Near Love Stories
by J. B. Hogan

"S…sure," I muttered. "I guess I was sort of going to be in it."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Are you going to be there?"

"I guess I'm sort of in it, too."

"Cool. I didn't know that."

"Well," she said, waving to some of her friends beyond the ramada and signaling the imminent end of our conversation, "I better go visit Jimmy and Kay."

"It was nice seeing you again," I said as she began to move away.

"Me, too," she said without any hint of irony. "See you later."

"Later," I said. She walked away. I called after her: "Hope you get to feeling better."

She waved with the fingers of her left hand and smiled. I stood in the ramada and watched her cross slowly through the park and join her friends.

*    *    *

The Saturday demonstration turned out pretty well. Something like four or five hundred people showed up, as many as I had ever seen at any protest in my time in Tucson. Everyone was there, from hard core lefties to well off liberal democrats. We put on an amateurish piece of street theatre in which Anna Lee played a sleazy government official channeling illegal funds to contra chief Calero. I was Calero, even though I had gray hair and a gray beard and was a scrawny representation of the obese would-be Nicaraguan political boss. I jammed the play money Anna Lee offered me into all my pockets, letting lots of it fall out onto the ground. The crowd seemed to like our little show.

When the demo was over - there hadn't been too many hitches in it and we hadn't had the typical counter protest - Anna Lee and I and a couple of our mutual friends crossed Broadway to where our cars sat in a dying strip mall parking lot.

"Which one of these is yours?" Anna Lee asked with a wry smile. There was a nice new brown Honda Accord near us, a sporty late model red Mustang, and an old, sun-baked, gray Toyota Corolla.

"That's mine," I said, pointing to the Toyota. Anna Lee's wry smile turned into a laugh.

"I thought all you IBMers drove BMWs," she said. "Beamers for Beamers."

"Not everybody," I smiled back at her. "I ain't into that shit."

Our friends suggested going somewhere nearby for an early meal and I said that sounded good to me.

"I'll need a ride," Anna Lee said. "I don't have a car."

"You could ride with me," I offered quickly. I was already basking in the glow of being seen with maybe our best and most well known activist and I didn't want it to end just yet. I was also discovering that I really liked Anna Lee, for more than just her local hero status.

"Alright," she said.

"Great," I said. "We'll meet you down at the Sonorita," I told our friends, referring to a small veggie Mexican restaurant at Speedway and Wilmot. I opened the rider's side for Anna Lee and we climbed into my little gray car and headed out west on Broadway.

The details of our post-demonstration meal mostly escape me now, but I remember listening intently to Anna Lee's down to earth personal and political perspective. I remember thinking that a lot of us, including myself, postured our radicalism loudly but that Anna Lee, who was a true activist living a radical life, had a quiet confidence about her. Her ideas were always expressed firmly but the volume was turned down at least a good two notches. She was living her politics and therefore didn't have to shout them from the rooftops.