Window down, radio playing, Aaron Tippen or something, low under the rush of the wind.  John knew she was trouble, knew that feeling of an edge somewhere nearby, one he didn’t want to go over, drawing him.  Concentration playing out in his grip on the wheel, one hand, keeping the left front tire exactly on the double yellow line.

"Popping in is fine," she had said, and he wished she hadn’t, when he asked her about bringing back that book.  Not what a woman should say to him, not one who’s husband had just left, not one who had a whiney pale faced little girl clinging to her leg, some sticky treat clutched in her other hand, a tough woman about to fall.  He didn’t want to ‘pop in’, didn’t even like her, really, she talked way to much, need spilling out like flesh from her too tight dress, need transformed by the latest self-help vocabulary into something much more intellectual, into words that said just the opposite.

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Warm yesterday.  Up to what, maybe sixty degrees.  And sunny.  And a friday.

So I go sit down on Church street, and the place is packed.  People everywhere, enjoying the sun.  That first sunny day, stepping out without a coat, without that subconcious cringe bracing for the cold, for the shock of a chill.  I sit and have a smoke, and watch everyone strolling about watching everyone.

Who are all these people? Was reading in ‘Guns, Gems and Steel’ that a tribe can get up to a hundred or so people before you have to have a more formal social orginization, some kind of structure.  The ‘big man’ can’t remember everyone’s name.  From somewhere else, I remember that city-states cannot get bigger than say, a thousand or so, before direct governanace dosen’t work.  A thousand being about the number of people you can gather in a stadium, or on a senate floor, and have the conversation be workable.

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