The next day Johnny hit four banks in forty minutes and the taxi driver dropped him at 8th Avenue and 14th Street, where bought a two chocolate donuts and a bottle of Yoo-Hoo. He wasn’t hungry, but was alarmed by the increasing thinness of his body and forced himself to finish the donuts. The sugar charge burned off quickly and he barely made it to the hotel. As he struggled across the lobby, Ernie shouted out. “Johnny, you on a diet?”
"Trying to reach my fighting weight.” Johnny laboriously scaled the stairs to room 301, where Sean was singing SUMMER’S ALMOST GONE to a grumbling bass. Johnny smiled, thinking that Tammi must have forgiven or forgotten this morning’s trespass and proceeded to his room, glad someone was having a good time.
He opened the door.
Frankie was lying half on the bed and half on the floor. A needle and spoon rested on the night table. He was breathing with the lungs of a man on Mars and Johnny lifted his legs onto the mattress. He was dying to break his new abstinence, instead he grabbed his guitar, hoping the music could calm the demons raging in his body.
Johnny played a slow version of the Airplane’s SOMEBODY TO LOVE, stripped the funk from NIGHT TRAIN, accelerated Miles’ KIND OF BLUE, ripped through Moby Grape’s OMAHA, savaged ME AND MRS. JONES, sang along to Elvis’ SUSPICIOUS MINDS before finishing this set with a soulful rendition of Dave Mason’s LOOK AT YOU LOOK AT ME. Putting his guitar down, he dropped his face into his palms and emptied his sorrowful soul into his hands. “Why me? Why me? Why me?”
The answers pigpiled him.
His only bully was the needle on the night table.
Its narcotic mysticism would dispel his pain, vanquish the anguish of being gay in America, and blackjack the powerlessness of his youth. He clenched his fists, until his nails cracked the skin of his palms. The veins popped from under his skin. Opening his hands, he wondered why he was resisting the drug.
Tobacco killed hundreds of thousands of people. Booze was another mass murderer.
Heroin might OD five thousand in a good year, but he was too young to think about dying. To do drugs or not do drugs was up to him. No one else cared about his actions. Frankie least of all, but sometimes he had to worry about himself. After five minutes the storm had passed and Johnny shook Frankie awake. “We have a rehearsal.”
“Gimme ‘nother twenty minutes sleep,” Frankie wished that GTH had an automatic drum machine like Suicide.
“That's not sleep, it's a coma." He cued Bowie's REBEL REBEL on the stereo. It was loud enough to dredge Frankie from his slumber.
“Okay, okay," Frankie absently examined his needle marks and pulled on a long-sleeved shirt. "Is it cold in here?”
"No." Johnny was burning with a fever. "You're dope sick."
"And you?"
“I’m doing fine.” Johnny massaged a swollen gland under his armpit, which seemed larger than yesterday.
Frankie tugged on his jeans and said, “You have another nasty red mark on your neck."
"Shit." Johnny tied a scarf around his neck.
“What is that shit?”
"Just my body’s revenge for getting any dope. I'll be fine in another week."
Frankie figured Johnny knew best and he recollected the previous night’s events.
"Johnny, Sgt. Weinstein stopped me on 57th Street.”
And what you tell him?” This wasn’t a good sign.
“Nothing, because I knew nothing.”
“Good.” The overweight detective's questioning Frankie was a little too coincidental for his tastes.
“You doing anything I should know about?”
“Just this band, why you ask?” He had a pocket filled with money. Frankie wasn’t stupid. Seeing that much cash would tell him that he knew more than nothing.
“No reason.” They were supposed to be a team and his not telling him everything hurt. Two could play that game, but Frankie decided to give his friend the benefit of the doubt. “One more thing. I was at the Dollhouse and saw Charles spying on Tammi like she was a lollipop.”
“That comes as no surprise.” The millionaire’s infatuation exceeded the boundaries of puppy love. “He’s a big boy and Tammi can make her own decision, so it’s none of our business. Get dressed. We’re supposed to be at the loft in less than an hour."
Frankie dressed, while Johnny laid his guitar in its case and stashed the money from the ATMs in his boot. The teenager traveled light with a pair of drumsticks and they walked to room 301. No one answered the repeated knocks and Frankie said, "He must have gone. You mind if we stop at Sunshine Fruits?”
"It's not on the way." The East 4th Street bodega was a hot spot for copping dope.
“I’ll be quick,” Frankie was betting on Johnny’s weakening in the face of temptation. The guitarist was in the throes of kicking a jones, which was never a pretty picture to another junkie.
“And careful too.” Johnny didn’t have to strength to prevent Frankie from getting ripped off by the fiends of the Lower East Side.
“I’ll be prepared for anything.” Frankie had a knife in his pocket.
”Anything covers a lot of territory.” Johnny hoped that the young drummer wasn’t gaming him. Everyone turns on everyone in this scene and Frankie was no saint.
”I’m just getting a bag and getting straight.” Frankie sensed the distrust from Johnny, but blamed it on the jangles of kicking dope.
They hailed a taxi in the Meat Market. The drive over to the East Village took about ten minutes. East 4th Street was crowded with early evening dabblers. The guitarist remained faithful to his resolve, while his drummer shambled to the shooting gallery, reputedly the source of Sean's OD.
Tapping on the cab’s Plexiglas barrier, Johnny told the nervous taxi driver, "Man, we'll be leaving soon."
"Soon can't be soon enough for me," the driver replied, since 95% of the people on the street were criminals in the eyes of the law. Worst was Johnny recognized more than a few. Junkies with junkie stories and junkie woes. He was one of them and nothing would ever erase his baptism. Once a junkie, always a junkie.
Frankie scored in record time and the driver raced to make the light on Avenue B. They reached the loft in Chinatown before anyone else in the band and GTH’s drummer headed for the bathroom. Before he shut the door, Johnny warned, "Go light on that stuff. It nearly killed Sean."
“I’m only doing a little." Frankie closed the door to take his chance with the devil.
After arranging the gas burners in a circle, Johnny sat inside the Saharan heat. He was still cold, as his trembling hands counted the most recent score from the ATMs. Three weeks ago $1200 had been a fortune.
One glimpse at Charles Ames III’s penthouse had revealed the true composition of real wealth; the car, the driver, the penthouse, the paintings, furniture, and the respect of the doorman.
The Ames’ money had been around over a century and their wealth was protected by trust funds and codicils for several more generations. GTH’s success on the Top Forty was no assurance that the money stayed in a musician’s pocket. The Beatles hadn’t owned any of their original songs, Colonel Parker had screwed Elvis from day one, and Tommie James and the Shondells hadn’t earned a penny from CRIMSON AND CLOVER. The only money he could depend on was that he took for himself and Johnny stashed the $1200 in his jacket. It was safer on him than a bank.
Picking up his guitar he strummed the chords to Love’s SIGNED DC, altering the progression to an entirely new song by the time Tammi walked into the loft. She looked about fifteen in her Catholic school outfit and white leather coat from Cheap Jack’s thrift store.
Exhausted after the early morning shift at the Dollhouse Tammi laid her head on his shoulder. Her puffy red eyes along with the clothing in the plastic bag in her hand indicated her insolvable differences with Sean had necessitated a change of address.
“Tough night?”
Fighting a sniffle, the redhead confessed, “I left Sean."
“You happy with that?” Johnny suspected she couldn’t shut off her love that fast.
"I’ll be the same as I ever was." Tammi couldn’t predict the date of her recovery and listened to Johnny’s guitar. "That new?"
"This?” Johnny repeated the four bars to the chorus.
"It’s catchy.” The music filled a few holes in her heart and she hummed the chorus, following Johnny into the bridge.
"Can you think of any lyrics?”
"Play it again." Tammi tapped the seesaw emotions in her heart and she sang, "Maybe tomorrow. I'll know all about the future. Maybe tomorrow, I'll know about you and me."
”Not bad.” Johnny motioned to a piece of paper and a pen on the floor. “Write them down.”
Tammi scratched out the lyrics to match the mood of a love gone bad. She refined the stanzas during his breaks. Sean’s desertion had blessed her with a vision and Johnny declared,"There’s our ballad."
“Ballad? I didn’t think punk had ballads.” Frankie emerged from the toilet and sat the drums with his eyes silent pins of black. He banged a 4/4 beat on the snare and Johnny slowed his pace on the guitar. “Not so fast. This is our ballad.”
“Can’t we do a ballad fast?"
“Sure, but it isn’t a ballad. Try it at half that speed.” Johnny suggested impatiently and Frankie nodded, “Oh, a slow song.”
The elevator ground its way to the penthouse and the door slid open for Charles. He limped out, wearing a full-length leather coat and a KGB fur hat. He really was a prince. Bobby wheeled a handcart loaded with new mikes and monitors.
“These are for us.”
Elated by his generosity Johnny asked, “You buy them on sale?”
“They’re brand new. Consider it as an early Christmas gift.” Charles sloughed off the coat to reveal his gleaming plastic vest and pants. He appeared a little too new to be associated with the rest of GTH, although a single shopping binge could alter their appearances, if he lavished most of it on Tammi.
“Thanks, man.” Frankie lifted a monitor. "Now we'll be able to hear ourselves."
"Tammi can use a new mike." Charles avoided any eye contact with the redhead, fearing the guilt of his conspiracy with Caroline was tattooed on his skin in bold letters. He stood behind the B-3 and plotted his hands over the keyboards to join the new song’s chorus. The words practically predicted their future togetherness. "This have a name?"
“Maybe Tomorrow.”
The four of them repeated the song twice before Sean slinked into the loft, sporting his new scars and bruises. The band stopped and Frankie snickered, “Caveman had a rough night?”
“I ran into a door,” Sean told the other band members.
“More it ran into you.” Bobby had heard about the brawl from Dove at Trash n Vaudeville, at which Charles had been shopping earlier this evening. Tammi wasn’t amused by his tardiness and snarled, “You're late.”
“Sorry.” Another day or two of this and the two might as well have never met on the highway. He had to talk with her, but now was not the time and he plugged his bass into the amp.
”Save your sorries for the rest of the band.” The obvious ridiculousness of his explanation nullified her wavering of her heart.
”Sorry.” He bowed his apology to the rest of the band.
"Gimme a minute to show Sean the new song’s chords,” Johnny said to lessen her obvious antagonism.
The rest of the band took advantage of the break to huddle before the space heaters in a conspiracy plotting Sean’s exile to the nearest Siberia , as Johnny demonstrated the fingerings to Sean.
"No woman can stand a loser, so I need you to play bass like your life depended on it.”
"If I don’t, I’ll be dead in GTH,” Sean sighed with resignation.
“All you have to do is sing along with Tammi.” Johnny handed him the lyrics. “Can you handle that?”
“Do I have a choice?” He walked to the amp.
“Not tonight.” Johnny raised his mike. “Your best and nothing else.”
“That’s all I can give.”
“Then everything will be perfect in the end.”
The guitarist assumed tonight they would return to the hotel, listen to music, and Johnny might give him a massage. After that anything was possible and he restrained his baser urges to guide Sean through the chord progression.
Sean read the lyrics. Each word targeted him. His older brother had felt the same way about the lyrics of YOU’RE SO VAIN without ever having met Carly Simon and he asked Tammi, "You write this?”
"I did." Tammi stood behind Frankie and Charles, almost as if they were her bodyguards.
"These are great. I really mean it."
"Let’s hear how it sounds, cause we were short an extra song for our gig." Johnny commanded with a leader’s assurance.
Charles, Frankie, and Sean each reacted with a croak. "Gig?"
"CB’s has scheduled us for the midnight slot on Monday night," Tammi intoned she had arranged it. Johnny forgave her usurping their assumption, because she was aggressively seeking a confrontation with Sean and it was better nothing stood in her way.
Sean stammered, “We ready?”
"We will be, if we rehearse non-stop.” Tammi wasn’t accepting any excuses for failure.
“This is 3/4 everyone.” Johnny stomped the beat. “One-two-three."
The band ran through four bars before Tammi's voice skated over the bass and organ,"I'm leaving you today, don't ask me when I'm coming home, you know why I'm going away. But maybe tomorrow, I'll come home."
Frankie steadied the beat, Johnny slashed his lead on the ten-second bridge and harmonized with Sean on the closing chorus. The band was in synch and each instrument enmeshed clearly on the new PA.
Charles witnessed the fulfilment of Johnny’s prophecy in the Lincoln. This was rock and roll at its simple purenesswith no violins, no lights, no synthesizers, no pyrotechnics, or pseudo-opera theatrics. Three chords and lyrics to save a world on fire were enthralling in their effortless majesty, the band wished Tammi had written another hundred verses, but they hit the final chord in unison, gazing at each other with wonderment, as the song's spell faded from the amps with a buzz.
“That’s more like it.” Tammi smiled at Johnny.
A ragged chord arrangement and her anger had created a thing of beauty. Sean’s bass had filled an overdue hole. Before anyone could celebrate this breakthrough, the elevator began its ascent and Johnny asked, “Anyone expecting visitors?”
“Not me.”
Neither Johnny, Tammi nor Sean caught the secretive glance between Charles and his driver. Frankie cracked a rimshot.
“Maybe a Chinese brujo’s giving a chicken the Final Rites?”
The elevator door slid open and a blonde wraith emerged from the flurry of feathers.
Johnny and Tammi were instantly jealous of the black fur coat covering her silvery flesh and the silk sheath shimmered like coal on her pale flesh. The slick Italian leather boots’ spike heels answered any foot fetishist's fantasy and the shoulder-length platinum hair cast a ghostly lunar halo around a timeless face. Caroline Ames smiled with an unconscious sexuality bespeaking a deeper desire, for her arrival had impeccably coincided with the finish of their song. "So was that noise ‘punk’?"
“Yeah, and who are you?” Johnny released the neck of his guitar, identifying the intruder from her incredible similarity to Charles and the organist creaked from his B-3. “This is my sister, Caroline.”
Caroline had spared no expense to accentuate her sexual charisma.
Sean’s staring indicated that she had succeeded in making the improper impression and the organist introduced the rest of the band, saying, “You’ll have to excuse her. She's not musical."
“Who needs to be musical, if I have the quarters for the jukebox?” The blonde’s condescension reminded Tammi of the Kittery High cheerleaders, but they were trailer park trash in comparison to Charles' sister, who had reaped the benefits of rampant wealth without ever having suffering a catastrophic accident to temper her haughtiness. Tammi was keen to humiliate Charles’ sister and said, "Everyone's musical. You ever try a tambourine?”
”Do I look like a gypsy?” Caroline instantly loathed the young redhead, rendering Charles’s request so much more enjoyable. She gave the brutish bassist a simmering glance and she laughed, his Adam’s apple bobbing with nervousness. "But I can give it a go."
"Hey, Tambourine Girl. Play a song for me." Frankie tossed her the jingling circle. “ Catch.”
“I’m ready, if you are.” Caroline snatched the tambourine from the air and shed her fur with ballerina fluidity. Her miniskirt barely covered her ass and Sean almost missed his cue, as Johnny said, “SUMMER’S ALMOST GONE, on four.”
Banging the tambourine against her thigh, Caroline observed the bassist sing as if he was reading the lyrics off an invisible wall with the aid of a bouncing ball. He was not handsome like a male models from GQ or the actors from the Adler School, yet his battered face possessed a savage aura, whihc she prayed wasn’t an act.
Sean struggled to concentrate on the music, fighting off the illusion that Nico from the Velvet Underground had materialized from their concert at the Boston Tea Party in 1967. He self-consciously lowered his head to the microphone, as the band launched into WAY TO NOWHERE.
His attraction to Charles’ sister was obvious to Tammi and, if he couldn’t control himself in front of her, the rich bitch could have him. She had her voice, her youth, and growled the chorus, pledging her future to a million tomorrows alone, "You and me got nowhere to go."
Sean’s vocals supported Tammi’s lead and his improved bass laid a solid bottom for the rhythm section. GTH’s sound could easily be confused with power pop with Johnny’s iridescent chord progressions cutting through the melee of feedback. Striking the coda, the entire band segued into LOVE NO LOVE to complete their third song in a row and the entire band smiled in recognition of this breakthrough. Two minutes later Tammi shouted, "I’m looking for love it don’t matter who, just as long as it’s not you.”
Johnny dreaded the crossover, except each of them leapt the chasm between the two songs on one beat and they tightened the core of music into TAKE ME HIGHER. Frankie flailed at the drums in a near-epileptic fit, Sean mechanically thumped the bass, and Charles’ adoration of Tammi contributed to create another miracle, as the teenager shouted a final ‘take me higher’.
The band stopped as one and breathed in unison.
“Was that as good as I thought it was?” Frankie asked, sweat pouring from his pores.
“I’m not a partial observer,” Johnny admitted cautiously and the band members regarded Caroline, who tossed the tambourine at Frankie.
“I expected the worst, but it was great and nothing like anyone else has heard before.”
The entire band was elated by this success after three weeks of questionable hard work, but Sean’s concentration on his voice and bass had not permitted him to appreciate the difference in the band and he approached Caroline to reaffirm her opinion.
“You’re not kidding about it being good?”
"GTH isn’t a joke." Caroline tilted her head to the side and a curtain of blonde covered one eye. This Veronica Lake affectation never failed with man or woman. She studied the scars on his face. They were new and real. His left eye was puffed shut. "Charles has been so removed from the world that I had been expecting a dreadful version of Barry Manilow, but GTH isn't disco, soft rock, or metal."
"It's Punk." Sean faltered slightly under Tammi's acid gaze.
Caroline was an expert at regaining a man’s attention and lightly touched a crescent cut on his forehead. Her brother had mentioned his violent streak and she found herself strangely drawn to him as would any heiress be to a stable boy.
"Those are recent?”
”Last night.” Sean glanced over to Tammi, who was talking with Charles at his B-3. “A difference of opinions about music.”
“You’re a man of conviction.” Caroline disregarded the redhead’s glare. It wouldn’t take much to wipe the adolescent scorn from her face and Charles’ sister wouldn’t be satisfied, until the young girl discovered that she had sex with the bass player.
“Maybe you’re right.”
Caroline grazed his battered neck with her fingertips. "I can show you less violent side of the city.”
Charles’ sister caressing Sean was too much for Tammi to bear. The singer put on her leather coat, its cheapness exposed in each crease and tear. She hadn’t failed to compete with the girls in Kittery and Caroline was a thousand times pretty than this year’s homecoming queen. The redhead excused herself from Charles and headed for the door, cutting tonight’s rehearsal short. The organist clattered after her on his cane.
"You leaving?”
"I have to find a place to live." Tammi had been expecting Sean to apologize. She would have forgiven him this once. Now it was too late.
"There’s plenty of space at my place." Charles hid his joy at Bobby’s plan having reached stage one.
“Thanks for the offer.” The 57th Street penthouse fulfilled any stripper’s or debutante’s materialistic musing. Unfortunately his unspoken infatuation was too much to handle tonight and Tammi smiled kindly. “But I think it’s best, if I stay with a friend."
Charles was disappointed with her refusal, but offered, "Can I give you a ride?”
"Sure, to East 13th Street," Tammi’s staged exit failed to interrupt Sean's conversation with Charles' sister. “I'll skip the good-byes tonight."
“That’s fine by me.” Charles limped after Tammi into the elevator, trailed by Bobby.
Frankie raised his eyebrows to Johnny, who packed his guitar in its casse to announce the rehearsal was over.
Glancing at the silhouette of Sean and Caroline against the Lower Manhattan skyline, Johnny swallowed his frustration that Sean would never notice his love as long as it was blinded by his lust for women. The guitarist flicked off his amp and walked to the stairwell, shouting, "Shut off the lights, when you leave.”
The clang of the door surprised Sean, though Caroline had instinctively sensed her brother’s happiness before his departure. “They left.”
“We can catch them downstairs." He had to speak with Tammi.
“Why the rush?” Caroline arched her back for her shirt to slip off her shoulders as a declaration that she wasn't interested in seeing anyone other than him. Holding it with her fingertips, she whispered, "Try it on."
“It won’t fit.” Sean fingered the glossy material, as if a message in Braille was written on the silk.
“Oh, yes, it will.” She helped it over his t-shirt, the material clinging to his muscles.
“It’s soft.” Sean stammered for the first time in weeks. He needed a guide to their next destination and Caroline provided the assistance by placing his hand on her breast. “This is softer."
She wasn’t lying and Sean was frozen by the deluge of possibilities. She must have been reading his mind, for her neck swiveled sinuously. "You waiting for an invitation?"
He pushed her against the wall and pressed his groin to her belly. Caroline closed her eyes, as if she were trying to break any connection to her body, although her hands running over his chest demonstrated that she was far from blind and she said, "Take me onto the roof."
“It’s freezing.”
“Are you scared of a little cold?” Caroline loved having sex in strange places.
Sean shook his head and dragged her onto the roof. Her body shuddered with the exposure to the Arctic air and she placed her hands on the wall.
"Do it quick."
He lifted her skirt. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Her skin glowed in the shadows and her right hand directed his erection to a moist vee between her legs. Seizing a shank of silver white hair dangling down her back, he thrust forward, forgetting about the Tammi's bi-hued eyes. This wasn’t going to take long.
Caroline sensed his urgency and cupped his testicles, then suggested provocatively, "Cum on my ass."
He obeyed her command with a dying gasp. There was no romance in this coupling. It was strictly a fuck and Caroline pushed him aside, almost as if she had hired him for a few minutes.
"Now I'm freezing. Let's go inside."
The drafty loft was a furnace in comparison to the roof.
Sean stared at the mike.
Begging on his hands and knees wouldn’t rectify this second strike with Tammi. It was all falling apart and he was a shell of who he had been yesterday. Nerves and skin strapped across a skeleton, inside which was a haunted house.
Caroline was in danger of losing him and exorcised the unseen presence of the redheaded singer by licking at his neck.
"So are you ready for a sight-seeing trip?"
"Where?" Sean was eager to avoid CBGBs or Max's Kansas City.
“You into dancing?" Caroline didn’t want to see the teenager either.
"You mean 'disco'?" The word had been reincarnated from the 60s. The clubs were 100% dance and the complete opposite of punk.
"Is that a dirty word?" Caroline reached into her pocketbook and sprayed on a perfume killing every scent in the world, but hers.
"Disco's fine, if you cut out the Hustle."
“No one at Les Mouches hustles anymore.” She stood with her arms extended from her sides and Sean helped her with the black fur coat. “Your want your shirt?”
“It’s sexier on you."
None of the lesbians at the Sahara complained about her dancing topless and the fags at Les Mouches were dying to meet a genuine punk. To finish the evening the Cisco Disco with its intense popper clientele was ideal.
“You have anything against 'gays'?”
”Nothing at all, but I’m not looking to convert.” Sean had forgiven his best friend in Boston turning queer after receiving tickets for the 6th game of the 1975 World Series, which his friend had wheedled from an anonymous baseball player.
"No one else is getting their hands on you." Caroline squeezed his nipple hard.
“Is that a promise?” They were much too alike to misunderstand the threat that they posed to each other
“For tonight it is.”
Caroline hauled him into the elevator and pushed the STOP button.
Once had not been enough and he was willing to give her his body, but not his heart, which along with his soul had been promised to Tammi with a vow stronger than lust. He just wasn’t willing to admit that he had failed keep that promise, because he was a man alone with a woman in an elevator above a Chinese slaughterhouse and that picture only held beauty for two people. Any more would have been asking for too much.
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