"Their love strobed, bodies alternately furnace and freezer, threaded through with ecstasy that trickled along their nerves like ice melting, metal liquefying, frost forming. The air in his lungs was partly her exhalation and therefore partly her, seeping into him the way cold crept into the car. They were one substance – was separation possible? This Walt Sanders identity was a single chip in a great mosaic, their multiple lifetimes creating the complete image. He'd seen enough fragments – he longed to break out of this skin for a glimpse of the whole.
   "Being part of everything isn't imprisonment," she said, knowing his thoughts.
   "This existence is a limit – I want the history of my soul to flow through me and take me along."
   "There's as much infinity between zero and one, as between zero and infinity," she observed. "Whatever your soul knows, is here. Every wail of birth and ash of scattering is in you now." Fingers light on his temples, rubbing little circles, she said, "You're thinking so furiously your head's all tense – let go."
   Under his skin he followed her touch, each muscle going fluid with joy, every cell smiling as thoughts bounced telepathically, faces stretched so far it seemed their lips would split. Laura started the Grateful Dead's American Beauty in the tape player; voices and guitars circling like a net gathered them up to be reborn in light, the whiteness of this snowbound car. Intricacies of frost had decorated their drawings on the windshield, acid's brilliant blues and pinks edging the crystalline feathers. Music rose in spirals visible as their breath, teasing every receptor to shrug off habits of perception – the world was incomprehensibly rich, and now they were awake to drink it in."

"The pull Cob had exerted on her before was still there – this broken leg was the first salvo in a war he didn't want. He should leave – not just this room but California, their history. Karma, Cob said – Walt had barely given it a thought before coming out here but Karmafornia was where he'd landed. Berkeley, Cob, the van driver on Highway 17, even Laura were on the same wavelength: hurry up, push, go, trample. What was he doing here? He couldn't see his peaceable nature prevailing. Karma supposedly provided opportunities to fix past mistakes, to evolve, but Cob had already destroyed him twice – what was going to be different this time around?"

  "The whole drive home Walt thought about death - the loss of so many lives was more horrific in contrast to the beauty of sun on the waves, surf seething among the rocks - if Jim Jones and Dan White could have left the constricted world of their own heads to witness this day, maybe their homicidal urges would have shrunk to something momentary, forgettable. How could a man believe he was connected only to what he approved of, understood, controlled? Everything was connected - there could be no picking and choosing. To perceive Earth as a vast ball, its moon pulling the oceans into tidal sloshing as both circled the life-giving sun, was to watch one's self-importance vanish into the cosmic dance."

      "At the big stainless-steel espresso machine a lean black man moved fluidly to knock out wafers of expended grounds, press in new, crank them onto the machine, flip switches and turn dials, blasts of steam rising around him, a Hephaestos of coffee at his forge. He wore a Soviet Army officer's cap over a short natural, his face a blue-black folded terrain of muscle and bone - he could be thirty or fifty, Laura couldn't tell.
      She was next and his eyes drilled her, recognizing her first visit - like a lot of people in Berkeley he didn't meet her gaze so much as confront it. As Cob ordered espressos she put on her don't-mess-with-me face but the barista saw her uncertainty beneath - her wish to fit in - and narrowing one eye as if he found that amusing while appreciating her looks, he turned back to his task. His work was unhurried but a steady flow of drinks went up on the counter, his gravelly voice sing-songing the orders - "dub shot, cap, two spress". His glance flicked some signal of male collaboration Cob's direction - he must've seen him here with other women.
      Cob with their cups nudged past empty chairs, squeezing over to a spot by the windows, shifting the ashtray to an adjacent table. "Not very crowded today – I've been in here when there wasn't a vacant seat."
      "Doesn't seem like a student hangout."
      "Not undergrads – no room to study, no food. Somebody's always asking the owner to sell snacks, but then he'd have to worry about the Health Department."
      "And clean the floor?" she laughed.
      "Not likely. He has all the business he needs – why change anything?"
      "So, what were you saying about power?" she reminded him.
       He closed his eyes, holding his drink just beneath his nostrils, inhaling long and slow like a professor ready to begin a lecture. The self-importance he projected would make Walt bolt for the exit, but she'd chosen Berkeley imagining this – discourse, insight, an intellectual atmosphere. Just for a moment she experienced vertigo – for a kid from Carling this place was mythic: former university president S.I. Hayakawa, SDS leader Mario Savio, the great anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn had all made their reputations here. Desire to win renown on that scale focused her restless mind. This bitter espresso seemed the very essence of challenge and discovery – already her palate was learning not to crave sugar to counteract its bite."

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