iv
Wednesday was Mike’s birthday. I had planned on calling him that evening, in anticipation of a weekend together in Cambridge. Coming out of psych lab, I daydreamed about what I’d say, what kind of card I’d make for him. Entering the Yard, I found it filled with people shouting at each other. From an upper story window in Weld Hall boomed the Moog synthesizer version of a Brandenburg Concerto. Students interspersed with a few faculty filled the space between Widener Library and Memorial Church, their attention trained westward to Uni. Several kids had bull horns, leading competing chants of “Rotcy must go” and “Out, out, out”. One of the deans had been allowed to speak, pleading, “Be terribly careful of what you’re doing, because this is a collision course. I’m not sure Harvard can survive this type of thing, and I’m sure that many of you can’t.”
I found Howard at the statue, and asked him, “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Some of the SDS bolted into Uni Hall, kicked all the deans and secretaries out.” He pointed up at the second floor windows, where crude hand-lettered signs spelled out “ROTC Must Go.” A red flag, with “SDS” in a black circle, hung nearby. “They’ve chained the doors, only students are being allowed in. If we’re gonna be a part of this, we’ve got to go now. Sarah – Janie – are you coming in?”
I felt a strange calm tinged with fear. I remembered that day in Chicago, when I lost Charlie and almost got trampled in a mob. I looked inside Uni, where kids leaned out windows, urging, “Join us! Join us!” Mike’s face floated into my mind’s eye, and I wondered what he would think, what he would say. I looked over at Howard, feverish with anger and anticipation. He reached for my hand when I felt a tap on the other shoulder. Turning, I saw Jeanne, a look of bemused wonder on her face.
Howard quickly filled her in on the status of the demonstration, finishing with another exhortation to join him up the steps into Uni.
Jeanne, thinking precisely as always, immediately answered, “No, Howard, this is not something you just walk away from, just go back to class after. Besides, nothing will change. They had their vote on ROTC last month, Harvard’s not going back on that decision. You may think you’re fighting for workers’ rights, but you’re just play acting. I don’t see any of those workers here. You think they’ll show up when the students when get pulled out, taken to jail? I want things to change as much as you do. But I can do that best by being a part of, not apart from, society. We’re supposed to be the leaders of tomorrow, and I want to do that right, not lose that chance.”
“Leaders of tomorrow”, Howard snorted. “Right. Follow their rules, play their game, become a part of them. Think you’ll change anything, Jeanne? They’re just gonna change you…” He shook his head violently, turning back to me. “Sarah…?” he almost pleaded.
I looked at Jeanne, seeking her strength and self-assurance. She linked arms with me at the elbow, and softly said, “It’s all right, Janie.” I hoped she wouldn’t let go. I watched as Howard ran inside.
All afternoon, people kept going up the steps, in twos and threes and tens, to be let in by those inside while the chains were unlocked, then locked behind them. Shortly after four, Dean Glimp arrived, and began addressing those of us assembled in the Yard, as well as the occupiers inside. First, he said the Yard was now “closed”, open only to the Freshman who lived in the surrounding Houses. Next, he invited everyone to an open meeting at Lowell, to “discuss the situation”. He ended by saying, “all persons now present in University Hall must depart therefrom, so that it may be restored to its proper use. Anyone failing to observe this warning within fifteen minutes will be subject to prosecution for criminal trespass.”
From inside Uni came a competing announcement. “We advise our friends and brothers not to leave the yard. It’s our yard, not their yard!” High up in Weld Hall, the massive stereo speakers aimed outward, throttling the Beatles’ “Revolution” (the hard, not the acoustic version) down upon us. The crowd, filling every space by now, cheered.
A few left for the meeting in Lowell, while those who stayed learned that Freshman were opening their rooms to anyone who needed a place to crash. Jeanne and I found one of her friends from St. Louis, making arrangements to eat and hang out with him in his room.
After dinner, I called Mike and told him what was happening. He responded by describing the takeover, by black students, of Fisk Hall at Calvin, six weeks earlier. “Remember, my year was the first they tried to get a lot of black students here. Thirty, out of 350 in our class. Something about wanting John Calvin U to ‘reflect America in every way’. But just admitting different people doesn’t do it; they have to change what they teach, how they teach, as well. Those guys, when they took over the hall, had decided it was their duty to help improve the institution which was giving them a chance. They wanted us to be better.”
“That’s what’s going on here, Mike. It’s all about how Harvard operates, who it’s for. Is it supposed to be a feeder into the highest parts of the establishment, in Washington, in New York? Is it supposed to grow ever bigger, taking over the places where people, who don’t get the chance to go to Harvard, where they live? Is it supposed to be for us, the students, so we can become the best version of ourselves? And what about the faculty, they seem to think it’s all about them and their careers, being famous, getting grants, winning Nobel prizes.”
“It’s all those things, isn’t it?” he said with finality. “What about this weekend? What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, Mike.” I paused, sighing deeply. He didn’t seem to hear how important this was, for me, for my friends. “I don’t know. It’s like I can’t think that far ahead. Let’s just wait and see, OK?”
After hanging up, I turned to Jeanne with my lower lip quivering. Not usually a hugger, she sat next to me on the couch and, saying nothing, let me cry on her shoulder.
Once composed, I began, “He’s not here. He doesn’t know.”
“What’s wrong, Janie?”
“It’s been three years now. I feel like we’ve grown up together, but a lot of the time, we’ve been apart. I always thought it was a cliché, but what I really feel is… this is so scary … I need some space, some time to find out who I am without him.”
Jeanne said, “There’s time for that later, Janie. Right now, we’ve got to get some sleep. They’re saying the Cambridge police are at the firehouse over on Quincy. And the kids inside Uni, they’ve said they’re staying all night, asking people to form a picket line around the building.”
I looked outside, and did see a few students walking slowly back and forth just below University Hall’s front steps. I turned back to Jeanne and nodded. “Sleep…Here?”
I took the cushions off the couch, giving them to Jeanne while I tried lying down on the sagging springs. If I did get any sleep, I don’t remember it.
At 4 AM, fire alarms started going off all over the yard. Kids were running through the halls, shouting, “Wake up, wake up!” One burst into our room, announcing quickly, “They’re coming! They’re here, the cops are here!”
Hundreds of cops spilled down the steps from Memorial Hall. Police from Cambridge, Boston, Somerville, and the smaller towns around began forming lines, listening to instructions through several bullhorns. State troopers appeared in helmets, with long thick coats, shiny black boots and jodhpurs. I saw shields, night sticks and guns on many of the others. The sound of buses idling came from the Tercentenary theater. I remembered Chicago, the fearful chaos, and hoped the kids in Uni would leave when asked, this time.
v
“Hello?”
As soon as I heard Mike’s voice on the other end, I broke down. “They came marching up the steps…pounding on the door…it was awful…dragging them out…handcuffed, by the hair, down the steps. I saw…I saw the clubs swinging. It was like…it was like…I don’t know, I don’t know what it was like!” Sniffling, shaking, exhausted from only 4 hours sleep the past two nights, I fell silent, hoping he’d make some sense where I couldn’t.
“Wait, what? Janie, is that you? What happened?”
My breath came in spasms. I looked at the clothes I’d had on for the past three days, now wrinkled beyond recognition. My hair, not brushed the whole time, had tangled into a black rat’s nest. A thought flashed by, he can’t see me like this. That brought me back, provided enough stability to muster a few rational words, trying to overcome the chaos.
“The kids in Uni hall – they sent the police in after them this morning. Early this morning. Dragged them all off to jail, I guess, in buses. There was blood on their clothes, blood streaming down the steps. They didn’t do anything, the kids, they didn’t hurt anybody. Pusey doesn’t care, he just sent the pigs in after them, no warning, hundreds of cops.” I paused. Mike said nothing.
“Are you still there?” Still silence on the other end. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. No one’s going to class, they’re talking about a strike, at least ‘til Monday. And Harvard’s saying, like a cornered corporation, ‘You can’t strike, we’ll lock you out.’ I don’t think it’s a good idea to come up this weekend.”
“What? Of course I should…you sound, um, scared.”
Now under control, I felt the words come out unbidden, “No. You can’t. I don’t need, don’t want you here right now.”
“What do you mean?” he almost pleaded. “It’s my birthday. We were going downtown, walk along the river, then spend the night. Why not?”
Seeing all those SDS kids, first taking over University Hall, then getting dragged out and hauled away, must have built a new courage in me, another layer in my sense of self. “No, Mike. I’m having trouble being with you now.” I bit my lip, then forged on. “I’ve been meeting people here, in the SDS and others, and I need some time to find out more about who I am. I need to – have to – do that by myself, without you. I need some time for that.”
Sounding hollow, he said in a monotone, “You need time…”
“There’s so much happening here, so many people saying so many things, not just the strike, but every day all around me. In classes, the professors. In the dorm, in the dining hall. At meetings. I’m not letting myself grow. I tell myself, ‘I have a boyfriend, I don’t have to worry about this stuff.’ And that was good – that’s still good – but it’s not where I need to be right now. I need to be here, without you, and find out what’s going on, who I am without you.”
As soon as those last words came out, I could sense his pain, his confusion, through his silence. I was lucky I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t reach out for his hands, his arms. If I had, I never would have said, “I think we need to be apart for a while, Mike, I need to be apart from us. Not you…not you, apart from us.”
He didn’t fight, he didn’t argue. He didn’t try to win me over with charm or self-pity. He simply sighed and said, “OK,” and then hung up.
I slept through most of Thursday, while the campus boiled around me. In the evening, I tore up four or five letters to Mike, trying to explain, first of all, what was going on at Harvard, and then, what I meant when I’d said, “I need time apart from us.” Every time I tried to sound rational, analytic, realistic, I’d think of him, spending the night with him, and wonder what that meant. If we lived together, if we weren’t always coming back after being apart, what would it be like? Would we feel – would I feel – as if we had to make love every time we got together? I realized “making love” meant, not just physical love, but our whole relationship, almost as if we had to re-create it every time we got together. If I stayed apart from him for a while, we’d have some time and space to build something wider, deeper than we seemed to have.
I tried writing one more time. “You have been – you still are – my best friend. And, yes, you are still my boyfriend. But I’m not sure I know what that means anymore, Mike. I’ve been with you so much, I want to be with you so much, I’m not sure I know who I am by myself, anymore. And I don’t know who we are, apart or together. I’ve got to think about all that, got to find out about being apart, so we can be together. That’s what I was trying to say on the phone, that’s what I’ve got to do here for a while. Please don’t hate me, please try to understand.”
The next two weeks were indeed confusing, both for me and for our University. The feeling of a General Strike dissipated within a week or two. Some faculty held classes, others didn’t. Some returned to their curriculum, others held intense discussions about the nature of a University, whom it ultimately served, and the “meaning of Harvard”. Several mass meetings filled the stadium, and the Faculty issued solemn pronouncements. Eventually, Pusey endorsed their proposal reducing ROTC to “extra-curricular” status. The College gave Black students a voice in the new African-American Studies program. The SDS remained splintered between those who wanted to fight more broadly, for workers’ rights and against the war, and those who looked inward, at reforming the institution. Outside the organized activists, other students, while supportive, became fatigued with constant turmoil, and returned to classes and their ambitions.
Mike wrote me several letters, at first supporting my “search”, and later, reverting to describing his own life and dreams. He vividly described his ski trip to Colorado over spring break. I seized on that as a way to keep him around without actually having to deal with him. I started knitting a sweater. Blue and white, with a pattern meant to evoke winter, something you might see in a European ski village. At first knitting calmed me, giving my hands something to do while I read. Gradually, I saw the sweater as a belated birthday present, handiwork from me that would last no matter what. Sometimes while knitting, my mind would wander from the book or paper I’d be reading, and light on Mike, his hair, his arms, his stomach, his smells, the sheer physicality of him. That sweater brought me back to him, and him to me. With each twist of my wrist, each flick of the yarn, I stitched over whatever was pushing us apart.
vi
Bev and Leslie planned another dinner party on Friday, two weeks after the strike. Jeanne wanted to bring Larry, the guy from her high school who’d loaned us his couch the night before the Uni Hall occupation, and his roommate Sam, as a thank-you gesture. We walked over to the Yard to pick them up, show them the way to the Oxford Street house. After crossing Mass Ave, we cut through the Law school, and immediately ran into Howard Lehrman, still sporting a band-aid on his forehead where a billy club had cracked him the morning of the raid.
He didn’t see us, and I hoped to avoid him, but Jeanne called out, “Howard! Hey!”
He squinted our way, then brightened when he saw us. “Jeanne…Sarah Jane! Well, Les told me you were coming to her place tonight. I guess we should go there together, no?”
He still refused to call me by my name, or at least the one I preferred. I had let it go on too long to start correcting him now, but it was irksome. Instead, I said, “Yes, that’s where we’re going. First a little detour, though. Jeanne wants to thank those guys who let us stay in their room that night, take them to Les and Bev’s.”
“I’ve got time. OK if I go with you?”
Larry and Sam were sitting on the steps outside their house, laughing – no, giggling – uncontrollably. As we came up, they tried without success to completely suppress whatever was amusing, ending up snorting through their noses while shaking their shoulders.
Howard was onto them right away. “Are you guys high?”
They looked at each other, and started full-on laughter. Sam reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag half full of greenish brown leaves and sticks. “Sure. Want some?”
“What? No, put that away!” Howard urged. “Wait until we get inside, if it’s OK with Les and Bev, all right?”
Larry abruptly stopped laughing. “Whoa, man, what happened to you?” he asked, pointed at the bandage on Howard’s forehead.
“That?” Howard snorted. “Some pig thought he could get me out of Uni Hall. I kicked his legs out from under him, and he went ape-shit on me.”
Sam’e eyes bulged. “Wow. Must have been some fight, uh?”
Howard wryly chuckled. “It was a lot easier than trying to get the Corporation to make any changes, that’s for sure. I haven’t slept more than three or four hours a night since. I could really do with some of that dope myself right now.”
Turning to me, Howard asked, “Where’s that guy, Mike? I thought he came up here every weekend from Jock U. Or have you dumped him finally?”
I had no interest in getting into that with Howard, so I turned to Jeanne and asked, “Did you hear yet about this summer? Did you get that thing at Mass General?” Today, the last Friday in April, she was supposed to learn whether they’d accepted her as an aide in the psych clinic.
“No, too many seniors and med students ahead of me. I’m going to have to go back to St. Louis, work in my dad’s hospital there.”
Larry asked, “Barnes?” Jeanne nodded.
Once inside, Howard cornered Bev, and pointing at Larry and Sam, said, “These guys have some grass. OK if we roll a joint and smoke it here?”
Bev wrinkled her nose. “Hmm. Landlord’s out of town, Ought to be all right.” She flicked her head towards the kitchen. “Go over there, the window by the fire escape. Keep the smell out of here, please?” Then she added, “Let me see it.”
Sam pulled out his baggie. Bev shook her head and twisted her mouth in disgust. “Yuck! It’s half seeds and stems. Looks kind of dead to boot. Sure it’s any good?”
“Well, these guys think so. They haven’t said one thing that makes sense the whole walk over here,” Howard noted.
Bev looked at me, although why she thought I could give an expert opinion was a mystery. She knew I’d never tried marijuana, having as much a fear of losing control that way as I did with alcohol. I put on an innocent, surprised face that said, You’re asking me?
With the boys gone, Bev turned to me and asked, “You still knitting that sweater? Any closer to figuring out what to do with your on-again, off-again boy friend?” I pulled the needles, yarn, and half-finished sweater from my satchel in response. She went on, “Didn’t you tell me you thought he had a fling last summer, at that swim club? And he’s going back?”
I reminded her, “That’s not exactly it. He had a crush or something on a girl there, but didn’t do anything about it.”
“But didn’t he write a poem to her?”
“Not to her. About her.”
“What’s the difference? If he’s thinking about her, that’s the same thing. Worse, actually, because he can deny anything’s going on, but she’s still taking up space in his head which belongs to you, right?”
Howard sidled up to Bev, holding the smoldering joint gingerly with the nails of his thumb and middle finger. “This stuff is surprisingly fresh, despite its appearance. You really should try it.”
Forgetting her proscription against smoke inside the apartment, Bev shrugged her shoulders, closed her eyes, grabbed the joint, and inhaled deeply, sucking in more air several times without exhaling as she handed it over to me, gesturing with her nose and hand to take it.
I looked at Howard for help. “How does this work? I’ve never even smoked a cigarette.”
He made a small “O” with his lips, then instructed, “Hold it right next to your mouth, and make sure you breathe in a lot of air around it, don’t just suck at the end. Then hold your breath as long as you can, let the smoke stay in your lungs.”
Larry and Sam had looked juvenile, silly, when high, but Howard was already in law school, and Bev about to be a senior. To me, they were old enough to be role models. If an occasional fling with grass hadn’t harmed them, maybe I could handle it, too.
I did as instructed, suppressing a strong urge to cough it all out as soon as the harsh vapor seared the back of my throat. Bev finally let out her breathe, chortling, “All right, Janie!” She reached to take the joint back for another hit. She handed it to Howard, who returned to the kitchen fire escape window, where Larry and Sam were intent on stacking the plastic wine cups into a three-dimensional pyramid.
She resumed the cross examination. “Let me get this straight: Mike’s thinking about this girl, but you’re OK with it because he’s too scared to do anything about it.”
“Mike’s not like that,” I whined. “He wouldn’t…”
Leslie barged in and asserted, “I keep telling you, Janie, after a point, there’s nothing special about any man. Sure, you want someone as smart as you, someone who’s not a loser or a psycho. I say, you won’t know what you’ve got, unless you find someone to compare him to. It’s only fair – if he’s thinking about looking around, shouldn’t you be too?”
Bev chimed in, “Of course it’s fair. Even if you get back together with him, I say you have to find out what else is possible in a relationship. You’ve already told him you need time, space, right? The next step is yours, not his.”
I felt cornered, double-teamed by these two older friends. I stood still, my neck tight, my hands cupped together at my waist. I found myself saying, “I like being loved by him. I like everything we do with and to each other.” My head was filled with poems, with our walks and the endless observations we shared. I didn’t know how to put that into words, so I simply said, “I care about what he does and says with me, not who he thinks about.”
vii
Next morning, I found one of those bulging envelopes from Mike. I ripped it open, reading it right there in one of dorm lounge comfy chairs. This one was five pages long, titled “Seeking An Unknown Master, I Had Some Friends Over For Dinner”. It read more as a lyrical story than poetry:
I seek an unknown master; I sit patiently at my writing table, waiting for his arrival. How then do I seek, while I must wait? A high chair is not the best for waiting, but an easy, cushioned soft and sinking one is what I wait in.
I thought that while I waited, I’d have some friends over for dinner. They weren’t very tasty. Not only that, they couldn’t understand the candle in my window. I tried to explain.
“Look,” I said. “See that candle; its flame will soon expire, but not the hope that my waiting will wake into seeking. Not by sleeping, but by trusting, here with you, our after-dinner chatter. Like, ‘How is Margaret’s daughter, can she still hide her belly? And the butcher, does he still cut off too much fat? The important things we do are not resting on that mantle with my candle; they are hiding here with us – let’s go and find them, please.”
My neighbor raised her nose, and the rest of her head followed. She appeared to be ready to speak. While I waited for her favour, I remembered it was her son who’d helped young Margaret with her hidden bulge. “But why a green candle?” she fairly shouted. “Don’t you know that nothing can be representative anymore? There’s always been something slightly fertile about green, as far as I’m concerned.”
People hushed and then agreed, all gabbing at once, each explaining why every color of the rainbow was best suited for my candle.
“But!” I screamed, But But But I shouted at them ‘till they heard that I had said, “My candle does not wait, it only shows the way.”
“For whom? Or what” they asked, at last intrigued.
“For whoever wants to come, that’s who. All of you were able to find, to follow, to come to here to me by its wavering, dying light, weren’t you?” They all had to agree.
And then one, more clever than the rest (a postman, I think) looked thoughtful, and hushed the crowd. He said, “Was it we you were waiting for? Could it be perhaps that all you seek is us”
“Perhaps,” I granted, “But you’re not an unknown master. I know all of you very well, don’t I? I mean, once you’ve sat down to dinner with someone, and shared what’s really important, Well, you can’t help but end up knowing them.”
“And liking them, a whole lot,” a slightly flighty little lady gurgled.
We all agreed with a warm, comradely mutual laugh.
“Well, it certainly is pleasant to spend an evening with one’s friends, discovering who they really are, now isn’t it, one said. And we all sort of nodded and looked down at our half-eaten pies, smiling, shaking our heads, and clicking our tongues. We were privy to our lives, privileged to be privy.
But now they’ve gone. I’ve cleared away the dishes, fed the scraps to the dog and cats, and brushed away the clouded air of too many laughs and too many pithy observations. I’d vainly I sought with them; I now must wait, here in my easy chair.
“It’s time for musing, not amusing,” I murmured under my beard. “I’m not as lonely as I was yesterday, I’ll be more lonely tomorrow. I guess I can say, with a quiver and a break in my voice, constricted in my throat, welling in my eye, that I’ve never been so lonely in my life. Not just feeling, but being, Lonely.” That made me slightly melancholy, so I went on –
My unknown master, I wonder what he’ll wear –
A rainbow-colored Joseph cloak,
and a tassel made of silk
He’ll look like everyone I’ve ever known,
and most of all like me.
He’ll be so wise,
and I’ll read in his eyes
any story, any preaching
I’ll ever need to know.
Oh, he’ll mean so much
to me,
he’ll feel so much for me,
He’ll be my own, my very private, privy
Unknown knowing Master –
He’ll be me!
Under the final line he’d drawn, with the Rapidograph I’d given him, a curving arrow down to the words, “I think he’s also you, Janie; But then you are so very much me.”
Maybe it was the lingering effects of my experiment with marijuana, but I felt he’d been with me at the party the night before. Or perhaps he had foreseen it somehow, for surely he’d written this some days earlier. And, it was obvious he was missing me – “never been so lonely in my life. Not just feeling, but being. Lonely.”
Damn that boy, I thought. Why can’t he let me be? Hadn’t he heard what I’d said? This story, filled with pride and loneliness, said he was not going to simply let me go. I spent the weekend flipping between imagining a life without him, one in which I was the master of myself, free from expectations of the past, free to create the person I should become; and aching for more time with him, to give him another chance to come along with me, on my path, our path.
The next two weeks, that battle in my head consumed me. I couldn’t eat, took hours to get to sleep, and drifted off in classes. Finally, I realised I could not purge the memory of Michael Harrison from my mind. I knew I needed him as a friend. He knew me better than anyone on Earth. And, worse, it seemed, I could not drive him away from my heart. Each time I imagined myself without him, I felt an aching, a stabbing, through my gut, a fear I might never find anyone else like him. That fear grew to anger; I did not want to be so dependent on anybody, but did not yet know how to depend solely on myself.
He didn’t write or call after sending that story-poem, during the two weeks I was driving myself crazy futilely trying to wrest my thoughts and feelings away from him. I stayed inside, spending most days at a hidden carrel in Hilles Library during reading period, writing, studying, intent that at least my grades not suffer, even as my sanity, my very sense of self, dissolved.
Mid-May, final papers written, confident I’d studied enough for my last two exams, I called him up.
“Hello?” His familiar baritone, smooth and questioning, sounded impersonal. Until I spoke, I could be any one, I knew. I froze.
“Yeah? Hello? Who is this?”
“Mike, it’s me, it’s Janie.”
Now it was his turn to be silent.
“Mike? Mike?” This was going nowhere fast. Or maybe ending fast. I flashed that if neither of us spoke, our dream surely would be over. He must have come to the same conclusion, because we both spoke at once.
“Janie, it’s you!” Eagerness enveloped his voice.
“Mike, Mike, we’ve got to see each other…” I wanted to say more, something like, It’s not over, but I still didn’t know it wasn’t.
We talked awkwardly for five more minutes, each testing the other’s resolve to stay on the line, probing our feelings, finding our rhythm again.
Mike eventually pointed out that, “I’m done here this week. Should I come see you? I’ve got another birthday poem for you, I can get a present, I guess, or…”
“No, I need to study this last weekend, my final exam’s on Monday. But, I’m gonna go home after that. We can drive back together, stop at the Vineyard one more time. Who knows, we might break down on the turnpike again!”
His familiar laugh meant yes, I hoped. “Uh…OK, sure. I guess I can find something to do on the weekend…”
The tug inside my heart won the battle with my head. “No, it’s OK, come up this weekend. Stay with me, just stay out of my way if I need to study. Maybe we can go out Saturday night, go to Boston, eat somewhere.”
“Um, yeah, great.” A pause. “Oh, I forgot. Did you hear that Bob Dylan’s gonna be on TV?”
“What? He never does anything like that.”
“Yup, that country singer, Johnny Cash, has a summer TV show, and Dylan is his first guest.” Then, “I thought you were staying in Cambridge, to work this summer.”
“That’s still happening, but my parents said I had to come home for a week, so I go back on Sunday, the 8th.”
“Great! He’s on the 7th, we can watch it together then!”
With that, Mike and I carved out a three week island for ourselves.