LITMIR.BIZ

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was just entertainment. Abbie Hoffman’s “Revolution for the hell of it.”

      Traffic inched forward. A guy in Haggar slacks and buttoned-down shirt was coming down the row of cars pushing a clipboard in the windows. He looked contemptuously at Mark on his motorcycle, but said, “Sign the referendum for visitation rights in the dorms?” Mark grinned. “Sure.” He noticed Carol coming his way accompanied by two serious-faced guys in preppy dress.

      “What you said makes sense,” Mark told her when they came even with him.

      “Didn’t have much effect.” She said, still walking. “Tomorrow’s papers will talk about a student riot.” She stopped and came back to him. “Nobody will have the slightest idea what it was all about, including those who were there.”

      Traffic started moving. “What is it about?” Mark asked. He put the bike in gear and inched forward.

      “About change, constructive change,” she said over her shoulder. “You should join us.”

      * * *

      Two blocks away on Broadway, Jeff spotted Jennifer walking with a friend in front of Barth’s Menswear. He elbowed through the dispersing crowd and caught up with them. “Thought I saw you in the crowd. Hello,” Jeff said.

      “Hello, Jeff,” Jennifer’s smile drained away. “Stephanie, this is Jeff.” Jeff and Stephanie shook hands. The crowd flowed past, chattering about the protest and the cops. The three of them stood against the glass windows awkwardly, searching for something to say. Stephanie moved slowly along the display window, trying to get Jennifer to come along. Jennifer studied the manikins in tweed blazers and wool caps.

      “Is Mark okay?” Jennifer said.

      “Yeah, he’s fine.” Then Jeff caught her meaning. “Well, he’s keeping to himself a lot recently. He’s studying all the time, I think.” He didn’t notice he was leaning toward her, but she did and took a step away.

      She nodded. “Well, do you think I should phone him?”

      Jeff looked at his reflection in the glass and at her reflection beside his. “Well, yes.” The faint scent of tear gas came through the air, bringing a new burst of jokes and laughter from the crowd. Jennifer brightened. “Okay, I will. Well, we need to get back to campus.” She put her hand on Jeff’s arm. “Thanks. Now that you’ve met Stephanie, maybe the four of us can go out sometime.”

      Jeff nodded. “I’d like that.”

      Jennifer waved but Stephanie did not as they walked up Ninth Street toward Columbia College.

      * * *

      The police had University Avenue blocked, so Mark turned down Hitt and onto Paquin. He parked his bike in the gravel lot beside Dave’s TR3. As he came up the last flight of stairs he could hear Steve Griffin’s voice “…domino theory.”

      Steve was a townie too, tall, and dark haired, conservative in view, who had elected to stay in ROTC after it stopped being mandatory. He could usually be relied on to spark Dave’s indignation with right wing remarks. Mark grinned. This should be interesting. Mark stepped through the open door and a stocky girl with a great halo of dark brown hair handed him a joint. Steve and Dave were sitting on the floor in candlelight, surrounded by empty Busch cans and full ashtrays. Mark stepped over a Stan Getz record album covered in pot and found some floor space near the bookshelf. There were three perfectly shaped joints on the record jacket. The girl put the arm back at the beginning of the record began rolling another joint. Beside her was a copy of Stanyan Street. A beer was pushed into his hand.

      “Where’s Jennifer?” Dave said in a passable imitation of Jeff’s voice. He grinned, looking better than he had earlier and tilted his head at the girl. “Meet Allison.”

      Allison nodded to Mark, licked one joint closed and started rolling another. Steve handed Mark a joint, he took a hit, then passed it to Dave. The candle on the end block of the makeshift bookcase flickered and steadied. So Dave’s gone from bright and ambitious Carol to this trailer bimbo. Mark took a long pull from his can of Busch and tried to keep from staring at Allison’s boobs, nipples dark against her white tee shirt. Mark took a hit on a joint that came his way and leaned back on a pillow, letting his eyes rest on a new Monterey Jazz Festival poster tacked to the slanted ceiling. Relaxed.

      “Tet lost us the war, Steve,” Dave said in lecture mode. “It was all over the news.” He must be feeling better, Mark thought.

      “Bullshit,” Steve interjected, “it was all over the news, and that’s what lost us public support. The news portrayed it as a defeat—VC on the American Embassy compound—all that hysteria. But the fact is that the North Vietnamese had planned Tet to be a countrywide uprising against the government and the Americans, but nothing happened. It failed. It’s back to business as usual.”

      “Which isn’t saying much,” Dave said. “Eventually we’ll have our own little Dien Bien Phu, just like the French did.” Dave was in the place of honor next to the window fan and the record player. “Maybe we already have—the battle of Khe Sanh.” Allison sat beside him, knee to knee. She passed him a bottle of Lambrusco.

      “Bullshit,” Steve repeated. He took a hit on a joint and passed it. “We won the battle of Khe Sanh. Massive air strikes called Operation Pegasus, then the Air Cav came in to relieve the Marines. There was no resemblance to Dien Bien Phu. The French had no air support, no relief forces, a tiny infantry force with no artillery. There’s no parallel between Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh.”

      Mark felt a peaceful kind of melancholy. This familiar feeling—sitting with friends, drinking beer, smoking dope, talking—this is what’s important, this is what we’ll remember, not riots in the park. And all this will be gone soon. We can’t make it last forever.

      “I’m thinking about registering for classes,” Allison said out of the blue. They turned her way. Embarrassed at this change of subject, Dave took a slug from the Lambrusco bottle and passed it on. “What program?” His skeptical look was not sympathetic. Allison’s face had a slightly defiant look that Mark thought made her very beautiful. “Journalism or maybe Creative Writing,” she said in a defensive tone. “I’ve got over thirty hours of credits at Moberly Junior College.” She took a generous pull from the wine bottle.

      “Moberly,” Dave said, carefully neutral. “What’s your GPA?”

      “Three point four.”

      Mark and Steve laughed. “Hell of a lot better than my grade point,” Mark said. Maybe she isn’t trailer trash after all, he thought.

      “Grades don’t matter,” Dave said piously. He took a deep drag on a joint.

      “Yes they do,” Steve said. “If you want to get a job after college.”

      “You won’t have to worry,” Dave said softly. “How long’s the Navy got you for?” Steve had stayed in Naval ROTC all four years of college even though it was no longer mandatory.

      “Three years,” Steve said quietly.

      Dave took a hit from the joint and leaned back into the shadow. “When do you report?”

      “Fifteenth of February,” Steve said. He took another gargantuan hit from the joint and passed it to Allison. “It’s a citizen’s duty, and I’d just as soon get on with it,” he said around a lungful of smoke. “Maybe while I’m doing my time we’ll reach some kind of détente at the Paris peace talks.”

      “Know where you’ll be stationed yet?” Dave said slowly to the floor in front of him. The record had stopped and a new kind of silence had come into the room.

      “Oakland Navy Base until I get my ship assignment. Probably be there all summer. You guys should come out for a visit.” Allison put a Coltrane record on and let his sax smooth the smoky air in the room.

      Steve finished his beer. “When I was in officer’s basic at Camp Lejeune last summer the old timers

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