Free Summer of Love, a Time Travel by Lisa Mason Page B

young dudes can’t handle the booze.
    He
gingerly sits on the couch, and her cats swarm curiously all around him,
sniffing, trilling, rubbing against him the way cats do. A very, very good sign, that her little psychic barometers take so readily to him.
    “It’s
sad, you know?” she says, settling herself in her rocking chair. “It’s all just
a hustle these days. There’s no quest for freedom anymore. Today was the
Solstice, the first day of summer. A very high holy day to the ancients. The
longest day of the year. And you know what, Chi? I say it’s all a shuck. The
Haight-Ashbury has up and died. The love is gone.”
    “No!
Don’t say that, Ruby. The Haight’s not dead.”
    “You
don’t know how it used to be. You could walk down the street, and someone,
anyone, would come right up and put his arms around you, and he wouldn’t be
trying to hustle you. He’d just be there, loving you. He really would. People
believed in freedom. Believed in love. There was joy.” She wants to cry or
scream, it’s so damn sad.
    “Then
it’s up to you and me, Ruby, to keep the Summer of Love alive,” Chi declares.
    “You
can sleep on the couch.” She strides off to find him a pillow, some blankets.
    After
she settles him in, she climbs upstairs to third floor, taking her glass of Chablis.
She washes up, changes into a night gown, then collapses on her big double
featherbed, but she’s not alone for long. Her cats nestle around her.
    Could
it be true? That a guy his age still believes in the New Explanation? The
vision she and her friends once believed in and built their lives around,
before things got so crazy in 1967?
    Is
Chi for real?
    *  
*   *
    Ruby
wakes, smiling for a change. There were times, after Stan left, when she didn’t
want to face the day. Cold dawns when she lingered under the covers, curled up
like a baby.
    But
not this morning. She is up ‘n’ at ‘em, in spite of the chilly fog. And she
realizes: It’s good to have someone in the house. For the first time in a long
time, she isn’t all alone.
    Ruby
wraps herself in an embroidered silk robe and drifts downstairs.
    Before
she heads for the kitchen to brew coffee, she peeks in at him. His boots are
neatly stashed beneath a chair hung with his posh leather jacket. Chi himself
lies on the couch beneath the blankets, very still. He smiles. Since Ruby
climbed out of bed, the cats have discovered him and taken him over, crouching
on his chest, perching on his thighs, grooming each other between his ankles.
    “Morning,
Chi. Hope you like cats.” Ruby laughs. “They certainly seem to like you.”
    “Oh,
we like cats,” he says. “Schrodinger’s Cat is a fundamental of probability
physics.”
    We. His
distinction of himself and his people from her is unmistakable. Plus this
probability stuff again. She doesn’t like it.
    She
perches on the rocking chair. “Look here, sonny. Let’s get this straight. Files
and records. Things you think you know about me or someone like me. I got
hassled by the heat once, but I’ve never been arrested. I’m not somebody
famous. So tell me true. What exactly do you mean you’ve got a record of me?”
    “Well,”
he says slowly, “there are journalists and reporters observing the scene,
right?”
    “I’ll
say.”
    “Okay.
So someone’s seen your shop and you, and mentioned you in an article that’s
preserved in the Archives.”
    “Really?”
She doesn’t want to feel flattered, but she can feel pleasure rush to her face.
    “Really,”
he says, smiling. “That’s all.”
    “What
article? Where, show it to me.”
    “I
don’t have hardcopy with me. It’s stored electronically.”
    “You
mean like microfiche in the library?”
    “Exactly!
I saw the article in the Archives—that’s an electronic library. That’s how I
know about the files. And about you.”
    He
sounds too triumphant, like his lie is working out better than he hoped. He
makes it sound so innocent and plausible, Ruby is instantly