record store,their eyes glazed with lust and a kind of animal ferocity they werenât even aware of. She dated a few of them, but sheâd never had a serious boyfriend, and though she was prettyâshe knew she was prettyâshe couldnât figure out why that was, except that something was out of sync, as if sheâd been born in the wrong era and the wrong place, especially the wrong place, where nothing ever happened and nobody ever got anywhere. Thatâs what it was, she decided, that had to be it, and the notion comforted her through all her disappointments and the cardboard array of days and months and years, each as stiff and unyielding as the one that preceded it. She sat through the banal Education classes, Psych 101, faced down the six primary causes of World War I, algorithms and the internal anatomy of the earthworm, thinking there had to be something more.
She graduated, put on a face and started teaching third grade in the very elementary school sheâd attended ten years earlier, living in her girlhood room in her parentsâ house like a case of arrested development, and she was just like her mother everybody said, because her mother taught kindergarten and wore cute petite-size pantsuits and mauve blouses with Peter Pan collars and so did she. But she didnât want to be just like her mother. When she got home at night she balled up her pantyhose in her own petite-size pantsuits, flung them on the floor in her room and lay stretched out on the floor with a speaker pressed to each ear, staring at the flecks and whorls of the thrice-painted ceiling while Janis Joplin flapped and soared over the thunderous changes of âBall and Chain.â Her mother chattered through dinner, the lace curtains from Connemara hung rigid at the windows, her father guarded his plate as if someone were about to take it from him. She could barely lift the fork to her lips, peas, meat loaf, cod in cream sauce, Brussels sprouts. And what about Tommy Nardone, is he behaving in class, because I had his brother Randy, and believe you me, her mother would say, and sheâd nod and agree and go back up to her room and study the sneers of the Rolling Stones on the jacket of the Out of Our Heads LP. And then she went to buy makeup at Caldor one rinsed-out dead bleak soul-destroyingOctober afternoon and ran into Ronnie in the record sectionâOh, yeah, heâd dropped out, all right, and he was hustling records just until he could save the bread to get out to California, because thatâs where it was happening, there and no place else. Oh, yeah. Miniskirt. Head shop. The Haight. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
âThereâs been some problems,â Alfredo was saying, âand Iâm sure everybodyâs hip to them, but we allâI mean, me, Norm, Reba and like everybody that was working the communal garden this morning?âwe all felt things had come to a head . . .â
âWhich head?â Ronnie said, propping himself up on his elbows. âI think thereâs more than one here, man.â
âUneasy lies the headââ Merry chimed in.
Ronnie swung round, playing to the crowd: âHeads of the world, unite!â
There was some foot-stomping, a spatter of applause and a whinny or two of laughter that might have had a bit too much fuel behind it. Alfredo merely sat there, slumped over the table, his eyes burning into every face in the room. When the noise died down, he continued: âYes, but you all know that two toilets are inadequate for a commune this size, not to mention the fact that weâre swamped with visitors every weekend, and with summer coming on itâs just going to get worseââ
âPut up a sign,â Jiminy said. He was skinny, nineteen, with a beard that might have washed up out of the sea, and heâd been here no more than a week or so. Star liked his style. Sheâd been sitting outside on her stump, snapping