Ricky giggled, then slapped Blake on the shoulder. He sighed dramatically as he stood up so Ricky could take her spot between him and Nardo.
Emily quietly tucked in beside Clay but, as usual, he didn’t move to make space for her, so she was forced to hang onto the booth with one butt cheek.
“You know,” Blake said. “Now that you mention cars, did you guys see that Mr. Constandt got a DeLorean?”
“Actually,” Nardo chimed in, “It’s called a DMC-12.”
“For the love of God.” Clay dropped his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “Why do I waste my time with you senseless, boring plebs?”
Emily and Ricky exchanged a much-needed eye-roll. There were only so many times they could hear talk of revolution, especially considering that the worst thing that had ever happened to any of them was a few years ago when Big Al made Blake and Ricky work at the diner nights and weekends to help the restaurant get back on its feet after a devastating kitchen fire.
Clay groaned as he righted his head. His lips pursed around the straw. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. The setting sun in the plate glass window gave an angelic glow to his beautiful face. Emily felt a stir of desire at the sight of his features. He was undeniably handsome, with thick brown hair and a sexy, lush Mick Jagger mouth. Even as he drank, his cool blue eyes moved around the arc of the booth. First Blake, then Ricky, then Nardo. His gaze avoided Emily, who was perched at his left elbow.
“All right.” Nardo was always the first to break the silence. “Finish what you were saying.”
Clay took his time, slurping the dregs of his milkshake before pushing it to the side, which happened to put the glass directly in front of Emily. Her nostrils flared. The smell of milk was noxious, almost spoiled. Her leg started to shake up and down. She felt slightly ill.
“What I was saying,” Clay continued, “is that the Weather Underground did things. They trained like soldiers. They performed drills and practiced the art of guerrilla warfare. They transformed themselves from a bunch of college kids into a proper army for changing the world.”
“They blew themselves up, along with a very expensive brownstone.” Nardo was clearly delighted to be the bearer of this news. “That’s hardly a winning strategy.”
“They hit the Capitol.” Clay counted out the targets on his fingers. “The State Department. They knocked over a Brinks truck. They threw Molotov cocktails at the pigs and went after a state supreme court justice.”
Emily smoothed together her lips. Her mother was a state judge.
“Come on!” Clay said. “They bombed the fucking Pentagon, man.”
“To what effect?” Nardo looked more imperious than usual as he pushed a lank of his wispy blond hair out of his eyes. He’d been the only one of the boys who’d gotten an ear pierced. The diamond was huge. “None of those actions accomplished anything. They blew up some empty buildings, they killed some people—”
“Innocent people,” Emily interjected. “Who had families and—”
“Yes, all right.” Nardo waved her off. “They killed innocent people, and it didn’t do a damn thing to change anything.”
Emily didn’t like being dismissed. “Didn’t they all end up in prison or on the run?”
Clay looked at Emily, the first time he’d done so since she’d walked into the diner. She normally basked in his attention, but now she felt weepy. He’d been accepted to a college out west. Emily was going to school an hour away from home. They were going to be thousands of miles apart and she would pine for him while he probably forgot all about her.
Clay turned his attention back to Nardo. “Read the Prairie Fire manifesto. The point of the Weather Underground was to overthrow US imperialism, eradicate racism, and create a classless society.”
“Wait up,” Nardo parried. “I’m extremely fond of the current class structure.”
“How shocking,” Blake muttered. “The guy whose grandfather banked Standard Oil wants to keep the status quo.”
“Fuck off.” Nardo tossed a French fry in his direction, but it landed closer to Emily. “What I don’t understand, Clayton, is how this isn’t a cautionary tale. The Weather Underground. The Symbionese Liberation Army. Hell, even Jim Jones and Charles Manson—what became of them and their followers?”
Emily turned her head away, pretending to look out at the empty diner. Clay’s milkshake was bad enough. Add in the catsup-glopped French fry and her stomach turned into a rolling wave. She felt a weird unsteadiness, as close to being seasick as you could get on dry land.
“What you don’t understand, Bernard,” Clay began, “is that Mr. Wexler is right. We’ve got a Goldwater-loving, geriatric B-movie has-been in the White House giving subsidized handjobs to his corporate pals while he slams so-called welfare queens and props up the military industrial complex.”
“That is a lot for one sentence,” Ricky said, instinctively circling around Nardo.
“It’s called understanding the world, sweetheart.”
Ricky caught Emily’s eye again. The revolution very seldom advocated for women’s rights.
“Okay, but—” Blake jumped in with his predictably pedantic tone. “I suppose an argument could be made that we’re still talking about them, right? Or that we know about the Weather Underground and Charles Manson and Jim Jones all these years later, which means that somehow, they’re still relevant.”
“One builds off the other.” Clay held up four splayed fingers. “That’s the salute Bernardine Dohrn used to give to show solidarity with the Manson girls for sticking a fork in Sharon Tate.”