“Even over here?” Nick said, his own doubt.
She shrugged. “It all counts. Somehow. Why do you?”
“Same reason, I guess,” he said, letting it drop.
The line moved a little now, people drawing nearer to the steps where the speakers had appeared, and he began to move with it.
“So do you always wear a tie?” she said, trying to keep his attention.
He smiled. Was she flirting with him? “I have to meet somebody after,” he said. “That’s all. Tie people.”
She looked up at him and squinted her eyes. “Tie people?”
“Parents.”
“Parents?” she said, disconcerted.
“Am I too old for that too?”
She looked at him oddly, as if his answer had thrown her, a piece from the wrong puzzle. “They live here?” she said unexpectedly.
He shook his head. “Flying visit. One meal. One tie. Not too much to ask.” He glanced at his watch, reminded of the time. Larry and his mother were expecting him in just under an hour. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I-”
She seemed flustered again, but now there was a movement in the crowd, and before she could finish, people began to surge politely around them, looking down the street.
“It’s her!” someone shouted. “She came.”
Nick glanced toward the corner, where a black taxi idled as a tall woman leaned in to pay the fare. Two women with her greeted the organizers and collected their index cards, then steered her away from the photographers who had begun to move in their direction. “Miss Redgrave, over here!” She was dressed in a plain pea coat with a long muffler wrapped around her neck as camouflage, but in her high boots she towered over the other marchers, drawing attention like camera light. Now the rally had point.
She ignored the commotion at the steps and quietly joined the line not far from Nick, thanking the students who moved aside to make a place. They nodded shyly, pretending to be indifferent, but it was a face they had seen twenty feet high and soon they were staring openly, sprinkled with the same fairy dust that drew the press.
“Can you give us a statement?” one of the reporters shouted, Cockney and insistent.
“No, sorry,” she said, turning away and staring straight ahead, removing herself.
“And will you be speaking today?” he asked quickly.
One of the women with her waved an arm to take in the crowd. “We’re all speaking today,” she said. “Just by being here.” The students around her nodded, flattered.
Nick wondered who she was. An actress he didn’t recognize? Or a hanger-on, the willing mouthpiece?
“What about charges that demos like these are actually undermining the progress of the Paris peace talks?”
“What progress?”
“Right,” he said, smiling, finally jotting something down. “Film stars in politics?”
“Come on, Davey, not again,” the woman said, surprising Nick with the intimacy. Had they been around this dance floor before? Maybe she was famous, part of the new culture that seemed to have sprung up overnight, while he wasn’t looking, a music without history. “Everyone’s in politics,” she said, almost offhandedly. “Whether they want to be or not.”
“Even the dead, eh? These soldiers here,” he said, nodding toward the index cards. “Think they’d be pleased? Being part of this?”
There was a question, Nick thought. He wasn’t even sure how he felt, still alive.
“We honor them as victims, not soldiers,” the woman said, then stopped, aware that the reporter was writing. “That’s all now, please.”
And, surprisingly, it was. The reporter, still scribbling, nodded and started to back away, apparently satisfied with an interview that hadn’t really happened. Nick remembered the reporters in Vietnam taking the handouts from the press office, knowing they were lies, printing them anyway.
“Davey’s all right,” the woman now said busily to Redgrave, who seemed not to hear, her Valkyrie head still above the crowd.
The line continued to press from behind, drawn to limelight, and Nick felt himself pushed against the girl at his side.
“Hey, Nick!”
He turned to the yell and saw the crowd rearrange itself as Henry, from the LSE group, pushed through. He came up to them, clearly excited by the day. “Hi,” he said to the girl. “I see you found him.”
Nick looked at her, puzzled, and saw her face color with embarrassment.
“I thought he’d be over here,” Henry said to her, still unaware of her discomfort. “Description fit?”
“Perfectly,” she said quietly.
“How’d you get lost anyway?” he said to Nick. “Old Wiseman came. He was asking for you.”
But Nick was still staring at the girl. She met his eyes as frankly as before, then shrugged, found out.
“Hey, is that Vanessa Redgrave?” Henry said, looking around. “Where’s Annie? Annie loves her.” He finally made eye contact with his girlfriend and jabbed his finger in the air toward the tall woman.
“I just wanted to meet you, that’s all,” the girl said, still looking at Nick but smiling now. “Is that so terrible?”
