"It's all I've got."
"You don't think we should try to run for it?"
"No," I said. "If we run, they'll chase us. Maybe if we walk, they'll figure we haven't done anything and let us alone. They have a lot of arrests to make. They'll be busy for a long time."
The park was rolling with bodies, people and adults clawing at their faces and gasping. The cops dragged them by the armpits, then lashed their wrists with plastic cuffs and tossed them into the trucks like rag-dolls.
"OK?" I said.
"OK," she said.
And that's just what we did. Walked, holding hands, quickly and business-like, like two people wanting to avoid whatever trouble someone else was making. The kind of walk you adopt when you want to pretend you can't see a panhandler, or don't want to get involved in a street-fight.
It worked.
We reached the corner and turned and kept going. Neither of us dared to speak for two blocks. Then I let out a gasp of air I hadn't know I'd been holding in.
We came to 16th Street and turned down toward Mission Street. Normally that's a pretty scary neighborhood at 2AM on a Saturday night. That night it was a relief -- same old druggies and hookers and dealers and drunks. No cops with truncheons, no gas.