Nothing lasts; take things for what they are. I wondered if she could sense my insecurity. But having exposed myself, I now felt vulnerable.

"It's okay; I'm not upset…" I replied trying to sound casual, but I was disappointed and she probably knew it.  I'll bring this up in therapy, I thought; let Dr. Wachteller figure it out.   

She swung off the bed and pulled her clothes over her thin body. I watched her button her shirt and wished she would stay. Can you? I wanted to ask, but dared not. She'd already laced up her boots half way. Reluctantly, I dressed and joined her in the kitchen. I turned on the stove for some heat and made us coffee. I'd ‘liberated’ a dozen cans of fine espresso from the supermarket across the street after a fire had gutted the building. At night, after the fire department had left, the whole neighborhood descended on the still smoking ruins. Survival of the fittest, I reckoned and took what I could.  

She held her cup against her cheek. The freckles on her nose darkened with her eyes.

"What are you thinking?" I asked. She didn't answer.

Pigeons strutted arrogantly across the rooftops below, pecking at the snow and each other.  I thought about working on my dissertation and a woman I’d met in the library the day before. She seemed friendly and intriguing; I was angry with myself for not getting her number and wondered if we would meet again.

I'd taken a half-year off from substitute teaching at a junior high school in Brooklyn’s Bed-Sty neighborhood. I loved teaching and the kids, but was afraid that if I stayed I'd never finish my dissertation. I was one of the few white teachers that the parents’ committee trusted. Mrs. Mayes, a heavy-set, single-parent head of the committee, said I'd let them down when I told her that I was leaving. I tried to explain, but  I didn't persuade her, or myself. I was leaving; that was bottom-line. She shook her head.   

"That's OK, Whitey," she said and smiled knowingly. "Yo'all come back. We be here. We ain't goin' no place." As I walked down the street past the school yard some of the kids shouted my name. I turned around and waved to them. I'd miss them too and worried what they'd think when I didn't show up. 'Cop-out. Traitor,' I thought descending the stairs to the A train. I felt like running back and then the train arrived and I pushed my way into a packed car pressed against strangers. Survival contrives its own morality.

The Empire State Building glittered majestically over the flat rooftops and steaming chimneys. I threw some stale bread to the pigeons below and watched them scramble for the pieces in the snow. I wondered if Toni was thinking about another man, or what she would do with me. Her preparations to leave made me want her more. She looked at me as if reading my mind and shook her head.

The phone rang. I didn't answer. My mother was calling from Florida. She couldn't sleep, the weather was warm and she wanted to know how I was and when I was going to visit.  

"More coffee?" I asked and filled her cup again. She held it against her chest, enclosing it with her hands.  

"My Mom died when I was in high school. Dad raised us, but it wasn't much of a home. He was sloshed most of the time. Or hanging out with one of his girlfriends. Two of us, me and my sister. She was a couple of years younger. We grew up fast; we had to. He was pissed when I moved out. Guess he thought I'd take care of him forever." She shook her head. "We don't talk much now. Sis stayed for a while and then she got pregnant and moved in with a black dude that lived in the projects. He's into cars, fixing 'em, sometimes stealing 'em. But he's a good guy. He cares about her and the kid."

We’d argued the night before about her latest attempts to teach people how to fight the "capitalist pigs and the ruling class.”  Old stuff, I'd said, full of thorny slogans and rhetoric, warmed over by "the vanguard" to set us on the right path. "Clichés," I said. She didn't appreciate my comments. I too could be "the enemy," she'd said, half-jokingly. "It's how you think, as well as what you do, or don't do. Time will tell." The kitchen was warming up. Che waited patiently for me by the door.   

A large roach crawled from behind the stove in bloated confusion. I tried to kill it with a sudden stomp, which raised dust from beneath the torn linoleum. Toni glared at me, startled by my sudden rage. I wished she would hug me undialectically.

I turned on the radio for the morning news. "Listen to this," she said and turned it off. She read a manifesto she'd written in a spiral notebook covered with a subway map on which she had scrawled "We're all victims!"  

"It lacks imagination," I contended when she was done, handing her back an anti-war flyer, wanting poetry. She looked at me indignantly. Not the correct thing to say to a disciplined revolutionary. I turned the radio back on. The war. Stock prices. Sports. The weather.  

"Wall Street doesn't care about people," she said sharply.

"They're not supposed to," I replied, thinking about a friend of mine who dropped out of grad school to become a stockbroker.

"It’s over,” he'd told me over beers. “I've taken a permanent 'leave-of-absence.' I’m making money and I like it. Screw the degrees, man.”

"Hey, you betta get yo act together," Toni scolded, pointing at me. At first I thought she was teasing, but then she seemed upset with me; it was the last thing I wanted.  "We gotta bring the revolution," she said, shaking her head for emphasis. Power to the People! proclaimed the button she wore on her faded denim shirt. I nodded and wondered whether she would come back to bed. 

  She was going off to teach in an elementary school in East Harlem. She would read her students a Vietnamese story and call them ‘comrades.’ She would tell them that she was quitting next week because she had to work on  "Media for the Masses," a project run by her ex-lover.

  She would tell that to the little boy who kissed and hugged her whenever he had the chance and resorted to biting her when she didn't pay enough attention to him. She would tell that to the little girl who stood in the corner and stared at her with angry love. But there were more important things to do. As Mao says, 'Someone always gets hurt in the struggle; make sure it isn't you.' 

  "Without a sense of humor," I told her, "you can get very confused."

  She looked at me and squinted, measuring the distance between us. The A express shook the building as it hurtled past. For a moment, she looked frightened or amused. Was it me? Had I said the wrong thing? I tried to find a way back. I brushed her hair with my hand; she pushed me away.

"Why did you do that?" she demanded. "My father used to do that; I hate it. Makes me feel like I'm your childslave, your toy." She stood up defiantly.   

One of the neighbors began banging on the water pipes. In Brooklyn, Malta, Greece, or wherever they were from, this was a signal to send up more heat. But the boiler had been broken for weeks. In our old rent controlled building no one was listening.

Cars continued to back up in both directions. An ambulance stuck in traffic wailed over the grudging pattern of chaos and confusion. I wanted to ask if we would see each other again and if she could love me; I wondered if I could love her. A game of chance, cafeteria of desires. Eat as much as you want; no matter how much you're always hungry. I raped you softly with my love… A song from the radio. I raped myself.

She stuffed her books and papers into a small satchel and put on her army jacket. Soldier of Misfortune, I thought, wondering if she would be warm enough.  I put on a record of Bach fugues, hoping to drown out the desperate chorus of horns and her leaving. How easily differences could be worked out, forgotten in music, or not.