“Well, there’s one he does his practice on . . .”

“Girl, you’re too much. Anyway . . .”

“Wish it was me.”

“Hear you talking. Anyway, what was I saying? You made me lose my train.”

“About how he met her.”

“I don’t know how he met that woman, but he deserves better . . . Now, I could put some of these other men with her and say she was their just deserts, but not him. I remember I used to have this crush on him my own self. I really don’t know how they met, because he wasn’t really in our circle, you know. I don’t even know if he had a circle to tell the truth. Just looked up one day and they were together. Love is weird. Anybody doing a study on weird love ought to check them out . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with that woman. Any other woman. Catch like that. I don’t know what keeps some people together.”

“We all expected so much from her. Change art. Change the world. I always liked her, but she was one of those people with that morally superior air about them all the time. You know. Too idealistic.”

“We were all too idealistic.”

“Yeah, you know, but even in that she was sort of off. None of us could make up our minds about her. Outsider among outsiders, that’s what Mejia used to call her. Oh, she was with us, but . . . Well, there was a group of us who loved her, and another group that thought she behaved like her shit don’t stink. But she used to get so mad at all of us, our in-fighting and pettiness—and girl we could be petty—she’d say that we behaved like we were fighting windmills when it was giants we were fighting.”

“That sounds like her.”

“Now that Mejia used to get off a little to herself, too, and sort of sit back and look like she was being amused . . .”

“Yeah, but she was from Colombia, one of those places, you couldn’t expect her to blend.”

“Had as much booty in her as anybody.”

“Yeah well, she did run with us, not like Miss Argentina.”

“Yeah, I remember Miss Argentina.”

“What was that girl’s name?”

“She was from Nicaragua, though, I believe.”

“Why did everybody call her Argentina?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now I know she had more booty in her than me.”

“Mejia knew she was Black.”

“Uhm hmn.”

“I wonder what she’s doing now?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her being a guerrilla somewhere.”

“I hope she don’t disappear down there. A lot of people’s disappearing.”

“Somebody said that Loyola went down to Colombia to take pictures.”

“No, she’s at Columbia, teaching photography. I know that to be true.”

“Tell me something.”

“Well, I know that Mejia’s got to be a guerrilla. That’s why she was probably so amused at us all the time. Playing revolutionaries when she knew Che.”