Sanctuary!

May 21, 1968, I am blithely walking down Newbury Street or one of those streets frequented by Crazy Jane where the rich people shop, when I see an unusual sight. A group of scruffy dressed young people (that is not the unusual part) are playing recorders, beating drums, and falling down on the sidewalk. (That's the unusual part). Street Theater!.

For the past several months, I'd been part of a rag tag theater company who rehearsed in a church basement and we were in the middle of readying a production of Brecht's The House of Bernarda Alba. This was sometime after my disastrous experiment in conjugal living with Rick the actor in Dorchester, where we pretended to be a young married couple. The landlady was so sweet, I hated to abandon her after only a week, when I realized all of Rick's charms were skin deep. ( know this is so unfair. I'm sure he is a truly kind and humanitarian, loving man, but in those days, it was true passion and radical inspiration I was after).

So things at the Theater Company were decidedly frosty. Rick had even left for a few days himself to go back to Florida and see if his former girlfriend wanted to marry him.  She didn't.

I was playing one of the three sisters. I was, you might say, integral to the performance, not because of my stellar acting abilities. A turnip could probably have delivered the lines more convincingly, but because we were a tiny troupe with no one to spare.

But the street theater people intrigued me. so I followed them, as they drummed and fifed and fell down and got up, and finally ended up at a church around the corner. the Arlington Street Church on the corner of Arlington and Boylston Street.

At the top of the stairs two men, flanked by many others. One is in military uniform. Someone has a megaphone and is telling the gathering crowd that they are taking sanctuary in the Church, an ages old custom of providing a safe haven for the persecuted. This was a moment in history.

They are Bill Chase and Robert Talmanson,  Bill a civilian resistor, Tally, as Talmanson was know, AWOL from an unjust war.

The guerrilla theater performers are there in aid of them, of drawing attention to them and their cause. I approach the leader, a woman named Susan. I offer to join their troupe. How can she say no? Volunteers are always welcome, acting talent is optional. I have found the Movement I have been looking for. Direct action, not letter writing, report writing, making phone calls in aid of getting others to go to far off Washington for demonstrations. Right here at home.

And a theater troupe to boot.

Now I must tell Rosemary, the director of our church basement acting group. I can no longer pose as a sister in a Bertolt Brecht play when the real world is beckoning. I am relieved, no more Rick the actor, casting moon eyes at me. But terrified, The wrath of Rosemary is well known. Guilty, as I am leaving them all in the lurch. Can they find a replacement.

As predicted Rosemary is pissed; calls me a prima dona. "But it's for the Movement!" I cry. I am called; I must answer.

She is not impressed. But history is happening on Arlington Street. Surely they can find a stand in for my poor performance, even on short notice. I leave one church basement rehearsal space and head for another church's nave and sanctuary.

Harvard Square - 1967

Let me tell you about Harvard Square, the Harvard Square that was.

The Men of Harvard Square.

First there were the men of that spring and Summer of 1967. I don't remember all of it, the names of all the men. There was David and J.R. There was the guy who sold marijuana to the kids at Holyoke Center; there was the guy I met at the Cinemateque in Boston and we pretended we were in our own private Andy Warhol movie.

There was Vernon. Vernon was a tall man, lanky, maybe he had a beard. He was married to a woman who was bent at the middle; half her body went to the side, as if she had no waist, just a hinge. And not much of a torso between her hips and her head, long hair hanging down. I don't remember her name. I don't remember how I met them.

The funny thing about all these people I met, spent time with, in Harvard Square, in their apartments, on the streets, down by the river, smoking dope down by the river, in the park, the funny thing none of them knew each other. I even went back and asked (via Facebook, how else?) the ones i could find, David and J.R. if they had known each other then. They had not, or if they did, they did not remember either.

David was a bear of a man, who lived in a spacious airy Harvard Square apartment with his mom and Dad.  And his mom was Maggie of Maggie and the Beautiful Machine - an exercise program on public tv. She was gorgeous and fit; she was friends with the likes of the Chambers Brothers, and when they were in town, playing the Club 47, she held before and after parties in the spacious Harvard Square digs.

David's father was an M.I.T. professor; also a big bear of a man.  Maggie did her own thing, and I could not imagine anyone in the circles I had left behind, Methuen, the church, the Greeks, having a mother anything like her.

J.R. was small. His father was said to have been a colleague of Timothy Leary at Harvard working on L.S.D.

None of these men were romantic interests. Except I did have a little thing for Vernon. I told someone in the Vernon crowd that, "I have a thing for Vernon." They said, "Not good. Vernon is in love with his wife."

Ok, that was that for romance.

Besides I was too busy fantasizing about my "beautiful man" of the Coop, he of the mellifluous voice ordering books over the phone.

The buildings of Harvard Square. 

The Coop of course, go in the front door where they sold the clothes with the Harvard insignia on them, and ordinary clothes too, mostly of the preppy variety. Then you could go out the back door across Church Street and re-enter the store there, upstairs to textbooks where Jane and I and Mr. Lister held sway, up through the record department to get there, the escalator, with never ending theme of "A Man and a Woman" playing below and me in my little information box with my phone above.

Holyoke Center, the modern building on Mass Ave. where the kids from the suburbs hung out and bought dope from the guy who sold dope and sometimes snuck behind a pillar to smoke and sometimes asked for "spare change."

Brigham's and Bailey's (which Jane declared had the better sundaes) and of course Dunkin' Donuts.

Elsie's the delicatessen, and the hofbrau where Billy and I took the folk singers, Sandy And Jeannie Darlington, in high school, and some other famous sandwich shop.  Around the corner, Brattle St, with the Brattle Theater which always showed Casablanca or so it seemed, and even now shows Casablanca, downstairs the scented candle shop and everything smelling of scented candles, a warren of little shops and the Casablanca bar and other exotic seeming shops. Design Research with modern designs and, I guess, research, and Merimekko, with their bright simple designs, which Jane always wore. Hers were mostly in a purple or mauve tone.

The Cambridge Adult School where I took creative writing in the evenings and my teacher whose name was Ken thought I was a pretty bad writer, and maybe I was. (I wrote pretty much the same way then that I do now. More about that later.) A pharmacy, and down the street the Old Burying Ground where people have been buried since forever, many Revolutionary soldiers, local luminaries and of course Harvard Presidents.

And the Out of Town Ticket Agency, that used to be in the middle of the street, then they ruined Harvard Square. Then the ticket agency closed.
 

Harvard Yard.

You cannot "Pahk Youh Cah in Hahvahd Yahd."  You have to park in the street and walk. Harvard is everywhere, and it's also a big enclosed area, with administration buildings, classrooms and dorms. A Library, a museum. Harvard Yard.

And then there is Radcliffe.

Scavanging in Louisburg Square

Soon after my short foray into drug dealing, the bathroom ceiling caved in on the Beacon Hill pad, sending Jane and I scratching like fiends down the Hill to Mass General, sure we had contracted crabs from the incident. Assured there were no cooties on us, we had to find a new place to live.  She moved into her own North Beach pad, and just moseyed across the street with a girl called Amy and her roommate Cheryl who needed a third to share a tiny two bedroom apartment.. The way this place worked was two girls shared one room; each getting one single bed. Amy had the former walk in closet in the room.  We all coveted that closet from the day we moved in. Amy signed the lease. It was her apartment and she got the coveted closet room.   

Cheryl soon left for greener pastures, and a lively blond named Rosalie moved in. Rosie and I hit off immediately.  We would get that closet one of these days, and when we did, we'd share it, that is, we knew without saying so, that the closet would become the boyfriend room.

For the time being Rosie slept over at her boyfriend Allen's house more than she did in our apartment.  Jane came over frequently. Amy did not approve, and when she didn't approve and she couldn't move things to her liking just by her mere royal presence (like the termite queen), and believe me, she was no match for the Contessa of Cool that Crazy Jane could be, Amy just went into ther closet and closed the door.  Betty was on the large size herself, and when she plopped in the very middle of the couch in her bright Merimekko print moo moo, Amy oozed away defeated, slamming the closet door behind her.  Betty would smile her sly Betty smile and  we'd plot the evenings activity.

If it was Wednesday, we'd be on the prowl for treasures. Wednesday was trash night, and the rich people on the other side of Beacon Hill, always had the best trash. Antique chairs, in need of upholstery; whole loveseats with a loose leg, dressers that only needed some WD-40.

It was on trash night in Louisburg Square that we met Gilly. Naturally, he and Betty bonded instantly over an armoire the size of a baby elephant.Well, there was going to be hauling that into either of our apartments, so we graciously accepted Gilly's offer of a glass of wine in exchange for helping him get it to his street level flat on the not quite upscale but definitely on the "right" side of Beacon Hill Pinckney Street.

This soon became a routine, until Gilly's apartment was fashionably furnished, Jane had a few lighter pieces in her pad, and various other scavengers we met along the route scored big.  I never mined missing out because I couldn't see dragging anything up the four flights of stairs and  could nver get Rosalie to join in, as she was planning to move out West sometime soon with her beau, and Amy, well, Amy had enough already, so she wasn't invited.

Besides, there was always Gilly's to drop in on. He was gracious to a fault, cut crystal and dim lighting.  Decent wine; anyway it wasn't Annie Green Springs or Boone Farm Apple Wine, which the rest of us drank on those rare occasions we were buying.  Naturally, as was my way in those days, I soon developed a crush on Gilly. It took me awhile to figure out that Gilly wasn't into girls.

Selling Marijuana to the Christians

I returned from San Francisco by way of Kalamazoo, where I thought to reconnect with my childhood friends.  The first one I called was Anita Grintals.  She was in secretarial school and neither she nor her mother, the imposing Anastasia seemed pleased to see me.  I was full of my hippy tales of Haight Ashbury and the Straight Theater and the whole sex, drugs and rock and roll phenomenon.  Looking back, it was truly a "what was I thinking?" moment.

They put me up on the couch for one night, and one night only. It was clear, childhood friendships were not going to be rekindled. I never even bothered calling Nancy Boers.

Instead I called the Riddles, those friends of my dad's, who lived near the outskirts of town, and who, although she looked down on them for lack of formal education and so forth, my mother always called "the salt of the earth."

This salt of the earth family took me in with no questions asked. It was my goal to see my father and to ask him for a birthday present for my sister.  In my mind, that seemed as good an excuse as any for making contact.  The Riddles could tell me how and where to find him.

I spent about a week with them, seeing my father only once, in a diner, where he handed over $5 for me to get a puppy for my sister. He figured $5 would buy a dog from the pound.

The rest of the time I spent at the local college, Western Michigan University, in search of the "heads." In those days, you could tell who smoked dope and who didn't. Long hair, quiet demeanors, a gentleness, guitar cases.  I discovered Sam and Lee in a corner of the student union.  It was as if we had known each other for years. Sam was a student there and Lee was in between life decisions.  She was also headed to Boston for an abortion.  Now, this was before Roe v. Wade and from my experience with Crazy Jane, I understood abortions were still illegal in Boston.  Did she have an underground connection? Or was she stopping off on her way to New York, one of the few states in the Union, if not the only one in 1967, where abortion was legal.

I don't remember that part, only that in a few days we were off together on a plane for Boston.  I said goodbye to her in the airport and headed for the Beacon Hill digs I still shared with Crazy Jane.  This was before the bathroom ceiling caved in, and sent us screaming down the hill to Mass General, convinced we had contracted lice from whatever lurked beneath the ceiling tiles (asbestos fibers probably). I never saw or heard from Lee again.

Soon, I found myself with a puppy in a 3rd floor walk-up.  To accommodate the pup's needs, I got some kind of pen and covered it in newspaper.  Between my job at Filene's basement and the assortment of junkies and burnouts Jane and I had somehow inherited from Tommy Abbott, I didn't get around to cleaning out the dog's pen very often.

One day I got a call from the boys from Gordon College.  How had they found me? They wanted to know if I could get them some pot.  They were coming to Boston and they heard I had connections.

Wow, gone from the school for three months and I had a reputation as someone with connections!

Before I knew it the Christian boys were knocking on my door.

I was embarrassed by the dog poo in the middle of the kitchen, contained though it was, but they were wayward youth looking for drugs.  I did in fact have the necessary connections and made the transaction.  In some ways I felt oh so self righteous. At least I was no hypocrite. I always wondered what happened to those boys from the church.  I have looked, but I could never find mention even of my old boyfriend, who married the minister's daughter down the hall, and rumor has it, became a minister himself.

Finally, the puppy got to my sister, was named Gretchen, and grew fat and spoiled, but that was not the last I was to see of her.  It was the last, however, of my marijuana dealing days. 

Blue Eyed Poet Number 2

This was in the days of living on the coast, drinking in the afternoons, selling organic veggies and longing for the writer's life.

Bouncing with the Blue Eyed Poet -  a memory

Bouncing with the blue eyed poet, she wears other people’s cast offs. She knows she looks good, tube top, purple cotton jacket, black slinky synthetic skirt.  All turning this caterpillar into a butterfly.  They bounce together to the loud music in the gym.

Her hair is curly and her teeth are white. The blue eyed poet is suave, sexy, smiling. Bouncing together, they enchant the crowd. “What is this dance called” she shouts over the music, one hand grasping, pulling up the tube top. The blue eyed poet mimics. He is a chameleon; his eyes a mirror. His smile a cipher, slight, oh so sexy, buck teeth.

“Who knows,” he bounces her out into the street, the cool night air, September on the coast. He kisses her on the chin. He is always doing things like that. “What is it you want of me,” she asks, hugging thin cotton jacket close. He looks perplexed. Troubled. “Want?” He shrugs.

“To play. To bounce. To kiss your cheeks.  Nothing.”

She knows this then is the end before there was even a beginning. Coffee, and poetry, and gossip, and walks along the mesa bluffs. All less than a beginning. This dance, this bounce, this moonless walk toward his not new, but well-kept car.  

There is meaning in the movement.

His wife is returning and his harmless flirtation is over.

She sticks out her hand. “Well, then, goodbye,” she says, her eyes dark, submerged. He shrugs again.

“I don’t believe in goodbyes.” He smiles his cryptic smile, walking away. She goes back to the gym, but the bounce is over, the band disassembling their equipment.

Her friend Daphne waits for her. She says, “let’s go get a beer,” and the two friends cross the street to the Kingfisher Saloon, now in full post-dance boom.  

“No,” she says. “I want a grown up drink.”  They order martinis at the bar and sip until last call.

WINE WITH THE FUTURE FAMOUS WRITER

Ok, right off I have to say I don’t remember what year it was, never mind what month.  Sometime in the 70's because this was after Cambridge and Beacon Hill and even Berkeley, which is a whole nother story in itself. This was in a small coastal town called Benson, on a peninsula sticking out into the wide Pacific Ocean, where fog and mist and grayness defined the background for much of the action that filled our lives in those long-ago days. This is about one of them.

Daphne and I had been promising to visit the famous writer for months.  This was before she became a famous writer. She was cute and perky and young. She was clever. Even then, at the age of 23, she intimidated us older writers with her clever scribblings in the local rag, the Benson Bugler, which her friend Amy who ran off with the pharmacist edited. After she ran off with the pharmacist, I edited it, along with the Famous Poet and the astrologer. But that’s another story.

Daphne and I were poets. That’s what you did in the seventies in Benson. You scraped by on what you could get as a cleaning lady (and it wasn’t houses we were cleaning either) or selling organic veggies at the Co-op and you wrote poetry.

And you drank. A lot. You drank cheap white wine with friends in the afternoon on warm days at the beach. And you drank with everyone at night in the Kingfisher Saloon. Poets, fishermen, curmudgeonly old timers, hippies of every description met up at Kingfisher’s  for a game of pool and Bud or something stronger. No one drank wine in bars in those days.  It was sweet drinks like pina coladas or tequila sunrises or cheap beer.

Cocaine was appearing as an exotic new drug, and most nights you couldn’t squeeze in the ladies room at Kingfisher’s they were lined up three deep for the lines laid out on the back of the sink.

On this day, Daphne and I decided we would actually stop by the famous writer’s place and have that literary discussion we’d been avoiding. She was only 23 and she was writing a book. We were 29 and 39 respectively and we weren’t. We called her Randi in those days because that was her name and she wasn’t famous. Later she became Miranda and that’s how you know her.

In those days, people lived in all sorts of haphazard structures. Mine was a converted garage I rented by the month, with a loft and an oil drum wood stove.  Daphne lived down by the creek in one of several buildings owned by a family called Josephson and was known as Josephson’s Farm, but it wasn’t really a farm.  Randi lived in a small rented cabin on a corner of one of the main streets in town, behind a dense cypress hedge.  It was like a hobbit house in a different universe from the outside world of chainsaws, laughing children and barking dogs. Many of our little cobbled together homes had that otherworldy quality to them once you entered them leaving the outside world behind.  Or so it seemed during those unstructured times.

When we got to her cabin at the prearranged time, she was on the phone. Phones still had cords in those days, and hers was a long twisted one, getting more and more twisted as she hauled it around the cabin’s central room. We could tell it was a serious conversation because she wasn’t talking, just pacing and grunting and changing the phone from ear to ear, as she waved us inside.

We held out our bottle of wine and bag of Cheetos we’d picked up at the Liquor store, called Liquor’s (you never knew if it was purposeful, that apostrophe, maybe it used to belong to someone name Mr. Liquor) so we wouldn’t appear to be total freeloaders and she motioned us toward the table that served as dining and writing center. We pushed aside some papers as Randi cupped her hand around the phone and said to us “the corkscrew’s in that drawer. I’ll be right there,” then went back to grunting and pacing.

We opened the wine and found glasses in a cupboard. They didn’t match, but we didn’t care.  We tried to motion to her that maybe it wasn’t such a good time and we’d come back, but she kept shaking her head.  So we poured out three glasses of the cheap white and sat down to wait, looking over the spines on her bookshelf behind us.

We heard her hang up the phone, having never really said more than “uh huh” “Yeah” and “ok,” to whoever was on the other end.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” she said, taking a seat and a glass of wine. “Thanks so much. Wow, I really need this.”

“Thanks for having us over, but really if it’s not a good time, we can come back,” said Daphne.

“No no, I’m really glad you’re here. I’m sorry. I’m not being very hospitable. Do you want some cheese or something. Oh Cheetos. Maybe some chips.” She kept half jumping out of her chair, then remembering, “Wait, I don’t have any chips. I don’t think I have much here at all; maybe some old wheat thins.”

“No, that’s ok, have a Cheeto.”

“I’m really sorry guys, I’m sort of distracted. That was my brother on the phone. You know my dad’s been sick.”

I had heard about it. Her father was a famous artist who had run with the Beats, only was more mainstream. He sold fairly well and had respect in bourgeois circles. Now in his late sixties he had been battling cancer for some time.  We nodded.

“Well, it looks like this is it. We have to decide what to do, I mean, whether to pull the plug.  I can’t be there, so my brother is really stuck. And my dad is such a cool guy; he’s just so great, I know he’d want us to do it, but it’s so hard to say go ahead and do it, pull the plug, on someone, your father. You know?”

Of course, we didn’t know. We had unintentionally walked in on a very private moment. We were like ghouls at the bedside.   Should we stay, should we go? Would it be ruder to stay intruding on someone’s tragedy or to leave them alone with their crisis?

Just then the phone rang again.

“Sorry,” said Randi for maybe the fourth time, snatching it up.

Daphne and I were giving each other looks. Once she kicked me under the table and motioned with her head toward the door.  Uh, what’s the right thing to do? Would it more inconsiderate to get up and go or to stay. Inertia won out.

We heard more grunting, then a decisive, “Yes, yes, it’s ok. Let’s just do it. Do I have to sign something?”  Silence, then ,”Ok then, I’m really sorry I can’t be there. I’ll be right here by the phone. Call me; anytime, call me in an hour. Call me in ten minutes. Are you ok? I’m ok, really, I’m fine. You’re doing a really great job, Thanks, thanks so much.”

“OK, well, we did it.” She wiped her fist over her eyes looking much younger than 23, then sighed and took a long drink out of her glass.

“I’m really sorry, you guys. I’m glad you’re here, but now you have to listen to all this stuff.  It’s weird. Thanks so much for coming by.”

“We better go. You probably have things to do. I’m really sorry about your dad,” said Daphne getting up.

“Me too, I’m really sorry, can we um…do anything. Do you need a ride or anything?”

“No no, I have to stay here for my brother’s call. He’s only 18, and he has to be there actually doing it. I mean he doesn’t pull the plug; I don’t even know if there is a plug. I guess there is for the respirator, but the doctor pulls it. He just tells them, and I can’t get there, because I’m here and they’re in Connecticut. So can’t you please stay a little while longer? I’m sorry. I must be the worst hostess ever.”

She dumped the last of the Cheetos out of the bag and stuffed them into her mouth.  Daphne and I poured more wine for all.

“Oh, I don’t even like Cheetos,” she said, around a mouthful. “This is so gross. Do you want a napkin?”

She got up and pulled some paper towels off a roll, tearing them in places other than where the perforations were. She folded them as neatly as torn and mangled paper towels can be folded and put them on the table in the general area where we sat.  We smoothed them out just to have something to do. No one said anything at all for a while.

We spent the next few minutes trying to get orange goo off our hands.  Randi had it all over her white blouse; Daphne got some in her hair.  Randi noticed her struggling with some paper toweling and a strand of hair, looking crosseyed at the hair and pulling at it with the paper towel, now shredded.  She rolled her eyes and all three of us broke out into raucous laughter.  It seemed the right thing to do. We laughed and waved our orange fingers in the air until we were laughed out.  Randi said simply, “Thanks.”

Then the wine was gone and then Randi found some more in the back of the fridge. “Look, it hasn’t even been opened. Oh, it’s that really bad stuff from Liquor’s. I think they make it in the back room.”

Daphne was already pouring. We drank and waited for the phone to ring again.

The Kidnapper - A digression into the past

My mother was obsessed with kidnappers. She warned me about them constantly.  She checked every night that my shades were pulled down tight and window locked to keep them out. Was there something in the news around that time about a sensational kidnapping?  We lived in Michigan, a mid-sized City that became the site of the first outdoor pedestrian mall. That was later, when I was a teenager. The mall was an oasis for kids going from store to store with our friends, usually Anita Grintals, or Nancy Boers.  I had other friends as a teenager, but none who were interested in shopping.

You might say I had an eclectic taste, in friends, and in activities.  I was boy crazy with Nancy and still chased the large grasshoppers, big as locusts who populated our working class and yet very quiet and safe (and white) neighborhood with Anita.

My other friends were Sue Schneeberger, whom I giggled with in Latin class as we made up our own translations to the text, taught by the very thin and even more ancient Miss Mead, whose mantra was "I love Latin," said with a look of pure joy through a tight smile punctuated with pink teeth.

"Marcus look at the Queen; she is puking," we chortled behind our books. Miss Mead was not amused.

Later my friends were the the theater and newspaper crowd, and bookish Sharon Rothrock and Diana Henschel.  None of these people were friends with each other. Anita found Nancy frivolous and Sharon and Diana had no interest in either boys or the theater, certainly not grasshoppers or being irreverent in Latin class.  The theater crowd felt anyone not so inclined irrelevant.   

But this story is before all that, before any friends that I can recall.  Today there was just my mother and me.  And of course the kidnapper.

This happened one day when we lived on West Main Street. I must have been 4 or 5.  My mother and were walking to our favorite restaurant, the SuperBurger. We were not well to do. My father sold cars, flipped burgers and tried to carve out a niche for himself as a private detective.  Later my mother and I would accompany him on his stakeouts, hours in a cold car while he waited for a wayward deadbeat to return home so her could serve a subpoena.  No Dashiell Hammett my dad.  The only reason he kept his private detective gig going was because he kept flunking the test to be a cop.  Something to do with his hands.  He had some kind of a finger fungus, or so I remember it.

At this time, I also had a little brother, Glenn, my best and only friend for those early years before he got sick, and even after, when we moved to the new house on South Westnedge Avenue and made all those long car trips to Ann Arbor for transfusions, to prolong his meager life. What other friend could ever measure up to such a soulmate?

For some reason, it was just my mother and me on our way to the SuperBurger on this fateful day.  The brother, the father, somewhere else, but no doubt together, bonding over big Dad and small son activity at home.

Walking slowly along at first, on a warm spring day. Mom in a flowered dress. Me in braids and short skirt, frilly ankle socks, hand held tight in hers.  Then a tightening of her fingers, a tension communicated from mother to daughter. I turned to look behind me, my short legs working hard to keep up.

"Don't look back," my mother said through clenched teeth.  "Just hang onto my hand and walk fast."  I was already walking as fast as I could.  What could be going on. Was a big animal chasing us?

Faster and faster my mother moved toward our destination.  At some point, she let me know a kidnapper was following us. "But don't look back!" she warned. By this time, I was crying and running as fast as my little feet could go to keep up. A kidnapper had found me at last, despite drawn shades and locked doors and windows! The SuperBurger seemed miles in the distance. And the kidnapper was gaining on us! I could hear his footsteps. I could almost feel his breath on my neck. I held on tight to my mother's sturdy fingers, even though my own were cramped and painful in her steely grip.

We all but flew the last few feet to the door of the SuperBurger and dashed inside. Safe!  Surely he wouldn't follow us in here and kidnap me, with people all around!  Or would he.  My mom moved close to the counter, where she smoothed her skirt and dropped my hand. What if the kidnapper came in and grabbed me without her holding on tight? 

I dared a look behind me, but the glassed in door barely rattled where she had thrown it shut when we entered.  No one lurked on the sidewalk out front.  My mom indicated that I hop up on the stool at the counter, as she said to the man in the white paper hat on the other side, "Two SuperBurgers, please."