Caroline looked down at the dirt on the wood floor. Why dirty floors, always?
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“You have no right hanging out with us — it is dangerous. Dangerous for you and for us, do you understand?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Mel moved the papers together on her desk as though she was finishing a grueling performance report, or an employee termination, or a blackball.
“There are places you can go. I know some safe places where there isn’t scrutiny, or they don’t mind the scrutiny, or where everyone is hiding out so one more doesn’t matter.”
“Our intentions—” Caroline said quickly.
“—look, I’m not a supporter of tactics that give them an excuse for more harassment of the left. But that doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to hear about it. It is already too much. It is all too much.”
“Yes.”
Sunday Morning Coming Down
CAROLINE WAS Freya and the feds pounded on the door. She was in the motel again, but for some reason there were weapons all over the room. She wore a miniskirt and knee boots, like Bernardine Dohrn, bullets strapped across her chest, commando-style. They were pounding at the door. “Open up!”
She awoke in her apartment in Eugene, no guns, no Bernardine Dohrn getup, just washed-out blond Caroline. But someone was pounding on her door. She jumped up, looked at the bedside clock. 3:30.
“Caroline, it’s me, Berry. Please, please open the door.” Berry was knocking and begging at the door; she sobbed and was getting louder.
“Berry?” Caroline said and unlocked the door, undid the chain, turned the dead bolt. Berry was leaning against the door. Her nose bled and her lip bled. She pressed her scarf against her mouth.
“Oh my God, what happened? What happened to you?”
“Oh, Caroline, it is so bad,” she said and started sobbing again. Caroline pulled her into the apartment, and Berry ran past her to the bathroom. She heaved and retched into the toilet bowl. Caroline held her hair back as she vomited. Berry caught her breath and winced. She touched her split lip. “That hurts so much,” she said and then retched again.
When the heaving finished, Berry sat weakly on the floor by the bowl of the toilet. Caroline wet a washcloth and wiped Berry’s face very carefully.
“Let me see. What happened? Who did this to you?” Berry started crying again. Caroline wiped the blood off her nostrils and cheek. Berry winced and pushed her hand away.
“Does it hurt bad?” she asked.
“Not too much, but I’m pretty drunk right now. Look at me. I’m a total fucking mess. I am going to have black eyes tomorrow, too.” Berry’s lip was already swelling. Caroline went to the other room and grabbed an ice cube tray from her minifridge’s tiny freezer. She dumped the ice in a dish towel.
“We have to ice it so it doesn’t swell.”
Berry still sat on the bathroom floor, her legs spread in front of her. She wore flimsy Indian leather sandals, with just a center tie and a strap around the big toe. Her feet were dirty. Her purple gauze peasant dress was pulled up over her knees, and there were drips of blood on the blousy drawstring neckline. She tried to pull her frizzy blond curls out of her face with one hand while the other held the ice pack to her lip and nose. She still cried but no longer sobbed.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Are you finished throwing up?”
“I think so.”
“Do you want to lie down?”
Berry shook her head emphatically. “God no. If I close my eyes I will be very ill.”
“Well, let’s get off the bathroom floor and go to the couch. That will be a start.” Berry nodded. Caroline helped her to sit and wrapped a Day-Glo orange caftan around her lap.
“Maybe some food? I baked bread today, and I have tahini to put on it.”
Berry nodded. With the swollen lip she looked like a pouting little girl, nodding through her tears at the idea of food.
Berry slid from the seat of the couch to the floor. She sat cross-legged, leaning her back against the legs of the couch, gingerly and slowly eating Caroline’s bread covered with jam and tahini. They sipped tea, and Berry stopped crying. She pressed the ice against her face between bites.
“Better?”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
Caroline shook her head.
“I was having a drink at the Timberline.”
“A logger bar? Why would you go there? Who were you with?”
“No one. I went on my own.”
“Why?”
Berry shrugged, sniffing. She wiped her nose with the edge of the dish towel.
“I wanted to. You know, I wanted to go to a bar by myself, and I wanted to see men with muscular arms. I didn’t want some groovy guy. I wanted to see real, straight men — the guys who look good in their jeans. And I know women don’t go in that bar by themselves. So that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to be scared of any place.”
Caroline nodded.
“I wanted to see if I could pick up a guy, in a real bar. And not have a relationship, just use a guy like a sex object. I wanted to overcome my hang-ups about sex, you know? And I wanted some unhip guy so I could blow his mind with my liberated ways. Besides, some of these guys are sexy.”
“I guess.”
“Anyway, I thought there would be a sort of Kris Kristofferson type, you know, working class—”
“Unpretentious.”
“Yeah, down to earth and at least a little grateful for my attention, not entitled to it or expecting it like these longhairs around here, you know?”
“I guess, but Kris Kristofferson is like a Rhodes Scholar. And he has long hair. And a beard,” Caroline said.
“Okay, you’re right. I’m dumb, I know. But I felt lonely and I needed some attention.”
“Actually, I understand, I do.”
“You don’t, but anyway. I sat at the bar, and right away this group of guys starts talking about me to each other, whispering but not hiding it at all. Sort of pronounced whispering. This was happening quick. Everyone knows freak chicks will fuck anyone, right?”
“Or women who go into lumberjack bars by themselves, anyway.”
“But what I hadn’t expected was this whole group vibe, you know? And this whole hostility trip they were on, like, right away?”
Caroline nodded, frowning. She uncrossed one of Berry’s legs and undid the sandal. She pulled it off and undid the other.
“But you do know men find women like you threatening?” Caroline said.
“Why? Men want sex. What could be better than a sexually liberated woman, you know?” Berry said.
“They don’t really want free sex. They don’t feel comfortable with women. They want fraught sex. They want to go to the bar and be with other men and be far away from women. They are in the bar to not look for women. But once you are there, once a woman is in the room, they all have to try and screw you, and they’re mad, because they really want to drink a beer and not deal with women. If they wanted free love, they’d go to a hooker and pay for it.”
Berry sighed and chewed the last bite of bread. She no longer seemed so weepy and drunk.
“So what happened?” Caroline said.
“One guy did approach me and said something real clever about my forgetting my bra. And the other guys he was with laughed and stared. So gross. This guy was way too aggressive. Besides, I wanted to pick, I wanted to approach. That was the whole point. My feet are filthy.”
“They are. Do you want to take a bath?”
“No, not really. So I saw this cute guy in the back, by himself. Do you have any more of this bread?”