Free People in Trouble by Sarah Schulman Page B

against the right side of his face and thought for one fleeting second that he had turned into a very silly man.   He flipped to the jazz station and listened to that for a while.   Then he went home.
     
    When Kate came back from the studio that night she asked what he'd done all day.
     
    "I listened to jazz and worked on a show," he said.   "Working on a show" was the perfect way to explain away any block of time.   Then he raised his eyes to hers and saw that she had that look.   She had on her sunglasses and her scarf and too much lipstick and a big smile with lots of "yeah"s so he knew that she also had a secret because she was being much too polite.
     
    16
     
    By the end of October Kate realized that she had developed a habit of taking the same walk once or twice a week down the same street.   Only the weather changed.   The neighborhood was still jumping, though, with people trying to have their last outdoor party, their last street-corner conversation before the cold weather's isolation.   There were so many people on the street asking for money.
     
    During the many months of late-night walks home from Molly's Kate had often wondered, Have there always been so many?
     
    There was a huge black market on Second Avenue every night after eleven between Saint Mark's Place and Seventh Street.
     
    You could buy anything.   There were people selling hot ten-speed bikes for thirty dollars and hot three-speed bikes for fifteen.   There were crates of brand-new tape recorders and cassettes and CDs with cellophane still around them.   But there were also entire contents of various people's ripped-off homes that were pulled out and excreted onto the sidewalk.   You could buy half-used tubes of oil paint, half-eaten jars of peanut butter, plants, worn bedroom slippers and dirty towels.   There were endless answering machines with the messages still on them and endless leather jackets.
     
    There was something very different happening when Kate walked alone than on all those late nights walking with Pete.
     
    Coming home from some event she'd walk with him and look at him and talk to him and not see much of anything else.   But coming home alone from her lover's had changed all of that.   Men now talked to her constantly because Peter wasn't there.   They said anything to her that they liked.   She stood out, of course, with that coloring, especially late nights smelling of sex.   Instead of Peter's wide mass next to her like a wall or a shield, she was in a wind tunnel, completely alone and unguarded.   Kate pulled her shawl around her chest.   Coming back from Molly was the first nighttime ritual she had experienced without Peter standing next to her and it changed what she saw when she walked down the street.
     
    Some nights she wanted to get home as quickly as possible because she was tired from making love and would have preferred to just stretch out to sleep on Molly's rough sheets.   But she couldn't.   Or, sometimes she got so turned on by making love that she wanted to do that for hours, but she couldn't.   Peter would be so hurt.   So, she stumbled home instead and silently slipped into bed.   Or, she'd get turned on on the walk home, thinking about what she had done and would make love with Peter when she got there.
     
    Having a girlfriend makes sex better with your man, she thought.
     
    Or, sometimes, if he was awake, they'd sit up at the kitchen table over a beer or tea and she'd make up something that had happened at the studio.   Something very rich and specific.   Or she'd get home and he'd still be at work, so she'd regret having left Molly so soon, or revel in a moment to herself or feel lonely for Peter and wish he'd get home.
     
    But some nights Kate went home very slowly because she was swimming in sex and felt some special power and explanation for watching things more closely.   You see so much more when you walk down the street alone.   That's why people work so hard to