She put two fingers up

  in a tee like I had the cooties or something.  "A bunch of us have to get back, now." The kid behind me ducked like she'd thrown a dish.  

  "What were you listening to?" 

  "Nina Simone."  Me, afraid to let the silence linger.  Her, knowing a silence lingering gets filled with not just noise.  That's why I like her singing.  She's from these parts you know. 

  "No, I didn't know that."  

  "Why'd you come?"  Sponge-self feeling like a stamp licker, I blinked a few times to steady fluid.

  "There's a lot we can't talk about here." 

  Mmmmmmm-hmmmmm.

  "But, 

  "But what?  Spit it out.  We're all late." 

  "This is deep and I should just write a book like everybody else..." 

  We sat on the edge of a camp bed and looked at our hands.  Outside, voices.  The corklike quality of youth and vigor and uncertainty. 

  "I was there." 

  "Where?" 

  "In our Country.  When they,"

  "Who they?" 

  "The they, I don't like to call any people evil, but, so..." She got up and fiddled with a skeleton key in the thin door's lock.  "But, it was one of those times, when the bad guys," my eyes rambled on the floorboards.  "Did you know those motherf'ers hung the black flag in D.C. when everybody bailed?" 

  "No, I didn't." 

  "Did you know that it was no accident that, that a fire that burned up part of the Supreme Court building, didn't kill anyone that day." 

  "Why didn't it?" 

  "Because us Americans pulled ourselves together and at least stopped killing each other, mostly."  

  She looked at a spot on the wall where the sun had changed a square of paint coloring.  "There was something hanging there," she considered the fact of something missing. 

  "And, it was me." She looked at me kind of cocking her head.  "You?" 

  "I had your back.  Well, at least until you got blown backwards down the stairs." 

  "Stupid shoes." She said it, but then confessed she didn't know why she just said that, so determinedly.  "She doesn't always remember everything," the suit had warned.  "It's like clues.  We only get clues to the whole story..." 

  "As the stories get tangled and twisted and..." 

  "Layered up." 

  A soft knock.  Door wide open.  Here we go again.