“I’m burning my draft card!” shouted a tall, skinny kid in a coonskin cap and a bright red nightshirt that hung past his knees like a dress. He was standing in front of the sergeant, right arm extended, pinching a flaming scrap between his thumb and index finger.

A desultory round of applause came from some of the guys on the benches. Destroying a draft card was a federal offense: it could cost you ten grand in fines and five years in prison. But the sergeant just belched and shambled from behind the table with a Tiparillo clamped in his teeth. Seizing the kid’s wrist and ducking his head toward the flames, he lit his cigar with the burning card and said, “Numbnuts, that’s your driver’s license.”

Letting go of the charred scrap, the kid bent down to inspect it, then announced with disbelief, “I burnt my license; I can’t believe it; I burnt my fucking license.”

The sergeant gave the kid his paperwork and shuffled back behind the table.

After finishing my questionnaire, I spent the next few hours waiting in various lines, taking off my clothes and putting them back on, and answering questions, all the while wondering whether Glenna was pregnant with our son or daughter.

Since I had neither a terminal illness, drug habit, nor an unnatural fondness for men or beasts, I passed my physical with flying colors. Brooklyn College was closed until Monday, January 5, so I couldn’t submit Form 109 for my deferment to the registrar until then. Still, I wrote my name on the form, signed it, and tucked it into the glove compartment of the GTO.

With Glenna in Palm Beach, Palmer visiting his old college roommate in San Francisco, and Robin at a dude-ranch spa in Arizona with her parents, the house was quiet, and I occupied myself by hunkering down at the typewriter and trying to write about the kid and his driver’s license. When Todd called to say that he’d copped us fourth-row seats for Hendrix’s late show at the Fillmore, I told him that I was working.

“You’re certifiable, Meyers. This is Hendrix.”

“Next time.”

“Not in this city, man. In two weeks I’m off to Hollywood. Let me know if you wanna come.”

I hung up the phone and typed away, but the sentences wouldn’t behave. Early on New Year’s Eve, I tore another false start out of the Smith-Corona and rode the trains down to the Village.

The Eighth Street Bookshop was closed, but the holly and tinsel and lights were up in the stores. People hurried home from work, kicking up the slush on the sidewalks, eager for the party to begin. Behind plate-glass windows, waiters in black bow ties and starched white aprons were already seating couples at candlelit tables, and whenever anyone tramped in or out of a bar, snatches of conversation, music, and laughter filtered into the street.

Easy Rider was at the Waverly. I was hungry and bought a ticket and a bucket of buttered popcorn. Afterward, on the subway uptown, the movie stayed with me, the images of Fonda and Hopper on their bikes, racing down the open road under an endless sky, and suddenly I felt that I couldn’t take any more limbo with Glenna. I should split and it didn’t matter where.