Her lips thinned, but she looked at the people still milling across the street, and I could almost see her thought. We might not get another table for a while.
“A roast beef sandwich would be great,” she said.
“And coffee?” I asked, feeling a little impy.
She made a face. “A glass of water would be fine. Just wait here for a second while I wash my hands.”
She left the table before I had time to protest, and wended her way to the restroom. I supposed she would order when she got back, before she came to the table.
I sighed and sat down, claiming our table. To my right, a woman with a short bob sat alone, reading a thick book about Kafka. In front of our table, four kids earnestly discussed the moon landing. One of the girls kept tucking and untucking a strand of dirty blonde hair behind her ear. The boy beside her, with his curly red hair a riot around his face, removed his granny glasses and shook them at his companions to make a point.
To my left, a couple sat in silence. They were maybe my age. The woman stirred her coffee repeatedly, while he ignored her. He was reading one of the free newspapers, the Berkeley Barb, as if he were memorizing every word.
Eagle came directly back from the bathroom, which surprised me. She rubbed her well-scrubbed hands, and made a face as she sat down.
“There was something slimy on that garbage can,” she said. “I worked hard to make sure I didn’t touch anything else.”
“Except the dishes you moved,” I said, looking at them in their pile.
“Well,” she said in a somewhat wry tone, “let’s hope their dishwasher works.”
If they even had an automated dishwasher. I would wager the dishwasher here was some student who couldn’t get a better job. And given the students’ level of personal hygiene in this town, I wouldn’t trust that the dishes Eagle touched would be clean after five washings, let alone two.
My gorge rose for a moment, and then I sighed. I had to trust, even when it came to food.
“Okay,” I said with more determination than I intended, “I’m getting sandwiches.”
Eagle’s glance at me was perplexed. She probably heard my Churchillian “we will fight on the beaches” tone in my voice.
I stood, and hurried to the small counter, skirting several tables. It smelled like fresh ground coffee up front. A young woman wearing a white gauze peasant dress was counting pennies to pay for her coffee. The young man beside her, in cut-off jeans and a loose t-shirt, swayed to music only he could hear.
I got in line behind them—if you could count them as a line—and studied the posted menu, even though I already knew what I wanted. A young couple stood outside the door, feet bare. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
There was no sign here that said No shirt, no shoes, no service, but there needed to be. I had no idea how this place kept going. In Chicago, the city would’ve shut them down or made them pay huge fines to stay open. But then, in Chicago, almost no one went barefoot on the streets—at least in my neighborhood. Too much broken glass from smashed streetlights.
I ordered for Eagle and got myself a ham sandwich and a specialty coffee drink—espresso with some foamed milk. I asked for two waters, figuring I probably needed to drink something after that exercise session.
I brought everything back to the table in two trips. Clearly, I’d never been a waitress. I shoved an ashtray to one side, moved the big glass sugar dispenser, and grabbed some paper napkins.
Eagle looked at my small cup of coffee, with the little flower the counterman had drawn in foam on the surface.
“You’re drinking that crap?” she asked.
“I fell in love with it when I was in Italy for my junior year abroad,” I said.
She leaned back and gave me a sideways look. “You are a bundle of surprises.”
I hated it when people said things like that. They usually meant that they had underestimated me based on my appearance or my accent or my femaleness or something.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I tasted all kinds of crap when I was ove
rseas and I ended up hating all of it.”
I grinned at her, relieved. She hadn’t made any of the expected remarks.
So it was my turn. “Before you said army nurse. Now you mention overseas. Vietnam?”
Her face closed down. “What’s it to you?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “That thing, in the alley—”
“Forget it.” She hadn’t even picked up her sandwich yet. She looked like she was about to leave. “It’s not important.”
“I’ve had similar experiences,” I said, ignoring her. “But not because of my service. I didn’t serve. I’m not qualified. I was just a regular citizen until December.”
I wasn’t exactly sure why I was talking to her. Except maybe some part of me thought she was the only person I had met who could understand.
“What happened in December?” Her fingers toyed with the sandwich. She didn’t look quite as stressed out. She almost looked interested now.
I had only spoken about this twice before, once with Marvella and once with the med school classmate who ended up botching the abortion.
I licked my lips, then lowered my voice. I hoped the clank of plates and the low thrum of other conversations—not to mention the distant sounds of tambourine, harmonica, bongo, and guitar—would prevent people at other tables from hearing what I had to say.
“I was raped,” I said. “And after that, he wouldn’t leave me alone.”
Eagle didn’t seem shocked at all. She had probably seen worse in her life, or maybe even experienced worse.
“Is that why you moved here?” she asked. “Because he follows you?”
I shook my head. “He’s dead.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Thanks to your husband?”
“Friends of my husband. Not Truman, although he tried.” And that got him killed. I shivered with guilt. I had treated him badly, and he had treated me well. Well, enough, anyway. He wanted a traditional wife, and I just wasn’t wife material. But I wasn’t going to tell Eagle the whole sordid story. It was behind me now. Or at least, I wanted it to be.
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