Free Like People in History by Felice Picano

but would instead be arrested for brawling in the gutter.
    Then Wally was out of the taxi, blocking me. It looked as though he were holding out something in his hand. Yes, he was holding out a ten-dollar bill, thrusting it at the cabby. I knew Wally had already spent his money tonight, so this had to be his only-in-a-dire-emergency cash kept in his Levi's tiny hip pocket. A real sacrifice.
    "Keep the change!" Wally said brightly to the suddenly befuddled taxi driver. All I could do was shrug. I slowly stumbled after Wally, who'd already strode off, headed up Eighty-sixth Street.
    As I passed the cabby, I saw him fingering something in his other hand, the one not holding the change maker; it looked like some kind of beads. Yes, that's exactly what it was—prayer beads! I was so surprised not to see a knife or blackjack that it didn't strike me for a minute why he'd been fingering the beads: he'd been praying there wouldn't be a fight—even in his great anger and sense of righteousness. The opening lines of The Dhammapada flew into my mind: "All living creatures fear death."
    Two blocks farther up, I spotted Wally. He was across the street, holding a phone, waving the receiver at me.
    When I managed to get through the traffic to where he stood, Wally said, "You were going to call Alistair?"
    I took the receiver and hung it up. "You never stop! You're incorrigible!"
    Wally wasn't in the least upset. He took my hand and pulled me along.
    "C'mon, slowpoke. The demonstration will be over!"
    "But I've got to stop him from taking the pills!" I said. "I've got to reach Orkney and tell him."
    "No," Wally said. Grabbing me by one shoulder, Wally began to lead me away, up the sloping walkway to the promenade, repeating, "No. You've already done what you had to."
    "But... If Orkney knew..."
    Wally walked me over to the steel pipes running horizontally along the river side of the promenade. Across the churning water was Long Island, Queens, Sunnyside. I found myself thinking, Sunny side of the street. Gold dust at my feet. Clouds had begun to thicken the night sky. I could make out the pearled necklaces of lights from three bridges.
    "If I call now, I can stop him!" I explained.
    "You have to let whatever happens happen," Wally said. "It's out of your hands now, Rog."
    He wasn't kidding, nor was he setting me up for some judgmental shit. This was Wally being Wally. The real Wally. The Wally I could trust, could rely on. The Wally who sometimes—not often but sometimes—saw with total clarity and let me know it.
    "Then he'll die," I said.
    "Hell die," Wally confirmed.
    I pulled away. This was too much. "He doesn't deserve this!"
    "Doesn't he?" Wally asked. "He's done awful things to you."
    I stared at his unyielding face, then I let Wally take my arm and move me toward Gracie Mansion. He was right, of course, Alistair had done terrible things to me. Terrible things to several people.
     

     
    I'd never met my mother's cousin Diana, so when the plane finally landed at Burbank Airport just before sunset that late June day, I had no idea whom or what to expect. Given what little I'd overheard between my parents and my sister of Cousin Diana's history—divorces, remarriages, travels to strange places—I expected someone totally glamorous: a combination of Barbara Rush and Dagmar.
    What I got instead was a slightly spiffier version of my mother. True, Cousin Diana wore dark glasses and a silk kerchief tied around the middle of her long, thick, unnaturally blond-streaked hair, not covering it so much as dividing it and lifting it off the back of her neck. Also true, she wore a silk blouse unbuttoned in front much farther down than I would have expected to see on a woman her age, close-fitting tan slacks that revealed more of her than if she'd been nude, and high-heeled sandals through which her bright carmine big-toe nails glimmered. She was waiting for me at Arrivals, and she recognized me instantly—from photos my mother had sent, I