There seemed to be radios everywhere. Music and DJ-hype came from open car windows and above-shop apartments. Bridgeman’s was packed with teenagers, juiced on sugar and the Rolling Stones, a throng of blushing hungry kids from north Minneapolis. The black soda jerks tried to keep up but couldn’t. They didn’t look at the customers, but through their lowered lashes and rapid dance of ice cream scoops and soda levers they seemed to have a language of their own that was slick and fast and beautiful anyway. No one talked about the war or the protests, some purposeful and others merely carnival, down at the University and farther away in Chicago and DC. The Democratic National Convention was a faint three-year-old echo in the upper reaches of northern hearing. They still didn’t talk about it. One of their own had been there, the local boy, Hubert Humphrey, and they felt shame and sadness for him, were embarrassed.

The boys who came back from Vietnam were bitter, but the people of Minneapolis were puzzled more than alarmed. The unrest among the students and teenagers manifested itself in loud music, bad taste, and sometimes earnest dialogue. Their rebellion was treated as if it were a fad, like troubadour pants: mildly alarming but something that would ultimately pass. As for the teenagers themselves, fashion, whether material or moral, always came slowly to the north. The city seemed so new, so out of the way, devoid of monument and proclamation. It lacked memorials, or seats of power so the protestors hardly had any targets at which to direct their anger.

Vera walked past Bridgeman’s and nodded to a group of her friends who nodded back solemnly, bound by a pact to cover for her, so no words were needed. They did not fully understand why she wanted to sneak away to see Lester. They hadn’t officially met him but had seen him, tall and angled, waiting at the bus stop. They didn’t understand why she took the risk of seeing him, were half-scared and half awestruck at both Lester and the situation. To them he looked loaded and dangerous: dark and tall, and so different. They idolized Vera because of this and guarded her secret, acting as alibi when needed.

She saw Lester ahead at the bus stop and he did look serious. Though she didn’t know it, he wore that face out of nervousness and perceived vulnerability in a strange neighborhood, among blacks he didn’t know and foreign languages he didn’t understand, distrustful of what he saw as the casual wealth of the area, though it was neither casual nor all that wealthy.