MAYBE TOMORROW - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter 4

IV

Two hours past midnight the Olds 88 crossed a bridge spanning a black tidal river. Co-Op City’s stark highrises loomed on the left and abandoned wrecks lined the Interstate to remind motorists that crime didn’t sleep in the Big Apple. Thee minutes later Sean lifted his foot off the gas and veered onto the Bruckner Expressway.

Off the elevated highway flames leapt from a vacant building unattended by fire trucks. Smoke smoldered from neighboring tenements without any spectators. This part of the Bronx had been deserted for most of the decade.

The sleeping runaway on the passenger seat came from small town up north. She probably had never been to a city bigger than Boston and New York was no city for a young girl on her own.

The Olds shuddered over the rough pavement and Sean steered hard right to avoid a deep pothole. Breakdowns in these derelict neighborhoods were a nightmare for motorists passing through the city. Roaming road gangs could strip the tires and engine off a vehicle in less than five minutes, while the owner tried to find a tow truck.

The heavy Oldsmobile rumbled off the highway and Sean headed toward the Willis Avenue Bridge. The car dove into a treacherous dip in the badly-maintained road and the chassis bottomed out with a screech of metal. The young girl stirred from her slumber and rubbed her eyes for several seconds. before asking, "Where are we?"

“Almost in Manhattan." Sean jerked the wheel left to avoid an axle-snapping chasm.

"Really?" Kittery was a small village. Portsmouth was barely a city. Boston was big, but not big like this. Her eyes widened in awe of the panorama of tall apartment buildings across the East River. “I never thought I’d make it.”

“I’m not a bad driver.” The Olds bisected a lane of cars. Horns blared and fists were shaken at the car exiting onto the ramp for Harlem.

“I believe you.” Tammi giggled, sounding twelve. “But the other cars are avoiding yours like it was a shark in a swimming pool."

"The gash on the side is thanks to your friend." The car chase in Connecticut had added an unwanted detour to the trip from Boston,

"And normally after a driver has an accident, they check out the damage." She lit a cigarette and the smoke bit into her lungs. "Meaning?” Sean fussed through the radio to find The Doors' RIDERS ON THE STORM.

“That this isn't your car.” Tammi smirked with the cigarette dangling from her lip. She had spent hours practicing the look in the mirror. “Don’t look so innocent. It’s obvious that this is a stolen car, but I won't report you to Santa Claus or the police."

"It’s not stolen. It was given to me."

“For a Thanksgiving Day present?”

“No, the owner paid me to make it disappear?”

“You do magic tricks like a magician.” The teenager mocked him with fake amazement.

“No, the car is a gas guzzler too much gas. Nobody wants to buy it, so the owner contacts me and I tell to leave it on the street with an extra set of keys under the seat. I drive to New York, park the car in a bad neighborhood, and leave the keys in the ignition, then it's stolen by real thieves and the the next day the owner reports the theft to the police. A month later he gets a check from the insurance company. Happy ending.” Sean hadn’t told any of his friends about his sideline. He shouldn't have told Tammi, but once she got out of the car, he would never see her again.

"You make it sound like you're doing a good deed.” She was a little young to be so sarcastic.

“Only the insurance company gets hurt." Baptized a Catholic Sean had given up of worrying about his immortal soul long ago. “And this is the last car I disappear.”

"I don’t give a fuck whether this is the first, last or the hundredth car you ‘disappeared’. To me it’s a ride.” Tammi twisted the dial to banish RIDERS ON THE STORM from the radio. "I hate that oldie music."

"Oldies? I saw the Doors in 1968. They played for three hours at the Uptown Bus in Boston. I started a band, hoping to be a rock god. All I ever played were pool parties.”

"Sorry, hippie boy, but this is 1976 not 1968." Tammi spun the knob to a droning voice accompanied by a 3-chord band and she sang along with the chorus. "Road, road, roadrunner, goin’ fifty mile an hour."

“Not bad.”

“Me?” Tammi wasn’t used to anyone say something good about her.

“You sound like Dusty Springfield without training.

“So you’re not only a car thief, but a musical expert.” Her father had listening to Dusty Springfield, so she didn’t take comment as an insult.

“I know music. Who’s playing now?” Sean slowed down to get off the bridge.

“I have no idea.” The local station out of Portsmouth was dominated by Top Ten Hits.

“That’s Jonathan Richman in the Modern Lovers and the song’s called ROADRUNNER.”

“I never heard it before, but I like it.” She turned up the volume, but when the song segued to BETH, she ruthlessly shut off Kiss’ hit and hummed Dolly Parton's JOLEEN.

"You hate the Doors and like country?" The driver grappled with the shuddering wheel, as the Olds sped down Lexington Avenue.

"At least you can sing country around a campfire." Tammi gawked at the forlorn projects and the black men on the sidewalks well past midnight. "Is this Harlem?"

"Yes,” Sean answered, pacing his speed to avoid stopping at a red light.

"I always pictured Harlem this way." The young girl was astonished by the number of black people on the sidewalks. "Bright lights. Lots of black people. There are no blacks back home."

“You know anyone in New York?” He was sure that the answer was no.

“No one from my town ever leaves it, but I have enough money to stay at a hotel.” Tammi examined the driver’s thick-boned face. He reminded her of an extra from a 1960s caveman movie, and she asked, "How about you and me splitting a hotel? Money goes longer with two than one."

"I....I..."

Tammi laughed at his stammering.

"Let me guess. You have a jealous girlfriend?"

“Sorry." Sean was two hours late for meeting Cheri.

"Sorry for having someplace to go?” She had done fine in Kittery owing no one nothing. “You in love?"

"Yes." Love was the only word to describe the feeling of Cheri’s embrace.

"Then all’s forgiven." Tammi stopped speaking and the Olds rolled down avenues and streets surrounded by the gauntlet of increasingly taller buildings. After fifteen minutes she pulled out a cigarette without lighting it and pressed her face to the window.

“I know where I am. This is where they drop the ball on New Year's Eve."

“It’s Times Square.” The glow of the marquees and flashing neon billboards camouflaged the area’s legendary sordidness. On the sidewalk two young boys were rummaging through a fallen man’s pockets. No one on the sidewalk interfered with the robbery.

"Tammi, no matter how terrible it was at home, you're too young for this. In 1969 I watched hundreds of girls flocking to the hippie corner in Boston Commons. They drifted away to free-love communes on Mission Hill or go-go bars in the Combat Zone. Each of those places were a thousand times safer than Times Square.”

"I’m willing to listen to an alternative.”

"I give you the money for a bus ticket home."

Tammi visualized the return ride to Kittery, her stepmother cooking turkey, her stepsister’s smug smile, the boys at school begging for a quick trip to the Fort, and the girls at school calling her the town pump.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because this place was made for girls like me. Stop.” Tammi twisted her head.

“Where?” Sean cut off a yellow taxi and pulled over to the curb.

"Right there." Tammi pointed to a poster GIRLS WANTED underneath a blinking neon marquee.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Dead serious.” She pulled up on the door handle.

“This is wrong." The slender brunette was the same age as his youngest sister. "If it was so wrong, you'd be crying, hippie boy, besides I’ve heard that song, "If I can make it here, then I can make it anywhere.' It had to be true for somone, so why not me?"" Tammi leaned across the seat to kiss Sean with a tenderness better suited to the end of a junior prom date.

“What if they don’t give you a job?” Sean doubted that she had valid ID.

“Oh, they’ll give me a job.” Tammi smiled with the wanton pleasure of being who she wanted to be.

The teenager popped out of the car and clomped to the DOLLHOUSE in her one high heel. The brutish bouncer stopped Tammi, then she reached into her jacket and produce what seemed to be an ID, then danced a seductive Watusi as an audition. Ten seconds later the bouncer waved the teenager inside the Playpen. Her disappearance was too fast for his tastes and Sean opened the door to rescue her from the naked truth of Times Square.

A uniformed cop rapped his billyclub on the hood.

“Shut the door and move it. This is a no parking zone.”

"My friend went into the Dollhouse."

"Then she ain't comin' out any time soon." The scruffy cop shut the door with a shove. "You want to wait. Stick this shitbox into a parking lot."

"Yes, officer." Sean was angered at his inability to be two places at once, but he didn’t need the cop running the plate.

His right foot stomped on the gas and the Olds weaved out of Times Square with the big V8 begging for speed. The car might not have been owned by Sean, street maintenance was a low priority on the impoverished city administration’s agenda and 7th Avenue’ rutted surface challenged the Olds’ suspension to the limit.

At 34th Street the chrome bumper narrowly missed a bum’s shopping cart. At 23rd the under chassis once more blistered steel on a bump topped by a manhole and a meteor shower of sparks sprayed against the ragged asphalt. Sean turned west on 14th Street. By 8th Avenue the sidewalks were devoid of foot traffic. The lights were with him, as the tires rattled over unpaved cobblestones of the Meat Market.

The Olds turned south under the West Side Highway following the train track for a few blocks before crossing West Street. Sean braked hard to halt the Olds before the lip of the Hudson River embankment.

The headlights lit the first hundred yards of the black trough of water separating New York from the rest of America. Sean shoved the column shift into Park and turned off the engine without taking the keys. Stepping out of the car he zipped up his jacket and pulled a screwdriver from his pocket. Sean scanned the street.

The smell of Old’s burnt rubber mixed with the rank tidal water and a block north shadowy men wandered into a twisted metal pier. Cheri had explained that homosexual trespassers used the fire-scorched warehouse for shadowy orgies. Sexual outlaws were no threat to him.

He crouched behind the Olds and unscrew to the license plates, then repeated the process with the one on the front bumper, then tossing both into the river. A Checker taxi passed him. The driver didn’t even bother to look at him. This time of night there were no good reason to stop on this side of West Street and Sean grabbed his canvas bag from the rear of the Olds. He glanced across the street to the third-floor of the Terminal Hotel.

The corner room’s lights were out. Cheri had to be home by now. The waitress finished work at 2. Sean hefted the bag over his shoulder and smiled to himself, thinking about her naked in bed.

A new life awaited him and Sean eagerly climbed the Terminal Hotel’s crumbling steps, nearly knocking over a bottle of NightTrain shared by two winos. Their garbled curses barely grazed his ears, as he entered the musty lobby. No one alive had seen this establishment’s heyday and Sean vowed to move someplace better tomorrow.

"I'm here for Cheri." He rapped on the counter to wake the sleeping desk clerk’ attention and looked at keys on the wall. #301 was there.

“Cheri?” The wiry clerk scratched his unshaven jaw.

“She’s in room 301.” Sean dropped his bag on the floor. It had gotten heavy on the walk from the Olds.

“You mean she was in 301.” The clerk grinned without showing his teeth. Life had a funny way of not working out according to plans at the Terminal Hotel.

“What you mean ‘was’?” He shook his head in disbelief.

"Like past tense ‘was and now is not’."

"I was supposed to meet her." The old man had to be lying about her checking out.

"Hey, women change their minds." The clerk pretended to examine the ledger. “You musta missed her by three hours. Tough break.”

"Where'd she go?" Sean glanced over to a young blonde man in a leather jacket. He was paying too much attention to this conversation and Sean resisted telling him to mind his own business. This was not his city.

"She said Paris.” The clerk glanced overhead. “Plane’s probably halfway across the Atlantic by now."

"She leave a message?"

"Yer name is Sean?" The clerk grabbed a letter pinned to the wall.

"That's me." At this moment he wish that he was someone else.

"Then this is for you." The clerk suppressed a grin. “I read it earlier. You want me to tell you what it says.”

“No.” Sean dropped his bag and devoured the four sentences hoping to read a comforting explanation, instead Cheri had written that she was going to Paris to study art at the Sorbonne. There was no mention of ‘them’ or when she might returned. The last sunbeam in his solar system was sucked into a black hole with no promise of a dawn on the horizon.

"Bad news, kid?" asked the clerk fighting back a grin.

Sean shook his head and left the lobby with his bag over his shoulder. On the steps he released the letter and the night wind seized the page before it hit the sidewalk. Across West Street was a black river and he stumbled forward into the night.

Two seconds later Johnny Darling bent over to pick up the discarded letter from the sidewalk. He read the four lines in less than two seconds. Cheri’s words were as deadly as a script of a snuff film and the guitarist stuffed the sheet of paper into his pocket before trailing the hippie down the sidewalk.

Plenty of men left the Terminal Hotel blanketed by a similar despair. More than a few ended up in the river.

When Cheri's rejected lover reached the other side of the West Side Highway and punched the hood of a dented Chevy Vega with New Jersey plates. The metal buckled under his fists and Johnny shouted, "Go easy on that car. It’s already been knocked out."

“Get the fuck away from me.” The hippie lashed out a quick right.

“Slow down, Sean, I'm not trying to fuck with you." Johnny sidestepped the roundhouse swing and lifted his hands to demonstrate his harmlessness.

"Who the hell are you?" Sean snarled at the intruder to his fury with red murder in his eyes.

"I'm Johnny. I live at the Terminal.” Johnny didn't need a broken nose and wisely kept his distance from the hippie.

“And?” Sean pushed his hair out of his face.

“Cheri was my friend and I'm sorry to tell you that you’re not the first guy whose heart she broken. She had this hillbilly boyfriend from West Virginia named Bix. I think he was studying math at the New School. Anyway they went out for a year, but Cheri never kissed Bix. Not once. After she deserted him, Bix moved in a cave in Central Park, mumbling numbers like a bingo announcer. His parents finally committed him to a mental hospital”

“I’m not Bix,” Sean had heard a different version from Cheri.

“I'm not saying that you are, but Cheri had a little problem of letting men confused lust for love and men had an even bigger problem with her small problem.” Johnny intuitively recognized how the hippie brutal features might have appealed to Cheri, who balanced deep-seeded sexual masochism with a dangerous streak of mental sadism. “You know she talked about you?"

"What she say?" Sean 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?" "Yeah." Sean nodded with a heavy head. "She say why she left New York?"

"The hotel clerk said she was spooked.”

“Spooked?”

“Love scares people.”

"Damnit." Sean had believed his own lies and punched the car again and again.

"Stop it, breaking your hands won’t bring her back." Johnny hauled the hippie way from the Chevy. The owner was probably in the pier fucking a complete stranger.

"Oh, yeah, watch this." Sean shrugged off Johnny and smashed a window with a left hook.

"Suit yourself, but it's not easy eating pizza with a busted hand."

"You think I want pizza." The hippie lifted his bleeding knuckles.

"Not tonight, but maybe tomorrow." No city had better pizza than New York.

"Fuck pizza today and tomorrow."

"ou”re only saying that because you can't see tomorrow." Cheri's lover 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 hadn't thought that he had any.

>“One, go back to Boston.”

"Impossible. I burnt all my bridges back there.” Sean understood Tammi’s decision better now.

"Tough walking across a burnt bridge, so choice number two is stay here.”

Sean surveyed the grimy belly of the West Side Highway. Water dripped from the steel girders and rats scurried along the struts supporting the roadway. He gasped for breath. The air smelled of rotten meat. This city was rotten to the core and he said, "I came here to be with Cheri and now she's gone."

"So if you go, where will you go."

"I don't know."

Johnny sensed the wavering of of his indecision and said, “You can always leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Leave today, leave tomorrow. No one is stopping you. Do what you want. It’s your life.”

Sean took a deep breath. Driving a stolen car was a bad idea. He needed sleep and picked up his bag. "I'll stay the night. Tomorrow I'll figure out tomorrow."

"Now you're thinking. Let's get you a room." Johnny accompanied Sean 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 with him as Cowboy and Johnny cast in the role of Ratso. This deja vu worsened inside the Terminal Hotel, where the wizened clerk smiled, as if he had expected to see Sean again.

"So Sean, yer wanna a room? 301 is available. It even had a view."

"I know it." Sean slapped a twenty and signed the register.

"That's right." Ernie wasn't 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 your bellhop." Johnny lifted the canvas bag and climbed the stairs to the third floor maintaining a constant banter to prevent Sean from rethinking a hasty decision. “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 any tourist places, because I’m into music and not concert rock, but clubs and bars. You know what you need. Some music to soothe your soul."

"I don't think so."

"Too bad, because Max's and CBGB's offer four bands a night." Johnny stopped before Cheri's old room."

"I said I'm not interested." Sean stared at the door.

"Okay, okay, I get the message, but if you need anything, knock on 301. Anything at all."

“Thanks.” Sean stepped into the room and shut the door. He ignored the cracked walls, the dangling flypaper, and the nude painting on the wall, because a faint fragrance belonging to Cheri lingered in her absence.

She should be in this room with him.

Only last weekend they had lay in bed naked. She had said that she would be waiting. He wasn’t supposed to be alone now.

Sean went to the window and tried to open it. The management had nailed it shut and he took a step back to a running start only to hear Johnny ask, "Did Cheri's leaving hurt that much."

Sean saying nothing said everything. Johnny wasn’t letting Cheri's jilted lover jump through the window to give EMS drivers a chance at his money and stepped into the small room.

"Listen, you'll fall in love again and sooner than you fear.”

“Fear?”

“Love is never love without the risk. I have a good idea. We should go get a drink."

"I'm not into gay bars."

“I know that, but I'm talking about CBGB's. It's not straight and it's not gay. Boston has nothing like it." "I don't know. "What there not to know?" Cheri's lover was smart to mistrust him, although anyone’s misgivings melted after a taste Johnny’s 'special' drink. “CBGB's is rock and rock, cheap drinks, loose girls, and much more.”

“Much more sounds too good to be true.”

"Perhaps it is, considering CBGBs’ is 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. She was dancing naked in Times Square. He should have taken up her offer of sharing a room. “I don’t care for country.”

“No one plays country at CBGBs.” Not since punk took over the stage.

"Is it far?" He wiped his bloodied hands with a soiled towel.

"Less than ten minutes away.” Tonight was working out with his first meeting Charles and now Sean. He had given the first a miss, but there was no way the hippie wasn't paying for his introduction to New York. “You'll love CBGBs. Trust me."

"Okay."

Two minutes later the two young men left the hotel. A taxi stopped for them on Jane Street. Johnny gave the driver an address on Bowery. It was a little after 3am and he had one more job to do before he could sleep for the night, until then there was no rest for the wicked.

MAYBE TOMORROW - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter 6

Night life on Bleecker Street panned out after the Village Vanguard. Sean gazed out the taxi’s window at the forlorn sidewalk grilled yellow by cruel chrome streetlights. This was how New York really looked without the eyes of love.

Three weeks ago Sean had abandoned a 1974 Cadillac DeVille by a gutted pier on the Hudson, intending as on his four previous trips to catch the next Amtrak train from Penn Station, instead he had stopped for an omelet at a West Village restaurant. When he had asked for the check, the brown-eyed waitress’ unexpectedly had propositioned him to accompany her home.

“Excuse me, I don’t think I heard you right.” Only one woman on Boston had spoken so openly and Linda had walked out of his life five years ago.

"Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m an artist and you have a face I’d like to paint.” The brunette tilted her head, as if to study him for another angle.

”Oh.” He hadn’t been with a woman for months and stupidly asked, “Why?”

“Has anyone ever said that you looked like an angel under candlelight?”

Sean shook his head. No one had ever said that he looked like anyone or anything and he imagined himself to be one of a kind. With the world population at nearly

“Good, I was hoping that.” The brunette posed, as if her slender body was treasured by other men. “My name’s Cheri and my shift ends at midnight, which is only a few minutes from now.”

”I haven’t said ‘yes.” The waitress was the exact opposite of a Playboy centerfold, but so was his taste in women.

“And there’s no way that you’re going to say no.” She stuffed his bill in her pocket, signifying the dinner was on the house. “See you outside.”

Cheri vanished into the kitchen and Sean left the restaurant to stand on the sidewalk. A nearby church bell rang out the midnight hour and Sean zipped up his leather jacket against the cold. Christopher Street was swarming with men barhopping in search of other men, although most of the gay disregarded the long-haired stranger in favor of trimly bearded gays in denim jean jackets and work boots.

Five minutes passed and he peered through the restaurant’s front window.

A fat blonde was taking orders.

Sean questioned whether Cheri might have changed her mind and he debated whether to stay or catch the 1:10am train to Boston. If she didn’t show at the end of a count to a hundred, he would leave for Penn Station.

At 59 Cheri appeared from the alley, buttoning her pea coat and tugging on a beret to transforming her into a French art student.

“We can walk to my place. It’s not far.”

”Okay.”

They strolled through the maze of streets in conversation.

Cheri was studying art and came from Pennsylvania.

Sean told her about stealing cars and he recited his poem about a cowboy named Lucky. Cheri laughed at the end and pulled him up at a set of stairs to the Terminal Hotel.

“Home sweet home.”

“Here?” The hotel was in the final stages of a long descent from respectability. “I know it’s not the Plaza, but the view from my room is very Edward Hopper,” she said, entering the shabby lobby.

The clerk ignored their entrance and they took the stairs, since the elevator was broken.

”Climbing three flights a couple of times a day is good exercise.” She lifted her skirt to reveal well-formed legs.

On the third floor Cheri led him to the end of the corridor and took out a key to open the door to # 301. The small room had a bed, a night table, and a closet filled with clothing, shoes, and boxes. Paint tubes, canvases, and an easel stood between two windows.

”I know it’s not much, but it’s in Manhattan and take a look at my view.” Cheri drew back one curtain.

She hadn’t been lying about the view.

The hotel room overlooked the elevated West Side Highway, the Hudson River, and the far shore of New Jersey.

”But I didn’t ask you here for the view. Off with your clothes.”

”My clothes?”

”Yes, I want to paint you in the nude.” Cheri undressed him and examined his muscles like a medical student prepping a cadaver for an autopsy. He tried to tear off her clothing and she pushed him away, saying , “Slow down, there’s plenty of time for that after I paint you. How good are you at standing still?”

”I don’t know.” His hands were cupped over his erection, for the lust in his blood was one match away from arson.

”I guess we’ll have to find out and one more thing. Angels aren’t shy about their body.” Cheri posed him against the wall and squeezed little mounds of paint on a splattered easel. She turned to the wall with a thick pencil in her hand and ordered, “Don’t move. I’ll try and do this as fast as possible.”

"You’re doing a mural?” He remembered reading that Michaelangelo had spent years on the Sistine Chapel.

”I don’t have a spare canvas. Artists work with what’s at hand.” Cheri was already sketching his body on the buckled wall. Within a minute he recognized his body and within three his face was taking form. She was better than good.

“In my grandmother’s house there was a bedroom with a mural of a harbor in Maine. I loved sleeping in that bedroom.”

“That’s nice.” Cheri hardly lifted her head from sketching his body. Her concentration excluded any dialogue and Sean fought to keep from shifting his body, as she spread splotches of paint over the wall. Finally the oil fumes overcame him with drowsiness blind to her laying down the brushes or stripping off her clothes. He woke with his entry inside her.

She hadn’t been lying about their having plenty of time, for the next two days blurred into pornographic positions separated by his monologues on New England; the Quincy Quarries, fried clams, his best friend drowning in Lake Sebago in 1960, losing his virginity along the banks of the Presumpscot River at age 13, the Red Sox’s 6th game against the Cincinnati Reds, and seeing James Brown at Boston Garden the night of Martin Luther King’s murder.

Cheri spoke little about herself while painting and even less before, during, and after their couplings, although she said that her last boyfriend had gone mad, because he had loved her too much.

“How much was too much?”

"I don’t know, you’d have to asked Bix.”

On Sunday night Sean boarded the last car of the train to Boston. His base intuition warned that if he said a single word about his feelings, Cheri would vanish into Manhattan. Instead he asked, “Are you free next weekend? It’s Thanksgiving.”

“I work Friday and Saturday nights,” Cheri replied with an evasive hesitancy.

“That’s fine. I can wander around the Village, until you get off work.”

The train lurched into motion and Sean waved good-bye. Her sullen departure acted as no deterrent to his proposed rendezvous and he telephoned two days later to announce,“I’m moving to Manhattan.”

Her silence bridged several seconds.

“Can’t you wait a week or two?”

“I quit my teaching job.” 1984 had arrived eight years early at South Boston High School. State Troopers in the hallways, classrooms, and dining areas futilely guarded against any racial violence between the whites from Southie and the blacks from Roxbury. An intense hatred had ignited the city and Sean feared catching the plague. “If I stay here any longer, I’ll die. I’ll be there Wednesday night.”

“I’ll be waiting.” She had understood nothing could prevent his arrival and tonight she had fled before he could trapped her in New York.

There was no reason for him to stay in this city another day beyond tomorrow and he turned to Johnny. “Are we there yet?” 


“Almost.” Johnny slapped on the plastic divider. “Stop on Mulberry.”

The taxi driver braked next to a scrawny tree and his two passengers got out of the Checker. Three derelicts stood around an oily fire and Sean asked suspiciously, "Why we getting out?"

"I thought a walk would help you get a feel for the city." Johnny paid the driver and stepped onto the sidewalk.

“It looks more like purgatory.” Sean’s only heaven on Earth would be standing atop the Eiffel Tower with Cheri.

“You’ll get used to it.” Johnny secretively shifted the knife in the small of his back, as they passed a cluster of cardboard shacks sheltering shivering bodies.

“I won’t be here long enough.” Sean envied the derelicts’ sleep and toyed with walking back to the hotel. It might be haunted by Cheri, but at least the bed was warm. "You said CBGBs was close."

"And I was telling the truth. This is other end of Bleecker Street from where Bob Dylan performed in the Sixties and it wasn’t cool then and it isn’t now.”

An old man in rags lurched from a shallow doorway to verify Johnny's statement and stuck out a palm roadmapped with crevices and scars.

"Got a dime to spare an old wino?"

“Sure, Pops.” Johnny seered the lines of the old drunk’s lost past and short future. $5 shocked the red-faced alcoholic, who gasped, "God bless you, young man."

"Have a good drunk on me.”

”Only if I hurry.” The old man wobbled across the silent street into the abyss of shadows. The derelict bar on the corner of Houston and the Bowery charged twenty-five cents for a shot of bottom shelf whiskey. Its closing hours were determined by the last dollar left in the bar.

”That was a generous donation.” Sean gave bums his spare change.

"I hope someone might do the same for me, if I ever that low.” Johnny motioned for them to continue walking down the sidewalk.

"You have a long way before you hit the bottom."

"A car hits me and I'm an old man before my time." Johnny had witnessed the city’s mercilessness too many times to believe in the survival of the fittest.

“I’m lucky with cars.” Earlier this evening Sean’s destiny had scrapped bunkers with death on a Connecticut highway and he reflected on the old superstition that bad luck comes in threes. The car chase had been the first, Cheri's desertion had to be # 2 number one and meeting Johnny could well be number three. “That’s a plus for a car thief.” Johnny stopped at a wide avenue. “I’ve been here before.” Sean declared to his own surprise.

"You been to the Bowery?" No one accidentally visited on a boulevard renowned for its flophouses, drunks, and broken dreams.

"I came with my family to New York in the early Sixties.” His father had taken them to the Empire State Building, the Rockettes, a steak dinner at Tad’s, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “We were driving back from the Staten Island Ferry and I saw a man lying in the street and asked my father, if he was dead. He said that the man was a Bowery drunk."

“Those old boozers are tougher than an old dog's paws and so are punks.” Johnny nodded across the avenue to the leather-jacketed crowd underneath a white awning emblazoned with the letters CBGBs. The Palace Hotel next door was a close relative to the Terminal Hotel and Sean glared at his new acquaintance with a twinge of disappointment. “This is it?”

"What’s outside had nothing to do with what’s inside.” The hippie’s disapproval intensified Johnny’s impatience to rip him off and he leapt off the curb to dart through a surge of speeding cars and taxis. "Last one across the street buys the first round."

A rattling Checker bore down on Johnny and Sean braced for the soft crunch of steel into a body, except the thin blonde gracefully vaulted across the hood onto the traffic island and dodged two newspaper trucks to safely reach the opposite sidewalk. He shouted, “I’ll take a Wild Turkey.”

Johnny had challenged death twice in two seconds, but Sean’s mother had cautioned him to walk the other way from any menace to life and limb. He would still be living in the suburbs, if he had followed her instructions, so crossed the Bowery to find Johnny arguing with two men carrying guitars.

"You use the drugs, you have to pay.”

"I owe you nuttin’," sniveled a crow-haired guitarist, resembling Keith Richard, if the lead guitarist had died instead of Brian Jones.

His pointy rat boots, straight-legged black Levi's, a stained tuxedo jacket, and a skinny tie knotted loosely on the collar of a rumpled shirt were the fashionable antithesis to Sean’s Frye boots and plaid shirt. The loiterers on the sidewalk were similarly attired in leather jackets or narrow lapel jackets. Sean felt out of place and even more so after Johnny seized the zombie's guitar.

"Where’s my $50."

"Hey, I gotta be at Max's in thirty minutes." The rocker feebly wrestled for the guitar and Johnny shoved him into a pile of garbage.

"Give me the money and I’ll give you the guitar."

The onlookers hooted, as if this was a long-running sit-com, and the rocker offered shrilly, "I'll give you the fifty at Max’s."

"And wait in line with the other twenty junkies you stiffed today?” The fifty was more useful in Johnny’s pocket than the junkie’s vein. “Fifty or no guitar."

"Okay, okay." The skeletal musician unhappily forfeited a crumble of bills. "Now gimme my guitar."

"Been a pleasure doing business." Johnny released the guitar and the junkie rocker rambled up the Bowery. The thin blonde pocketed the cash and turned to Sean. “This ain’t Kansas or the Emerald City. Trusting no one's the first rule of this city and the second is always obey the first."

A taxi stopped at the curb and the back door opened for a bleached blonde in a miniskirt, ripped fishnet stockings, and gleaming black high heels straight out of fetish stroke book. Standing on the sidewalk the milk-white dominatrix sneered with crooked teeth, "You have a problem with your eyes, caveman?"

Sean stammered, "I haven't seen anyone dress like you before."

"You sayin' I'm a whore?" She flashed a rack of sharp fingernails at Sean’s face.

"Sheila, this is my country bumpkin cousin, so cut him a break." Johnny stepped between them.

"This is related to you?" The blonde’s laugh sounded like her first of the night.

"Can't you see the resemblance, Sheila?” Johnny leaned over to Sean’s face.

"I get it. You're country cousins." The blonde dominatrix blew the bewildered hippie a kiss and entered the club with a sadistic swagger. When the door shut, Sean asked, "Why she dress so slutty, if she isn’t asking me to look?"

"The girls at CBGBs wear slutty clothing, because they are whores or stripers, who might break your teeth or ask you home for a fuck. I’ll let find out for yourself which is worse.” Johnny opened the thick door and Sean's eardrums buckled under a sub-sonic boom. The last band he had heard this loud was Blue Cheer and his guide shouted, "Now hold onto your wig. No more Abba. No more Bread. No more Boz Scaggs. This is the world of tomorrow today."

The pure power on the stage drew Sean forward and a stringy-haired giant in a yellow construction helmet halted his progress with a meaty hand. "Five dollars."

Sean dropped $5 before the bearded man at a desk and beelined for the front of the club, where four men in black leather jackets, torn blue jeans, sneakers, and scraggly hair performed a blindingly fasy version of CALIFORNIA SUN.

The singer resembling a wigged mantis yelled indecipherable lyrics to the frenzied audience. Each song raced to its end in less than two minutes and Sean unconditionally joined the crowd’s bopping worship of the hard-driving quartet. When the band had exhausted the audience's energy, the longhaired gnome announced their encore, "PT boat on the way to Havana."

The heaving mob surged Sean forward and he asked a mulatto teenager with a safety pin stuck in his cheek, "What’s the name of this band?"

"The Ramones." The pimply kid rolled his eyes at Sean’s ignorance.

He had never heard of them, but judging from the number of people emulating the band's get-up, this band had existed for several years.

A minute later the Ramones finished their encore and the jukebox blared a song about Chinese Rocks. Most of the audience surged to a narrow hallway behind the stage and Sean fought his way to the bar, where Johnny handed him a long-necked Bud. He drained the bottle in three gulps and ordered a Wild Turkey from a redheaded bartender wearing a skimpy tube top. He downed the shot and called for another round.

"So how great is this place?" Johnny was pleased by the wad of bills in the hippie’s hand.

”I don’t know about the place, but the Ramones reminded me of these bands; the Remains, and the Ramrods.” Sean had always been puzzled by the Surf Nantasket bands’ failure, while Three Dog Night crammed the Top Ten with covers. “They were sort of like the Ramones.”

"I know the Rockin’ Ramrods. They had this great song about the wind." Johnny preferred MR. WIND to their modest hit BRIGHT LIT BLUE SKIES. “Punk is the bastard son of Garage Rock.”

"The Ramones play here much?" The alcohol boiled in his empty stomach.

”Ever since this band Television convinced the owner to change the format from country and bluegrass on Sunday nights. They lied about performing original Bluegrass music, but drew about fifty people paying a buck and this record producer named Marty Thau talked the owner into letting other local bands playing at the bar. Soon you had Patti Smith, the Heartbreakers, Richard Hell, the Dictators, the Shirts, dBs, and Mink DeVille. Max’s Kansas City joined the act and over in England there’s the Damned, Clash, Stranglers, and Sex Pistols. LA and Frisco are starting scenes. France has Plastic Bertrand. Course the radio won’t air punk, because the record companies force the kids to listen to shit.”

"Like Foreigner and Yes." The Ramrods had failed for the same reason. "On the way here the radio played only one real song." "I ALMOST CUT MY HAIR?" Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were the Kingston Trio of Soft Rock.

"No, ROADRUNNER."

"The Modern Lovers?" Johnny nodded to a chubby bearded A&R man from Satellite Records. Nick Arcc was a piece of work, but was also well connected with a number of record labels. "

“I saw them play on the Cambridge Commons.”

“Who else you see?”

Sean didn’t get a chance to reply, because two teenage girls in pink polyester dresses kissed Johnny and then squealed with delight, "We loved you in THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. Can we have your autograph?"

“Sure, darling.” Johnny faked an English accent and scrawled a name on a paper napkin. The two girls swooned away and he explained, "They mistook me for David Bowie and who am I to destroy the illusion? You’ve heard of David Bowie, right?”

"Sure.” Seeing Sha-na-na instead of Ziggy Stardust was a secret mothballed in the closet with other embarrassing skeletons. Only Linda knew the truth.

"So you still in a hurry to leave town?" Johnny sipped at his whiskey.

"might hang around a little longer." Sean's eyes followed the sashay of a wild-maned blonde in a rubber dress and Johnny warned, "Heel, boy, that's Dove tonight. Tomorrow morning he's Dave."

"She walks like a woman and talks like a man, Lola, La-La-La-Lola." Sean quoted the infamous Kinks song, rubbing his forehead. The graffiti-marred mural on the opposite wall was wavering into a fuzzy abstract painting and his tongue had been thickened with glue.

”Are you alright?” Johnny asked with a grin, for the two Quaaludes in the first beer were hitting home.

"I’m fine.” Sean couldn’t feel his fingers. “You know the MC5 played at my high school and so did the Stooges. I saw the New York Dolls in Cambridge. They were junkies.”

“Something wrong with that?”

“They tend to fall off the stage.” Sean wavered against the bar and Johnny asked with mock interest, "You play in a band before?"

"Me and my friends had a band." The Hung had three gigs in the summer of 1968. Their final show had ignited a riot and his subsequent arrest had terminated his rock star career. “I was the bass.”

"Really?" The hippie was filled with surprises.

"I'm as good as anyone on that stage tonight." Sean’s hands clustered into a Joe Cocker cramp over an imaginary bass and several girls in beehives giggled at the drunken hippie fingering the air bass. "Man, I'm feeling a little weird."

"You need air." Johnny steered him from the club, as giant doorman in a yellow work helmet shouted, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

“What’d you do to me?” His brain was disintegrating into cold mush and Sean staggered through the front door.

“Nothing.”

“You drugged me.” Sean reached for the lapels of the leather jacket. A sharp point punctured his index finger and he yelped in pain.

"Stay still." Johnny warned, gingerly extricating a hook from the hippie's skin.

"Damn." Sean sucked at the pinpoint puncture.

"English trick. You sew fishing hooks under your collar to prevent anyone grabbing you for a head butt.” Johnny peeled down his collar. “You should be thankful I filed off the barbs."

"Try any other secret weapons and I'll kill you." The threat sloshed out of Sean.

"Calm down, I have nothing up my sleeve.” The alley behind CBGB’s was the ideal setting to rob the hippie. Johnny started for 1st Street, but was blocked by the junkie guitarist and three New Jersey bikers, who rarely visited CBGBs in compliance with the 3rd Street Hell's Angels unwritten ban on competing gangs entering their auxiliary clubhouse.

"Where you headed, queer boy?” The biggest biker stood with clenched fists at his side.

"I haven’t the time for this crap." Johnny tried to sidestep him and the biker shoved him. "Why not, fairy boy? Got a hot date?"

“With someone a little more handsome than you.” Johnny’s hand sought his shank. Sean stepped in front of him and shouted at the bikers, "Piss off?"

"Piss off?" the smaller biker demanded in disbelief.

"You deaf or stupid?” Blank anger was clearing the fog in his head. “Or both?”

"Listen to this granola hippie." The biggest biker poked Sean’s chest, figuring his size and weight lopsided any altercation in his favor. "You should have stayed on the commune. You people______"

“You people?” Sean belonged to no group.

“Go suck yogurt.” The biker shoved Sean against the wall. Hippies were the bully's natural victim and glared at Sean, "What are you going to do, you piece of shit?"

Sean had fought the Boston Police at anti-war demonstrations. Billyclubs versus baseball bats and he responded to the biker's challenge with a left jab squarely to the nose, shattering the cartilage. The biker cupped his nostrils to stem thee bleeding. Sean followed up with a knee to the groin. The biker collapsed onto the sidewalk and Sean confronted his startled friends, “You asking for it, cause I'm dealing it out."

“We’re leaving.” The bikers lifted their fallen friend to his feet. The junkie guitarist had disappeared into the night. The fight was over for Sean, until the biker mumbled, "I'll be getting you for this."

Red Halley lived in his hometown’s dump. The Korea war veteran had boxed in the ring and fought on every street in Boston. Sean sometimes gave him money for Thunderbird. Red Hally paid back the donations with pugilistic advice and had one time said that if a man says he’s out for revenge, you might as well hit them before he gets a chance to come back and get you, so Sean buried his foot into the bigger man's stomach.

”Enough is enough.” Johnny restrained Sean from sending the biker to Bellevue Hospital. As the bikers vanished onto 2nd Street, Johnny clapped Sean’s back. “You’re more a fighter than a lover.”

"You drugged me." The hippie slapped away his hand.

“It’s just the drink,“ Johnny protested to deaf ears, for the Quaaludes toppled the hippie against a pole. He hailed a passing Checker and poured his defenseless victim in the back, telling the driver their destination. "West Street."

On the ride over to the West Village he rummaged through the unconscious hippie's pockets, twice counting the money, twice putting it back. Frustrated by his conscience’s untimely arrival, he punched Sean’s arm. “Arise and shine, flower boy.”

“Huh.”

The hippie had to improve on that response, since the conclusion of his evening depended on his answering three questions and Johnny asked, "Beatles or Rolling Stones?"

“The Stones.” The Lynn Police had stopped the 1966 Rolling Stones concert at Manning Bowl with teargas. The horde of screaming girls had scared the riot squad and the Beatles were too cute for be trouble, plus his mother loved ELEANOR RIGBY.

"Doors or Velvet Underground?"

"And it was allllllright?" Sean recalled Tammi's comment about the Doors and sang off-key.

The hippie was bound to fail the clincher and Johnny asked, "David Bowie or T-Rex?"

"Bang a gong." The dead were easier to deify than the living and Johnny sighed, "Was that a guess?”

There was no answer. Sean never heard the question, for his blank gaze was fixed on a point of no return on another planet and his head lopped forward like someone had slice his spinal cord. He wasn’t a pretty sight, but then it never is when the final destination for the night is utter oblivion.

MAYBE TOMORROW - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter 7

Sean woke to a throbbing headache, swollen knuckles, and a delirious argument about Robert Kennedy’s having contracted his brother’s death to avenge Marilyn Monroe’s murder by the FBI.

Opening his eyes, he discovered that he was naked in Cheri’s old room.

The afternoon sun was slipping below New Jersey’s low skyline across the river painting a silver glimmer on the ominous clouds’ underbelly. Most of today, which was Thanksgiving was gone and he settled into the pillow with images of last night screening in his head as a film burnt by a bulb; the Ramones, the beers, the fight outside, the chorus from T-Rex BANG-A-GONG, and then a blank coma until now, which had a simple explanation.

Johnny had drugged him at the bar.

Johnny had brought him to the hotel.

Johnny had undressed him.

In a dazed panic Sean tottered across the room to his jeans. He fumbled with his wallet, expecting the worst, except his money was still there. Relieved on his fear he collapsed on the bed, destined for another bout of unconsciousness, except a brunette in a Chinese silk bathrobe entered the room. Sean blinked to clear his eyes and croaked, "Cheri."

The thin artist smiled, as if yesterday's vanishing act had been a joke.

"I'll show you funny." Sean leapt from the bed and yanked the brunette by the hair to discover that he had ripped a wig off Johnny’s head.

Stunned by Cheri’s second disappearance, he sputtered, "C-ch-cheri____."

Sensing Sean wasn’t amused by his deception, Johnny backed away out of striking distance. "Cheri left me her clothes, but I had you fooled, right?"

The car thief responded with a punch to the wall.

A crack snaked from ceiling to floor and the shouting ceased next door. He whacked the wall with repeated rights and lefts.

”Enough already.” Johnny bearhugged the hippie, who didn’t put up much resistance, and said, “Bet you freaked your parent, teachers, psychiatrists, and girlfriends with this violent streak, even more after you told them it excited you.”

”I wasn’t that way as a kid.” Sean’s daily beatings by his 7th Grade schoolmates was a secret that he wasn’t sharing with a man disguised as his ex-lover and he shook off the guitarist. "Did you drug me?"

The truth was more convenient than Johnny’s initial impulse to lie. “I slipped two Quaaludes in your beer.”

“Why?” Last night Sean would have voluntarily downed the muscle relaxants.

“Cheri was supposed to be the lead singer in my band and you scared her off with your puppy dog love.” Johnny glanced at the hippie’s crotch. Unexpectedly aroused by the longhair’s Neanderthalism he tightened the robe’s belt around his waist and leaned against the doorjamb. “So I decided to rip you off.”

"But you didn’t?" Sean was unnerved by Johnny’s stare.

"You protected me.” Johnny’s code of ethics arose from an instinct for survival, instead of greed. “Not many people do that.”

"I would have helped anyone.” Sean pulled on his jeans and searched for his shirt.

“But you helped me.”

“I’m straight.”

“No one said you were gay.” A majority of the hustlers on 8th Avenue were heterosexual, saying they were on the game for the money, but Johnny knew better. His first sex with a male had been with an older man in the bathroom of a 42nd Street movie theater. He had been twelve. The bald man’s fellating him was more satisfying than the parish priest’s furtive groping, though not as intoxicating as his experiments with Dave. In Florida he had tried to date girls. Getting to first base had proved too much work. Men were so much more easy. They never said stop.

“I know how you people think.” Sean’s friends at Boston’s 1270 Club asserted no man was completely straight.

“Spare me the ‘you people’ bias.” Johnny favored straight men; ironworkers, sailors and firemen to gays. “Besides I’m not here to discuss sexual hang-ups. Reason #2 why I didn’t rip you off is that yesterday I met this rich kid. We formed a rock band GTH. Going To Hell. He’s the organist, I’m on guitar, and my friend, Frankie, is on the drums. Cheri was supposed to be the singer, but we’ll find another girl quick. How you like to be bass?”

"I haven't played bass in years." Sean had mastered the chords for DIRTY WATER, WIPEOUT, FEVER, HEART OF SOUL, and several garage hits in 1967 without achieving any virtuosity on the instrument.

"Most musicians on the punk scene haven’t struck a triangle in a school play.” Musicians generally regarded bassists as one step above roadies, although The JBs’ master, Fred Thomas, had unceremoniously carried James Brown to the pinnacle of Funk.“Cheri mentioned you were a poet. Maybe we can cannibalize a poem for lyrics."

“I might have one or two.” Sean’s skepticism about Johnny’s proposition was blinded by a vision of rock and roll stardom.

“Good.” Johnny baited his interest further. “Music consists of chords. Chords played at the same time and speed with other instruments. All you have to learn for punk are three-chord progressions in certain keys. No one has to be Mozart. We rehearse a month and put on a couple of showcases. I have connections in the record business and within two months, we'll sign a contract.”

"Overnight success rarely happens overnight for anyone around from the beginning.” Sean had watched Aerosmith struggle for years in a cramped apartment on Commonwealth Avenue. They would have starved if it wasn’t for the generosity of BU co-eds.

"You’re right.” The hippie wasn’t stupid, once you discounted his falling in love with Cheri. “Being in a band is hard work.”

“I’m not scared of work.” Sean had driven taxi eight hours a night to pay for college.

“So you want to be a rock and roll star?” The question had been a hit for the Byrds in 1967.

Sean hesitated for a second. This stranger had dosed him with ‘Ludes. He was gay and a possible drug addict, but this very risky long shot offered a better option than hitchhiking to LA to sleep on the beach.

"Sure, why not?" It wasn’t like Johnny was going to mickey him again.

"Then come to my room. I have a bass with your name on it." Johnny snatched his wig off the floor and Sean followed him down the hallway to room 314.

"You'll have to excuse the mess.” Johnny opened the door.

The room was slightly bigger than #301, yet was crowded to the ceiling by the hundreds of LPs and 45s precariously piled against the walls. Unmatched shoes cluttered the floor and three amps towered over the bed. A blowdown of guitars was stacked in the corner and Johnny picked up to a Fender Bass. "Play that."

"Now?" It had been over ten years since he last held a bass.

"Ain't no time like the right time,” the guitarist quoted the old Blues Project song.

"And, baby, the right time is now." Sean’s fingers crabbed over the thick strings trying to find the corresponding chords. 


“Close.” Johnny responded with encouragement.

”But not every close.” The years of neglect had erased every progression from his memory.

”Playing bass is like falling off a bike. You’ll remember it if it hurts.” Johnny plugged the guitar and bass in two small Peavey Amps, emitting matching buzzes and the thump of the bass.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” The guitarist reduced the volume. “My neighbors sleep late. You know the song LOUIE LOUIE?"

“Of course.” The Kingsmen’s cover of Richard Berry’s song had surprised everyone in 1964.

”Watch my fingers. These are the basslines.” Johnny strummed the four classic chords and Sean clumsily repeated AAA*/*DD*/EEEE/*DD*/AAA*/*DD*/*DD*/EEEE/*DD*.

"You weren’t lying about being in a band.” Johnny arched an eyebrow.

“All the cover bands played LOUIE LOUIE in 1968.” Sean missed the bridge and apologized for the error.

“As long as you learn from your mistakes, no problem. Now follow me.” Johnny guided the ex-hippie through the chorus, bridge, and hook. Sean followed doggedly for several minutes, appreciating the economy of Johnny’s style. "You weren’t lying about being in a band. You’re great.”

"Me and about ten thousand other lead guitarists in America, but the core of LOUIE LOUIE is the basis of punk, except it’s faster and louder and stripped down to the basics." Johnny cued a 45 on a dusty stereo. "Here’s an oldie from your hometown. DIRTY WATER.”

“The Standells weren’t from Boston.” DIRTY WATER had been the encore of that fateful pool party in 1967 and his fingers fumbled over the frets. "Sorry."

“Don’t say sorry, until you’ve done something really wrong.” Johnny recalled his own traumatic birth on guitar and strummed a chord in imitation of the Who’s Pete Townsend. "Plus you can’t get any worst, right?"

"I'm not so sure about that."

“Let me help you.” The guitarist positioned the hippie's fingers to an e-chord and started strumming his guitar fast. “We’re going to play this chord over and over again.”

“How many times?” Sean’s fingertips were red from abuse.

“You’ll when to stop.” Fifteen minutes later Sean put down the bass. His hands had reached their limit.

"That's enough for today." Johnny turned off the amps

“Great.” Sean balanced the bass against the wall and stood up to leave, even though he had nowhere to go.

"Take it with you. It’s yours."

"I can't." He wasn’t sure if he could ever play bass.

"It's not a gift. It's an apology.” It was the least he could offer for having dosed the hippie last evening.

“I’m not a musician.” Sean wanted to dip his fingers in ice.

“Trust me, you will be.” Johnny threw on a leather coat and swept a handful of coins from the table. “Wait a few minutes here, I have to call the drummer and the rich kid.”

The door shut and Sean flexed his fingers. Whatever Johnny’s game was, he was certain that the pain in his fingers would never translate into skill. If he left tomorrow morning, he could be in LA within five or six days. He was almost out the door, but caught the cover of AFTER BATHING AT BAXTER'S on the floor.

He had listened to the Jefferson Airplane’s third album a thousand times at his hometown library and reverently withdrew the vinyl disc from the sleeve. The surface was unscratched and he cued SPARE CHAYNGE on Side B. Picking up the bass he ineffectively tried to match Jack Cassady’s solo by plunking single notes on the top steel string. Johnny was right. If he practiced three or four hours a day, he would improve over time, never to perfection, but Sean decided to stick it out with GTH to achieve a long suppressed boyhood fantasy of rock and roll fame.

As Grace Slick sang the lines to COMBS IN HIS HAIR, Johnny entered the room and remarked, “I have to say this about the Airplane. They followed the very successful SURREALISTIC PILLOW with a devastatingly uncommercial LP and I respect them for freaking out the record company people by dosing the golden goose of Flower Power with LSD. How are your hands?"

"They feel like the Mafia failed to pull out my nails."

“It’ll get worst before it gets better.” Johnny smiled at the hippie’s simple humor and said, “I told you about this rich kid. We’re meeting Little Richie Rich at Max's. It was Warhol’s old hang-out and they put on a Turkey dinner for the punks.”

"Do the Underground go to Max’s?" The flame in his heart for Nico burned with eternal devotion.

"Sometimes Lou Reed shows up, but he’s more into trannies than hippies." Johnny tugged on Sean’s thatched roof of split ends. "And this is seven years too Woodstock for CBGBs."

”You think I need a haircut.” Sean recollected Cheri's calling his hair a mane. The compliment had become an insult and he touched the scraggly hair.

"More a mowing. Come with me." Johnny dragged Sean to a hallway alcove, where a beer-bellied drunk slept on a distressed Barcalounger.

"Hey, Dynamite, time to work." Johnny knocked on the doorframe.

”What the fuck?” The alcholic’s eyes were the color of ham and eggs. He focused on Johnny and groused, "Ya shoulda cum befer I drunk my wine."

Two empty Muscatel bottles lay at his feet.

”I can afford a barbershop?"

"There aren't any more 'real' barbershops and course hair salons are fine, if you want a suedehead like Danny Terrio.” Most American women loved TV’s SOLID GOLD puppy-cute disco-dancing host. The girls at CBGB’s preferred scruffy over spit and polish. "If you’re after disco, you can join ten million people wearing polyester dancing to the 110 beats per minute, otherwise I'm giving you the chance to kill that unhappy hippie beating up a car.”

"Did I look that unhappy?” He had been blinded by the rush of blood..

“Almost suicidal.” There was nothing to gain by sparing the hippie the truth. “Or murderous.”

”That bad.”

”But not as bad as that hair.” “Okay, I surrender." Sean had grown his hair to emulate the flowing locks of the Ultimate Spinach's guitarist. Not one girl in Boston had ever noticed the similarity. He sat on a three-legged stool and the puffy-faced drunk lifted a pair of shiny scissors.

“Nuttin’ to worry ‘bout, hippie boy. I usta cut hair fer da Marines."

"No buzzcuts."

“Well, it ain’t gonna just be a trim either.”

For the next five minutes Dynamite mercilessly shorn his head. Each snip strangely lightened his head, as Johnny spoke about various bands at CBGBs and Max’s; the Ramones, Television, Cramps, Dictators, Wayne County, the Mumps, the Voidoids, Heartbreakers, and their vain struggles against the power structure of radio.

“AM won’t give any punk songs a shot, despite the length of the 45s being tailor-made for their format. The Ramones are trying to release ROCAKWAY BEACH waiting for next summer, but the DJs don’t want to risk their careers on a band that also recorded I WANNA BE SEDATED, so instead the kids get SILLY LOVE SONGS and DISCO DUCK and FM is worse with the DJs pretending to be hip, but we’re going to change all that. You, me, and GTH.”

“We are?” Sean liked a good fight, but challenging th had learned teaching at South Boston High School that the st

“Congress controls the FCC, which in turn instructs the radio stations which songs to play. They even had J. Edgar Hoover investigate LOUIE LOUIE for depravity.”

“There was no ‘fuck’ in that song.” Sean had played the 45 a hundred times without hearing the infamous swear word. Millions of other teenagers had conducted their own research with similar results.

”Of course not. The reason they tried to suppress LOUIE LOUIE was that it broke the format and now regional radio stations are switching to single-format playlists, making it impossible for local bands to break nationally without a push from the record companies who aren’t interested in anything other than the steady diet of crap to placate the parents of tomorrow by spinning rock ‘classics’. Nothing new. Always HEY JUDE or STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN or worst.”

“So it’s one big plot?” Sean was hoping that Dynamite would stop soon.

“No one’s that smart, are they?”

"No one has to be smart to fool the American Public.” Dynamite lowered the scissors and slumped into the Barcalounger. “HL Mencken said that or something like it.”

"How's it look?" Sean’s head felt like another person’s skull.

"Like you were just paroled from prison, but the girls at CBs will die for you.” Johnny brushed off his new friend’s shoulders and stuck five dollars in Dynamite's top pocket. “Now for a change of wardrobes.”

“What’s wrong with these?" The Levi bell-bottoms were from Walker’s on Boylston Street.

"If you have to ask, then you might be a lose cause." Johnny led Sean to his room, where he culled a pair of black jeans and a torn t-shirt from a clump of clothing.

"Try them on. I promise I won’t peek when you’re taking off those hippie rags.”

Sean smelled the clothes. They were relatively clean and he stripped off his jeans and teeshirt.

“I don’t know about this.” The new clothing was tight enough to have been plundered from a younger sister's closet and he wished that the management of the Terminal Hotel had provided mirrors in the rooms, but it was probably for the best that their tenants never saw their reflection at this late stage of the game.

"You'll fit in at CBs just fine.” Johnny handed the ex-hippie a pair of suede black boots to complete the outfit. “You hungry?"

"A little." Pulling on the boots Sean was magically two inches taller than in his Frye boots. His mother had burned his pointy-toed Cuban heels after the Hung’s final performance in 1966.

"Like I said Max’s having a Thanksgiving dinner for punk orphans.” Johnny was changing into the same clothes as the previous evening. “It won’t have mom’s apple pie, but the food won’t kill us.”

"MY friend Red Tate used to say ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you wish you were dead.”

”A wise man.” Johnny was liking the ex-hippie more than was good for a hustler. His blue eyes threatened to hurt any casual lover and Johnny warned himself that falling in love was for suckers.

"The wisest in town.” Red Tate would fit right in at the Terminal Hotel and Sean thought about home for a second. His mother would be serving dessert to his father, brothers, and sisters. A few friends were always invited to fill out the table. They had to be asking where he was and he swore to phone them later.

”Wisdom in short demand in this hotel, but you were smart to not leave New York. You have a new look, a kicking bass, and a warm place to sleep.” Johnny didn’t expect thanks for these gifts and shut off the lights. “Plus I have a proposition for you.”

”What?” He doubted that it was legal.

”I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, but for now let's go. That food won’t last forever.” Johnny pushed Sean out of the room and locked the door. It wasn’t much protection against a professional thief, but most of the residents of the Terminal Hotel were on disability and practiced honesty in everything other than lying to themselves.

They hurried down the stairs into the lobby, where Sean caught the reflection in a cracked mirror and tried to fingercomb the spikes out of his hair.

“Stop. That’s a million dollar look."

"More a million lira." Ernie shouted from his post. “In a $1 bag.”

Johnny flipped the old drunk the bird.

“One day I have to leave this shithole.”

They exited from the hotel into the icy night. A frigid wind gnawed through their clothing and Sean wished her was wearing a sweater. under his leather jacket. Johnny hailed a Chevy taxi and they jumped in the back, happy to be warm.

”Max’s in Union Square.”

”I know the spot.” The driver had a heavy foot with the gas and criticized the country with a manic intensity.

“We’re lettin’ in too many foreigners into America. One day this city won't have any American-speakin’ taxi drivers." The rant lasted for the entire ride.

"At least we won't have to listen to foreign idiots," Johnny whispered, as the taxi braked in front of the Max's.

Half-heartedly subscribing to the driver's prophecy, Sean tipped the driver a dollar before getting out of the Checker.

That was generous,” Johnny commented on the sidewalk.

I drove cab in college.” It seemed colder here than on the river with a sharp wind slipstreaming through the park. Clouds were lowering in the evneing sky. Coming from New England Sean could feel snow in the air..

”Are we going inside?” The soles of the boots were paper-thin.

”Just a second.” Johnny lingered on the sidewalk to greet three skinny girls in plastic jackets and pants. They peered over his shoulder at Sean and Johnny said, "This is Sean, our new bass.”

“You’re starting a new band?” the cutest girl asked and Johnny said, “GTH. Going to Hell’.”

“Sexy devils,” the three girls cooed with Jersey accents and the shortest girl flirted with Sean. “You speak or you the strong silent type?”

“I___” he managed to say before Dove exited from the club with a Slavic-skulled man in his twenties. The blonde was wearing a slick white leather coat and eyed the newly scalped Sean with a withering yearning.

"Appears you have another convert to the cause, Johnny. He playin' for your team?"

"No, he’s on the I-want-girls side," Johnny snapped and Dove quickly retorted, "How he’d feel about being traded to the in-between league?"

Her escort's face muddied with murder and Dove quelled his jealousy with a kiss, then entered the taxi with a wink at Sean.

"Is Dove’s friend aware she's a he?"

"Dove has this strange power to suspend men’s belief in reality with the promise of dirty weekend in a cheap hotel." Johnny hoped Dove was careful with this Russian mafia thug. A 9th Precinct cop had mumbled a nasty tale about his reputed KGB connections. They sold icons and bad paper, also killed people that they didn’t like whenever they were drunk and snorting coke.

"I'd never mistake her for a woman." The Adam's apple and oversized hands were dead giveaways.

"No one mistakes Dove for anything more than what she is, but remember the word 'never' has a funny way of becoming always in New York.”

“Thanks for the warning."

Johnny and Sean walked through the shrouded entrance into the bar, where the jukebox was playing IMAGINE. One of the girls kicked the machine and the record skipped to the Kinks’ ALL OF THE DAY. Sean tried to rake his hair into order and Johnny drew away his hand.

"I told you before messy's in. Play your cards right and you'll get laid plenty, because we’re here for sex, drugs, and rock and rock, right?"

”I guess so.” Sean’s habitual drug use of marijuana and LSD had vaporized his college years. He had first had sex with his father’s secretary. Other girls had followed, although never enough to satisfy his libido. Maybe it’d be different in New York. “I like those girls.”

”The three from Jersey. We can do better than that.” Johnny gestured for the skinny hangers-on to scram and the trio sat at a wall booth with two members of the nearly defunct New York Dolls. The bartender placed a vodka-tonic in front of Johnny and asked Sean, "Drink?"

"A Heineken and a plate of turkey," Sean answered and a frosty green bottle was slammed on the bar. When he sniffed at the mouth of the bottle, Johnny asked, "I wouldn’t try that twice?"

"You told me 'never trust anyone', right?"

"Glad you're listening." Johnny nodded to the manager of the scene’s top electronic duo.

"Everyone here your friend?"

"A novelist wrote if you had two friends, you were blessed. Three meant you were a liar. These people are no one’s friend.” Johnny pointed to a pasty-faced man wearing black lipstick. “That thin man in the corner.”

“The Josef Goebbels look-alike?” Sean had studied German in high school and college.

"Klaus is a cook by day and at night an opera singer with an unearthly castrati alto, though his balls are intact." Johnny shifted his attention to a Latin brunette with an angelic face. "Maria is sixteen. A Wall Street banker pays for her acting lessons around the corner at the Adler School, but she prefers balling musicians more than the executive or Lee Strasberg.”

"Maybe I'll get lucky one day."

"Sorry, bass players get the girls.”

"McCartney got Linda Eastman.”

“Don’t mention his name in my presence. John was the best Beatle, although Yoko was no prize either. Why don’t you get yourself some food.” Johnny pointed to the buffet against the wall. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

”What about you?”

”I’m a light eater.” Johnny hadn’t eaten in two days and felt no hunger.

As you like it.”

Johnny leaned against the bar and observed the ex-hippie load his plate with free food. His manners bespoke a middle-class family background in Boston. He should have been working at a bank or a law firm and Johnny suspected that the detour from his destiny had something to do with his violent streak. Any further conjecture was postponed by Frankie's exit from the bathroom.

The teenager was high and Johnny grabbed his arm.

”What?”

”I have someone I want you to meet.” Johnny pulled Frankie over to the table at which Sean was sitting.

“Sean, this is Frankie. He's the drummer for GTH. Sean’s our bass.”

“And Cheri?” Frankie shook the stranger’s hand, remarking on the lack of calluses on his fingertips. He was no musician. No one on this scene was anything, but a cheap show.

“She left for Paris.” Johnny’s eyes flashed a warning for Frankie to drop the subject. “We’ll find another singer.”

Frankie was glad to hear Cheri was out of the band.

"So where's our angel?"

"Angel?” Sean imagined that he had misheard the young boy.

"He’s talking about Charles, our organist. And there’s nothing celestial about him other than he hasn't been in public much, so both of you act cool or else he'll retreat back to his monastery. There he is.”

Charles Ames III was at the door, wearing newly purchased punk attire.

With the new haircut the three girls in plastic mistook him for Brian Eno, Roxy Music’s keyboard player. Johnny saved Charles from utter confusion by saying, “He’s with me.”

“Sorry, Johnny.” The girls went back to the Dolls’ table and the guitarist led away the shaken millionaire. "Glad you made it."

"This is the place?" Charles surveyed the dingy bar.

The stark interior was a stunning contrast to the Carlyle Hotel’s luxurious Bemelsman Room, where he had earlier dined with his father, a woman eager to become the fourth Mrs. Charles Ames II, and his sister. None of them had commented about his haircut, although during dessert his sister Caroline had asked if he were attending a Halloween party. He hadn’t bothered to answer her glib jibe and had excused himself from dinner earlier than expected, but his family was used to his unexplained departures.

"It’s early and the show happens upstairs much later.” He handed Charles earplugs to lessen the volume of the Dictators' CARS AND GIRLS on the jukebox. "Stick these in your ears."

"Thanks." Max’s lacked Times Square’s energy, but its inhabitants belonged to a same class of people as those lurking along 8th Avenue. Charles didn’t belong here. His family mixed with the elite from Sutton Place, Millbrook, and Palm Beach. The previous generation had produced a senator and several judges, yet Charles Ames III stood to gain nothing by following the footsteps of his predecessors.

“This isn’t about Max’s.” Johnny called over the other two band members. “Frankie and Sean have been in bands and you’ll learn fast, Charles, plus the music business has always been more about faddy appearance than anything else and they have this new way of showing music called ‘videos’, which will help sell records. The mop tops made the Beatles, the Dolls without the drag clothes were a flash sensation, and Elvis minus the sequins was a fat slob. If the look is right, then you can fake the music. Are you in or out?"

Riding in the Lincoln had exhausted its possibilities. "When do we start?"

"I've rented us a place in Chinatown to rehearse."

Charles Ames III had been dreading this moment since meeting the blonde hustler.

"Do you need anything?"

"No, I covered the first month.” Nothing scares off a rich person faster than a poor person asking for money, even if it’s one dollar, then again this wasn’t a rip-off. This was the start of a band. “After that we'll kick in equal shares."

"I don't have an organ." The guitarist’s refusal delighted Charles.

"Go to Sam Ash in Times Square and ask for Slow Ed. He deals with the keyboards. Buy a B-3. Used, if possible. Pay him in green and you won't have to pay the tax." Johnny received a 10% commission from recommended sales for cash transactions. "Can we meet tomorrow Eight O’clock at the Terminal Hotel?"

"The Terminal Hotel?" Charles doubted that any his family had stayed at this establishment.

"Oh, it's a real treat on Jane Street. Your driver will find it.”

“I’ll be waiting on the steps,” Frankie said eagerly, for Charles was the epitome of a prince in this city. Johnny had come through again in a big way and this time for a trip to the big leagues.

"I’ll be there on time." Sean nervously wolfed the rest of his turkey.

“You live there.” Johnny laughed, “You better be on time. Anyone up for CBGBs?”

“CBGBs?”

“It's the less classy bookend to this place."

"Less classy than this?" Charles didn’t really care, for any bar was more cheerful than the hospital room in which his back and head had been stretched by wires to reconnect his neck to his spine.

"The Bowery is worst than Union Square. Where’s your car?”

“Outside.” The Lincoln’s engine was running to facilitate any get-away.

“Great, we’ll be riding in style.”

The four of them left Max’s and got into Charles' ride without noticing a short-set man in a black sweater writing down the license plate.

The Lincoln made the light at 14th Street and a voice from Union Square Park shouted Nick Arcc’s name. The furry twenty-five year-old turned to see a quartet of scrawny musicians from Cleveland walking across the street. He greeted them with a smile, for The Dead Boys’ pockmarked singer with the Prince Valiant haircut was most assuredly his type.

“How’s it going, boys.”

“We’re ready for turkey and drinks,” the mottle-skinned bass declared in the moth-bitten leopard-skin pants and the A & R man announced, "First round on me."

As the band cheered his generosity, the bearish A&R man checked the license number. Its beginning with a number instead of Z indicated that the Lincoln was privately owned. The pale punk in the new clothes came from real money and Nick Arcc wasn’t above weaseling in on another hustler’s game. Only time would reveal, if it was for pleasure as well as profit.

MAYBE TOMORROW - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter 8

The music on Dollhouse's sound system switched from RING MY BELL into BROWN SUGAR and the naked redhead on stage cupped her girlish breasts before a middle-aged man in a suit. The plaid-suited businessman was bald and overweight, but the $20 in his hand transformed him to Robert Redford, as he slipped the crisp bill underneath Tammi West’s g-string.

“Honey, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” The man licked his lips with anticipation of the best Times Square had to offer in the way of pleasure.

"I bet you say that to all girls." The teenager leaned forward to caress his cheek, wondering if he called his wife 'Honey'.

“I haven’t seen anyone as cute as you before.” Her admirer blushed a deep red and tapped the wallet inside his suit jacket.

"That’s because I wasn’t here before.” She played her newness as a “I could be much more friendly, if you sat with me.”

“If I sit with you, you have to buy me a drink, handsome.” The manager had given her three instructions of how to make money at the Dollhouse; get naked, get dancing, and get the customer to buy a lady drink.

"Sure, I’ll buy you a drink, sweet thing, but no bottle of champagne. I’m not sucker.” The man’s leer was identical to the grin of a dog ready to hump a wedding guest’s knee.

”I’ll be with you as soon as my shift is over.” Tammi executed a split and twisted her head, so that her startling new red hair spun from her shoulders. She had changed the color after hearing the other dancers speak about a gunman targeting brunettes in Brooklyn and Queens. None of the girls were taking any risks with the killer getting lost on a bridge into Manhattan and dyed their hair blonde, black, and red.

“What about now?” The man grabbed for her and Tammi pirouetted from his grasp with the joy of discovering that her being a sex toy was an act of liberation financed by $1s, $5s, $10s, and $20.

The Rolling Stones were replaced by Santana’s BLACK MAGIC WOMAN and Tammi climbed off the stage. At the bottom of the steps a statuesque black woman in a sequined dress eyed her from head to toe, "Thanks for warming 'em up, sweet thing."

"Just doing my job," Tammi harvested $60 from her g-string. She had already forgotten the foul whispers.

"You leave a little coin for the rest of us and everyone will be happy.” The older stripper gazelled onto the stage and spun around the fire pole.

Her gymnastics was ignored by the men clamoring to buy Tammi a drink. She was surprised by how fast a little flash of teenage flesh pathetically crumbled any straight man’s dignity. The businessman was no exception and she went over to him and said, “Honey will be right back as soon as I change back into my costume.”

”I don’t do private shows.

“What about for a hundred?” The bill was joined by another.

“We’ll talk about it later.” The other girls sold their time by the half-hour. $50 got a man a good short time. Tammi had refused every offer so far and scampered into the crowded dressing room where she wiped off the sweat of men’s hands with a soiled towel.

Her separation of bills by denomination was stalled by the other dancers’ argument about whether Fonzie was more a punk than LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY’s greaseball friends. A statuesque blonde in stained lingerie whistled at the cash in Tammi’s hand. "Damn, those cheap bastards love that young pussy."

“We were all young pussy once.” A haggard dancer sighed, spreading a smear of lipstick over bruised lips.

The veteran dancers assented the truth of that statement with a tired chorus of ‘yeahs’ and repaired their drawn faces with broad strokes of make-up, while Tammi posed before the mirror to taunt then with her youth. Her narcissistic elation evaporated with the opening of her locker door.

It was empty. Her leather jacket and dress were gone and she glared accusingly at the other dancers.

“Don’t look at us. We have one rule here.” The blonde sneered with amusement. “We don’t rip off each other. Customers, sure, but never us.”

”Then where my stuff?” The teenager dropped her arms to her side in defeat. None of the dancers said a thing. The hippie had said that New York was a tough town and now she knew how tough.

Yesterday she had eaten two slices of pizza for Thanksgiving dinner and worked a double-shift at the Dollhouse. No one had cared about her missing Turkey Day or being robbed of all her possession.

"Hurry up, you sluts.” The manager entered the dressing room slathered with sweat. “There’s customers holdin’ hands with a drink, when they cud be gropin’ you."

"Damnit, when you gonna learn to knock?" a buxom blonde cursed at Fatso Valera.

“Spare me the Snow White act. I’ve seen how many elves you’ve screwed, blewed, and tattooed. I only wanna check on how the new girl's copin' with the wonderful world of the Dollhouse." Fatso clapped his hands explosively. "The rest of you get your asses on stage."

The dancers decamped muttering insults, which the obese manager ignored in favor of staring at the teenager’s girlish body. Her ID said 18, but it had to be a fake not that he or the owners cared about an underage girl working at the Dollhouse. Their customers loved young things.

"How you doin’, honey?" Most new girls were uncomfortable with dancing naked before men old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers, but on her very first night the little redhead had knocked Josie Cane from the #1 spot and her vixen body had him licking his lips.

"Someone stole my things.” Tammi held a towel before her.

Fatso snatched it away.

"I prefer the girls naked." He was no gentleman and proud of it.

"Stay away from me.” Tammi threatened him an empty beer bottle, having found suspect # 1 in the theft of her things.

“Why you gotta act that way?” Fatso asked in a singsong voice. “I can make you a star.”

”I don’t need anything from you.” She was no stranger to the lust in men’s eyes.

“You’re wrong there. I can give you the best hours, best sets. A ‘whale’ comes in, You get you first shot. Then you can buy all the new clothes you want.” He wanted to feel her breasts and his hands rose

“Stay away.” Tammi swung the beer bottle at the Dollhouse manager’s head. He dodged it and chuckled, “I like the rough stuff.”

Tammi cursed herself for believing that her life in this city would be different from Kittery, then the dressing room door slammed open and the sweaty black dancer entered the dressing room and said to the manager, "Cut her a break."

"Gimme one good reason why I should.” Fatso hated anyone interrupting his breaking in the new girls.

“I’ll give you five.” The wild-haired stripper punched his sternum so hard that the fat man cringed like a turtle out of its shell. "The girl isn't doing anything she doesn't want to."

"No one forcin’ her to do nuthin’, Josie.” Fatso grunted trying to catch his breath. “How ‘bout a visit to the office, Sweet Pea? I’ll make it worth your while.”

“She said no once and no means no, so get the fuck out of here. This is the ladies’ dressing room. Not the men’s room.” The black woman fronted the manager, who stood his ground saying,

"Listen kid, Josie didn’t save you out of the kindness of her heart. Read your Girl Scout handbook. I bet they have a special chapter in the Girl Scout handbook about her type."

"Very funny, Fatso." The black stripper hated the manager, then again she hated all men.

"Yeah, I'm a real comedian about the other team." He had pushed the wrong button and the black woman dug her nails into the manager’s jowl. "It’s none of your business what I do in my spare time, is it?”

”None at all.” Blood trickled down his neck from the nail punctures.

”And you’re giving her back her clothes, right?”

”I didn’t take nothin’, so let me go or else you’re both fired.”

”Please let him go,” Tammi pleaded to her rescuer. Losing this job meant hitting Times Square naked and from what she had overheard, the other strip clubs were much worse than the Dollhouse.

”You’re a lucky man. No, you’re a lucky pig.” The black woman pushed him out the door.

"That's Mr. Pig to you. No get outside workin’ the squares or you're fired." Fatso shut the door and the two women laughed at having vanquished the manager with a little bluff and muscle.

“Fatso ain't as bad as most of the scumbags running these places.

”There are worse?”

”A lot worse.”

”I hope I don’t find out how much worse.” Tammi was uncomfortable with the other woman eyed her body and stepped away from the black stripper. "This Barbie Doll doesn’t play with other Barbie Dolls.”

“I was just looking.” She took a $5 from her g-string and stuck in Tammi’s underwear. “I can pay like everyone else, but we girls are working the same scam here. Not as a team, because everyone here is out for themselves, but that doesn’t mean you and I can’t be friends. Both of us looking out for each other. The name’s Josie. Josie Cane.”

“Friends?” The only lesbian in Kittery was her gym teacher. She like the boys at her high school had wanted to be more than a friend and Tammi crossed her arms over her breasts.

“You’re new in town and you can’t have many friends.” Josie brushed a thin layer of powder over her breasts, ignoring the new girl’s hesitation. She didn't have to sleep with every beautiful girl she met. Just most of them. The black languidly slipped into a filmy teddy. “But you have understand looking at a pretty girl doesn’t make me a criminal. At least in the Dollhouse.”

"If the old geezers can ogle me, I guess a woman can too." Tammi couldn't be too fussy about friends in Times Square.

”And what about the friends thing.”

”I could use a friend.” She had none in Kittery. "Just don’t try anything funny.”

"I'll only dream about it." The black woman put her hands together and lowered her head in a mock prayer. Tammi giggled girlishly and the black woman said, “I’m praying to the goddess of pussy for good luck. She takes care of us, if we take care of her. What’s your name?”

"Tammi West." The teenager offered her hand, despite Josie’s obvious preference for a hug. "Aren't any places run by women?"

"Girl, the Mafia and the police work hard to keep us women under their thumb, because otherwise we'd be free and free women making more money than men is against every rules in this macho society.”

Josie rummaged through a locker and threw the naked girl a pink baby doll nightie, a spandex jumpsuit, and a rabbit fur coat from a locker.

"Those should fit."

"What about the girl they belong to?" Tammi’s getting robbed didn’t no justify her stealing.

"Betty moved onto better things." A two-month bid at Rikers for soliciting a cop.

"She die in this?" Tammi grimaced at the acrid smell.

"No, she danced her ass off, which is as close to dying as you can get at the Dollhouse.” Josie handed the young girl a pair of spangled platform shoes. “Besides beggars can't be choosy, can they?"

"I don’t have to beg.” She held up her cash.

"You walk on these streets naked and you’ll discover how fast you’re begging for mercy from the perverts.”

"Is Times Square really that dangerous?" Tammi hung the clothing into her locker.

"You really are too sweet for words. The other night at the Lark Hotel Dr. Frankenstein's retarded brother decapitated two girls and sewed the heads the opposite bodies. That dangerous enough for you?"

"I'm staying at the Lark." Tammi had stuffed paper in her ears to block the screams last night.

"And the newspapers printed squat about the murders.” The NY Times, Daily News, and Post covered the struggle for freedom in Israel, the desperate war against Communism, rich white people committing charitable acts, and black on white crimes, but not a word about the murder of whores in Times Square. “Hell, last winter they had a movie on the Deuce called SNUFF about a sick motherfucker having sex with a girl and cutting her up dead. All the liberals squawked for a minute and no one mentioned how Hollywood constantly butchers women on the silver screen. You and me and the girls are on our own. And you best not forget that either."

"I’ve learned my lesson with men.” Tammi tugged the nightie over her head.

”At too tender an age.” Josie pegged her for younger than 18, perhaps criminally so. Not that it mattered, because Times Square cops were paid to look the other way in every direction. "Damn, pajama party girl, you’re gonna make a fortune tonight."

"Fame and fortune is why I came to the big city.” Tammi modeled the new outfit in a mirror and stashed her bill roll inside the skimpy undies.

"And let's forget about whatever comes our way."

"I saw Steppenwolf this summer." The Canadian rock group’s concert at the Hampton Beach Casino seemed a million years ago.

"I love dancing to MAGIC CARPET RIDE and that Peter Fonda in EASY RIDER is one sweet dude.” Josie escorted the young girl into the lounge, where Tammi teasingly stretched her lithe body. Men at the bar responded to the pubescent mirage by waving their money and Josie whispered, "You’re a star, rookie. Fame and fortune."

"And whatever comes my way." Tammi went over to the out-of-town businessman and sat on his lap. "Hi, Bill."

"The name's not Bill." The out-of-towner gulped with shock that the young girl had correctly guessed his name.

”Everyone can be Bill or any name you want at the Dollhouse. We’re good at keeping secrets.” Tammi tugged on his tie.

"Call me Jim.”

“Jim it is.”

“What about that drink. I am thirsty after dancing so hard." Tammi snapped her fingers and the bartender put two drinks on the bar. Her ginger ale champagne cost ‘Jim’ ten dollars. He would have gladly paid twenty.

Fatso Valetta observed the little girl toy with her customer, who was obviously proposing her for a private session and was refusing him like a snotty debutante, but she was a slut like every dancer in this place.

Two quaaludes in a drink would shed that prom queen act fast and Fatso smiled to himself thinking about her eyes lost in her head. His fantasy was disrupted by a scruffy young man entering the club and calling out, "Tammi."

He walked right up to her and Tammi stared at the leather-jacketed man with the spiky hair without placing the face.

“Do I know you?”

“It’s me, Sean." He sat next to her, trying to recall her hair color from the other night.

"The car thief himself?" Tammi brushed away the businessman’s straying hand from her bare thigh. “Give me a few seconds.”

“This isn’t right.” The businessman protested with a frown. “I paid good money for these drinks and I expect____”

“I know what you expect, Jim, but I’ll be right back to fulfill your expectations, promise.” She feathered his ear with her fingertips, then walked Sean to another table. As they sat, Tammi smiled with an eerie innocence for a girl in a strip club and said, "Looks like the old hippie went to the commune in the sky.”

"I got run over by a lawn mower.” The stage lights painted the runaway’s face a lurid red to match her hair. She seemed even younger than the other night. “Cinderella went through changes too."

“New places, new looks.” His unexpected appearance at the club was surprisingly pleasing and she glanced over his shoulder. "You have any money?”

“Sure.” More than $800 from his savings and stealing the Olds.

“If you talk with the girls in this bar, you have to buy them a drink. And drinks aren’t cheap either." It was nice seeing Sean, but work was work.

Having frequented Boston’s Combat Zone, Sean was familiar with the workings of a strip club and slapped a twenty on the bar. "I can cover the drinks, but I have a proposition."

"Propositions seem to be tonight’s special on the menu." Tammi signaled the bartender for drinks.

"This is probably different anything else you heard in here." Sex was only thing on these men's minds.

"How so?" Tammi realized that his girlfriend must have ditched out on him, otherwise he wouldn't be here.

"I’m offering you a gig with a rock and roll band." It sounded ridiculous to his ears.

"A rock and roll band?" The teenager laughed with a weariness older than her years. “Doing Eagles’ covers? That’s a good come-on, but I’m not a country bumpkin anymore."

"This isn’t a come-on.” He ordered a Heineken from the bartender and was charged $15 for the two drinks.

At least the beer was cold, but he was glad to be here for more than Tammi’s nakedness. She was someone he knew. Maybe for only a few hours, but he didn’t feel so alone in this city sitting next to her.

"How so?" Tammi was also happy to see the hippie, even if he wasn’t a hippie anymore. She hadn’t expected him to visit her., which was a nice surprise for a not so nice place, then realized that his girlfriend must have ditched out on him, otherwise he wouldn't be here.

“I’m want you to join me in rock and roll band." It sounded ridiculous to his ears.

"A rock and roll band?" The teenager laughed with a weariness older than her years. “That’s the best come-on I've heard tonight, but I’m not a country bumpkin anymore."

"This isn’t a come-on.” He ordered a Heineken from the bartender, who charged $15 for the two drinks. At least the beer was cold, but he was glad to be here for more than Tammi’s nakedness. She was someone he knew. Maybe for only a few hours, but he didn’t feel so alone in this city sitting next to her and quickly explained, “Two nights ago I met these musicians at a bar called CBGBs. They play punk music there. They're forming a band and the guitarist wants me to play bass, but we need a singer and I remembered you singing in the car and told the rest of the band you were the next Janis Joplin."

"You're joking, aren't you?" “Not at all.” He took a sip of beer and leaned back in his chair.

"Me a singer?" She loved ME AND BOBBY MCGEE, especially the part about the Mercedes Benz. “Oh, lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz, my friends all ride horses and must make a mint.”

"That's the offer and you don't have to quit your night job."

"Don't I have to audition?"

"Yes, but I'm sure you'll get the gig."

“You really are serious?”

“As a grave, but if you're not into it, I won't bother you anymore."

"What makes you think you're bothering me?"

"Just your boyfriend by the door is staring like I stole his lunch money."

Tammi’s face twisted with disgust.

"You must have a low opinion of Cinderella, if you think I’d settle for Prince Uncharming."

"It’s not like the Dollhouse is a palace.”

“Closer to a brothel.” Tammi had few illusions about her place of employment.

“At least I'm no toad."

"We can’t be sure, until I kissed you." Tammi smiled invitingly and Sean leaned forward. Their lips meeting set them adrift in their own little world. He bought his hand onto her thigh. Her skin tingled and she flattened his palm to her flesh, wishing he would move her hand higher.

”Hey, hey, hey.” The manager had waddled to the bar with two thick-necked bouncers. “This creep givin’ you a problem?"

“Calm down, Fatso. He’s a friend.” Tammi wasn’t scared of this man.

"Friend?” Each stripper had two or three boyfriends hidden in the woodwork. They were all trouble.

”From up north.” Johnny was the only person whom he knew longer in New York.

“More like an old boyfriend and the Dollhouse hates more than old boyfriends.” The blackjack in his pocket cured most of their heroic urges to save their high school sweethearts from the high life and Fatso clicked his fingers. “Thanks for visitin’, but now get lost.”

The two bouncers grabbed Sean’s arms and slammed him into several tables on the way to the door. He hit the sidewalk on his knees, tearing a hole in his jeans. Sean didn’t learn his lessons the hard way so easy and jumped to his feet, planning to take on the biggest bouncer with a chair. The driver prevented him from rushing inside the club. "You have a problem?"

"I saw the girl and she’s okay with joining the band.” Sean tried to push away the driver. “The fat-fuck manager won't let her leave."

The driver stood his ground.

"Let me handle this.”

"I can take care of it myself." Sean visualized chairing the bouncer and head-butting the second. This premonition of violence pulsated in his temples and his eyes thickened with blood. The driver blocked him from getting to the door.

"This establishment and the other joints in Times Square are controlled by Harry the Horse. His mob pays off the police. You go into that bar again, the odds are that you come out in smaller pieces."

"This is my business." Sean settled his own problems despite a less than 50% success ratio.

"You’re a musician. You need your hands." The chauffeur’s tone suggested his job description encompassed other duties than driving a car. “I’m just going to talk with them. This is a big city. We talk, otherwise we'd be killing assholes all day long and that’s gets boring after a while.”

"I want Tammi to come with us." Even more so after that second kiss.

"Yeah, everyone wants a girl in this neighborhood. I’ll be right out."

Bobby walked to the Dollhouse and the two bouncers barred his entrance. He spoke with them for several seconds and they waved him inside the club. A minute passed quickly as did three.

After five minutes Sean’s visions of the fat man pawing Tammi grew more explicit and he headed for the front door only to have the driver exited from the club. He shook the bouncers’ hands and walked to Sean.

"Your girl gets off at 12. That's an hour from now. She'll meet you at the pinball parlor in between Broadway and 7th Avenue. Under no circumstance go into that bar, unless you’re looking to visit Bellevue in a bodybag."

"They that pissed?”

“To say the least.” The driver was cool, calm, and collected. He opened the back of the Lincoln and got out Sean’s bass. "I'll explain to Charles and your friend that you're waiting for the girl and will see them tomorrow. I'll also say if she can sing as sexy as she dances, she's a winner."

"You think so?” His hands were trembling from the adrenaline release.

"She's a little skinny for my tastes and jail-bait young.” Bobby had witnessed the Dollhouse audience’s undivided devotion. “If she can sing, you might have a shot.”

"She can sing alright. I'm sorry about losing it before." Sean had misjudged the driver. "You’re from out-of-town. What do you know? Nothing?” Bobby considered him a complete hick and the driver wasn't far from the truth.

"Next to nothing now.” Sean was embarrassed by his ignorance and vowed to learn fast.

“The name's Bobby, right?" He was grateful for the help.

"And you're Sean. Let me move the car before a cop busts my balls."

The Lincoln sped downtown and Sean studied the sign GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. The Beatles had performed at the Star Club in Hamburg’s redlight district. Times Square was New York’s Reeperbahn and He had heard bootleg tapes of The Fab Four's early days that were as raw as tonight’s rehearsal.

GTH might be the worst band in the world, yet as long as Tammi was in the band, he didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world than where he was right now, for New York was giving him a new life and he wasn’t fool enough or smart enough to turn down its offer.