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: : : CLARK TRIES TO MUSTER UP the urge to edit the article that's on the screen—a feature about Chicago bridal boutiques. She sips her coffee and looks again at the words. Every bride needs plenty of accessories to look sharp for the big day. She pinches the bridge of her nose.
Maybe some music. She has a little portable CD player on her desk, she can use it as long as she keeps it down low. She hasn't gone out and bought any new music in a while, but at the M20 rally this weekend Oliver gave her a burned CD of labor songs. A small gift on an unhappy birthday—the war on Iraq, now one year old.
She pops the disc in, listens to Utah Phillips recite the Preamble to the IWW Constitution. The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few who make up the employing class have all the good things of life. She grins.
She wonders if Oliver's into her, like Fletcher says. The other night, at the bar, she mentioned the burned CD and Fletcher clutched his head with both hands and said —and you still don't think that he's into you?
—He's a nice guy, Clark says. —It's just a little present. Nice guys give presents. It doesn't necessarily—
—When someone burns you a CD it isn't just a little present, Fletcher said. —It's courtship. This guy is courting you.
She used to think the same thing but as the season wore on and he didn't make a move she became less sure. She has trouble imagining it. She's had trouble, lately, imagining that anyone could possibly find her attractive. When she rides the subway in to work she looks at her reflection in the glossy dark of the window and sees tangled hair, big bags under her eyes. She thinks I can't believe you left the house looking like this. She looks at her co-workers and they seem so—well put-together, or something. By comparison, she feels like a child that was never quite taught to dress itself.
But, listening to this CD, she remembers the rally, remembers being out there, in the street, among thousands, shimmying to the beat generated by the drummers in the crowd, looking up and waving at the people peering down from the windows of office buildings, wondering how she looked to them—feeling good, feeling happy, alive, wondering if that was getting across to those people, up there.
She remembers Oliver by her side. She wonders how she looked to him.
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