VI
Johnny picked the letter up from the sidewalk. He read the four lines in less than two seconds. Cheri’s words snuffed out any probability of a rekindled romance and the guitarist stuffed the terse dismissal into his pocket. He 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. The hippie was too young for that fate.
Upon reaching the other side of the West Side Highway the longhair punched the hood of an stripped car. The metal buckled under his fists. Johnny almost pitied the Cheri’s lover, however he had vowed that the hippie’s valuables were his before night was day and Johnny shouted, "Go easy on that car. It’s already been knocked out."
“Go away.” Annoyed by a queer hitting on him, Sean threw a right destined for the thin blonde’s nose. Johnny sidestepped the roundhouse swing and lifted his hands to demonstrate his harmlessness.
“Whoa, Sean, that’s your name, right?"
"Who the hell are you?" Sean murderously eyed the stranger in the leather jacket.
"Call me Johnny. I live in that hotel.” Johnny 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 far the first guy whose heart she broken. She had this hillbilly boyfriend. Never kissed Bix. After she left him, Bix lived in a cave in Central Park, mumbling numbers like a bingo announcer. His parents finally had the police commit him.”
“I’m not Bix.”
“I know, but Cheri was never in love with anyone, but she 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. She was as much as physical masochist as she was as mental sadist. Johnny was neither. “You know she talked about you?"
"What she say?" Sean demanded with the desperation of a drowning man swimming to a sinking raft. Johnny threw him more line. "You were from Boston, wrote poetry, and stole cars. That you?"
"Why she leave?"
"You know THE PETRIFIED FOREST?”
"I hitchhiked through it.” He had stolen two red stones from the desert of prehistoric trees. The Indians reputed the theft to be cursed and tonight had proven the legend true.
“Not the place, a movie from the Thirties.” Johnny stepped closer to the hippie, who at least didn’t reek of patchouli like the deadheads in Washington Square. “Cheri loved how the female lead played a talented young painter trying to escape a dead-end town. She meets a failed writer, who convinces a gangster to kill him, so she goes to the Sorbonne on his life insurance. Cheri always cast herself as the young artist."
"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 the smaller man and smashed a window with a left hook. Johnny had witnessed worst beatings on 42nd Street, "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?” Sean had been comfortable with zero.
“One, go back to Boston.”
"Impossible." He refused to recross the smouldering stumps of his burnt bridges.
"Then stay. You know this is the center of the universe.”
Sean 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. He didn’t have to be here and said, "I’d rather go to LA."
“LA isn’t a city. It’s one never-ending suburb.” The palm trees and mountains were only part of the Hollywood sets. “I know it has surf, palm trees, and swimming pools, but not for someone like you. At night there is no life. 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.
“And drive a stolen car 3000 miles across America. Here you don’t need a car. You can walk anywhere you want to go and if you’re lazy there’s always a taxi.” Johnny read the indecision on the hippie’s face. “You can always leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” He had been dreaming too much about tonight to even think about tomorrow.
“You want to leave, you can leave tomorrow. No one is stopping you. Do what you want. It’s your life.”
Sean took a deep breath. Cheri’s friend was making sense. It was late. Tomorrow was another day and he really wanted to go to Paris. A plane ticket couldn’t cost more than a couple hundred bucks. There couldn’t be that many American artists at the Sorbonne. He had studied French in grammar school. Once he found her, he’d say, “Je t’aime.” She would have to know it was true. Sean bent over and picked up his bag. “Okay, I'm staying the night."
"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, and the tubercular coughs next door, for his nude on the wall and the faint linger of a woman’s fragrance inspired a plea for Cheri’s miraculous materialization. God and the Devil neglected his request and he sat heavily on the bed. The drive to New York had resulted in simply changing one shitty room for another. It was all he deserved and Sean went to the window to part the curtains.
Beyond the West Side Highway the Hudson was a broad black oil slick and the murky night sky was unsullied by a single star. He 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 danger. We should have a drink."
"I'm not into gay bars." Sean had frequented the 1270 disco in Boston to hit on fag hags. Gays wanted him too. He said no, but didn’t mind dancing with them. “Not tonight.”
“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. You haven’t seen anything like it.”
During high school Sean frequented The Surf Nantasket. Local rock bands played to the teenagers of the South Shore. Sometimes groups like the Turtles and Shocking Pink. He had stopped going after high school, figuring he was too old to hang out with 17 year-old girls. In college he had went to The Phoenix on Commonwealth Avenue. It had a reasonable jukebox, spicy Mexican food, pinball, and liberal BU girls. CBGBs was probably a distant cousin. Getting drunk one last time in the USA couldn’t hurt him.
“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 liked Merle Haggard, then remembered the runaway girl 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.” If this kept up, he should apply for a job as the bar’s PR agent. “You'll love it. Trust me."
“Why not?” Sean grabbed his jacket and the two young men left the hotel. Sean let Johnny lead him into the night, for the aftermath of this evening was irrelevant as long as he woke in one piece and that fate wasn’t too much to ask from New York. Especially since there were only seven more hours to go until dawn.
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