While I was living on Cambridge Street, I ran into Mildred Beckwith in Filene's basement and got a rundown on the grandchildren, Danny and Kathy. When I got home, I called Gail in Providence where she was living and that was that. We were back in touch.

Now she lives in Cambridge and we talk on the telephone every day for almost an hour. About getting our work done: I must get into the darkroom; she must sit at her desk and work on her poems. We complain to each other. Console each other. Cheer each other on. Instead of commiserating on our mothers, how we can't borrow the car, stay out late, get a new sweater, now it's Harvey, Mike, Danny, Kathy, our work, And we love to talk about the people we know; try to figure them out.

Though I'm always good for a long phone conversation, I don't have quite this relationship with anyone else. Gail and I actually see each other every ten days or so, for a few hours in the afternoon. We're practically neighbors, so access doesn't explain why we seem to prefer the phone. I think it's because the phone lets us be personal and thoughtful; there's a confidentiality that seems impossible face to face. Talking over a distance, into a machine, can be mesmerizing. It must be why Harvey says most of the defendants he knows forgot they were being tapped. In the same tape he'll hear them say, 'I know we're being tapped,' and five minutes later, 'This is how we'll work it.'

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