Freaky Deaky Read Free Page B

rubbed his eyes with a knuckle. “I get tears thinking about it.”
    Robin said, “You remember the last time we were here?”
    The waiter appeared with Skip’s drink and thebottle of wine, opened it and poured a taste into Skip’s glass. Robin watched Skip hold the wine in his mouth and wink at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to spit it out and do a scene with the waiter. Skip loved scenes. But this time he swallowed and gave her a sly grin.
    “I wasn’t gonna do nothing. Guy’s a real waiter, wears a tux, probably been here all his life.”
    Robin tried again, patient. “You remember the last time we had dinner here?”
    Skip had to stop and think. She watched him look around, maybe for something that might remind him. “We got picked up in ‘seventy-eight. . . . It wasn’t after they brought us back.”
    “Before that. Before we went underground.”
    “Man, that was a long time ago.”
    “We came here December fifteenth, 1971,” Robin said, “about a week after we got back from New York.” She waited again as Skip frowned, thinking hard. “We went to New York for that stop-the-war benefit.”
    He came alive. “Yeah, in that big cathedral.”
    “St. John the Divine,” Robin said. “You sold tickets at the door and walked off with something like nine hundred dollars.”
    “I think it was more.”
    “You told me nine hundred.”
    “The People’s Coalition for something or other.”
    “Peace and Justice.”
    “Yeah, they had a bunch of celebrities giving talks. It was so goddamn boring, that’s why I ripped ’em off. I figured they weren’t gonna cut it, so fuck ’em.”
    “But when we came here for dinner, you were broke.”
    “I’d bought a ton of acid and a few pounds of weed by then.”
    “You said, ‘It looks like we’re going to have to eat and run, fast,’ and I said, ‘Why don’t you take up a collection?’ Remember?”
    He was looking around again. “Yeah, shit, I remember.”
    Robin watched his gaze stop and hold on a trio of strolling musicians across the room, short, heavyset guys in red vests, two with guitars, one with a stand-up bass. They were singing “The Shadow of Your Smile” to a table of diners trying to ignore the trio.
    “I dumped the bread out of the basket and that’s what you used,” Robin said, bringing Skip back. “You went from table to table.”
    Skip was grinning. “I went up to this couple, I go, ‘Pardon me, but can you spare some bread?’ The guy thought I meant bread . He goes, serious as can be, ‘You ask your waiter, he’ll get you some.’ I like to died.”
    “You sound more Indiana farm boy,” Robin said, “than even you did before.”
    “From hanging out with these two stunt guys from Texas. Couple of shitkickers, but good guys. I think before Mr. Mario told me to sit down I scored about fifty, sixty bucks.”
    “Thirty-seven,” Robin said, “and the drinks and dinner came to thirty-two fifty. You might’ve left a tip, but I doubt it.”
    “Come on—you remember the exact amount?”
    “After we talked on the phone I looked it up in my journal. It was thirty-two fifty.”
    “That’s right, your notebooks. You filled up a bunch, huh, writing your column.”
    “I have everything we did,” Robin said, “from the summer of ‘sixty-eight in Chicago to June of ‘seventy-two, when we were busted and jumped bail. I have the names of every single person we were involved with, too. Including the copouts.”
    “I always liked your stuff, had a mean sound. You kept writing, didn’t you?”
    “I did ‘Notes from the Underground’ the first couple of years. The Liberation News Service picked it up. Since Huron Valley I’ve written four historical romance-rape novels. Have you ever heard of Nicole Robinette? Emerald Fire? Diamond Fire? ”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “I’m Nicole.”
    “Why’n’t you write your own story? Be more exciting.”
    “I have a better idea,” Robin said.
    She waited for