4:10am I lie on the living room floor. My ribs hurt less that way.
Vincent Price was killing zombies on the TV and the NY Sunday Times is scattered besides me. I'm reading the back pages of the travel section, wishing I had enough money to buy a round-the-world ticket. $1100. I only have $78 in my wallet. I'm stuck in America.
It's quiet here. Alice slept in the bedroom. We haven't touched each other since yesterday. I haven't offered any solace. This is all her. Even though I want it to be all us.
Last week the girl renting the apartment below us had her throat slashed by a boyfriend. Luckily she lived. Alice is asleep in the loft bed. It's the dead of night.
Alice said later last night that she had to apologize for my behavior at Irving Plaza. Apologize for getting beaten up by Blondie's band. For having my ribs broken. For doing my job. I wish I hadn't done anything. I just wanted to go home in peace.
In the summer of 1967 I had driven a borrowed Vespa accompanied by Steve Talutis (a bullied neighbor who pumps gas at Jenny's gas station across St. Elizabeth's on Route 28. A year older he drives a yellow Mustang) to Tony's Fried Clams in Wollaston. I arrived first. Hippies hung out on the sea wall. I was dressed in straight legged jeans and a black tee-shirt. Bikers were harassing them for fun.
My mother hated this spot.
"I'd let you go to New York, before allow you to go to Wollaston."
A hippie boy with long blonde hair came up to me and said, "I don't like the way you look."
"Don't be an idiot," the pretty girl with him walked away and he followed. I would have too and started to take off the helmet. Something hit me. A fist. I was surrounded by the hippies. The blonde guy yelled, "Take off the helmet." I looked for help. There was none.
Just like last night.
Alice wasn't there.
"She was the only one who might have stopped it.
But there was no one.
Just like at Wollaston Beach.
Some things don't change.
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