'Daddys going to spank you when we get home,' the young woman promised grimly. 'And no treats before bed.'
'BAWWWWTLE'
Now why does a young girl like that want to streak her hair? he wondered, and looked at the paper. The headlines said:
SMALL CROWDS IN BETHLEHEM PILGRIMS FEAR HOLY TERROR
On the bottom of page one, a short news story caught his eye and he readit carefully:
WINTERBURGER SAYS ACTS OF VANDALISM WILL NOT BE TOLERATED
(Local) Victor Winterburger, Democratic candidate for the seat of the late Donald P. Naish, who was killed in a car crash late last month, said yesterday that acts of vandalism such as the one that caused almost a hundred thousand dollars' worth of damage at the Route 784 construction site early last Wednesday, cannot be tolerated 'in a civilized American city.' Winterburger made his remarks at an American Legion dinner, and received a standing ovation.
'We have seen what has happened in other cities,' Winterburger said. 'The defaced buses and subway cars and buildings in New York, the broken windows and senselessly marred schools of Detroit and San Francisco, the abuse of public facilities, public museums, public galleries. We must not allow the greatest country in the world to be overrun with huns and barbarians.'
Police were called to the Grand Street area of the construction when a number of fires and explosions were seen by
(Continued page 5 col. 2)
He folded the paper and put it on top of a tattered pile of magazines. The washer hummed and hummed, a low, soporific sound. Huns. Barbarians. They were the huns. They were the rippers and chewers and choppers, turning people out of their homes, kicking apart lives as a small boy might kick apart an anthill-
The young woman dragged her daughter, still crying for a bottle, out of the UWash-It. He closed his eyes and dozed off, waiting for his dryer to finish. A few minutes later he snapped awake, thinking he heard fire bells, but it was only a Salvation Army Santa who had taken up his position on the corner out front. When he left the laundry with his basket of clothes, he threw all his pocket change into Santa's pot.
'God bless you,' Santa said.
December 25, 1973
The telephone woke him around ten in the morning. He fumbled the extension off the night table, put it to his ear, and an operator said crisply into his sleep, 'Will you accept a collect call from Olivia Brenner?'
He was lost and could only fumble, 'What? Who? I'm asleep.'
A distant, slightly familiar voice said, 'Oh for Chrissake,' and he knew.
'Yes,' he said. 'I'll take it.' Had she hung up on him? He got up on one elbow to see. 'Olivia? You there?'
'Go ahead, please,' the operator overrode him, not willing to vary her psalm.
'Olivia, are you there?'
'I'm here.' The voice was crackling and distant.
'I'm glad you called.'
'I didn't think you'd take the call.'
'I just woke up. Are you there? In Las Vegas?'
'Yes,' she said flatly. The word came out with curiously dull authority, like a plank dropped on a cement floor.
'Well, how is it? How are you doing?'
Her sigh was so bitter that it was almost a tearless sob. 'Not so good. '
'No?'
'I met a guy my second . . . no, third . . . night here. Went to a party and go s-o-o-o fucked up-'
'Dope?' he asked cautiously, very aware that this was long distance and the government was everywhere.
'Dope?' she echoed crossly. 'Of course it was dope. Bad shit, full of dex or something . . . I think I got raped. '
The last trailed off so badly that he had to ask, 'What?'
'I know,' he said.
'Bullshit, you know.'
'Do you need money?'
'Why ask me that? I can't fuck you over the telephone. I can't even hand-job you.'
'I have some money,' he said. 'I could send it. That's all. That's why.' Instinctively he found himself speaking, not soothingly, but softly, so she would have to slow down and listen.
