Overload

Walking away from that bar, and now that it was done, Yvette felt at peace.

Peace, at last.

It had been a long time since she had known any. For sure there had been none with Georgos, though at first the excitement of being Georgos' woman, of listening to his educated talk and sharing the important things he did, had made everything else seem not to matter. It was only later, much later, and when it was too late to help herself, that she began wondering if Georgos was sick, if all of his cleverness and college learning had become in some way . . . what was that word?...perverted.

Now she truly believed it had been, believed that Georgos was sick, maybe even mad.

And yet, Yvette reminded herself, she still cared about Georgos; even now, when she had done what she had to. And whatever happened to him, she hoped he wouldn't get hurt too badly, or be made to suffer much, though she knew both things could happen after the black woman played those tapes today and told whoever she decided to-the police most likely-what was on them.

About Davey Birdson, though, Yvette didn't give a damn. She didn't like him, never had. He was mean and hard, never showing any of the little kindnesses Georgos did, despite Georgos being a revolutionary and not being supposed to. Birdsong could be killed before today was out or rot in jail forever, and she wouldn't care; in fact, she hoped one of the two would happen. Yvette blamed Birdsong for a lot of the bad scenes that had happened to her and Georgos. 'ne Christopher Columbus Hotel thing had been Birdsong's idea; that was in the tapes too.

Then she realized she would never know what happened to Birdsong, or Georgos, because she would be dead herself.

Oh God-she was only twenty-two! She had hardly started her life and didn't want to die. But she didn't want to spend the rest of it in prison either. Even dying was better than that.

Yvette kept on walking. She knew where she was going and it would take roughly half an hour. That was something else she had decided yesterday.

It was less than four months ago-a week after that night on the hill above Millfield when Georgos killed the two guards-that she realized just how much trouble she was in. Murder. She was guilty of it, equally with Georgos.

At first she hadn't believed him when he told her. He was merely trying to frighten her, she thought, when, on the way back to the city from Millfield, be had warned, "You're in this as much as I am. You were there, a part of it all, and you killed those pigs just as if you pulled the knife or fired the gun. So whatever happens to me happens to you."

But a few days later she read in a newspaper about the California trial of three men charged with first-degree murder. The trio had broken into a building together and their leader shot and killed a night watchman.

Though the other two were unarmed and did not participate actively in the killing, all three were found guilty and given the same sentence-life imprisonment without possibility of parole. It was then Yvette realized that Georgos had been telling the truth and, from that moment, her desperation grew.

It grew, based on the knowledge that there was no going back, no escaping what she had become. That had been the hardest thing to accept, even while knowing there was no alternative.

Some nights, lying awake beside Georgos in the darkness of that dreary Crocker Street house, she had fantasized that she could go back, back to the farm in Kansas where she had been born and lived as a child. Compared with here and now, those days seemed bright and carefree.

Which was bullshit, of course.

The farm was a rocky twenty acres from which Yvette's father, a sour, cantankerous, quarrelsome man, barely scratched enough of a living to feed the family of six, let alone meet mortgage payments. It was never a home of warmth or love. Fierce fights between the parents were a norm which their children learned to emulate. Yvette's mother, a chronic complainer, frequently let Yvette-the youngest-know she hadn't been wanted and an abortion would have been preferable.

Yvette, following the example of her two older brothers and a sister, left home for good as soon as she was able, and never went back. She had no idea where any of the family were now, or if her parents were dead, and told herself she didn't care. She wondered, though, if her parents, or brothers and sister, would hear or read about her death, and if it would matter to them in any way.

Of course, Yvette thought, it would be easy to blame those earlier years for what had happened to her since, but it would be neither true nor fair. After coming west, and despite her legal minimum of schooling, she had gotten a job as a department store salesclerk-in the infants' wear department, which she liked. She enjoyed helping choose clothes for little kids and, about that time, had the feeling she would like to have children herself someday, though she would not treat them the way she had been treated at home.

The thing that happened, which put her on the road she finally walked with Georgos, was being taken, by another girl Yvette worked with, to some left-wing political meetings. One thing led to another, later she met Georgos and . . . Oh God, what was the use of going over it all again!

Yvette was well aware that in some ways she was not bright. She always had difficulty in figuring things out and, at the small country school she attended until age sixteen, her teachers let her know she was a dunderhead. Which was probably why, when Georgos persuaded her to give up her job and go underground with him to form Friends of Freedom, Yvette hadn't any real idea of what she was getting into. At the time it sounded like fun and adyenture, not-as it turned out to be -the worst mistake of her life.

The realization that she-like Georgos, Wayde, Ute and Felix-bad become a hunted criminal came to Yvette gradually. When it was implanted fully, she was terrified. What would they do to her if she was caught? Yvette thought of Patty Hearst, and what Hearst had been made to suffer, and she was a victim for Chrissakes. How much worse would it be for Yvette, who was not?

(Yvette remembered how Georgos and the other three revolutionaries had laughed and laughed over the Patty Hearst trial, laughed about the way the establishment was falling over itself in a self-righteous effort to crucify one of its own, just to prove it could. Of course, as Georgos said afterward, if Hearst-in that particular case-had been poor, or black like Angela Davis, she would have gotten sympathy and a fairer shake. It was Hearst's misfortune that her old man had money.

Hilarious, though! Yvette could still see their small group watching TV and breaking up each time the trial reports came on.) But now, the fear from having committed crimes herself hovered over Yvette, a fear which expanded like cancer until, in the end, it filled her every waking hour.

More recently, she realized that Georgos no longer trusted her.

She caught him looking at her in strange ways. He didn't talk as much as before. He became secretive about the new work he was doing. Yvette sensed that, whatever else happened, her days as Georgos' woman were almost over.

It was then, without really knowing why, Yvette started to eavesdrop by making tape recordings. It was not difficult. here was equipment available and Georgos had shown her how to use it. Using a concealed mike, and operating the recorder in another room, she taped conversations between Georgos and Birdsong. That was how, playing the tape back later, she learned about those fire extinguisher bombs at the Christopher Columbus Hotel. The Georgos-Birdsong conversations were on the cassettes she had given the black woman. So was a long, rambling account of it all, from the beginning, by Yvette herself.

Why had she done it?

Even now she was unsure. It wasn't conscience; no point in kidding herself about that. Nor was it because of any of those people at the hotel; Yvette was too far removed, too far gone, to care. Perhaps it was to save Georgos, to save his soul (if he had one; if any of them did) from the terrible thing be intended to do.

Yvette's mind was getting tired. It always did when she thought too much.

She still didn't want to die!

But she knew she had to.

Yvette looked about her. She had kept on walking, not noticing where she was, and now realized she had come faster and further than she thought.

Her destination, which she could already see, was only a short distance ahead.

It was a small, grassy knoll, high above the city, and preserved as a public space. The unofficial name was Lonely Hill, which was appropriate since few people went there, a reason Yvette had chosen it. The final two hundred yards, beyond the last streets and houses, was up a step, narrow path and she took it slowly. The top, which she dreaded reaching, came all too soon.

Earlier, the day had been bright; now it was overcast with a strong, cool wind knifing across the exposed small peak. Yvette shivered. In the distance, beyond the city, she could see the ocean, gray and bleak.