When They Fade by Jeyn Roberts Page B

sixties. We had a right to get an education and a job. A guy screamed “Fight the power!” several times in my face, to the point where I covered my ears with my hands. “Don’t let the man get you down. This is America! We need to let the government know we don’t want to fight in their corporate war. Down with Vietnam. No draft! No draft! Girlies, support your men. Let those government pigs know you will march against Washington.”
    Thankfully, some elderly men stopped him from following Andrea and me farther.
    I paused to look at some wooden beads spread out across a table. There were two men behind the table. The first had a bushy gray beard and matching long hair. He wore a tie-dye shirt and a bandanna. He sat on the back bumper of a Volkswagen bus, a cigarette between his fingers. He looked older than my father, and I couldn’t help grinning to myself, wondering what Dad, with his crew cut and trimmed mustache, would say if he could see what I was seeing.
    “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
    I glanced up into the most amazing pair of brown eyes I’d ever seen. I’d been looking at the old man and hadn’t seen the young one standing across from me. Long sandy-blond hair spread across his shoulders and halfway down his back. He was tall and slender, and his shirt fit his body perfectly.
    “Um, yeah,” I said. That was it. One glance at him and he’d rendered me stupid. My conversational skills went out the window. I swallowed twice and gave him what I hoped was a nice smile.
    The guy reached across the table and picked up a set of beads. They were brown and red. He lifted them over the top of my head and let them drop gently across my chest.
    “They’re from Mexico. We picked them up last winter.” Tilting his head to the side, he squinted with a critical eye, studying the way the beads looked. Frowning, he removed them and tossed them back on the counter. “Wrong color,” he said. He studied the collection and chose again, this time beads that were yellow and brown, the same color as his hair and eyes. “These are better,” he said as he draped them down around my neck. “Yellow is prettier. Sunshine. They’ll make you glow.”
    “Thank you,” I said. He held up a cracked mirror, and I studied my reflection in the glass. They were truly lovely. “How much?”
    “For you? I’d ask for a smile. But my business partner”—he nodded back in the direction of the man sitting on the bumper of the bus—“he’s not going to be as generous. So I’ll have to up my bid to a dollar.”
    The answer was so unexpected, I couldn’t help but laugh. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a bill. I could have turned him down. I wasn’t so enamored by his looks that I would buy anything he might be selling. Yes, his smile was bright and genuine, and I loved the way his hair naturally waved around the collar of his shirt. I was sure a lot of girls fell for his charms. That didn’t mean he’d be able to sell me just anything. But the beads were beautiful and the cost was reasonable.
    He took my dollar and handed it over to the bearded gray-haired man, who nodded in my direction, but didn’t say anything. He dropped the money into a rusted can and then stomped his cigarette on the ground beneath his shoes. I turned around to show Andrea, only to discover that the crowd had swallowed her up. Apparently she hadn’t seen me stop and had kept on walking.
    “Lose someone?” the young guy asked.
    “Yeah, my friend,” I said. “I could have sworn she was right behind me.”
    “Lots of pretty colors here,” the guy said. “Plenty of distractions. It’s not that difficult to get lost in the crowd. Want me to help you find her?”
    “That’s okay. If I don’t catch up with her, I’ll meet her at the car later.”
    “I hope so,” he said. “In case you didn’t notice, there’s a major concert going on.” He leaned in close to whisper in my ear. “I hear there’s going to be a lot of people. Total