AS CHRISTINE STIRRED HER MARTINI THAT EVENING, SHE thought angular momentum—a term from her physics class, and she had thought it while the fire hose spun her body. Who was she? Physics student by day; teacher by night. Miles College—same place, both roles, different station.
In the bar, her bar, the Athens Cafe and Bar, Christine felt pampered as a queen. Grateful for the puffs of air-conditioning soothing her body, she stirred the liquid—slightly viscous, she noted—her own drink, specially made for her, Christine Taylor. Maybe she hadn’t thought angular momentum when they blasted her round and round like a top; she just thought it now, watching the magic liquid twirl in her glass.
Better than in her own basement apartment, here in her bar, she could claim safety and peace. This was only a beer joint, with a pink neon STERLING sign in the window, but Christine loved the sign. The jukebox belted out Ray Charles, and a large jar of pickled pigs’ feet sat on the counter.
Weeks before, Christine had marched into the Athens Cafe and Bar and had taken out her Martini and Rossi from an innocuous paper sack. When she presented the booze as being just for her own personal use, Mr. Constantine had accepted the bottle and put it under the counter. Here white waited on colored. Mr. Constantine kept a skinny jar of green olives for her, too.
Angular—she liked the word; her own face could be described as angular. She liked it that she had strong facial bones, that her whole body was strong and wiry. Leaning against the back of the booth, Christine’s sore body made her feel again the hard street when she had fallen and rolled. She was bruised all across her back from the water pressure.
By dint of nothing but her angry, imperial manner, Christine felt she had brought class to the Athens Cafe. Christine stirred her martini. Like a goddess, she ruled the transparent liquid world inside the glass, made it swirl and sway to the music. She dominated here, relaxing with the drink and a new friend sitting across the table.
“Whose ribs?” Gloria Callahan, her classmate at Miles, asked Christine.
Gloria was so shy, she could scarcely look at any listener while she uttered a whole sentence, even one two words long. Shy Bird, Christine thought of her that way. Gloria was a shy bird but she had classy, high-toned habits. She brought in all her papers typed on thick paper and without any ink corrections. Gloria couldn’t even look her professors in the eye, let alone a white, but Christine had taken Gloria under her wing. Already, Christine had convinced her to teach in the night school to help the dropouts, but when it came time to demonstrate, Gloria said she had to practice her cello.
“Yeah, Gloria,” Christine said slowly. “Reverend Shuttlesworth got broke ribs today. He in the hospital. I witnessed when the hose water struck him down. Me laying on the street.”
“Sure am sorry to hear that.” Through her whole utterance, Gloria stared down at Christine’s swirling of her drink.
“You ever heard Reverend Shuttlesworth preach?” Christine asked sharply.
“No, ma’am.”
“Don’t you ma’am me. I not but five, six years older than you.” Christine’s speech had shifted into the vernacular. They all had seesaw speech; sometimes they talked home talk, sometimes school talk. Up and down, first one then the other.
“All right,” Gloria said.
Christine knew Gloria was forcing her eyes to glance into Christine’s irritation. “I saw the hose get you,” Gloria said to Christine, but she whispered the statement toward the floor. “On TV.”
“Yeah? What you think when you see that, you safe at home watching TV?”
Christine knew Gloria wanted to join the protests.
“Pryne, pryne in a gyre!”
“Girl! What you talking about?”
“It’s from William Butler Yeats. ‘Sailing to Byzantium.’ And he wrote that all will be ‘changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.’ ” Gloria said all this with her rare green eyes fastened on the dirty concrete floor. “That’s from ‘Easter 1916.’ ” She was tracing the cracks, running like tributaries toward some river.
Sometimes Christine thought Gloria’s complexion had a reddish cast to it like maybe she had Indian blood. Gloria sat still as a sculpture, as though she had no right to move. She sat like a brooding dove, full-breasted, soft, with a short body.
“Where is Byzantium?” Christine demanded. “Girl, look at me when you answer!”
“It not but half real.” Gloria studied the floor again, whispered, “Mythological. Constantinople.”
“Mr. Constantine,” Christine called out boldly to the Greek bar owner, “you ever been to Constantinople?”
The man just shook his head while he dried the inside of a glass with a cloth towel.
Mr. Constantine tried to keep conversation to a minimum with his customers. After nearly thirty years, his English was still uncertain.
Constantinople! Uncle Theo had taken him across the water to Constantinople when he was a young boy, led him through the confusing city to Saint Sophia glittering and glowing with gold mosaic. “Now you’ve seen heaven,” Uncle had said to him, in Greek. While they visited the sights of the marvelous city, Uncle Theo had been identified, mistakenly, for a spy. After the pleasure trip, Turks had followed him home, tracked him to his hilly slopes. They had murdered him while he peacefully herded his goats back in Greece.
“Ever been to Byzantium?” Christine insisted.
“Birmingham,” Mr. Constantine answered, but the image of his kind uncle passed like mist through his mind. He saw Uncle Theo leaning on his staff on the hillside, daydreaming of the dome of Saint Sophia in Constantinople. “This Birmingham,” Mr. Constantine repeated firmly.
“Birmingham’s half mythological, too,” Gloria said. Then she asked firmly, “What about tomorrow?”
Under her tutelage, Christine saw, Gloria would make progress. Even on the third word, tomorrow, Gloria managed to maintain her gaze, to look Christine full in the eyes. Suddenly Gloria was as striking as a Polynesian idol with her rich, red-brown skin and jade eyes. Fierce. Christine blinked.