VJohnny picked up the letter from the sidewalk. He read the four lines in less than two seconds. Cheri’s words snuffed out any possibility of a rekindled romance and the guitarist stuffed the sheet of paper into his pocket, then trailed the hippie down the street at a distance. Plenty of men had shambled from the Terminal Hotel blanketed with similar despair. Many ended up in the river.
Upon reaching the other side of the West Side Highway the longhair punched the hood of a stripped car. The metal buckled under his fists and Johnny shouted, "Go easy on that car. It’s already been knocked out."
“Go away.” The hippie threw a right.
“Whoa, Sean, that’s your name, right?" Johnny sidestepped the roundhouse swing and lifted his hands to demonstrate his harmlessness.
"Who the hell are you?" The hippie murderously eyed Johnny
"Call me Johnny. I live in that hotel.” He indicated over his shoulder with the nod of his head, wisely keeping his distance.
“And?” His long hair fell into his shadowed face like slashed curtains.
“Cheri was my friend and you’re not the first guy whose heart she broken. She had this hillbilly boyfriend from West Virginia. Bix. She never kissed Bix. After she left him, Bix lived in a cave in Central Park, mumbling numbers like a bingo announcer. His parents finally committed him.”
“I’m not Bix.”
“I know, but Cheri had no problem with letting men confused lust for love.”
The longhair’s eyes were deep-set and Johnny intuitively recognized how his brutal features might have appealed to Cheri. She was as much as physical masochist as she was as mental sadist.
“You know she talked about you?"
"What she say?" The hippie demanded with the desperation of a drowning man swimming to a sinking raft.
“She said you were from Boston, wrote poetry, and stole cars. That you?"
"Why she leave?"
"The hotel clerk said she was spooked.”
“Spooked?”
“Love scares lots of people.”
"Damn." He had believed his own lies and snapped his fists into the car.
"Breaking your hands won’t bring her back." Johnny hauled the hippie out of striking range.
"Oh, yeah, watch this." Sean shrugged off Johnny and smashed a window with a left hook.
"It’s hard eating pizza with a busted hand."
"You think I want pizza." The hippie lifted his bleeding knuckles.
"Not tonight, but maybe tomorrow." No place had better pizza than New York.
"You can have tomorrow and the day after too."
"In another hour it will be tomorrow." The hippie was primed for the taking and Johnny unreeled his pitch with the glib ease of a carnival barker shilling a Kewpie doll to a ten year-old girl’s father. "You have two choices.”
“Two?”
“One, go back to Boston.”
"Impossible. I burnt all my bridges back there.”
"Tough walking across a burnt bridge, so choice number two is stay here.”
Cheri’s lover surveyed the grimy belly of the West Side Highway. Water dripped from the steel girders and rats scurried between the sewers. The streetlights glowered a sickly yellow and the air smelled of rotten meat.
"I’d rather go to LA."
“LA’s one never-ending suburb. The palm trees and mountains are only part of a Hollywood set. At night there’s only empty streets with cops telling you to move on, because unless you have a car, you’re a criminal in LA.”
“I can get a car.” The Olds was still parked down the street.
“Sure, drive a stolen car 3000 miles across America.”
“It’s been done before.”
“Only in movies. Here you can walk anywhere you want to go and if you’re lazy there’s taxis.” Johnny read the indecision on the hippie’s face. “You can always leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Leave today, leave tomorrow. No one is stopping you. Do what you want. It’s your life.”
“Okay, I'm staying the night." The hippie stared at the Hudson River and took a deep breath.
"Then let's get you a room." Johnny walked across West Street at a slow pace. "Once you're settled, we can eat. How's that sound?"
"I'm not hungry." This evening was unfolding as a scene cut from MIDNIGHT COWBOY and the deja vu worsened inside the Terminal Hotel, where the wizened clerk turned down CHARLIE’S ANGELS. “So yer wanna a room?"
"Number 301." Sean slapped a twenty and signed the register. "It has a view."
"That's Cheri's old room." Ernie worried the hippie might try something stupid, then again stupidity was how most people ended up at the Terminal Hotel and he slid the key across the desk. "Enjoy yer stay, Mr. Coll."
"C'mon, I'll be bellhop." Johnny climbed the stairs to the third floor. “Most tourists visit New York for the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. I’ve lived here most of my life and I haven’t been to either just like most New Yorkers. Me, I’m into music. Not concert rock. Clubs and bars. Four bands a night at CBGBs. Headliners and flashes in the pans. This is your room. I'm in 308. If you need anything, knock. Anything at all."
“Thanks.”
Inside 301 Sean ignored the cracked walls, the dangling flypaper, the tubercular coughs next door, the nude painting on the wall and the faint linger of a woman’s fragrance. He went to the window and laid his head against the glass. It was cold and he tried to open the window. It was nailed shut and he took a step back.
"Cheri's leaving really hurt?" Johnny asked from the doorway.
“No." His heart was roiling with acid blood.
Johnny wasn’t letting Cheri's jilted lover jump through the window to give EMS drivers a chance at his money.
"Listen, you'll fall in love again and sooner than you fear.”
“Fear?”
“Love isn’t love without the risk. We should have a drink."
"I'm not into gay bars."
“We're going to a bar. Not straight. Not gay. CBGB’s might make you feel better.” The hippie was smart to mistrust him, although anyone’s misgivings melted after drinking Johnny’s 'special'. “It’s rock and rock, cheap drinks, loose girls, and much more.”
“It sounds too good to be true.”
"Perhaps it is, considering CBGBs’ an abbreviation for country-bluegrass-blues.” Johnny had forgotten the meaning of the OMFUG on the awning.
“Country?” Sean remembered Tammi singing along with Dolly Parton. “I don’t care for country.”
“No one plays country at CBGBs.”
"Is it far?" He wiped his bloodied hands with a soiled towel.
"Less than ten minutes away.” First Charles and now the hippie. If this kept up, Johnny should apply for a job as the bar’s PR agent. “You'll love it. Trust me."
The two young men left the hotel. A taxi stopped for them on Jane Street. Johnny gave the driver a Bowery address. It was barely midnight and he had one more job before he could sleep for the night, until then there was no rest for the wicked.
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