by Lewis Shiner
“Sure,” Alex said, not giving himself time to think about it. He sat up and put the paper under his tongue. “Thanks.”
“Have a good trip, brother,” the man said. He got nimbly to his feet, extended a hand to Alex, and pulled him up as well.
Apparently Havens was finished. Recorded music came over the speakers, a heavily syncopated Cuban song from the fifties. Alex’s father, who even then had been on his assimilation trip, had never played any Latin music in the house, and you never heard anything but trios and mariachis in Guanajuato. Alex felt like he was hearing the rhythm for the first time, and the complexity blew his mind, the way it pushed and pulled against itself, every measure speeding up and slowing down without losing its steady beat. A space opened up in the middle of the floor and Alex pushed his way over to see the guy in the pork-pie hat dancing with a tall, dark-skinned woman. He moved with confidence and style, a big, crooked smile on his face as he spun her two, three, four times at a crack, until she became a blur. He swung her out and in again, their hips undulating, her arms shooting straight up, sweat flying off their faces. Alex saw that Cole, on the far side of the circle, was into it too. When the song finished, the guy swooped her down almost to the floor and she threw her head and arms back in total surrender. The crowd applauded wildly. The guy set her on her feet, tipped his hat, and disappeared. Another song came on and some of the audience tried to replicate what they’d just seen, making a hash of it, laughing and bumping into each other. Alex made his way over to Cole.
“Where’d you go?” Cole asked.
Alex found that he didn’t have the words. He held up his hands, looked around, made vague gestures. Cole would likely be pissed off when he found out about the acid, so Alex held the secret close for the moment, a private joke all his own.
Cole, always good at reading Alex’s moods, turned away rather than pushing for a resolution. Alex wandered off, took a hit off a joint as it passed by, and then, as the Springfield was being announced, noticed something he’d never realized before, that the air was made up of small, intense dots of color, like the four-color lithography in comic books. If he focused on any one of the dots, it zoomed around like a firefly. The band started to play a song he knew well, though he couldn’t think of the name. He knew it was the last song on side 2 of their album. A funny place to start, at the end. The notion struck him as quite profound. And the music. The music was made of discrete particles too, only much larger, each one like a flaming comet swooping through the room, making an audible whoosh as it passed. The world was far more intricate and connected and colorful and tactile than Alex had imagined and the knowledge turned him on.
*
The first thing Cole noticed about the Buffalo Springfield was that Neil Young wasn’t with them. Instead some guy with heavy eyebrows and a dark mustache played guitar alongside Stills and Furay. One more disappointment. Young’s shimmery lead guitar was one of his favorite things about their album, and the live sound was not the same. Though Cole had to admit that the pa sounded better than any he’d heard before, loud without being distorted or painful.
Next up was a new song by Furay, “Nobody’s Fool,” which had a country feel that Cole didn’t like. They did a decent version of “Clancy,” and then Stills announced a song off their forthcoming album, Stampede, called “Rock and Roll Woman.” Cole looked around for Alex to see his reaction to the idea of a new Springfield album. In vain.
He would never have predicted that Alex would go native this way, and it made him anxious. So many things to go wrong this far from home, from bad drugs to cops to getting mugged. Cole knew he would be accountable to Al Montoya if anything happened to Alex. And something was eating him that he wouldn’t talk to Cole about.
Somebody now stood next to Cole where Alex had been earlier, a girl with ragged-cut brown hair and dark, smudged eyes. Short, thin, in loose jeans and a white T-shirt that had seen better days, a man’s shirt over it like a jacket. She looked up at him and smiled and he said, “Hi,” then looked back at the stage.
The new song had a hook like Muhammad Ali and built up to a big three guitar climax. Cole swayed to the music and so did the girl next to him, their shoulders or hips touching from time to time. What had started as accident turned to flirtation, the contact lasting longer each time.
The band played three more songs, ending with a ten-minute workout on their recent single, “Bluebird.” The house lights came up halfway and the girl put her hand on Cole’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a little unsteady. Haven’t eaten in a while.”
Cole, who recognized a hint and an opportunity, bought her a hamburger. They sat against a wall near the grill while she wolfed it down.
Her name was Becky and she’d grown up in Mobile, Alabama. She had the strongest southern accent Cole had heard outside of tv. She was “almost 17” and she’d hitched across the country to get away from her stepfather, only to be robbed within two hours of arriving in San Francisco. Her oversize purse had held her id, her money, a change of clothes and extra underwear, and the list of people to call that she’d put together before she hit the road. She’d spent the night before in the doorway of one of the Haight Street shops. She’d come to the show with some people she’d met that afternoon, who she didn’t entirely trust. She’d been drawn to Cole because he looked like “a gentleman.”
The room darkened and Muddy Waters began to play. Cole, who’d always been indifferent to the blues, stayed put, listening to Becky. She was more than pretty, she was brave and vulnerable, looking down with genteel shyness one minute, and the next staring into his eyes and touching him on the arm or the leg.
All the while, as he was drawn to this girl and feeling serious possibilities, Cole was aware of the music too. The loose-jointed way the bass and drums framed the piano and guitars, the way the vocals and harmonica fit into the rhythm like gears in a machine, rickety at first listen, then too powerful to resist. Becky heard it too, swaying as she talked, finally saying, “I like this song. Can we dance?”
Cole looked at the dancers around him, waving their arms like they were giant underwater plants, or swooping and diving like birds. “I don’t know if I can dance like that.”
“Not like that,” she said. She got up and so he did too. She came into his arms and slowly moved from side to side. “Like this.” She smelled a little of sweat and smoke, of public restroom soap, of some distant, lingering sweetness. Cole, who hadn’t danced since his two-stepping days in Tyler, let the music move his feet. He knew where a 12-bar blues was going, where it wanted to stop and start. With her holding on, the guitars burned into his brain. Muddy finished “Rock Me Baby” and went straight into “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” Becky didn’t let go, so they danced into the next song, her head burrowed into his chest, her breath warm against his skin.
Later they sat against the wall again, holding hands, Becky’s head on Cole’s shoulder. Alex walked up, eyes as big as saucers, like the dog in the fairy tale. “Oh, man,” Cole said. “What did you do?”
Muddy was playing “Got My Mojo Working” for an encore and Cole barely heard Alex’s response, except for the occasional “fantastic” and “amazing.” He looked childlike and highly pleased with himself. Cole saw that it was useless to lecture him in his current state.
“This is Becky,” Cole said. “Becky, this is my best friend Alex.” Becky jumped up and wrapped Alex in a powerful hug. Alex stood with arms and eyes wide, still smiling, looking to Cole for a clue as to how he should react. Cole didn’t know either.
Muddy finished, reminding people that he would be back for a second set later. Cole had other things on his mind. It seemed to be understood that Becky was coming to the motel with them. She and Cole walked downstairs with their arms around each other, Cole keeping his other hand ready to grab Alex if he started to wander off.
During the ride back, Alex tried to explain something about how so many people on the bus were tripping that they were no longer traveling
through conventional space-time. It looked to Cole much like the reverse of the previous ride, only in darkness now, and with a different sense of anticipation.
At the motel, Alex asked Cole to play Surrealistic Pillow and then sprawled out across his bed. Cole got the stereo going and then stood in front of Becky. He was about to kiss her when she said, “Can I, like, borrow a toothbrush and use the shower? I want to be nice for you.” Cole showed her which toothbrush was his and where the towels were. He started to back out and she said, “Hey, where you going?”
Cole hesitated.
“You don’t have to be that much of a gentleman,” she said.
They showered together, soaping each other’s bodies and giggling like kids, Cole becoming so aroused that they started making love standing up in the shower and finished on a pile of towels on the bathroom floor. By the time they’d dried each other off and gotten into bed he was ready to go again and this time it took forever. She had a hunger in the way she kissed, in the ribs and pelvic bones that showed so plainly beneath her skin. She was literally hungry too—when they were done, Cole got into their road supplies to fix her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some potato chips.
He kept the music going for Alex, who had undressed and gotten under the covers, signifying his presence with an occasional “wow” when Cole changed the album side. At three am, Cole put on the Grateful Dead, volume low, and crawled into bed with Becky. He was exhausted and happy, thinking about how he had never been able to spend the night with Janet, and how much he was looking forward to falling asleep with Becky tucked under his arm.
“Hey,” she said, just as he’d faded into sleep. “Do you think your friend would want to ball?”
“What?” Cole said. “Alex?”
“I don’t want him to feel left out. Only if you don’t mind.”
Cole saw then how wrong he’d gotten everything.
“You do mind, don’t you.” A trace of disappointment in her voice.
“No, man,” he said. “It’s cool. Whatever you want.”
“You’re sweet,” she said, and kissed him on the corner of the mouth. She got up and padded naked over to the other bed.
“Hi,” Cole heard her say to Alex.
“Hi,” Alex said, sounding sleepy and pleasantly surprised.
“Want some company?”
Alex could say no, Cole thought. Cole would, if the situation was reversed.
Alex didn’t say anything. Rustling noises. “Oh wow,” Alex said.
Cole turned his back to them and put a pillow over his head. He could barely hear the Dead and Becky’s and Alex’s voices were no more than wordless murmurs, his rising, hers falling.
At some point he fell asleep. He woke up at dawn, and Becky was in bed with him again, curled against his back. It gave him a warm feeling at first, then he remembered what had happened.
When he woke again, she was standing over him, fully dressed. “I’m going to split now,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”
“Wait,” Cole said. “Where are you going to go?”
“I’ll be all right,” she said.
“You don’t have any money, or anyplace to stay.” He got up, shivering in the morning chill, and found his pants on a chair. He took a couple of tens out of his wallet and crumpled them into her hand.
“I’m not a whore,” she said.
“It’s a loan. Till you get on your feet. You know where to find us.”
She put her arms around him and kissed him. Cole resisted at first, then gave in to the warmth, becoming aroused again despite himself. “Such a gentleman,” she said, and let herself out, a tentacle of chill fog snaking in as the door opened and closed.
Cole, still freezing, checked on Alex. Tucked in, deeply asleep, mouth open, snoring quietly. Suddenly paranoid, Cole did a quick inventory and verified that all their stuff was there.
And yet he still felt like he’d been ripped off.
*
Alex was torn between the need to proselytize and the inadequacy of language. Acid had changed him, and he couldn’t explain that to Cole.
“I don’t know,” Cole said. “I don’t think I can let myself get that out of control, not here. I don’t feel safe here.”
They were in their booth at Louis’, eating breakfast at one in the afternoon, watching the seagulls glide into the murky pools below.
“You felt safe enough to bring a total stranger to our room.”
“You didn’t have any complaints last night.”
“What, are you pissed that I got it on with her?”
Cole looked out the window. No doubt about it, he’d been assuming romance when all the girl wanted was a place to crash and a little hedonistic thrill. Cole needed perspective. This, Alex thought, was why you dosed your unsuspecting friends. The temptation was strong.
“We should have stayed in Los Angeles,” Cole said. “It was nice and warm, we could go swimming, there’s plenty of great bands there.”
“Yeah, if you like the Mamas and Papas.”
“I do like the Mamas and Papas.”
“So do I, but you know what I’m saying. LA is plastic. This is where it’s happening now.”
“What exactly is it that’s happening? Scrounging for spare change and freezing to death and getting so fucked up you don’t know where you are? I’ll pass.”
“Last night a bunch of complete strangers got me high, took care of me, welcomed me into their thing. There was no judgment, no violence, no manipulation, no expectations. I was living in the moment, and it was fucking beautiful, man.”
“I was living in the moment too last night. The real moment, not a hallucinated moment.”
“I think you were hallucinating as much as I was,” Alex said. “Maybe more.”
For once Cole didn’t have a comeback, which pleased Alex no end.
The next order of business was clothes. They took the hearse down to the Mission and hit a couple of Goodwill stores, coming away with sweaters, flannel shirts, and windbreakers. When they walked out of the second store, the sky had cleared and it was 70 degrees, golden sunlight sparkling off the buildings. They drove uphill to Twin Peaks, and from there you could see the Golden Gate and the headlands of Marin County, the whitecaps and the freighters steaming toward the Pier. Golden Gate Park was a green carpet that unrolled from the center of the city to the ocean.
The previous night’s lsd paid Alex a return visit, giving him a momentary sense that he was not sitting on a hillside, but instead gliding through the slow afternoon, looking down on a peaceful world. The beauty of the view was so obvious and overwhelming that it didn’t bear discussion. Even Cole had enough sense to see that.
Eventually they drove downhill toward the Marina. In places the grade was so steep that when you crossed an intersection, it looked like you were driving off a cliff. Cole inched his way forward, as always unable to trust his common sense or the example of the car in front of him, while Alex grooved on the roller-coaster thrill.
They took the first parking place the hearse fit into and spent the afternoon walking around. The freshly painted row houses of the rich, their pricey shops and outdoor cafés, made a potent contrast to the poverty of the Haight. They worked their way downhill to the circular Palace of Fine Arts, with its arches and friezes and pure-white dome, and through the surrounding parkland to a gravel path that led past grassy fields and marshes right up to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Alex thought it all so fucking majestic and iconic and breathtaking and perfect, gulls flying overhead, fresh breeze off the bay, light that made everything seem like a painting.
On their way back, Alex spied a knot of hippies on the grass, pretending they weren’t passing a joint. He walked over, leaving Cole on the path, and said, “Hi. We’re new here. Is there any music happening tonight?”
The five of them looked at each other instead of him. Finally one of them, in a cowboy hat and mustache, said, “There’s always music at the Fillmore.”
An
other one, with a big head of kinky hair, said, “Not on Mondays.”
The cowboy said, “Oh, right, except Mondays. What about the Avalon?”
“Weekends only,” said the guy with kinky hair, amused.
A girl, wearing a pea coat despite the warmth of the afternoon, said, “What about the Matrix?”
The kinky haired guy said, “I think there’s a jam session there tonight.”
The girl gave Alex directions, and the cowboy, his suspicions lulled, produced a joint from behind his back. It had gone out, however, and he seemed uncertain as to what to do about it. Alex thanked them and ran over to Cole.
“I found us a jam session,” Alex said. “It’s just up the street.”
“Were we looking for one?”
“That’s why we brought our equipment, remember?”
“Our equipment is back at the motel.”
“We can use somebody else’s equipment tonight, if we get to play.”
“So we didn’t need to bring our equipment.”
“We’ll need it if anything comes of it.”
“What are you expecting to come of it?”
“I don’t know, what’s with the third degree all of a sudden?”
“What’s with you, is the question. What’s going on in your head?”
“I’m curious, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“About how good we really are. Are we good enough to play in the big leagues.”
“And if we are?”
“Well,” Alex said, relieved to finally get the words out, “I guess that would be the question.”
“Would you do it? Would you blow off college and move out here and go for it?”
Alex chewed his lower lip. “I don’t know.”
“This is about your old man, right? About the house in Austin and going into the beer business?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You can tell him no, you know. He would do anything for you. If you want to live in a dorm, if you want to transfer to some big Eastern school next year, if you want to take a year off and bum around Europe. You don’t have to drop out and move to San Francisco to be your own man.”