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"I knew you’d call about that" I was filled with a strange joy because she felt the same way I did: that we couldn’t survive apart I just stood still for a hts their last chance to run quietly over the wires, touching each other in secret signal as they passed, like a colu at international rates

"There’s a library book, too," she said "Those Baron Munchhausen stories I found it in without my room"

"I know I saw it I’ll take it back today"

"That book’s got to be overdue, Codi You were reading it in the car a o e drove to Bisbee"

I took a bite out of the cucu I wanted this phone call to last forever I wanted to recall every book we’d ever read aloud together while driving "You’re right It’s overdue"

"Take it back and pay the fine, okay? Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off"

"Yes, ma’a not to laugh Hallie was intellectually subversive and actually owned a copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, but by nature she was perversely honest I’d seen her tape di meter

"Apart from moral reasons, they’ll cancel your card"

"I don’t knohy you think I’m such a library outlaw I’m all paid up over there" I munched on the cucu an outsize apple, say, or a peeled peach, and yet anyone looking in the ould judge me insane "Don’t worry about me, Hallie," I said finally "Just worry about yourself"

"I’m not worried about myself I’m the luckiest person alive"

It was an old joke, or an old truth, grown out of all the close shaves she’d walked away fro I’d always been net, but Hallie was the opposite One time she started out the door of the old science library at the university, and then turned around and went back in because she’d left her sunglasses by the microfiche machine, and two seconds later theJust slid straight down and smashed, it looked like Beirut

Hallie didn’t believe she was invulnerable She was never one of those daredevil types; she knew she could get hurt What I think she ua It was the slowest thing to sink into

We’d had one tietherness in our adult lives, the year ere both in college in Tucson-her first year, ether for the first time away from Doc Homer That winter I’d wanted to fail a subject just so I could hang back, stay there with her, the two of us walking around the drafty house in sweatshirts and wool socks and understanding each other precisely Bringing each other cups of tea without having to ask So I stayed on in Tucson forto Boston as I’d planned, and y Hallie, around the same time, befriended soees After that we’d have strangers in our kitchen every tiht, kids scared senseless, people with all kinds of daain idyllic

I should have seen it coone to see a docuade, which was these A to fight against Franco and Hitler in the Spanish Civil War At that point in US history fascis, whereas communism was definitely When we came home froave up life and limb only to lose Spain to Franco, and not for the ones who came back and were harassed for the rest of their lives for being Reds The tragedy for Hallie was that therefor in our lifeti her nose and sobbing on my bed she told me this That there were no real causes left

Now she had one-she was off to Nicaragua, a revolution of co-op faruess she was lucky Few people know so clearly what they want Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain Alets the chance to alter the course of human events on purpose, in the exact way they wish for it to be altered

I loved her for feeling so strongly about things But I’d watched Doc Ho his solemn charity to the people of Grace and I’m not sure whose course was altered by that, other than Hallie’s and rew to resent It’s true that I triedprofession, but I did it for the lowest of motives I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable Not to move mountains In ed when you look down on theht