“What I’m trying to explain,” she said, “is you have to get people’s passions involved. Like with cheerleading. Politics and passion, same thing.”
And so then we discussed passion.
For me, I said, it wasn’t a question of right or wrong. It was a kind of seeing. “Crazy,” I said, but she didn’t laugh, so I told her about the flashes, and she nodded—she cared—she listened while I went on about Phantom jets and napalm and Kansas burning, how it wasn’t a dream, or not quite, or not entirely, just seeing.
Even then she didn’t laugh.
“Well,” she finally said, “I guess that’s one kind of passion.”
At two in the morning there was a final dance, then we trooped over to the student union to watch an old Jane Fonda movie.
But it was hard to concentrate. Sarah sat with her legs in my lap, knees cocked up like targets near my chin.
“You can touch,” she whispered.
So I touched. And later she chuckled and said, “Kneecaps—who would’ve thought it? You’re a sly puppy, aren’t you?”
Then she fell asleep.
For a long while I simply sat there in the dark. Up on the screen, Jane Fonda was busy seducing a basketball team, but I couldn’t keep my mind on it. I watched Sarah’s sleeping face. Real, I thought. It was no fantasy. Those pulsing places at the throat and inner thigh, the connectives, the curvatures and linkages. I considered my good fortune. There was a curious flow of warmth between us, as if we were exchanging blood, and the rest I imagined.
Much later, Sarah nudged me.
“Hey, there,” she murmured.
“Hey,” I said.
She sat up and stared at the screen. There was fatigue in her eyes, a lazy blankness.
“Kiss?” she said.
I kissed her, and she nodded. She moved closer. “You were aching for it, weren’t you? I can always tell. And now I suppose you want more?”
“I suppose so.”
“No future in it. No tomorrow.”
“We’ll see.”
“I do see. Nothing.” She eyed me for a moment. “You’re a virgin, no doubt?”
“Sort of,” I said. “With you, I used to pretend.”
“Pretend?”
“You know. Make-believe.”
There was a short silence. “Well,” she said, “glad I could help.” Then she sighed. “All right, permission granted, but just kisses. Nothing else. Don’t even pretend.” She slipped her head against my shoulder. “A little intensity this time, it’s good for the complexion.”
And later—maybe four in the morning, maybe five—later, when the lights came on, Sarah tucked her blouse in and looked at me with level eyes and said, “I wish it could work out. I really wish that.”
“But?”
“Let’s walk.”
We skipped the pancake breakfast.
Outside, there was a bright moon. Not quite dawn, but I could feel the stirrings.
“Be a gentleman,” Sarah said. “I’m très bushed. Too late for nookie.”
She hooked my arm.
We walked past the science building, across a parking lot, down a gravel path that led to the Little Bighorn. Our shoes made crunching sounds in the snow.
“What it comes down to,” she said, “is we’re different people. Complete opposites. Nobody’s fault.”
“Right,” I said. “Opposites.”
Sarah stopped at the riverbank.
She lay down and made an angel in the snow, then shivered and stood up and took my hand.
There was a slight droop to her eyelids.
“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, like when the pieces don’t fit. Miss Razzle-Dazzle. Mr. Gloom-and-Doom. We’ve got our images to protect.”
“Images. I never thought of that.”
“I wish you’d—”
“Fucking images.”
I was moving on automatic. The river curled eastward, through white birch and pine, and things were very still.
“Besides,” Sarah said, “we had an agreement. A brief encounter. Didn’t we decide that?”
“I guess we did.”
“There you are, then.”
“Of course,” I said. “A deal’s a deal. Very tidy.”
She stopped, removed her gloves, put her hands on my cheeks, and held them there. We were the same height, almost exactly.
“It’s for the best,” she said. “I told you before, I’m dangerous. Too raunchy, too bitchy. Everything. You’d get hurt.”
“Sarah—”
“Enough.”
Crossing campus, we didn’t say much.
I was a gentleman.
Now and then, by chance, we brushed up against each other, and I could smell her skin, the skin itself, and there was that moment of hurt and panic, the urge to try something desperate, something gallant, like rape, a blow to the chin and then drag her off.
It made a nice picture.
At her dorm door I swallowed and said, “Well.”
Sarah kissed me.
“Passion,” she said, “good luck,” then she shook her head and backed away.
It was a rough weekend. Hard to envision a happy ending. Complete opposites—she was right.
On Monday morning I confronted the facts. It wasn’t love, after all. It wasn’t anything.
Getting out of bed was a major enterprise.
I showered and shaved and examined myself in the mirror. The eyes were bloodshot, the expression empty.
“No problem,” I said.
At noon I picked up my poster and walked over to the cafeteria. Ollie and Tina were already there. It was a dull winter day, bare and frozen, and no one cared, no one understood, and when I took my place on the line it all seemed trivial and small and dumb. Three clods in the cold. The poster, the model bomb—a bad joke. Not love, I thought. Not passion either. A joke, but it wasn’t funny.
For a long while I just stared down at my shoes, shoulders hunched, pondering the world-as-it-should-be.
When I looked up, Sarah was there.
Which is how it always happens—that fast. She was simply there.
We stood inspecting each other. Her hair was pulled back in a businesslike ponytail. She wore blue culottes and earmuffs and a silver letter sweater.
“What you remind me of,” she said after a moment, “is tooth decay. No sleep, I’ll bet. Bad dreams.”
“Surprise,” I said.
“You could’ve called.”
“I could’ve. I didn’t.”
Her lips brushed across my cheek.
“Well,” she said quietly, “a girl likes to be chased. Hot pursuit. The feminine mystique, I guess.” She looked over at Ollie and Tina, then at my poster. “So this is it? The famous Committee?”
It was all I could do to nod. There was an absence of symmetry, a strange new tilt to the world.
Sarah shrugged. She made a low sound, not quite a sigh, then took a step forward and turned and stood beside me. She was carrying a megaphone and red pom-poms.
“Don’t expect miracles,” she said. “You and me. A trial period, understand?”
“Of course.”
“And there’ll be some changes. New tactics. New leadership.”
“Agreed,” I said. “It’s only natural.”
Sarah lifted her megaphone.
“All right, that settles it,” she said. “Two weeks, maybe three, then we shut this rathole down. No more bullshit. There’s a war on.”
6 
Escalations
LIKE HIDE-AND-GO-SEEK—the future curves toward the past, then folds back again, seamlessly, always expressing itself in the present tense.
The year is 1969, for example.
If I concentrate, if I stop digging for a moment, I can see Sarah sitting at a kitchen table in Key West. She wears a black bikini. She’s oiling an automatic rifle. “Terrorism,” she tells me, “is a state of mind. No need to hurt people, you just give that impression.”