Linda Boroff

Summer of Love

September, 1967. Cassie’s aunt from Grand Rapids has flown to San Francisco to claim

her. Neck creped with anxiety, she consults in murmurs with the arresting and probation

officers, the psychologist and the caseworker before moving in on Cassie herself. The

tall, redheaded girl huddles, impenitent and swollen-faced, against a slender boy of about

sixteen dressed in torn blue jeans and a black T-shirt with a red hammer and sickle on the

front. The boy’s wavy brown hair is parted in the middle, cut blunt at earlobe length. He

keeps throwing it back from his eyes, but it immediately cascades forward again. The

aunt steps up, moistening her lips.

"Cassie, it’s time to come home." Cassie looks up once and back down. "This

summer has been quite a trial for your family. Not a word for six weeks. We were sure

you’d been kidnapped. Your mother is bedridden. Then they find you living like an

animal in a houseful of hippies. She indicates the boy with her chin.

"His name happens to be Dennis," says Cassie. She looks at Dennis.

"Be strong," he says.

"Are you packed?" asks the Aunt, applying gloves.

"Nothing to pack."

"You mean to say you ran away with nothing at all?"

"There was nothing I wanted from there." Dennis snorts.

"Is he coming with us to the airport?"

Cassie's look is like a blow. "Yes," she says. "The man I love is coming with."

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 Noxious vapor hugs the ground before the South San Francisco Industrial Park.

The bus cleaves it bluntly, brazenly, breaking its own arrogant wind, a mocking retort to

the triumphant crows of all technology visionaries. Trees along the road shrug off bluish

leaves in the gale of the bus’s passage. Cassie scratches a tooth, examines the residue and

flicks it onto the floor. People look away.

"Next stop the San Francisco International Airport." In the early fog, a gappy red

and yellow chain of bars appears. As the bus roars past, a few old wobblies and drowsy

barflies wince at this noisy rebuke from death morning.

The bus picks up speed as it enters the final straightaway before the airport’s

curving ramp. The driver slouches, then braces for his Saturday morning Grand Prix de

Monte Carlo. Buttocks flobbing, elbows back, he bares his teeth to the wind as he handles

her on out and cuts loose.

Alarmed passengers grab at chrome poles, exchanging anxious glances. Women

forsake propriety and brace their feet apart in the aisle. Somebody’s shopping bag splits,

releasing ripe plums and curses. Cassie grabs a large plum as it bounces past and stuffs it

whole into her mouth, giggling as she maneuvers it into place and bites down. The plump

globe explodes, drenching the skirts of both Cassie and her aunt, and the neck of the man

a seat ahead in its surprised liquor.

Cassie gags, hiccups, and swallows the fruit, seed and all, nearly toppling

sideways into the aisle as the driver fights the lurching gulk bus to a standstill, aerating

his armpits in the ebbing wind. His shirt is cold and damp. His nose drips and he tastes

grit, the Driver.

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 The cowed passengers creep from the bus on tiptoe. Cassie and Dennis wolf two

more plums on their way into the airport, and Dennis belches juicily as they enter. A

stewardess wheels to stare in amazement, and Cassie sticks out her tongue. The hair of

the stewardess is the color and shape of the fruit they have just eaten, a spherical helmet

of glazed plum.

Reflecting on the hair of women, Dennis suddenly recalls the strobe light at a

dance joint in Berkeley; Cassie’s hair sailing and snaking in a thick, braided liana,

redolent of sin, serpents, and perdition in the blinking tropics of the dance floor. Stoned,

scared, he had grabbed both Cassie and the braid, trapping the seductive, glossy hair in a

curve of warm spine. And there they had clung to the end of the dance, Adam and Eve

trembling before the furious, invisible Assailant.

The eyes of the stewardess, caught again in appraisal, flutter off like a moth.

Leaving Cassie’s aunt to buy the tickets, she and Dennis stroll toward the gift shop,

studying the infinite uniformity of the baggage, car rental, and ticket counters, a waist-

high walled fortress whose inhabitants preen and blink beneath a fluorescent sun, pulling

levers, punching buttons, and wishing pleasant journeys to fornicators and communists.

At the gift shop, Dennis buys Cassie a tin of violet pastilles, a paper flower, and a

book entitled The Night Action ("Hippie love and lust without limits in Sin Francisco.")

The cover features Australopithecus Robustus in bell bottoms preparing to flagellate with

love beads, a female wearing nothing but a large guitar. Between them lies a skull ashtray

in which a cigarette burns, releasing the type of green cloud that usually contains a genii.

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 Cassie’s aunt signals from the mouth of a wide, windowless corridor leading to

the boarding areas. Holding hands, Cassie and Dennis drag their feet toward her. Cassie’s

fingernails gouge his palm; her tongue rolls about her cheeks, gathering tears.

"All right, Cassie," gravels the aunt. "Say goodbye to Douglas."

"Dennis," Cassie sobs.

"Goodbye Dennis." Says the Aunt.

"Bye," he replies. Cassie’s face is completely out of control,. the lips twitching

toward the chin. Her breath comes in gasps. Dennis and the Aunt watch her curiously.

"Write," wails Cassie.

"I’ll send for you as soon as I can."

The aunt mutters "the hell you will."

"Freedom forever," bellows Cassie. The aunt grabs her shoulders and attempts to

shove her toward the boarding area, but the girl ducks out and under and circles and

returns, throwing herself into Dennis’s arms for a final drenching kiss, while the aunt

hovers like a frustrated bee. At last, Cassie releases the boy, wheels and walks swiftly

away, shoulders shaking. The aunt, trotting after her, looks back once.