The barking of two men in the hallway woke Sean from his deep sleep. He ignored the garbled argument and reached over to the naked female sharing his bed. For a few seconds he basked in a delusion that Cheri had returned from Paris, except the sleeper’s warm flesh was much younger to his touch.
Sean rolled away to the other side of the mattress, almost as if he was in the wrong bed and his abrupt movement disturbed Tammi, who demanded with a sleep-dusted voice, "Can't you stop them?"
"I doubt it," Sean was wallowing neck-deep in a high tide of heartbreak. Cheri was still in his system.
“Please try.” She cooed under the sheets and Sean got out of bed, for even a teenage girl is a woman and Tammi wouldn’t let him rest, until he had addressed her request.
Flattening an ear to the flimsy door he discerned that the squalid dispute was over a bottle of wine drunk before its time and he plucked several dollars from the nightstand before opened the door to yell, "You mind shutting your holes."
The two wizened alcoholics blinked blankly at the naked man, then the smaller drunk sniveled, “He drank my wine.”
"Then go buy yourselves a couple bottles of Thunderbird." He tossed the bills on the floor and the shorter wino snatched the cash and brandished the money in the other’s face.
"See, Sparky, you steal my wine and God provides me money to drink more. God certainly loves a drunk. Let’s go get us some wine. What’s the word.ThunderBird. And the price? A quarter trice." The two drunks chanted the old poem down the stairway and Sean sat on the bed. "Happy?"
"-er." Tammi slid across on the sloped mattress.
This was her first time sleeping with a man and she was surprised at how pleasant the experience was with Sean. His body smelled of the last night’s sex and she cuddled closer, saying, “Now we have an alarm clock."
"Alarm clock?" Sean rested his arm on her waist, as Tammi explained drowsily, “You paid for their silence, so tomorrow morning we'll have a chorus of bums whining for wine. Next time let me handle them."
"And you have a better technique?" Sean fondled her small breasts and the teenager issued a breezy mew, “I'll show you."
Tammi kissed his chest and licked his belly. He was instantly erect and Sean tensed, as her tongue fluttered against the thick vein under his cock like a flock of butterflies. The young girl had honed her techniques on the boys of Kittery and perfected them with sailors of Portsmouth. She had hoped that satisfying them would result in their liking her for herself, except her attempts to be a nice girl failed to alter the fact that the boys are after one thing from a woman or girl, which wasn’t a handshake at the end of the night.
Tammi had learned her lesson more than once, but with Sean she fell back into the same trap by reward the first man to ever treat with what she thought he wanted from her.
The redhead stretched her lips over his thickening erection. It tasted salty and a little of her. Her mouth tongue toyed with the slit before her head bobbed on his spit-wet penis. Her hand tickled below his balls and a savage growl accompanied his ejaculation. As she spit the semen into a Klee-nix, Sean asked, "Is that how you plan on keeping them quiet?"
"No, just you.” She rolled onto her back.
When Sean tried to reciprocate her exertions by fondling her vagina, she laughed deep inside her soul at how easy men succumb to physical manipulation.
Last night she had faked two orgasms to convince Sean of his sexual prowess. He had perceived her moans as declarations of desire. The ensuing sex had hurt her body in several places, but she had experienced worst from the boys of Kittery.
"Is it okay, if I hold you a little?" Tammi pulled away his hand.
"Sure, I’m spent.” Four times in one night was the limit of his endurance. sapped his energy. She was no rookie to sex and he wondered how many men had known her. It really didn’t matter this morning.
"Me too, you know this is strange." Tammi sighed with relief.
"Me and you?" Sean fingered a small mole inside her right thigh.
"No, having the man from this painting touch me.” Tammi traced his face on the wall. “Your girl paint that?"
“Yes.” Cheri’s memory violated the newness of their Eden.
“She captured the roughness in your face.” The other walls were decorated with assorted cityscapes.
“Yeah?” Cheri’s desertion festered in him and Tammi needed to taste his misery. "You an art critic?”
"I painted in school."
“Finger-painting in grade school." Sunlight flashed into the room and his eyes rejected the brightness.
"Being young doesn't mean that I am ignorant. I’ve seen Michelangelo in books and Van Gogh on a field trip to Boston.” Most of the other students had joked how Van Gogh’s THE POSTMAN had been done by numbers. She had rejected their collective blindness in admiration for the Frenchman’s mad devotion to his art in the face of his failure to sell a single painting. “And being older doesn’t mean you’re smarter.”
“I find that out all the time.”
At Tammi's age Sean had had an affair with a twenty-six year-old divorced business woman, whom he had considered much more mature than the college girls in the Boston bars mostly due to his erroneously equating lingerie with intelligence. She had left him the minute he asked her for a more satisfying gesture of love than a fuck. Her superiority about age had hurt in 1970 and he regretted taking revenge on Tammi for simply complimenting Cheri’s picture. "I'm sorry."
For what? You hurt and people have hurt me too. Pain shouldn’t be our only our bond. I’m on your side, but___"
"There’s always another ‘but’ with women.” Sean dreaded that she might ban his drinking.
"This is the last demand.” She laid her head on his chest. “My father swore that people lied thirteen times a day, which served as his excuse for not telling the truth. Not that he lied about his love for me, just about stopping drugs. “
"I haven’t lied to you yet.” That streak probably wouldn’t last the day and he said, “I can’t promise I’ll always tell you the truth, but I’m willing to give it a go.”
Tammi searched his eyes for any hint of dishonesty, detecting only the traces of heartache.
“The key to triumph is in the first syllable."
"Thankfully not in the last." Sean had read the same quote from a Salada teabag.
"Anything else this morning?"
"No, that covers it." Despite the aching in her vagina she sought to reward him and reached for his penis, which hardened to the touch and Sean gasped, “You ever rest?”
“Not before I’m done.” She smiled wickedly and wet the top of his cock with spit. Before she could insert it, someone knocked on the door and Sean shouted, "Go away. We already gave to the Wino Fund."
"It's Johnny.”
“The guitarist?” Tammi gathered the sheet around her body. "Then let him in.”
"I thought____" He wrapped a towel about his waist.
"There'll be plenty of time for sex later, I promise."
"That vow about lying runs two ways." He got out of bed and opened the door.
Johnny was wearing a red Chinese robe with a Les Paul guitar hung over his shoulder. He eyed the couple and he snorted, "Guess I'm in time for the matinee featuring the gladiator and slave girl."
"And you play Tony Curtis." Sean thought that Frankie would be better cast in that part.
“I loved SPARTACUS.” Tammi cooed and Sean moved aside for the guitarist. "Tammi West, this is Johnny Darling."
"I've heard so much about you," Tammi sat up in bed and Johnny sarcastically picked the notes to GOOD MORNING, LITTLE SCHOOLGIRL. "How this brute describe me?"
"He said that you looked sexy in a dress." Sexier than most of the dancers at the Dollhouse, if you had a thing for skinny girls.
"I’m sure ‘transvestite’ will work wonders on my job application."
“You don’t seem the type to be interested in a day job.”
“Oooh, and she’s insightful too.” Johnny had been anticipating an airhead from the hicks, but this girl was more clever than her age. "Since we're in a ‘nice’ mood, Sean says you can sing."
"His judgment in music make a little hard to believe, considering he listens to the Doors."
The two shared a sour face.
“What’s wrong with CRYSTAL SHIP.” Old loyalties died hard for Sean.
“Nothing, but THE END? Seventeen minute about killing your parents.” Johnny rolled his eyes. “And his fans think he’s alive in the South of France. More likely he’s working as a Sumo wrestler’s body-double in Japan, but we can't hold the love beads and long hair against Sean now that he trimmed that thatched roof." With his skim-milk skin Johnny was a teenybopper’s heartthrob, although his sly inspection of Sean's body was not in the interest of biology and she drew Sean into bed to affirm their relationship. "He did drive me here."
"For you to become a star." Johnny hated her possessing Sean.
"That’s aiming pretty high." Stardom had been beyond her wildest dreams in Maine, where a day without someone hassling her would have answered her fondest wishes.
"Girl, being bashful doesn't pay in this city and certainly not on this scene. Either you have it or you don’t." Johnny had been encouraged by the driver’s description of her dancing, for while punks hated disco, they loved jumping up and down in front of the bad girl done running away. Tammi was tough, smart, pretty, and not in a WonderBread’s Twelve Ways. If she could sing, she might even make a dent in New York and Johnny said, “You have to have a better voice than him."
"I sing okay,” Sean protested in his defense.
"You ever heard Dean Martin on dope? That's our Sean." Johnny grimaced like an icepick had been stuck in his ear.
Tammi laughed giddily and sought a cigarette on the night table.
“Remember I threw them away,” Sean smiled with the righteousness of a reformed druggie.
”He’s trying to save me from an early death.” Tammi was too young to be worried about death.
”He’s a natural for playing the hero.” Johny had seen him in action outside of CBGBs.
"So when’s the try-out for the band?" Tammi grabbed the spandex jumpsuit from the floor. It smelled worse than last night.
"Right now." Johnny plunked the notes from Iggy's WILD CHILD on his guitar.
“Right now?” She slipped on the distressd jumpsuit under the covers. The material felt like day-old sweat.
"No time like the right time." Johnny sat on the bed.
"We rehearsed TAKE ME HIGHER last night." She threw off the blanket.
“So you’re industrious too.”
“We changed it a little.” Three days ago she had been a junior in high school. The next day a runaway stripper and today she was on the verge of singing in a rock and roll band. Life sped up when people said ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’.
"Changes?" Johnny was irked by her reworking his composition.
“Just the lyrics.” Tammi disregarded his disapproval and handed him the rewritten verses.
"It better be the same as this." Johnny plucked the song's chords and tapped the beat with his foot. "On my count. One, two, three."
Tammi hit the mark on time, while Sean fumbled with his bass.
"I been to London, Paris, and Rome. Looking for a place to call my home. Hotels are all I've known, so it's time to….."
She cracked during the chorus, but smoothly phased the next stanzas, coloring the words with a sincere intensity. Johnny was surprised by the strength with which she belted out, "A rocket to the stars will fly us into Space. Take me higher and higher."
He lowered his guitar and Tammi wore a baffled expression.
"I make a mistake?"
"No mistakes." Johnny prayed that he wasn't sporting the same stupid smile spread across Sean's face. "Tammi, you're in."
"I am."
"You’re no Streisand.” Johnny was increasingly confident that GTH could succeed at CBGBs with Tammi singing lead. “But we’re going to make a complete stranger a rich man."
“What do you mean that?” She met strangers every night at the Dollhouse.
“A record producer hears your voice and he’ll steal you from the band.” Johnny was a good judge of raw talent.
After all the abuse she had received over her young life, Tammi instinctively distrusted compliments. "You're kidding me."
"For what possible reason. To crawl into your pants or rip you off? I’m play for the other team and I don’t steal from my friends or band members.” Mostly because none of them had enough to make it worth his while. “This is about a band. If you want in, you're in. If not, you can keep on shaking your ass at that go-go bar, till your tits droop to your knees.”
"You two aren't joking, are you?" The teenager had suffered through purgatory in Kittery and New York had been threatening to become a hell. Sean had helped her step closer to heaven and she embraced Johnny in near-ecstasy.
"Girl, this band might go nowhere." The guitarist was no one’s savior, least of all his own.
"And nowhere is a place I’ve been too long.”
“So let’s go someplace new. It’ll be a nice change.”
Pleased by a shared past, Tammi released Johnny and he hoisted his guitar over his shoulder. Now the band was complete, he had another project to discuss with Sean.
"You mind if the Gladiator and the Slave Boy have a private talk. Nothing about the band, but financial matters."
"You keep your hands off him." She wasn’t losing Sean to a man, even one as handsome as Johnny Darling.
“He’s not my type," Johnny kissed Tammi on the cheek. "Welcome to the band. We'll introduce you to the other members later. Sean?"
The two of them exited from the room. The hallway was deserted, yet Johnny whispered, “She is good.”
“I told you so.”
“Yeah, but don’t tell her. It goes to their head.”
“You mean just like how you said I sucked.”
“Close, anyway this is the capitol of the world. It takes money to live, eat, have fun.”
“Tell me about it.” His money was going fast. “You have a job in mind?”
"No, but an act of revolutionary re-appropriation.”
“Stealing in other words.”
“I prefer the term liberating funds.”
“Go on.” It wasn’t a conspiracy, until they spoke to a third person.
“The banks have these automatic cash machines called ATMs," Johnny rattled off the information sure that the ATM were unknown to Sean. "They dispense money from your account, so say you put $310 in a bank account. You wait three days for the money to clear and hit the ATM."
"Leaving you $10."
Lacking all the details, his math was off by a couple of zeros.
"No, you have another fifty minutes to hit three more ATMs before the computers calculated that the money has been withdrawn to the limit and closes the account."
"You're asking me to withdraw the money four times from the same account." The computers’ program having a bug was no defense in a court of Law. “Then the police find my name and hunt me down."
"Not you, but Jimmie O'Brian." Johnny produced a birth certificate to Sean. “Poor Jimmie O'Brian died ten years ago. The registry is operating in the Stone Age. You ask for a birth certificate and they give it to you. The DMV on Center Street will issue you a license in the dead man's name without a photo, so your Irish mug can pass for an O'Brian. You stick the money in the bank and hit the account after the money clears, scoring at least $900 for an investment of $300."
"If it's such a good payday, why isn't everyone doing it?"
"It’s a secret.” Johnny feared the ex-hippie might not share his confidence in Dynamite’s discovery of the glitch, while cashing his VA checks. "And redistribution of wealth has to beat flipping hamburgers at McDonalds.”
Sean appreciated Johnny’s giving the crime a revolutionary angle. He hated the banks for not hiring him after college. The interviewers had deemed anyone arrested for anti-war protests as a credit risk. Sean decided to prove them right by opening an independent withdrawal service of banking. "I'll give it a shot."
"Great. Get dressed. We have places to see and people to be.” Johnny had a full day’s agenda for GTH and walked down the hallway saying, “I'll meet you in the lobby in five minutes."
Sean entered room 301 and sat on the bed.
"Can I hear the big secret?" Tammi asked with a young girl’s innocence.
"This morning you asked me to not lie?”
“Yes.” Tammi hadn’t anticipated Sean disappointing her so quickly.
The success of any crime depends on minimizing the number of people involved, but inexplicably he needed Tammi’s trust.
What I’m about to tell you has to remain a secret."
"You can trust me," Tammi replied sincerely and he told her the truth.
Robbing banks without a gun was a romantic notion, but Robin Hood was a fairy tale and sooner rather than later every criminal was caught by the police.
“I’m not asking you to be Bonnie.” Sean read the disapproval on her young face.
“And I won’t call you Clyde.” She had been poor all her life, which wasn’t the banks’ fault, however she had read in THE GRAPES OF WRATH how the banks had thrown the farmers off their land. John Steinbeck’s book was just a book, yet a bank’s décor matched the Kittery police station or the her high school principal’s office and she told Sean, “Just Be careful."
"Aren’t I always." Sean let the towel drop from his waist.
"I thought you were meeting Johnny downstairs." the young girl smiled with temptation.
"Johnny can wait." Sean tore the jumpsuit from Tammi's body and she warned him, "This might be going nowhere."
"You mean you and me"
"Yes."
"And nowhere just fine with me.” Like Tammi he was very familiar with that destination, but she saved them from visiting nowhere alone with a single kiss, for a kiss is more than a kiss when you’re both naked.
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