New Beginnings. Jill Barnett

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СКАЧАТЬ Beach bookstores and the underground presses compared recent events to history’s anarchies. The city’s street-corner disciples (the ones who weren’t hiding in the nirvana of acid) railed at The Establishment, shaking their fists as they cried over the injustice of men killed here and overseas.

       You can’t vote for the man who sends you to your death?

      At home, where it was supposed to be free and safe, someone was assassinating the country’s heroes. In spite of all the shouting and ranting, most people carried a silent, dark dread down to their bones, and the youth of San Francisco sought anything available to pull away from a world so out of control they had to shout at it.

      March’s father was only a single generation away, yet a continent stood between their ideas. He taught math and geography, was logical, conservative, a genius, a veteran. Her mother was a housewife who sewed from Butterick patterns, played bridge and the organ at church, and served dinner at six o’clock. March was raised to be standardized and conventional, the perfect round peg to fit in the perfectly round hole.

      Her sister May fit precisely into the Randolph mold. She was stockings and white shoes. May was the one who went off to Smith some three thousand miles away and was picked as one of Glamour’s college girls, modeling in the magazine in her plaid skirt and cashmere sweater, her hair cut in precise angles and her smile as perfect as piano keys, even without braces.

      March, however, was bare feet and Bernardo sandals.

      She regularly forgot to wear her retainer and lost it often enough that she had to get mouth molds for new ones at least three times a year. Right after graduation, she was out of her parents’ house and living on her own near the Haight in a room cut out of the attic in an old Victorian. She worked a part-time shift in a coffee-house bookstore and attended the Art Institute, where thought was free, ungendered, and those East Coast kinds of traditions her sister May wrote home about were nowhere to be found.

      San Francisco’s artists worked in loud, in-your-face-you-can’t-ignore-us colors that defined the place and time. At the Institute, among so many unique individuals, March didn’t have to be exactly like her family.

      A close friend from a graphics class created psychedelic posters advertising local rock shows at the Fillmore, Winterland and Avalon ballrooms. Another designed velvet, lace and leather clothing, fringed sweaters and beaded tops for a trendy boutique frequented by local rock singers. Some poster work came to March via her graphics friend, and by connection she was soon part of the San Francisco music scene most weekends.

      It was dark inside the Fillmore that night in mid-June, one of those down moments between music sets. The place was filled with three times more people than city hall permitted, because Joplin and Santana were on the bill. The cloying, sweet scent of hashish floated above the crowd in foggy clouds of contact highs, and crudely-rolled cigarettes were passed from hand to hand, glowing like red fireflies through small, compact circles of people.

      As one of her friends dragged her through the crowd, she spotted a stranger a few feet away, standing alone, wearing a Nehru jacket, faded jeans and sandals. His hair was thick and dark and almost to his shoulders. His profile was noble. Even the lack of light and his close-clipped black beard couldn’t hide his dark, intense looks, the kind of guy girls noticed but only the bravest or silliest would ever approach. Within seconds, the music started again and she lost sight of him when he was engulfed by a flood of half-stoned people making for the stage.

      By midnight the Fillmore’s lightshow rose up from behind the band in those vibrant, poster-colored hues, pulsing with the ragged voice of Janis singing a spiritual turned into hard rock by Big Brother and the Holding Company. Near the stage rim, March danced in a circle, barefooted, her sandals stashed in the deep pockets of her long velvet dress, her arms raised high in the air and five inches of mismatched bangle bracelets rattling down toward her elbows.

      Freedom rang through the notes of the music and the words of songs: there was nothing left to lose, something that felt more true lately than ever. Her loose, uncut hair hung freely, and beneath the heavy velvet dress she wore nothing—free after being held captive and rubbed raw for too many high school years of elastic garter and Kotex belts.

      Even the apples in a copper pot by the Fillmore stage were free for the taking, but probably laced with something to make your mood all too free.

      When she looked up, he was standing in front of her, his hand out as if they’d known each other forever. But she kept dancing, shouting over the music: “What do you want?”

      “You.”

      His eyes weren’t drug-shot, but clear, his manner too confident and too knowing for her. He’d caught her off-guard and she didn’t know how to react, so she shook her head and turned her back to him, cutting him dead and feeling surprisingly calm about doing so.

      Earlier, in a ballroom filled with people she had looked at him and felt something she couldn’t name, then an odd sense of regret when he’d melted into the crowd. When she had thought about it a little later, she told herself the moment had been silly and Hollywood, the kind of moment that called for elevator music playing in the background.

      A numb second or two passed before she felt his breath above her, the heat of his body as he came closer. Guys came on to girls all the time; three, four or more times a night someone would hit on her. But they gave up easily when she always hesitated. You couldn’t go two blocks without seeing a sign that said: make love not war; love was as free as thought, as free as speech, and as free as most girls nowadays.

      But he hadn’t moved on to some other girl who would give him what he wanted. He stayed by her, but didn’t touch her, a good thing since she might have incinerated right there.

      The music stopped with a loud end note from the band. In that first heartbeat of silence, he leaned in and said in her ear, “You’re a fraud.”

      She faced him. “What?”

      “I see a barefoot girl, dancing alone, dressed in velvet, and with ribbons in her hair. If I stand close enough, when she moves, her jewelry sounds like tambourines.” He touched the necklace she wore. “Tell me those are love beads.”

      She stepped back and pulled the necklace with her. “Do I know you?”

      “No. But I’m trying to fix that mistake.”

      “Who are you?” she asked.

      “You didn’t answer my question.”

      “You called me a fraud first. Let’s stay strangers for now and deal with that.”

      He shrugged. “You disappointed me, sunshine.”

      “March. My name is March.”

      “That’s different.” He sounded surprised. “I like the name March.”

      “My mother will be thrilled.”

      “Good. You can take me home to meet her. Mothers love me. My own can talk about me for hours.”

      “I don’t live at home.”

      “Even better. Where do you live?”

      “I’m not going to tell you where I live.” She laughed then. “I don’t even know your name.”

      “I’m Michael Cantrell. Don’t disappoint СКАЧАТЬ