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 two-day break from shooting dope had reduced Johnny to a shivering shell, but at least it was warm in his room, for snowflakes were falling outside his window. Judging from the weak light of day, he guessed the time to be a few hours past dawn. Every ounce of his body begged him to stay in bed, instead he got up and dressed in a matter of minutes, then walked down the hallway to room 301 and knocked hard on the door.

”What is it?” Sean opened the door with a sheet wrapped around him.

"We have to get equipment for the band." The only way GTH would happen was if Johnny did everything, so the other band members only had to worry about the music.

"Like what?" Sean scratched his head, as if he expected that he still had long hair.

"I'll tell you on the way. Get dressed and meet me in the lobby.” Johnny walked down the stairs on uneasy legs. A shot would staighten him out, but he didn’t want Charles to see him in his natural state.

"Looking good this morning.” Earl sneered from the desk. The alkie was no stranger to withdrawal symptoms from booze and appreciated someone else suffering for a change.

”Fuck you, Ernie.” Johnny committed this moment to his memory. His revenge would come the next time the desk clerk was three quarters short of a bottle of Thunderbird.

”Mighty touchy this morning.” Ernie returned to his newspaper. it was from two days ago.

Five minutes later Sean entered the lobby and Johnny wrapped his arms around his chest, as they walked to 8th Avenue to get a taxi.

”Do we really need to be doing this now?” Sean had drunk ten beers at CBGBs last night.

”Being in a band requires more than songs. Normally a manager might get equipment, but GTH doesn’t have a manager. Right now it’s you and me, unless you want to go back to the Terminal Hotel and be a bum.”

”No, I’m with you.” Sean spotted a cab and lifted his hand.

Once they were inside Johnny directed the driver Lower Manhattan stopping at various apartments to scavenge equipment from unhappy musicians, who also liked to see late.

Charles Bobo Shaw lent a drum kit for Frankie and Johnny redeemed a twitchy monitor system from a pawnshop on 3rd Avenue. They brought everything back to the Hotel Terminal.

”Ernie, we’ll be leaving this shit in the closet for a few hours.” Johnny gave the clerk two bottles of Zapple wine. “Make sure no one steals it.”

”No one steal anything in the Termimal, but time.” Ernie unscrewed the cap of one bottle and slugged down a big gulp. “It aint’ thunderbird, but it ain’t milk either. Thanks, Johnny.”

”I take care of your end. You take care of mine.” Johnny and Sean crammed the lobby closet with the equipment and then retreated to room 314 in the Hotel Terminal, where they adapted Sean’s poems LOVE NO LOVE, and TAKE ME HIGHER into songs.

Sean's lessons on bass were torture. The tips of his fingers were bloody after three songs.

"Don't worry, they'll be fine in a week." Johnny called their creative session to a halt and they killed the wait for Frankie by sampling Johnny’s record collection; Serge Gainsbourg’s BALLAD OF MELODY NELSON, Françoise Hardy’s PREMIERE BONJOUR DU JOUR, Brigitte Bardot’s HARLEY DAVIDSON, Spirit’s WE GOT NOTHING TO HIDE, Clear Light’s MR. BLUE, Judas Priest’s HEAD OUT ONTO THE HIGHWAY, Jeff Beck’ AIN’T SUPERSTIOUS, Joe Tex’s I DON’T BUMP WITH NO BIG FAT WOMEN, and David Porter’s SLOOPY. Songs the radio exiled from their playlists in favor of Captain and Tenille.

“It’s all about controlling the market.” Johnny had heard the stories from various underlings in the music industry. “When we’re kids, the ads told us to eat candy and buy toys and see movies and watch TV. You and I have fewer and fewer choices and music suffers from the same dilemma. The corporate executives expect us to act in a certain way, so years later we’ll react to the proper stimuli and buy the right cars, appliances, and presidents. Luckily punk is a detour from the traffic-jammed freeway of consumerism. They might have the cops to keep us from the off-ramps, only we’re running right through the road blocks.”

“You think ‘they’ will let ‘us’ stop people from buying shit?” Sean had no illusions about money’s influence over their free choice. Americans purchased cars with no style and consumptive gas mileage, drank a teeth-eating soda, and tobacco killed hundreds of thousands of people each year.

“A little, if they can make money from us at the same time.” Johnny had read Marx, Engels, Mao, and Lenin without translating the communist tracts into revolutionary actions, since his devotion to anarchy resisted authority at any level.

“Isn’t that a sell-out?”

“Even the MC5 had to eat. Didn’t you say that they played at your high school?”

“Yeah, my all-boys school raffled off the most chocolate bars in Boston and our reward from the diocese was a concert from MC5. The brothers had heard about KICK OUT THE JAMS and ordered the band to change the lyrics. We threatened a strike, if they couldn’t perform the song.”

“And there was a compromise?”

“No, they did the entire album, except KICK OUT THE JAMS. When they left the stage without saying ‘motherfucker’, we stamped our feet and smashed chairs, chanting ‘motherfucker’ at the top of our lungs.”

“And?”

“The MC5 returned for their encore.”

“They say the word?”

“Yes, and we never wore ties, jackets, or uniforms again.”

“Amen to the revolution.”

Just as the sun set behind the Palisades, Frankie knocked on the door. The young drummer looked like he had spent last night on a roof and was in need of a fix more than Johnny. He wasn’t getting a bag of dope for free and Johnny got to his feet.

”Time to work.”

”It’s a little early to hit Times Square.” Frankie was shaking for his jones.

”Not Times Square, but some manual labor.”

The three of them descended to the lobby and moved the furniture to the steps of the Terminal Hotel. The snow had stopped, but the air was colder than in the morning. Charles’ Lincoln was parked by the curb.

”I like people who are on time.” Johnny had no watch. “It shows that he’s serious.”

”I was on time too.” Frankie boasted with a whine.

”And I’m proud of you too.”

The muscular driver got out of the car and popped the trunk.

”Sorry, I can’t help you.” Charles poked his head from the rear window.

”No need. We have enough hands as it is.” Johnny loaded the drum into the back seat and the amps into the trunk. The three of them made another trip upstairs for the guitars, which barely fit into the front seat.

”This will be a tight squeeze.” The driver didn’t like using the TownCar as a truck, but he was Charles’ man and said, “The name is Bobby and if I think you’re out to rip off Mr. Ames, then I rip off your ear.”

”Thanks for the warning.” Johnny opened the back door and the four of them rode in the cramped back seat to a block north of the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown.

“This is it.” Johnny helped Charles from the car, pointing to the five-story commercial building. No lights shone from the windows and a faint stench emanated from the brick walls. Frankie hated stairs with the passion of any project dweller. “Is there an elevator?”

“Straight to the penthouse.” Johnny unloaded an amp.

“Sheer luxury after the Terminal.” Sean hauled his bass into the building.

An inhuman babble pierced the walls, as they filled the freight elevator.

Frankie asked, “What’s that noise?”

“And that smell?” Sean kicked at the feathers on the floor.

A door opened in the corridor and a sweating Chinaman threw a bag of bones from a harshly lit room.

Inside scores of laborers slaughtered hundreds of chicken. Another Chinaman dumped the bones into an industrial grinder. Johnny ushered the band onto the industrial lift, pressing the button for the top floor. As the elevator rose from the ground floor, the driver coughed, "Shit, that’d make a maggot gag."

"That’s why the rent is so cheap." Johnny smelled his sleeve for the reek and Sean tried to spit out the stench. “Now we’ve solved the mystery of General Tso’s Chicken.”

Charles had never smelled such a gut-churning odor. “Is this the best you could find?”

“Believe me I saw more worse places." A damp basement below Avenue C had been cheaper, although the shooting gallery on the second floor presented too great a temptation for Johnny or Frankie. “Here we have no neighbors to complain about noise, so we can practice at any hour.”

Frankie yowled at the top of his lungs and the other band members covered their ears. <

Last night’s bands at Max’s and CBGB’s had proven musical talent wasn't a prerequisite for this ‘scene’. Still Charles Ames III was partial to a voice more melodious than the chickens’ death clucks.

"Are you the lead singer?"

“No, I beat the drums.” The teenager rattled the tambourine in the air to annoy the rich kid. “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.”

“Nice try, next." Charles’ manner sat uneasily with the other three, for no band is a true democracy or a strict dictatorship and Johnny suggested, "Either Sean or me."

"Can either of you sing?" Charles lifted a dented microphone.

The Hung’s final gig had been for two spoiled brothers on Brush Hill Road. They had thought the world owed them a laugh. Sean had taught them what was funny when they had chained a deaf girl naked in a dog house and Charles was primed for a similar lesson.

"I was in a choir."

The squat Italian driver laughed from his belly.

He wasn’t in the band and Sean demanded, “Why you laughing?”

“You being a frigging choir boy.” The driver’s scoff suggested he only visited to church to rob the collection plate and the guitarist stepped between them. “Luckily GTH will never be hire for a church gig. Once we set up, we’ll find out, if who has a voice.”

"And if no one does?" The drummer was a drug addict and the bass had been recruited from a missing link clan. Charles would have never spoken to either before meeting Johnny and once more questioned the wisdom of this venture.

"This is a city of seven million people.” Johnny yanked at the elevator door and stepped into a darkened space like he had a cat’s night vision. “One of them has the right voice for GTH, but we don’t ahve to worry about that right now. Let's unload the elevator."

Johnny flipped on a light. The old loft was huge. The broad wooden floor planks bore the scars of heavy machinery and the tin walls were yellowed by age. The windows offered a spectacular view of Lower Manhattan, although the Manhattan Bridge was partially blocked by a billboard on the next building.

Charles swept a finger over the dust on a table. No one had worked here for years.

"Hey, I can see my breath," Frankie complained and Johnny shot the drummer an angry glance. He could without any negativity from his protégé. "Tomorrow we can score space heaters and clean the place. Anyway GTH isn't about interior design. It’s about music. Let's hear how we sound."

Sean struggled with his outlets and Charles rested on a radiator, as Johnny and Bobby assembled the organ. Mercifully Frankie assembled his drums without a hitch and tapped an intricate set of riffs on a battered set of bongos. The patter filled the empty space with the hint of the music to come. If nothing, it was fast and loud. When all the leads were in their sockets, Johnny handed them lyric sheets.

"This first song is three chords. Sean learned them in one day. Charles, you follow his bass. The beat's fast. 4/4 and the words are Sean's. He gets first shot at the mike."

“You mean ‘sing’?” He rarely sang in the shower.

"Singing’s the only way a bass player becomes a rock star." The guitarist spread his legs in a classic rock and roll pose.

Sean switched on his bass. A buzz emanated from the amp. His fingers were frozen on the strings and he stepped to the mike, longing for a miracle. Girls loved singers. His name would headline Rolling Stone. Electricity crackled through his body.

"On the count of three. One-two-three."

Johnny strummed the intro and Sean plucked the four bars. He hit the lead verse, fantasizing himself in front of a thousand screaming fans. "I want love-no-love and that's all I need. Tonight___ "

Johnny stopped abruptly and Sean opened his eyes. "Anything wrong?"

"One, you were singing the chorus, and secondly you have to play with us." Johnny tried to go easy on Sean.

”What do you mean?”

Frankie had been taught the conga drums by his uncle, a Tito Puente fanatic, and rattled off a relentless 4/4 beat.

"You ever heard of time, man, cause you were speeding and slowing down, instead of matching my beat."

"Sean will improve on the bass with practice." Johnny waved him from the mike."Unfortunately you won’t be a rock god in this lifetime."

"My singing sucks?" His mother had sung the lead in NO NO NANETTE. He had to retain a fraction of her talent.

"Like Frank Sinatra with a cold." Johnny could lie, cheat, and steal, but not about music.

"And that's bad?" CBGBs had STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT on the jukebox.

"Even for a punk band, yeah."

"Oh." Sean mentally erased his face from eyes of the screaming fans.

"So we have to find a new singer?" Johnny looked Charles. The millionaire halted his Gothic fugue on the organ. "None of my friends are musicians____"

"Dove?" Frankie enjoyed drug binges with the drag queen. Johnny cut him short with an irritability arising from his drought of dope. "One Wayne County is all this scene can handle."

"I have a singer." Sean raised his hand.

“Who you know?” The ex-hippie hadn’t left Johnny other than for sleep in room 301. < p>"This girl I met on the highway. A runaway. Brown hair, mini-dress with one shoe.”

“One shoe?”

“Cinderella, if you’re partial to fairy tales, only her voice is a mix of Tina Turner’s gravel and Dusty Springfield’s velvet."

The combination was intrigued Johnny.

"How old is she?"

"18." Sean thought at most Tammi was 16, but she had a valid ID for 18, if she got a dancing gig at that strip club.

“Where is she?”

"I left her in Times Square yesterday.”

“Times Square?”

“She's at a go-go lounge."

"Runaways last a pimp’s minute there?” Johnny lowered his guitar, as Charles Ames III fingered the first chords to LOVE-NO-LOVE.

"Bobby can bring him to Times Square and we can keep practicing."

"Mr. Ames, I'm supposed to take care of you.” The driver warily regarded the three other members of GTH.

Charles hobbled over to slip him a fifty-dollar bill, "Please do as I ask."

"I'll watch him," Johnny offered and the driver returned the $50, pulling Johnny to the elevator. "You might have ‘Chuckie’ fooled, but you mess with him and I'll throw you off the roof. You got me?"

"Sure, like the flu." Johnny had no immediate plans to harm Charles and told Sean, “Guess it's a go, but the girl doesn't work out, you give her the fifty cents for the A Train back to Times Square."

"That's fair." Sean zippered his leather and Johnny strummed the chords from Del Shannon's RUNAWAY with a laid-back expertise. Smiling at the musical reference Sean said, "I'll meet you CBGBs .”

Johnny handed him the bass.

"If you’re trying to talk a young girl into joining a band, it doesn’t hurt to act the part.”

"So I look like a rock star, right." Sean slung the instrument over his shoulder and the driver wrinkled his nose. "I'll take the stairs."

“I second the motion.”

The door slammed shut and the amps’ humming drowned the wind whistling through the windows. Johnny had slept a hundred worse places as had Frankie and he placed his fingers on the guitar strings.

"So we ready for rock and roll?"

”Never more.” Frankie was daydreaming about limousines and huge mountains of drugs.

”I’ll give it my best.” Charles was a little more relaxed without the other two men’s presence. That confidence might hurt him in the future, but for tonight he was safe and the trio repeated LOVE-NO-LOVE.

They could have performed tomorrow night at a strip club in New Jersey, however Johnny was aiming higher for GTH and he hoped that pure dumb luck would catapult them to this peak in a city too tough to respect any other advantages. It wasn’t too much to ask on the day after Thanksgiving.

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.

MAYBE TOMORROW - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter 12

The five best pinball wizards in the Broadway amusement center were gathered around Sean, as he slammed the front of the 'KISS’ machine with his groin and bumped the legs with his thighs. None of them had ever seen anyone play with much intensity and they nodded appreciatively each time the scoreboard tocked another free game. Sean was on a roll, then the arcade’s front door opened for a frigid draft and a deathly thin player commented, "Damn, one of them Minnesota girls has come in from the cold."

"She’s heading this way,” a young boy in a thin jacket stated anxiously and an older voice said, “Man, she’s a twin for that teenage slut from TAXI DRIVER.”

“A little redhead?” Sean asked, as the steel ball blurred between the top bumpers for several seconds before diving toward the death zone only to have him save the impossible ball with a deft flick of the flippers.

“You have eyes in the back of your head, mister?”

“No, ESP.” Tammi’s reflection was framed in the glass scoreboard and she had reincarnated Jodi Foster’s carnal role in Martin Scorcese’s film right down to the cheap spandex sheath and a ratty rabbit fur jacket. “She's with me."

“Lucky with pinball, lucky with the ladies,” the young boy said with envy.

“Hey, Sean. You ready?” Tammi asked from behind him. Tammi responded with a yawn and laid her hand on the machine.

Neither man nor machine could resist her power tonight and the ball caromed off a side-panel to scorch through his double-flipper defense into the death hole. Sean slammed the glass top and Tammi asked innocently, "Did I do that?"

”No, the game did it itself.” Sean stared at her eyes and noticed that they varied in color; one green and the other an agate brown with gold flecks. Her eyelids were smeared with a vivid red shadow and a smear of maroon glistened on her lips to accentuate her new hair color. She was trying to look older than her years, but subtracting the cosmetics he figured that she had been born during his second year of grade school which was the year of JFK’s victory over Nixon.

"I-I-I almost hit a million." Sean stepped away from the machine upset by her interference.

"If you want to spend the rest of the night with a pinball machine instead of me, knock yourself out?" Tammi clumsily shifted her weight to one hip and nearly toppled off the towering platform shoes.

“No, I came her for you and I’m leaving with you.” Sean gestured for the young boy to finish his remaining games and exited from the amusement center with Tammi.

“How was your night?” His leather jacket needed a lining against the cold wind.

“Spending eight hours as bait in a crab pit isn’t much fun, but I made good money and that’s what the Dollhouse is all about making money.” She hooked her arm with his. A woman on her own was a target on the Strip and even well past 2am Times Square wasn’t ready to call it a night.

Men were crowding into a nearby theater featuring the hit XXX film BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR and a pimp strutted across Broadway with two ladies in skimpy silks. Tammi shut her borrowed fur jacket with a shiver.

“Pretty amazing, huh?” Tammi shut her borrowed fur jacket with a shiver.

“There’s not another place like it in America.” Boston’s Combat Zone was a Boy Scout jamboree in comparison. A pair of purse snatchers were eying the redhead and Sean lifted the bass over his shoulder. They moved away to seek easier prey

“We better take a taxi to my place.” Sean should have stuck the teenager on a bus back home, but he told himself that GTH needed a lead singer. It was an easy lie to believe after having seen her naked tonight.

“Where’s the Sharkmobile?” Tammi had felt safe in the Olds 88.

“It disappeared two nights ago.” Sean walked toward 42nd Street and Tammi struggled to keep pace on the platforms.

“Too bad, it was a good ride. So tell me about this band?"

"I’m on bass. Johnny on guitar, Frankie on drums, and this rich kid, Charles Ames III on keyboards."

"This isn't a cover band?" Anytime she had sung in the shower she had visualized herself in front of a band performing songs that no one had heard before.

"No, we have our own material. Not soft rock like Seals and Croft, but punk like the Ramones.”

"One of the girls at the Dollhouse was talking about them.” Tammi loved the sound of this band and leaned into the ex-hippie for protection from the wind.

“They play hard and fast music." Sean liked her close to him and didn’t care how wrong feeling this good was with a girl her age.

"Then count me in." Singing in a rock band was an unexpected promotion from her career as a teenage runaway stripper.

"I’m not promising anything. You have to do an audition."

“I know that.” Getting a job at the Dollhouse had simply entailed a willingness to take off her clothes. Singing lead for a band required a talent that only Sean saw in her.

“Johnny wants to hear your voice tomorrow.”

"Then we should rehearse your songs."

“Now?” His fingers were burning from the steel strings.

"I'm too young to be tired this early, but if you have to meet your girlfriend, I can get a room at the Lark.” It was less than two blocks away.

"I don’t have anyone anymore." Sean dropped his face to hide the hurt. "That girl ran off to Paris."

"Whenever I had a busted heart, all the songs on the radio sounded like they were written for me, even POPCORN." His bad news was good news for her

"POPCORN?" Sean had been brainwashed by the infectious pop instrumental on a cross-country drive in 1974 and he tried to pin down her age by asking, "You couldn’t have been any older than thirteen then?"

"No, I was fifteen and a date took me to this drive-in, where the lady next door sold popcorn off her porch. Eating it with my head on his shoulder was so dreamy that the song POPCORN makes me all misty inside." Tammi skipped the part about her date spreading a rumor about his hitting a ‘home run’ with her. They had only kissed a little, but the girls at school had elected her the class fast girl by calling her ‘Bases’.

"URGE FOR GOING brings tears to my eyes." Sean meant the Tom Rush version.

"Men cry hearing Joni Mitchell?” No boy in Kittery had ever admitted liking her.

"I don’t let anyone see me." Sorrow he buried beneath rage. Tears were special. On the corner of Seventh Avenue he flagged a downtown taxi. They got inside and Tammi slid across the seat to Sean.

"I'm simply sharing body heat, so don’t take it the wrong way."

“Their wives served as bedwarmers for guests.” He had read about this hospitality in Peter Freuchen’s BOOK OF THE ESKIMOS.”

“I’ll save that information next time I sit on Santa’s lap.”

Tammi actually appeared happy and Sean asked, "Did you think you'd meet me again?"

"In some ways I haven't.” She touched his ragged hair. “You’re a not hippie anymore."

“Shit, crazy bastard!” The driver swerved the wheel to avoid hitting barely a bare-chested man standing in the avenue, as if he were facing a hail of bullets.

Tammi swiveled her head. "Did you see that?"

"Yeah, and I know who it was. He’s the bass player for a band from Cleveland." Johnny had told him Dead Boys had signed a deal with CBGB’s owner for the bar tab and a percentage of the door.

"Really?" Tammi drew Sean closer than he had imagined possible.

Despite the cigarette smoke in her hair and the tang of sweat on her skin she smelled young and Sean said, "There's a lot you haven’t seen before."

"Namely?" Two nights and three days in Times Square had exposed her to an underbelly unexplored by sophomore Social Studies and she slipped an icy hand inside his jacket.

"Beautiful transvestites and David Bowie hustlers in black leather coloring their hair red and blue."

"Sounds like my new home away from home." She was never going back to Kittery.

“The bands are great, the people wild, they’re open late, and Johnny knows everyone.”

“Johnny’s the guitarist, right?” She was losing track of everyone in the band.

“Yes, and he stays at the Terminal too.”

The taxi reached the Terminal Hotel and the driver asked, "You young people staying in this dump?"

"I have a room with a view and it's warm."

"Tonight that sounds like heaven." Tammi jumped out of the taxi and a biting flurry pursued them into the hotel lobby, where ragged men were huddled on the floor next to the heaters.

"Guests are five dollars extra." Ernie pointed to a sign on the wall.

"She's coming to sing a few songs." Sean didn’t see the need to pay more money for a few hours and suspected Ernie was working a hustle.

"You young people find a new word for ‘it’ each generation. She goes to the room, you pay the five. I’m just following the rules of management."

"Same as with your guests?" Sean pointed to the sleeping pig-pile smelling of Sterno.

"They usta stay in the Bowery Missions, then the state cleared the nut houses and the bums got the short end of the stick.” Wino Liberation was a cause dear to his heart.

"Sorry, man, if I insulted your favorite charity." Sean handed over five dollars.

"Staying here for a buck beats freezin’ to death on the street.” Ernie pocketed these extras without reporting the take to his boss.

"I get a receipt?" The Terminal Hotel seemed to operate without paper.

"She have an ID?" Ernie countered with a raised eyebrow.

“Not with me.” Tammi had kept the ID in her leather jacket.

“Then try not to disturb any of our guests by playin' too loud." Ernie wasn't writing any receipts for money going into his pocket instead of the cash register.

"I have to move out of this dump," Sean said for the tenth times in two days.

"It's quieter than where I spend the past two nights." She had expected someone to break down her door the entire night at the Lark.

“No place is quiet in New York.” There were too many people.

Unlocking the door to room 301, he was glad to see that his breath wasn’t visible. Tammi shucked her rabbit-fur jacket and wanted to strip off the itchy spandex jumpsuit. Tomorrow she had to buy new clothes and she flicked one strap off her shoulder. Sean was watching her every move and she fought from smiling.

"You said you have a few songs. You write down the lyrics or are they stuck in your head?"

"No, I wrote them down." The tightness of the spandex jumpsuit revealed she wasn’t wearing a bra or panties, Sean resisted kissing her and gave her three sheets of paper.

Tammi read the scrawled words.

"They're good poems.”

“Thanks.” He strapped the bass over his neck.

“But they suck as songs."

"How so?" No one else in the band had insulted his lyrics.

"Usually the finishing syllable of each line has to rhyme and the lines should have the equal measure. If line A has eight counts and B has seven, C and D should match A and B." English was her one A subject and Tammi scribbled on the paper with a pencil.

"What are you doing?" Sean wasn’t accustomed to grammatical corrections from a high school dropout.

"Changing a few words."

"This is the modern world, not Shakespearean England?" Sean fingered the GAD chord progression Johnny had taught him and kept the beat with his foot. Playing the bass without a mistake was almost impossible. He was no musician.

"I don't care if it's a bunch of cavemen grunting around a fire. You do it the right way and it's easier to sing. This song TAKE ME HIGHER works, if you change "Don’t want to go to London or Rome. Can't call any of them my kind of home." to "Been to London, Paris, and Rome. Looking for a place to call my home." Tammi stared at Sean for approval and he had to admit, “It’s better.”

“And more so to music.” Tammi sang the altered lyrics to his plodding bass. She was as good as he remembered for the car and he broke into a grin.

”Are you making fun of my singing?” Tammi pouted with a young girl’s petulance.

“No, I really like your singing, but I’m surprised that you never sang before.” Sean laid his bass on the bed and Tammi lowered her head, anticipating the worst. "A little in the shower. Am I that bad?”

“No, you’re good and in truth better than good.”

"I can't recall anyone saying I was good at anything." Her stepmother was all right, but she was stuck with Tammi, because no one else would have her.

"Well, my mother was a great singer.” Sean omitted having seen Grace Slick or Janis Joplin in fear that their names might date him further into the Sixties.

“She sing with a band?” Tammi imagined his mother singing him lullabies.

“No, my mother performed at theaters in Boston and Portland, but abandoned her career to raise a family. Once she silenced the cathedral choir during AVE MARIA. I heard the voices died one by one and the bishop stopped serving Mass. I was embarrassed at the time. Now I realize it was an incredible moment. Your voice is nothing like hers, but you have something special.

"Thanks for saying I could sing.”

“Good and special. I don’t know whether I can handle all these compliments.” Tammi stared at the mural on the wall. The naked man was Sean. His girlfriend had lived here and Tammi grabbed her rabbit jacket to leave. Sean blocked the door. "Why you leaving?”

"I can’t stay here." She was liking Sean too fast for her own good.

"I paid the five dollars for your guest privilege." Not everyone in America had experienced a happy childhood and he vowed to tread carefully around her past. "Plus the two of us together could help each other by splitting the rent for this place.

”I don’t need anyone’s help.” Her eyes silently reminded him that she had been mistreated at home.

“Everyone needs help.”

“Not me.” She had been alone in this world ever since her father's OD. "If you want to go, I won’t stop you.” He stepped away from the door. Room 301 was not a jail.

"And if I don’t go?" Tammi bit her lower lip.

"Then neither of us will have to sleep alone." Sean's answer was as basic as he could make it.

Two nights ago the teenager had been willing to stay with him. He was much nicer than any of the boys in Kittery. Neither of them were saying that their sharing a place to live was a permanent arrangement and Tammi sat on the bed.

"I'll stay on a couple of conditions."

"Conditions?" He hadn’t expected any demands.

"The girls at the Dollhouse smoke and shot any drug they can find, legal or illegal. My father was a dope addict. I can’t live through that nightmare again, so if we live together, I can’t have you doing drugs.”

Sean had started smoking pot at 18, dropped acid over fifty times, snorted coke ten times, and huffed glue twice in 6th Grade.

"I’m not really into anything, but beer, although Johnny and Frankie are a little religious about drugs."

"I'm not living with them."

"Anything else?"

“One more thing.” Tammi had overheard the other dancers’ horror stories about their boyfriends and issued her 2nd Commandment, "No stealing from me."

"That’s a two-way street. You need money, ask.” Sean touched her skin. It was smooth as a river stone and softer than a dinner bun. “Me, I have one request.”

Tammi braced to hear a sick sexual perversion only to have Sean pluck away her cigarettes.

“These are as deadly as dope and you look ridiculous smoking.”

“I need those.” They calmed her down.

“If I’m stopping drugs, so can you.” Sean threw the pack into a wastebasket.

“You didn’t wait for the answer.” Tammi felt like he had thrown away her teddy bear.

“There was only one.” Sean joined her on the bed. “Anything else on the list?"

"Just this?" Tammi kissed Sean, busting the fragile seams of his heart.

He hadn’t expected such passion from the teenager and breathlessly he pushed back the young girl. "Slow down." "No slowing down. You and me are living for today and I’m not missing a second of it." Tammi was setting the pace for both of them. Each caress and every kiss scrapped away their past, as their hands tore off their clothing. They fell naked into bed naked and words ceased to exist in room 301, for they were the only two people left in a city of millions, until the sun rose on another new day and sunset was hours away from now.

MAYBE TOMORROW - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter 13

The barking of two men in the hallway woke Sean from his deep sleep. He ignored the garbled argument and reached over to the naked female sharing his bed. For a few seconds he basked in a delusion that Cheri had returned from Paris, except the sleeper’s warm flesh was much younger to his touch.

Sean rolled away to the other side of the mattress, almost as if he was in the wrong bed and his abrupt movement disturbed Tammi, who demanded with a sleep-dusted voice, "Can't you stop them?"

"I doubt it," Sean was wallowing neck-deep in a high tide of heartbreak. Cheri was still in his system.

“Please try.” She cooed under the sheets and Sean got out of bed, for even a teenage girl is a woman and Tammi wouldn’t let him rest, until he had addressed her request.

Flattening an ear to the flimsy door he discerned that the squalid dispute was over a bottle of wine drunk before its time and he plucked several dollars from the nightstand before opened the door to yell, "You mind shutting your holes."

The two wizened alcoholics blinked blankly at the naked man, then the smaller drunk sniveled, “He drank my wine.”

"Then go buy yourselves a couple bottles of Thunderbird." He tossed the bills on the floor and the shorter wino snatched the cash and brandished the money in the other’s face.

"See, Sparky, you steal my wine and God provides me money to drink more. God certainly loves a drunk. Let’s go get us some wine. What’s the word.ThunderBird. And the price? A quarter trice." The two drunks chanted the old poem down the stairway and Sean sat on the bed. "Happy?"

"-er." Tammi slid across on the sloped mattress.

This was her first time sleeping with a man and she was surprised at how pleasant the experience was with Sean. His body smelled of the last night’s sex and she cuddled closer, saying, “Now we have an alarm clock."

"Alarm clock?" Sean rested his arm on her waist, as Tammi explained drowsily, “You paid for their silence, so tomorrow morning we'll have a chorus of bums whining for wine. Next time let me handle them."

"And you have a better technique?" Sean fondled her small breasts and the teenager issued a breezy mew, “I'll show you."

Tammi kissed his chest and licked his belly. He was instantly erect and Sean tensed, as her tongue fluttered against the thick vein under his cock like a flock of butterflies. The young girl had honed her techniques on the boys of Kittery and perfected them with sailors of Portsmouth. She had hoped that satisfying them would result in their liking her for herself, except her attempts to be a nice girl failed to alter the fact that the boys are after one thing from a woman or girl, which wasn’t a handshake at the end of the night.

Tammi had learned her lesson more than once, but with Sean she fell back into the same trap by reward the first man to ever treat with what she thought he wanted from her.

The redhead stretched her lips over his thickening erection. It tasted salty and a little of her. Her mouth tongue toyed with the slit before her head bobbed on his spit-wet penis. Her hand tickled below his balls and a savage growl accompanied his ejaculation. As she spit the semen into a Klee-nix, Sean asked, "Is that how you plan on keeping them quiet?"

"No, just you.” She rolled onto her back.

When Sean tried to reciprocate her exertions by fondling her vagina, she laughed deep inside her soul at how easy men succumb to physical manipulation.

Last night she had faked two orgasms to convince Sean of his sexual prowess. He had perceived her moans as declarations of desire. The ensuing sex had hurt her body in several places, but she had experienced worst from the boys of Kittery.

"Is it okay, if I hold you a little?" Tammi pulled away his hand.

"Sure, I’m spent.” Four times in one night was the limit of his endurance. sapped his energy. She was no rookie to sex and he wondered how many men had known her. It really didn’t matter this morning.

"Me too, you know this is strange." Tammi sighed with relief.

"Me and you?" Sean fingered a small mole inside her right thigh.

"No, having the man from this painting touch me.” Tammi traced his face on the wall. “Your girl paint that?"

“Yes.” Cheri’s memory violated the newness of their Eden.

“She captured the roughness in your face.” The other walls were decorated with assorted cityscapes.

“Yeah?” Cheri’s desertion festered in him and Tammi needed to taste his misery. "You an art critic?”

"I painted in school."

“Finger-painting in grade school." Sunlight flashed into the room and his eyes rejected the brightness.

"Being young doesn't mean that I am ignorant. I’ve seen Michelangelo in books and Van Gogh on a field trip to Boston.” Most of the other students had joked how Van Gogh’s THE POSTMAN had been done by numbers. She had rejected their collective blindness in admiration for the Frenchman’s mad devotion to his art in the face of his failure to sell a single painting. “And being older doesn’t mean you’re smarter.”

“I find that out all the time.”

At Tammi's age Sean had had an affair with a twenty-six year-old divorced business woman, whom he had considered much more mature than the college girls in the Boston bars mostly due to his erroneously equating lingerie with intelligence. She had left him the minute he asked her for a more satisfying gesture of love than a fuck. Her superiority about age had hurt in 1970 and he regretted taking revenge on Tammi for simply complimenting Cheri’s picture. "I'm sorry."

For what? You hurt and people have hurt me too. Pain shouldn’t be our only our bond. I’m on your side, but___"

"There’s always another ‘but’ with women.” Sean dreaded that she might ban his drinking.

"This is the last demand.” She laid her head on his chest. “My father swore that people lied thirteen times a day, which served as his excuse for not telling the truth. Not that he lied about his love for me, just about stopping drugs. “

"I haven’t lied to you yet.” That streak probably wouldn’t last the day and he said, “I can’t promise I’ll always tell you the truth, but I’m willing to give it a go.”

Tammi searched his eyes for any hint of dishonesty, detecting only the traces of heartache.

“The key to triumph is in the first syllable."

"Thankfully not in the last." Sean had read the same quote from a Salada teabag.

"Anything else this morning?"

"No, that covers it." Despite the aching in her vagina she sought to reward him and reached for his penis, which hardened to the touch and Sean gasped, “You ever rest?”

“Not before I’m done.” She smiled wickedly and wet the top of his cock with spit. Before she could insert it, someone knocked on the door and Sean shouted, "Go away. We already gave to the Wino Fund."

"It's Johnny.”

“The guitarist?” Tammi gathered the sheet around her body. "Then let him in.”

"I thought____" He wrapped a towel about his waist.

"There'll be plenty of time for sex later, I promise."

"That vow about lying runs two ways." He got out of bed and opened the door.

Johnny was wearing a red Chinese robe with a Les Paul guitar hung over his shoulder. He eyed the couple and he snorted, "Guess I'm in time for the matinee featuring the gladiator and slave girl."

"And you play Tony Curtis." Sean thought that Frankie would be better cast in that part.

“I loved SPARTACUS.” Tammi cooed and Sean moved aside for the guitarist. "Tammi West, this is Johnny Darling."

"I've heard so much about you," Tammi sat up in bed and Johnny sarcastically picked the notes to GOOD MORNING, LITTLE SCHOOLGIRL. "How this brute describe me?"

"He said that you looked sexy in a dress." Sexier than most of the dancers at the Dollhouse, if you had a thing for skinny girls.

"I’m sure ‘transvestite’ will work wonders on my job application."

“You don’t seem the type to be interested in a day job.”

“Oooh, and she’s insightful too.” Johnny had been anticipating an airhead from the hicks, but this girl was more clever than her age. "Since we're in a ‘nice’ mood, Sean says you can sing."

"His judgment in music make a little hard to believe, considering he listens to the Doors."

The two shared a sour face.

“What’s wrong with CRYSTAL SHIP.” Old loyalties died hard for Sean.

“Nothing, but THE END? Seventeen minute about killing your parents.” Johnny rolled his eyes. “And his fans think he’s alive in the South of France. More likely he’s working as a Sumo wrestler’s body-double in Japan, but we can't hold the love beads and long hair against Sean now that he trimmed that thatched roof." With his skim-milk skin Johnny was a teenybopper’s heartthrob, although his sly inspection of Sean's body was not in the interest of biology and she drew Sean into bed to affirm their relationship. "He did drive me here."

"For you to become a star." Johnny hated her possessing Sean.

"That’s aiming pretty high." Stardom had been beyond her wildest dreams in Maine, where a day without someone hassling her would have answered her fondest wishes.

"Girl, being bashful doesn't pay in this city and certainly not on this scene. Either you have it or you don’t." Johnny had been encouraged by the driver’s description of her dancing, for while punks hated disco, they loved jumping up and down in front of the bad girl done running away. Tammi was tough, smart, pretty, and not in a WonderBread’s Twelve Ways. If she could sing, she might even make a dent in New York and Johnny said, “You have to have a better voice than him."

"I sing okay,” Sean protested in his defense.

"You ever heard Dean Martin on dope? That's our Sean." Johnny grimaced like an icepick had been stuck in his ear.

Tammi laughed giddily and sought a cigarette on the night table.

“Remember I threw them away,” Sean smiled with the righteousness of a reformed druggie.

”He’s trying to save me from an early death.” Tammi was too young to be worried about death.

”He’s a natural for playing the hero.” Johny had seen him in action outside of CBGBs.

"So when’s the try-out for the band?" Tammi grabbed the spandex jumpsuit from the floor. It smelled worse than last night.

"Right now." Johnny plunked the notes from Iggy's WILD CHILD on his guitar.

“Right now?” She slipped on the distressd jumpsuit under the covers. The material felt like day-old sweat.

"No time like the right time." Johnny sat on the bed.

"We rehearsed TAKE ME HIGHER last night." She threw off the blanket.

“So you’re industrious too.”

“We changed it a little.” Three days ago she had been a junior in high school. The next day a runaway stripper and today she was on the verge of singing in a rock and roll band. Life sped up when people said ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’.

"Changes?" Johnny was irked by her reworking his composition.

“Just the lyrics.” Tammi disregarded his disapproval and handed him the rewritten verses.

"It better be the same as this." Johnny plucked the song's chords and tapped the beat with his foot. "On my count. One, two, three."

Tammi hit the mark on time, while Sean fumbled with his bass.

"I been to London, Paris, and Rome. Looking for a place to call my home. Hotels are all I've known, so it's time to….."

She cracked during the chorus, but smoothly phased the next stanzas, coloring the words with a sincere intensity. Johnny was surprised by the strength with which she belted out, "A rocket to the stars will fly us into Space. Take me higher and higher."

He lowered his guitar and Tammi wore a baffled expression.

"I make a mistake?"

"No mistakes." Johnny prayed that he wasn't sporting the same stupid smile spread across Sean's face. "Tammi, you're in."

"I am."

"You’re no Streisand.” Johnny was increasingly confident that GTH could succeed at CBGBs with Tammi singing lead. “But we’re going to make a complete stranger a rich man."

“What do you mean that?” She met strangers every night at the Dollhouse.

“A record producer hears your voice and he’ll steal you from the band.” Johnny was a good judge of raw talent.

After all the abuse she had received over her young life, Tammi instinctively distrusted compliments. "You're kidding me."

"For what possible reason. To crawl into your pants or rip you off? I’m play for the other team and I don’t steal from my friends or band members.” Mostly because none of them had enough to make it worth his while. “This is about a band. If you want in, you're in. If not, you can keep on shaking your ass at that go-go bar, till your tits droop to your knees.”

"You two aren't joking, are you?" The teenager had suffered through purgatory in Kittery and New York had been threatening to become a hell. Sean had helped her step closer to heaven and she embraced Johnny in near-ecstasy.

"Girl, this band might go nowhere." The guitarist was no one’s savior, least of all his own.

"And nowhere is a place I’ve been too long.”

“So let’s go someplace new. It’ll be a nice change.”

Pleased by a shared past, Tammi released Johnny and he hoisted his guitar over his shoulder. Now the band was complete, he had another project to discuss with Sean.

"You mind if the Gladiator and the Slave Boy have a private talk. Nothing about the band, but financial matters."

"You keep your hands off him." She wasn’t losing Sean to a man, even one as handsome as Johnny Darling.

“He’s not my type," Johnny kissed Tammi on the cheek. "Welcome to the band. We'll introduce you to the other members later. Sean?"

The two of them exited from the room. The hallway was deserted, yet Johnny whispered, “She is good.”

“I told you so.”

“Yeah, but don’t tell her. It goes to their head.”

“You mean just like how you said I sucked.”

“Close, anyway this is the capitol of the world. It takes money to live, eat, have fun.”

“Tell me about it.” His money was going fast. “You have a job in mind?”

"No, but an act of revolutionary re-appropriation.”

“Stealing in other words.”

“I prefer the term liberating funds.”

“Go on.” It wasn’t a conspiracy, until they spoke to a third person.

“The banks have these automatic cash machines called ATMs," Johnny rattled off the information sure that the ATM were unknown to Sean. "They dispense money from your account, so say you put $310 in a bank account. You wait three days for the money to clear and hit the ATM."

"Leaving you $10."

Lacking all the details, his math was off by a couple of zeros.

"No, you have another fifty minutes to hit three more ATMs before the computers calculated that the money has been withdrawn to the limit and closes the account."

"You're asking me to withdraw the money four times from the same account." The computers’ program having a bug was no defense in a court of Law. “Then the police find my name and hunt me down."

"Not you, but Jimmie O'Brian." Johnny produced a birth certificate to Sean. “Poor Jimmie O'Brian died ten years ago. The registry is operating in the Stone Age. You ask for a birth certificate and they give it to you. The DMV on Center Street will issue you a license in the dead man's name without a photo, so your Irish mug can pass for an O'Brian. You stick the money in the bank and hit the account after the money clears, scoring at least $900 for an investment of $300."

"If it's such a good payday, why isn't everyone doing it?"

"It’s a secret.” Johnny feared the ex-hippie might not share his confidence in Dynamite’s discovery of the glitch, while cashing his VA checks. "And redistribution of wealth has to beat flipping hamburgers at McDonalds.”

Sean appreciated Johnny’s giving the crime a revolutionary angle. He hated the banks for not hiring him after college. The interviewers had deemed anyone arrested for anti-war protests as a credit risk. Sean decided to prove them right by opening an independent withdrawal service of banking. "I'll give it a shot."

"Great. Get dressed. We have places to see and people to be.” Johnny had a full day’s agenda for GTH and walked down the hallway saying, “I'll meet you in the lobby in five minutes."

Sean entered room 301 and sat on the bed.

"Can I hear the big secret?" Tammi asked with a young girl’s innocence.

"This morning you asked me to not lie?”

“Yes.” Tammi hadn’t anticipated Sean disappointing her so quickly.

The success of any crime depends on minimizing the number of people involved, but inexplicably he needed Tammi’s trust.

What I’m about to tell you has to remain a secret."

"You can trust me," Tammi replied sincerely and he told her the truth.

Robbing banks without a gun was a romantic notion, but Robin Hood was a fairy tale and sooner rather than later every criminal was caught by the police.

“I’m not asking you to be Bonnie.” Sean read the disapproval on her young face.

“And I won’t call you Clyde.” She had been poor all her life, which wasn’t the banks’ fault, however she had read in THE GRAPES OF WRATH how the banks had thrown the farmers off their land. John Steinbeck’s book was just a book, yet a bank’s décor matched the Kittery police station or the her high school principal’s office and she told Sean, “Just Be careful."

"Aren’t I always." Sean let the towel drop from his waist.

"I thought you were meeting Johnny downstairs." the young girl smiled with temptation.

"Johnny can wait." Sean tore the jumpsuit from Tammi's body and she warned him, "This might be going nowhere."

"You mean you and me"

"Yes."

"And nowhere just fine with me.” Like Tammi he was very familiar with that destination, but she saved them from visiting nowhere alone with a single kiss, for a kiss is more than a kiss when you’re both naked.