These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

On his third vodka Zan muses out loud, “Ronnie Jack Flowers.”

Brown makes that little gesture with his hand again. “Don’t know him.”

“I knew him,” Zan says, “twenty, twenty-five years—”

“Are you all right?” Brown interjects.

“Why? Don’t I seem all right?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“Do I seem drunk?”

“Not necessarily. But then I’m not sure I would know, would I? With you, I mean.”

“Twenty, twenty-five years ago. . ”

“Ronnie Joe. . ”

“Ronnie Jack. Black, hard-left politically. Radical politics in the Sixties, militant. . ”

“Panthers, then.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But armed resistance, anyway, up against the wall, all that. I think I am a bit drunk.” Zan holds his head a moment. Because he’s prone to migraines, it’s normal that with the first sip of liquor his head begins throbbing. “But when I knew him, like everyone in the Eighties, he had left the Sixties behind.”