“I know that,” he said. “Just checking to see if you’re awake.”
“I’m awake. Barely. These tapes are so boring.”
“Ditto,” he said. “Anything for dessert?”
“Tofu.”
“I pass.
The Corona beer we had picked up at Chico’s all-night market on Broadway was warm. I gathered up the greasy wrappers of takeout tacos that littered the couch between us and wadded them into a bag I set on the floor next to the last two beers in the sixpack. My knees were stiff when I got up to put another tape from Garth’s box into the VCR.
I needed to move around a little to stay awake. We had made it to the end of the first two tapes without finding enlightenment. The raw footage was damn tedious to watch. Most of it was just people milling around or mugging for the cameras, peace demonstration organizers looking for people to organize. There was an incredible amount of T and A. Young, nubile women had a magnetic attraction either for the zoom function of the camera lens or for the cameramen. I used the fast-forward button a lot. If I skipped past any young female material that looked especially choice, Flint rewound the tape and replayed it, sometimes a couple of times. He was a tease.
“What is this we’re watching now?” Flint asked.
I picked up the tape cover and read to him from the label, “Demonstration against war-related research on campus, University of California, Berkeley, November 19, 1969.”
“How long is this one?”
“Two hours, fourteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds.”
“Hmm.” He unsnapped his belt holster, took it off, and tucked his automatic under the sofa. After some stretching, he settled down into the sofa cushions and put his feet up on Em’s coffee table. His socks smeared a few of the black graphite smudges the fingerprint man had left on every surface in the apartment. The place was a mess and I thought about poor Mrs. Lim tackling it alone. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, and so beer-mellow, I would have gone in search of a rag and some cleanser.
Instead, I reached for the VCR remote and fast-forwarded the tape until something seemed to be happening.
The demonstration was in Berkeley, on a lovely, clear fall day. The camera was set up at the end of Telegraph Avenue near the Setter Gate. This was my hometown. I enjoyed watching people walk by, seeing again the familiar street scene just off-campus. It was something like watching home movies.
On the screen, a couple of cars pulled up, followed by a flat-bed truck festooned with banners, HELL NO, WE WON’T GO, and variations on that theme. The truck parked in front of the Bear’s Lair, a popular student hangout. The truck was positioned so that its bed was a stage facing down Telegraph. Two men in bright tie-dyed shirts and bellbottom jeans hooked up a P.A. system. I recognized one of them-young, thin, red-haired Rod Peebles.
The carloads of people who were dropped off next seemed to be a vanguard, the setup crew. A pudgy young woman in baggy jeans unfolded a card table on the sidewalk and taped a poster, LEGAL TEAM, to the front. I suspected this was Fay Cohen though I couldn’t see her well enough to be sure. She was off at the side, down Bancroft, and not what the cameraman was looking for.
Cartons of pamphlets were hefted onto the flatbed, opened, and distributed to passersby. In the background, someone was singing Beatle songs, with a guitar accompanying him. Some things never seem to change. Street musicians in Berkeley are still playing Beatles music.
The camera panned left, and I thought I saw Emily standing in a cluster of kids passing a joint. The pale, shiny hair was the same, and the person was very tall. When she started to turn, the long hair swept across her face like a sheaf of wheat blowing in the wind. I was already standing close to the TV. I leaned forward anyway, to see better. The hair I was watching fell into place and uncovered the wrong face. I took a moment to accept this; I really wanted it to be Emily. The kid with the long, shiny hair also had a full beard and mustache, a hippie, dippy guy. I punched fast-forward.
Flint stifled a yawn. “Exactly what are you looking for?”
“I’ll know when I see it.”
“Hmm,” he said again. His eyes were on the screen, but half-closed. “All that hair. Didn’t any of their parents ever take them to the barbershop?”
I laughed. “Do you have kids, Mike?”
“One. He’s fifteen.”
“How does he wear his hair?”
He pointed to a young man on the screen who had a two-foot-long ponytail hanging over his shoulder. He might have been all of eighteen. “I’d never let my boy out of the house looking like that.”
“So you say.” I nudged him. “You want another beer?”
“No thanks.” He seemed to rouse himself. He sat up and stretched.
“Maggie, where are you going to stay tonight?”
“Right here.”
“I think that’s a real bad idea until we get the door fixed.”
“Exactly why I have to stay,” I said. “I’m not leaving the apartment unattended. Not when someone’s already broken in. Anyway, there isn’t much night left.”
“Could we argue that once around again, or is that final?”
“I’m staying right here,” I said.
He sighed. “Then I’m staying with you.”
“Do you have a note from home?”
“Yeah,” he smiled. “I sign my own notes.”
“Okay, then.” I fast-forwarded a dead section of tape, watching the TV to avoid making eye contact with Flint, give away something before I was ready. I was glad I wouldn’t be in the apartment alone. I could have had worse company than Mike with whom to see the night through. A whole lot worse.
I had long ago concluded that his resurrected-hawk routine was exactly that, a routine, cop talk. While I suspected he didn’t pay dues to the ACLU, he wasn’t as reactionary as he tried to make out. Flint, I was learning, was a provocateur. He would say anything to get a rise out of me. I didn’t mind. I like a good argument now and then.
The scene on the TV began to take on some energy. Two army-green buses pulled up in front of the Bear’s Lair and four or five dozen national guardsmen in riot gear spilled out. They jogged into position around the campus gate and formed phalanxes on both sides of the flatbed. With bayonets affixed, they held their rifles at the ready.
A couple of men in business suits arrived in a plain brown Plymouth and strutted over to the flatbed. I recognized a younger, thinner version of Lester Rowland. Something about him, his attitude or his carriage, set my teeth on edge. Plainclothes in Berkeley is not J. C. Penney’s suits. Never was. If these two agents had had signs on their backs, KICK ME, I’M FBI,” their identity could not have been plainer.
Rod Peebles stuck close to them. He looked over their shoulders when they took leaflets out of one of the boxes on the truck. Lester Rowland said something to Rod, and Rod raised a fist in reaction. Just as the exchange seemed about to escalate into something interesting, a young woman carrying an armload of daisies entered frame right and seduced the cameraman’s focus away.
The woman was energetic and fresh-looking, with a curly mass of Renaissance-red hair that was held away from her face by a leather band. Her batik sundress was long. Its thin fabric billowed around her legs and fell away from her slender, suntanned arm when she raised a hand to sweep back a shiny lock of hair. Love beads swung from her neck in rhythm with the graceful step of her bare feet.
The cameraman must have been besotted. He stayed with her, giving us a full side angle as she broke off daisy stems from her bouquet and, ever careful of the bayonets, inserted a yellow daisy into the barrel of each guardsman’s rifle.
The guardsmen, who seemed to be about the same age as the woman, held their positions. But when she smiled, they smiled, dimples and healthy white teeth showing under flak helmets. As the camera moved in for a closeup, one of the guardsmen picked up a flower that had fallen to the pavement. He smelled it before he tucked it into his helmet.