The Price of Looking Free

The jeans needed blue thread. The last spool at Mnasidika had snapped halfway through a hem.

Peggy held up the broken end. “Bring back two.”

— One should finish it.

— One should finish it until it does not.

Celia took coins from the drawer. Mrs. Bell’s jeans lay open on the worktable, one cuff pinned flat. The customer had promised to return after lunch. Celia had promised the repair.

Peggy glanced toward the front window, where a woman in a white hat studied the patched-denim display.

— Back in ten minutes, Peggy said. Don’t lose the receipt.

Celia stepped onto Haight Street.

The pavement was crowded. She walked around a delivery cart and a family stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Young people passed in boots, sandals, jeans, long skirts, and department-store shirts. A man in work clothes carried a toolbox past two girls in bright patterned dresses. Curtains moved in apartment windows above the shops.

People gathered outside the Psychedelic Shop. Its window displayed books on psychology, meditation, and Eastern religion beside beads, bells, and imported goods. Inside, a clerk spoke with two students. Celia could not hear him through the glass, but one student kept looking at the price tags.

A man with a camera stopped beside her.

— Excuse me, he said. Where are the real hippies?

Celia looked at him, then at the sidewalk blocked by his family.

— I don’t know. You could start by moving.

His wife took his elbow. “Leave her alone.”

He frowned as if Celia had spoiled something he had paid to see.

At the Print Mint, concert posters and political broadsides covered the window. One advertised a dance at the Straight Theater. Another called for opposition to the war. Two boys argued over which print would look best above their dorm beds.

The papers carried music, arguments, and rumors across the city. They also brought customers through the door with money in their pockets. Celia had watched people buy a poster because it was pretty, then ask what it meant.

She checked the clock in a jeweler’s window. Four minutes gone.

The notions shop was off Haight, narrow and dim, with drawers of buttons and thread. Celia found two blue spools that nearly matched Mrs. Bell’s denim.

— Exact change, the clerk said.

She counted coins into his hand, took the receipt, and hurried back.

The Drogstore’s windows were fogged from the grill. Inside, people sat over coffee, eggs, and cigarettes. Some talked intensely. Others seemed too tired to talk. A few booths held young people with bags at their feet. The café was open all night, but every seat came with an order.

At I/Thou, the tables were full. A handwritten sign asked customers not to stay after they finished their coffee.

June stood outside Mnasidika.

For a moment Celia thought she was waiting to enter. Then she saw the empty paper cup in the gutter and June’s hand closed around a few coins.

— You got back, Celia said.

— I got turned around. June glanced at the shop window. I found coffee first.

— Did you find your friend?

— No.

June opened her hand. Two nickels and a penny lay on her palm.

— The rest?

— A man said he knew a place where I could sleep. June’s face went stiff. I gave him money for the room. Then he said I should come with him.

— And you didn’t.

— No. Her voice sharpened. I’m not stupid.

— I didn’t say that.

— He left anyway.

Celia looked through the window. Peggy was showing an embroidered shirt to a customer. June’s eyes rested on a blue scarf near the door.

— Could I get something cheap? June asked. Not for free. If I find work. Something that doesn’t make me look like I arrived this morning.

Celia wanted to say June’s dress was not the problem. But her bare arms were red from the wind, and the canvas bag at her feet made her look alone.

— A scarf won’t tell you who is safe, Celia said.

— I know that.

— Do you?

June looked away. “No.”

The door opened. A tall man came out with a canvas sack over one shoulder, his sleeves rolled above his elbows. Celia knew him by sight from the Panhandle and street gatherings: Marcus Lee, who helped with food distributions and told people when they blocked a line.

He noticed June’s coins.

— That all you have? he asked.

June closed her fist. “It was more this morning.”

Marcus nodded. He turned to Celia. “Peggy here?”

— She has not escaped yet.

— I need scraps. Cloth, paper, anything clean enough to put under bread.

— We sell clothes.

— I can see that. He shifted the sack. We’re setting food out near the Panhandle. The ground is damp.

June looked at him. “Free food?”

Marcus gave her a tired look. “Food people can have without paying.”

Inside, Celia put the thread on her table. Peggy checked the color.

— Close enough, she said.

Marcus stood by the cutting table. “Any bread? Fruit?”

— We are not a grocer.

— Fabric, then.

Peggy’s attention sharpened. “Not the good fabric.”

— I did not ask for silk.

— You ask in a way meant to make refusing sound cruel.

Marcus looked toward June outside the window. “Kids are coming in with nowhere to go. They saw pictures of this place and believed them.”

Peggy set down the spool. “I did not print those pictures.”

— No. But you sell part of the picture.

Celia began threading her needle. She needed to finish Mrs. Bell’s hem. She also wanted them to stop talking as if the other had invented the problem.

— This shop was here before this summer, Peggy said quietly. I pay rent. I pay Celia. I buy cloth before I can sell it. If I give it away, the door closes.

Marcus looked at Celia’s worktable. “I know work costs money.”

— Then stop talking as if that is a confession.

He rubbed his face. “It isn’t a confession. It is still why people come here looking for things you cannot give them.”

Peggy opened a drawer and took out narrow red pieces left from alterations.

— This can cover your table, she said. Nothing from the racks.

Marcus took the bundle. “That will help.”

— Don’t make a speech about it.

— I’m too hungry for a speech.

June had come inside. She looked from Marcus to the cloth, then to the dresses and denim around her.

— The food is close? Celia asked.

— Panhandle, Marcus said. Stew if the pot stretches. Bread. Maybe apples.

— Maybe?

— Depends what arrives and who gets there first.

June’s mouth tightened.

Celia looked at Mrs. Bell’s jeans. The cuff needed one clean line of stitches.

— I have a break, she said.

Peggy gave a short laugh. “You have a customer’s trousers.”

— I can finish them first. Then I’ll take June over.

— Thirty-five minutes. Not an afternoon.

— Thirty-five.

— If Mrs. Bell comes back and you are gone, I take the refund from your wages.

Celia bent over the jeans. Her fingers moved quickly, turning the broken hem into an even line. The work had to look casual when it was done, though nothing about it was casual.

Peggy inspected the cuff.

— It will hold, she said.

— That is nearly praise.

— It is all you are getting.

Outside, June stopped beside a café window. A man inside ate eggs and toast. She stared at his plate.

— Could we go in there? she asked.

Celia looked at the coins in June’s hand.

— Not today. We’ll try the food first.

June swallowed her answer.

Marcus had started down the block, red cloth showing from his sack. Celia tucked the receipt and change into her pocket. The shop bell rang behind them as another customer entered.

June fell into step beside her.

— I thought nobody here cared about money, she said.

Celia looked toward the trees of the Panhandle.

— Some people care less about it than others, she said. That doesn’t make food appear.

They crossed when traffic cleared and followed Marcus toward the park.