“Small houses grow into big houses, then into small buildings, and finally into big buildings.” In the GTO, with the rush of the Windowpane still coming on, I expound on urban sprawl while wearing a red-and-white-striped ski hat I found on the seat next to me. It’s a baby Cat in the Hat hat that hasn’t yet grown all its stripe stripes.

“You’re so right.” Arno reaches back over the seat and pulls the hat hat off my head head.

“What’d you do that for?”

“I’m going to need it.”

“You already have red stripes.”

Milton laughs.

“Who are the Panther Twenty-One?” Lucas the Inquisitive has paused to consider the words “Free the Panther 21” spray-painted on the stone wall beside Central Park.

“A group of Black Panthers who’ve been arrested on trumped-up charges of planning to blow up police stations,” Milton says.

Arno hooks a finger through one of Lucas’s belt loops and tugs. Buses rumble past, taxis honk, waves of headlights course through this dense, dark, humid urban fishbowl.

It’s the first time Lucas of Long I Land has been to the city since May, when Robin, her parents, and he marched in an antiwar demonstration around Greenwich Village, chanting “No more war!” and carrying signs that said HELL NO, WE WON’T GO!

Back then the war was an abstraction, a subject for passionate debate over mugs of Constant Comment and crappy-tasting carob brownies. Tonight, the war is real and immediate. It’s a huge black-and-red-striped panther with long pointed white fangs stalking in the shadows.

Lucas wraps his arms around a sidewalk tree and peeks back.

Arno groans with aggravation. “Now what?”

“It’s following us.” Lucas feels the rough bark against his cheek, the sap inside the tree flowing like water through a hose. The Windowpane’s rush continues to intensify.

“What is?” Milton asks.

“The war panther.”

“How many hits of Windowpane did you say you had?” Arno asks.

“Two.”

“And how many do you have now?”

“Uhhh.”

“For Christ’s sake.” Arno pries the tree hugger away from the tree.

On a dark, winding walkway through the park, it’s now Lucas with a finger through Arno’s belt loop. Flying bugs rocket in kamikaze orbits around lampposts. Someone in front of them has a halo. Out of the dark, over the distant honking and rumble of engines, comes the bell-like knell of soaring guitar notes.

“B.B. King,” says Milton.

The music builds, the crowd congesting on the walkway. The rush of the Windowpane has grown into an intense audiovisual swirl. Around the Wollman skating rink the horde is thick and milling, the music searing. The show itself is hidden behind tall walls. Outside those walls, huge shadowy tank-size war spiders creep behind the dark trees.