WHITE SUMMER ( Chapter 8)

WHITE SUMMER

Chapter 8



“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting my guitar.”
“Why? We’re just going to the Laundromat.”
Warlock zipped the Gibson into the black vinyl case. “Practice, man, practice. Today’s the day! Finest kind! The Airplane, Jase, the Airplane! You’re going with me, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it. But, the Laundromat!? What are you going to play the laundry day blues?”
“Hendrix practices in the kitchen with his Stratocaster strapped to him while he’s frying fucking eggs.”
“Good for him! It can double as a spatula. Let’s go! I want to get this over with.”
He slipped the strap over his head, the guitar neck like a big black exclamation mark behind him, and heaved the duffel bag of dirty clothes, fat as a sausage, onto his shoulder. “I’m set. Let’s boogie.”
“Who’s getting the door?” I carried an equally stuffed bag of clothes and a giant box of Salvo.
“No sweat. I will.” Warlock hooked the edge of the door with his toes and gave a yank, as it slammed shut. “Let me borrow your suds?”
“I’ll toss some your way when we get there.”
“Finest kind!”
I was hanging more and more with Warlock, as Joey’s visits to our room were becoming more frequent and unpredictable. When assignment deadlines weighed too heavily, I would capitulate and knuckle down to the books. It invariably would be these moments when Hunter came crashing in saying, ‘out, out, come on buddy, Joey and I need the room’, and I would be hustled out, gravitating to Warlock’s. I hated the hassle. So I kind of semi-permanently moved in with him, bunking on the bed of the AWOL Wolfman.
“Jase, you ever notice people?” Warlock said as we headed down Fee Lane.
“Yeah, I’m an artist, I’m a great noticer.”
“That chick,” He talked low, indicating a girl about a block in front of us. “I can tell what trip she’s on just the way she’s dressed, how she walks.”
“Yeah? Shoot.”
“Well, look at that hair, all sprayed down with that big flip in the back. You could surf on that thing. That tells me she’s uptight.”
“Maybe she just doesn’t want to get it mussed.”
“She’s freaking neurotic about it, every hair has to be in place. Would Verlaine get that hung up?”
“Okay, point taken. Go on.”
“Same thing, blue sweater, I bet every little pearl button is buttoned in front, plaid skirt, knee high socks, penney loafers.”
“Sorority sister, right?”
“ Hey, don’t put down Sorority girls!”
“ What?! Talk about plastic!”
“Not all.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this! So what does how she’s dressed, tell you, beside the fact that she’s wearing what every other coed on campus is wearing.”
“See how she walks? She’s a virgin.”
“Oh, well, definitely not Sorority then.”
“Knock it off!”
“ God, you’re touchy. How can you tell, she’s a virgin?”
“She walks like she’s got a book clamped between her legs.”
A laugh galloped up my larynx.
“She is business administration – no, she switched– she’s an education major. She has a boyfriend that she blows, but won’t ball. She wants a ring first.”
“You’re so full of it .”
“Doubt me? Go up and ask her about anything I’ve told you.”
“Yeah, like she’s going to tell me she gives blow-jobs to her boyfriend.”
“Okay, ask her what her major is.”
“That’s so lame.”
“At least see if she has pearl buttons down the front of her sweater, if you think I’m bull-shitting. Pussy!”
Damn, Warlock.. I danced up the sidewalk until I locked in step with her. I asked where a good laundry might be. She looked at me as if I was a window pane and shrugged her shoulders. Her little pearl buttons were all snapped in a neat little row.
“You’re an education major, aren’t you?” I asked. “I’m business administration, myself.”
She looked me up and down like a slide she had to prepare. “Oh, really? I dropped business administration last semester, too hard. I’m an Ed. Major now, so is my boyfriend. If you’d excuse me; I’m really late for class.”
“Sorry, see you around,” I said as I dropped back. “Need anything washed?” I had to add. “I’ll put it in my BIZ bag!” My answer was the scrape of her soles picking up the pace, at least, as best she could, with an invisible book squeezed between her knees.
Warlock’s grin was wide as a wedge of watermelon, as he caught up.
“You’re freaking scary, you know that?!” I said.
“Finest kind!” He responded.
The Laundromat was one of those glass fronted nothings in a strip mall off of 10th Street. It rubbed steel shoulders with a barber shop and a Pharmacy. Inside it smelled of bleach and fabric softener; relentlessly fresh. White washing machines were lined up in regimented rows in the center, big white dryers, with their portholes, like cyclops were arrayed against the back wall. Florescent tubes, like candy sticks, hung from the ceiling. One had a constant flicker.
We dropped our bags in front of some likely looking suspects, their lids raised, their gray mouths wide. A woman, with pink rollers in her hair the size of pop cans, three washers down, eyed us with interest. She looked like she lived there, and had given each machine a name.
“That one there don’t work,” she said as I untied the cord to my bag. “You’ll have to use the next one. You doin’ whites? ‘Cause if you are, it’s hot cycle is only luke warm at best.”
“Uh, thanks.” I looked at Warlock and moved my bag over.
“You can borrow my DRIFT, if you need detergent.”
“Thanks, we brought our own.” I held up the box of SALVO.
“Those newfangled detergents don’t do the job, don’t dissolve worth a damn.”
“We’ll try our luck, thanks.” I nudged Warlock to move to the next row of washers.
I started stuffing my jeans into one machine as he leaned his guitar gently against a washer.
“How does this go?” I held up a black t-shirt. “ Do you separate lights and darks or colors and whites? My mom has some kind of system; and what do you do with the reds?”
“How the hell should I know? Just stick them in. They’ll all get clean, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Here, let’s combine our things. We’ll save money on machines.” He started pulling clothes from his bag and jamming them on top of mine. “I don’t know what you’d do if I wasn’t around to help you, Jase.” He stuck two of the blue laundry tablets over his eyes and waved his out-stretched arms around like Frankenstein. He laughed as they popped out, caught them and tossed them in. He yanked off his shirt and flipped it in the washer as well.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Washing my clothes, what does it look like?” He peeled off his jeans. He wasn’t wearing underwear.
“Warlock!” I turned to see if the woman was watching, but she had her back to us, as she folded clothes on a table.
His naked scrawny ass bent over the machine as he planted his wadded up pants in the already full washer. Then he pulled a white towel out of his deflated bag and wrapped it around his waist. He overlapped the ends and knotted them.
“What!?” He said to me with his wide choir boy eyes.
“You’re just amazing.” I shook my head.
“Hey, everything needed to be washed. Finest kind!”
I closed the lids and shoved a quarter into each machine as they rumbled, complaining to life.
Warlock unzipped the case and started tuning his guitar, then leaped on top one of the machines.
“Ever sit on one of these?” He said, as the machine began to vibrate. “It does great things to your gonads! Oh, man!”
“Man, you are bent!”
“Ever, and oh so slightly. Finest kind!”
“Grass or acid?”
He did a run on his guitar. “Do I have to choose?”
“Just play. What are you going to do for Ka-Kau, The Airplane’s guitarist, ‘White Summer’?”
“ It’s pronounced YOR-ma, COW-ka-nen, Jorma Kaukonen. Maybe that, or...” And he teased out, ‘Light My Fire’.
“Hey, you two!” It was the Mistress of the Machines, noticing now, Warlock perched on the washer, “You, with the guitar, you know Rocky Top? I purely do love that song.”
“Uh, maybe not, no.”
He kept noodling around not settling on any one song, ‘Spoonful’ seeped in, some Love riffs wavered in the air, ‘Embryonic Journey’, bits and pieces of others, until the washing machine shuddered to a halt and he was thrown, his balance lost, and his towel, his pale ass bouncing to the floor. He held his guitar high like a cudgel and snatched the towel up and re-wrapped himself.
“Lordy!” Pink hair curlers must of been a noticer, too.
“Sorry! Sorry,” Warlock, called out.
“Oh, don’t be! I only wish I was twenty years younger. I could give you a run for your money!”
She and I laughed, Warlock reddened and looked apprehensive. I pushed over a wheeled basket and began peeling off slags of wet clothes from inside the washer. Our other machines also spasmed to stops and we shoveled out the damp clothes and proceded to stuff them in the big barrel dryers. Warlock’s towel kept slipping, so he relented, and set his guitar down. He held the knot to his waist with one hand. He didn’t want the woman, ‘who could give him a run for his money’ staring at his ass. After I had slotted the dimes, the tubs’ began their lazy revolutions, the clothes salad began it’s slow-motion fall, over and over. Warlock sat on the floor cross-legged in front of a dryer porthole, his guitar curved across his lap. I squatted on the floor next to him.
“Do you think we’re just clothes tumbling around and the universe is just one big freaking dryer?” He asked.
“Who puts the dimes in?” I answered.
His laughter, sudden and unbound, assaulted me and I succumbed. We rolled.
When we gained control, the laundry lady was there standing over us.
“You boys ain’t high, are you? I don’t want no ‘potheads’ in here!”
“H-he, just told me something that struck me funny,” Warlock stammered. “I-I just couldn’t control myself.” He held his white towel closed tight in front as he gathered his legs under him. “We’re clean cut kids, honest. We just like watching the clothes dry.”
“Well, dry your clothes, then you need to leave. I don’t need half-naked boys running wild in my Laundromat. You understand?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re terribly sorry, ma’am. We’ll be quiet, ma’am. ” Warlock’s sincerity dripped from his pores. “We’ll dry our stuff as quick as we can.”
“All right then. You two settle down. Go ahead and play your guitar if you want, that’s kind of pretty, but I’ve got work to do.” She shuffled back to the folding table where she was stacking clothes.
I punched Warlock’s skinny arm, lightly. “Knock it off,” I whispered.
“What!?”
“Heard from your kid sister lately?” I stood at the sound of buzzer, and fed the machines more dimes. “How’s she doing?”
“Okay, hmmm, well, not really.”
I dropped down next to him. “What do you mean, ‘not really’?”
“She’s been expelled.”
“Expelled?! From school?”
“Yeah, where else? Junior High.”
“What did she do?”
“Protest.”
“Protest?! And they expelled her?”
“What can I say, the school’s fucked-up.”
“Well, what happened?”
Warlock swept his black hair from his forehead, it looked like a raven’s wing. His eyes were deep and dark as caverns, as he watched the clothes’ circular chase and tumble in the dryer.
“Do you know who Caesar Chavez is?” He finally said.
“The farm worker? He wanted people to stop eating table grapes or lettuce or something, right?”
“Yeah. He wanted to organize migrant workers out in California to get them better working conditions and wages.”
“So?”
Warlock pulled out his pack of cigarettes and tapped one out, then snapped the steel cover of his lighter back and let the flame singe the tip as he inhaled and blew out a stream of gray smoke.
“So, Cheryl decides to bring the plight of migrant farmers to the attention of the student body at Grissom Junior High. How she does this, is on a Monday, she takes her lunch tray, yeah, she told me it did have a salad on it, and goes over and dumps the whole thing in the trash then goes back and sits down and doesn’t say a thing, talks to nobody.” He took a drag on his smoke and blew it out. “Cool so far. Next day at lunch she hangs a sign she made around her neck, it says, SUPPORT THE U.F.W., you know, The United Farm Workers. She gets her lunch tray walks straight to the trash can and dumps it, goes and sits down, doesn’t say a word.”
“She didn’t talk at all?”
“Not a word, and students around her were beginning to whisper and giggle. Like what’s up with her? You remember? All that junior high shit.”
“I’d like to forget.”
He laughed, his cigarette pressed to his lips. “Well this goes on, each day, same thing, dumps her food, sits in silence. The administration doesn’t give a shit. But then she starts passing out leaflets, she got hold of a mimeograph somewhere, and she starts telling others what’s she’s doing and like it would show solidarity if they joined her. Well, dig, around Friday her two best friends decide to do just that. They come in , get their trays, dump the food and sit in silence. Some kids move from their table. You know, who are these freaks? The administration now is beginning to freak . Like what are they up to ? On the weekend she talks on the phone to all her friends and tells them this is really important, blah, blah, and they call their friends. So that Monday at lunch, ten students toss their trays and sit in silence.”
“Ten. Shit!”
He stabbed his butt out on the floor beside him. “The principal, he’s a real uptight little prick, calls her to his office and asks her what is she trying to do. She tells him and he applauds her commitment, but school is not a political forum and she needs to halt her little protest. Cheryl leaves really upset. Next day, seventeen students don’t eat their meals and sit in silence. Kids are throwing food at them, calling them names. The principal...”
“The uptight little prick.”
“Yeah,” Warlock laughed. “He calls them all to the office and tells them in no uncertain terms this protest must stop.”
“How many the next day?”
“I think it was twenty-seven or eight. Kids were throwing food at them, calling them Commie freaks. The principal...”
“The prick.”
“Finest kind! ...comes to the cafeteria himself and threatens the whole student body and escorts Cheryl to the office. He suspends her for three days.”
“You’ve got to be kidding?”
“Nope. Three days. My folks hit the roof, read her the riot act and threaten to sue the school.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Wait. She goes back after three days. At lunch she hangs a sign around her neck that reads, ‘GRISSOM JR. HIGH STOMPS ON STUDENT RIGHTS !’ Thirty students throw away lunches, there is a mini-riot and Cheryl gets expelled.”
“The fascists!”
“There’s more, my sister’s friends continue the protest, five more get suspended, and her best friend, Mimi, or something like that, gets expelled too. It takes them three weeks to calm everything down and the principal is called before the school board, but the candy-asses just give him a slap across the wrist.”
“Jerks! So what did your dad do?”
“Nothing! He’s a big blowhard. The sonofabitch wants to send Cheryl out of state to a private Catholic school.”
“I didn’t know you were Catholic?”
“Fuck no! He just wants to put Cheryl under the thumb of some hard-ass nun, straighten her out. Show her not to step out of line and embarrass him.”
“Watch your mouths over there!” The laundry woman called out, as two women carrying plastic baskets, over-flowing with clothes, pushed through the door.
“Sorry, sorry! I called back .
“I don’t think I could stand her being shuttled off to some prison school,” he said softly, as if to himself. “Cheryl is the only one in my family that has any guts or knows where it’s at. She is the only one I can relate to in my family.” His eyes grew liquid and he pressed his lips, hard together. He barred his eyes with his arm.
I willed the buzzer on the dryer to sound and it did. I jumped up and popped open one of the lids and thrust my arm in. The clothes were still damp.
The front door opened again and another woman entered, her arms full.
Warlock looked around and noticed the place filling up with middle-aged houswives.“ I need my clothes!” He stood and grabbed his towel as it slipped. “Let’s get out of here.”
The first two women glanced toward us with barely concealed laughter.
“They’re still damp.”
“I don’t care!” He held the knot of his towel to his stomach. “I want my pants!” He started pawing through the tangled clothes.
“Be cool!” I shoved past him and took over the search. “Let me do it.” I pawed through the tangled clothes, scooping out dark clots that had the likelihood of being pants and dropped them at Warlock’s feet. I noticed nothing anymore was exactly white.
“Got ‘em!” He held up a twisted pair of jeans.
He dropped his towel and poked his leg into the wad of denim. It would not go. He hopped around naked until he forced his foot through the wrung fabric and managed to pull up the other pant leg.
The laundry lady screamed at him, “Are you crazy?! You can’t jump around naked as a jaybird over there! You get dressed and get out.” The women all laughed.
“We’re going, we’re going. It’s cool!” he answered, as he snapped the rivet on the front of his jeans. He stuck his torso into the dryer and emerged with a t-shirt that was a spider-web of wrinkles. He stretched his arms under it and popped his head through the collar.
We gathered up the clothes on the floor and stuffed the rest, still damp, into our bags. Warlock zipped the case over his guitar and shifted it onto his back. As we left we waved at the lady in the curlers.
“Get out.” She shooed us with her hand, shook her head and added, “college kids.”
When we got back to Warlock’s room there was a man in a tan trench-coat and a gray fedora sitting on the edge of Wolfman’s bed, his head bowed.
He looked up. “Hello fellows. The door was open so I took the liberty.”
“Hello Mr. Wolfenberger,” Warlock answered. He dropped his sack of clothes and laid the guitar on his bed. “Been here long?”
“Not long.” He removed his hat and smoothed his hair back. His eyes and smile reflected Wolfman’s. “I just came from a meeting with ‘the powers that be’. I thought I’d stop in and pick up some of Dale’s things but, you never know, he might come back and want them... I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?”
“Nothing,” Warlock said. “We don’t know where he could be.”
He stood up. Wolfman was taller. “It’s a bad business. The Dean of Students told me that my son was involved with radicals on campus. They found illegal drugs. I just can’t believe...”
“Not here!” Warlock said.
“No, no the building they took over. I think this thing was handled all wrong. I admit Dale has his impulsive side, but... this is just not like him.” He turned to me as if he was puzzled by my presence and held out his hand. “You must be...?”
“Jase. I’m Jase.”
“Of course, I should have known. Dale’s mentioned you. You’ve been a good friend. Well, I won’t keep you two . I’ve got to get back to Greencastle.” He slipped a couple of small white cards from his breast pocket and laid them on the bed . “If you hear anything, anything at all, don’t hesitate to call.”
“Okay, will do.” Warlock said.
“I know this is the time of life for letting go. You’re out from under the thumb of your parents. Stretch your wings, sure, sow your wild oats, but don’t be reckless. I’m not too worried about Dale, he has a habit of landing on his feet. But, remember, every action has a consequence. The things you do now can have repercussions on you for the rest of your lives. Well, sorry for the lecture, men,” he plunked his hat on his head, “take care.” And he walked out.
“Where do you think Wolf is?” I asked before I left with my clothes.
“Beats me, but like his dad said, he’ll come through. He always does.”
Hunter wasn’t in, which was no surprise. I emptied my laundry bag on the bed and pulled the odd pieces of Warlock’s out and stuffed the rest on the shelves of my closet. Then I noticed the note taped on the phone box. ‘Verlaine called wants you to call her. (Bet she needs it bad! Ha!) Hunter’. I wadded it up and sat down and dialed.
“ Picasso, here, do you want one eye or three?”
“Jase! Hunter is such an asshole! I hate it when he answers.”
“He just wants a reaction. What’s happening? I bet I can guess. You want your portrait finished.”
“Your telepathy is astounding. Can you?”
“I’ll be right over. But I can’t stay too long, Warlock wants me to go with him when he meets Jorma...”
“‘Yor-ma’ Kaukonen?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“ Why do you need to go, to hold his hand? He won’t play very well that way.”
“Quit! This is a big deal for him.”
“I was just joking!”
“I’ll meet up with you two, anyway, when the concert starts. Where do you think you’ll be?”
“Ingrid will be there, I won’t.”
“But I thought...”
“Well, something came up. Are you coming over here or not? I want my painting finished so I can frame it.”
The memory of the ropy veins on the back of the professor’s hand as it rubbed her knee flared in my brain and pushed my imagination down alleys I didn’t want it to go.
“Okay, okay, I’m on my way.” I cradled the receiver.
How could I ask her? Why did it bother me, a man twice her age? Why was I so hung up? It was her life. More questions tripped through my mind as I walked to her dorm. And there was Ingrid. We gave each other what we needed, no promises, no future, just an end. My crowded mind skipped me to their room like a pebble across water.
Verlaine shut her door and clicked the lock behind me. I saw the gold Kennedy pin on the cork board of her closet door. It was adorned with beads and ribbons, four small white origami flowers bordered it.
“The pin! That’s great!”
She bunched her green dress over her head and dropped it to the floor. “Thanks,” she said, “It’s a moment I’ll cherish.” She stood, briefly naked beside me, then crossed the room and arranged herself into her familiar pose on the bed. “This all right?”
“Let me see.” I moved the easel over and studied the painting, looked at her, glanced at it again. “May I?” I asked as I approached her.
“Go ahead.”
I pulled her knee out farther and pushed her right elbow up higher on the pillow, fanned her hair out with my fingers. Her eyes sparkled under the light. I stepped back.
“Satisfied?” She smiled.
“No, but it’ll do.”
I sat down and laid out my pallette, concentrated on the smears of pigment. I trusted my eye and that was all. I willed my brush to use the right colors to pull the painting together. Into the muted colors of the background, I mixed Thalo Green and violet to push it further back. I worked close to an hour before I said, “Take a look.”
She slid off the bed and pulled on the well-worn shift. “Is it finished?” she asked, as she leaned on my back.
“You tell me.”
“You’re the artist. It looks fine.” She was beside me.
“Then it’s finished.”
“Here, scoot over.” She bumped her hip against mine and I gave up half the chair.
“So what exactly did you do?” She tossed her hair back.
“Little things really, I softened the outline of your arms behind your head. I gave your knee a more defined edge, mixed in some Cadmium Yellow Light with Flake White for a warmer skin tone.
“Okay. Yes. I can see that.” She let a laugh die behind her lips. “ Not really. But, Jase, I love it. It’s me.”
I felt her warm breath by my ear.
“Let me pay you.” She stood up.
“How-how’s Professor Goodman?” I stared at her bare toes on the carpet.
“What?”
I licked my lips, “How...” I looked up. Her features were set like a spring-loaded trap.
“Why do you need to know?” Her voice was as flat as a painted line.
“What was going on between you two... at the Kennedy speech.”
“It’s really none of your business. We’re just friends.”
“Just friends with a professor? Are you sleeping with him?”
She crossed her arms tightly in front of her chest. “I said, it’s none of your damn business!” She skimmed her hair back from her face. “ I’m sorry, Jase, but why are you doing this? What I do with my life is my concern!”
“What is he, twice your age?”
“Are you jealous?! Is that it? That’s it, isn’t it!? There’s nothing between you and me, Jase. You should know that. I made that clear from the beginning. God, you’re so hung up! You and your bourgeoisie conventions!” She strode across the room and pulled open her leather bag that hung on the back of a chair. “I thought you were different from other guys. Fifty dollars? Right?”
“You don’t need...”
She ran back to me and stuffed the wadded bills down the front of my pants. “You agreed! I pay you for the portrait! Don’t spoil it, Jase!” Her fingers hooked around my belt buckle. “I care for you. You should care enough for me to let me live my own life, how I choose to live it.”
“I just wanted...”
“It’s not about what you want. It’s about what I want.” She let go, then looked at me, her eyes luminous and hard. “I don’t need to explain to you why I do the things I do. Some things have no reasons, you just let them be. You understand? ”
I nodded and lifted her painting from the easel and passed it to her, then I collapsed the metal tripod and set it aside. I cleaned my palette with a rag, then slid it into the paint box.
I stood up. “I-I’m sorry for what I said.”
“Don’t be. It’s your trip. We all take different paths, Jase, but we all end up in the same place. Can you dig that?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I unlocked the door.
“Thanks, for my painting. I feel blessed. I really do.”
I looked at her, “Really?”
She grabbed my waist and looked at me, our eyes close enough to collide, “Really, you dumb shit!”
In the hall, I didn’t head for the elevator, but on a hunch went in the opposite direction, toward the floor lounge. Ingrid lay on the couch, her legs drawn up, a book spread-open on her stomach. Her head rested at a peaceful angle on the cushioned armrest. She was asleep, the lights off, the blinds pulled, the room was steeped in morning shadow. I knelt beside her and studied her serene face. It was like a reflection on the surface of a lake, you dare touch it and it ripples away. I unhooked the clasps on my paint box and laid it open. I slid out my pad of paper and unrolled my charcoal sticks from the tissue. I went to a window and levered the blinds so a diffuse light fell across her face. Her lashes fluttered but her lids squeezed tighter. I sat on the floor close to her and let her face fill my eyes. My charcoal pressed to the paper like a whisper, as it pulled forth her delicate brow, her strong sharp nose, the hollows beneath her cheek bones. I smoothed and blended everything with my thumb, her slender lips, the delicate line of her jaw. Were we most possessed of God’s image when we slept. If I could hold a moment in a sketch, a likeness, perfect without loss, then everything I touched would be safe. I pressed my hand to her hair, soft as shadow. Would I ever know the depths she contained? Everything about her seemed impenetrable to me, like a virgin forest . I closed my pad of paper and put it in my paint box and snapped the lid shut. And what of Verlaine...was she a meadow,then? Yes, a sun-bleached meadow, grassy and flowered in thistles; butterflies and snakes, open ground; exposed terrain a frightened animal would flee across to get to the safety of the woods.
Ingrid’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused and puzzled.
“Jason, it’s you?”Her voice was still thick with sleep. “What-you are here? Are you finished with painting?”
“Yes. It is finished, done, finito. Fin! Yes?”
Her smile was a dim slash of light in the gloom. She raised up on her elbows and her book slid to the floor. I leaned forward and kissed her.
“That was nice.”
“A fool kiss.”
“What?” A small vertical crease formed between her brows. “ Non. Nice.”
“Maybe.” She swung her legs to the floor and rubbed her hair. I sat down beside her. “You up for Jefferson Airplane?”
“Rock and roll, yes!” Her eyes brightened. “B.B. King! Byrds! Jefferson Airplane! All of them! That local group, Saloom-Sinclair, is good, too.”
“It doesn’t start ‘til two. Before that I have to go with Warlock so he can audition for Jorma, uh-Yor-ma, their lead guitar.”
“He will play with them? Make a record?”
“Could be. Do you want to meet me somewhere at the left side of the stage, at two?”
“ This is fine. I will be there. I will wear my top with the red and white stripes. But, you do not be late, okay? I do not like to be alone in crowds.”
“Even in a crowd...”
Her lips drew together wordlessly forming her incomprehension.
“Lonesome, lonely, even in a crowd. Remember?”
“Ah!” She tilted her head back, enlightenment swept over her face like sunrise across a valley. “Yes!”
“Which? Lonesome or lonely?”
She paused then said, “Lonely.” And I kissed her and she smiled and I walked her back to their room. Ingrid noticed the changes immediately and was as pleased as Verlaine. She hugged me and Verlaine smiled. I finally went to the elevator.
When I got to Warlock’s room, his clothes, and some of mine, were scattered over his bed and he was replacing the strings on his guitar.
“ I thought I better re-string this thing for a sweeter sound. Some of your things were mixed in with mine,” he motioned with his head, “ go ahead and grab them, if you want.”
“I noticed.” I dropped on Wolfman’s bed.
After he wound the E string around the peg, he tuned it, holding down a string and picking the two in tandem, turning the key until the note hung long and pure in the silence surrounding it. He strummed some chords and did some runs until he was satisfied, then he sheathed the guitar in it’s case and set it upright at the end of his bed. He hopped off and rummaged around in one of his desk drawers until he found what he was looking for.
He threw me a towel. “Stuff this under the door and get your ass over here.”
I slipped my sandals off, climbed on his bed and folded my legs. He sat cross-legged next to me as he lit the joint and took a long toke, then passed it.
I held the doobie to my lips and siphoned the smoke into my lungs.
Warlock exhaled and coughed into his fist. “I need it for my nerves, man.”
I nodded my head.
“Put something mellow on.”
I slid off the bed and thumbed through the albums. I found Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’ and noticed Wolfman’s name was scrawled on the cover in blue ink. I set the tone arm down on the record and resumed my position. I inhaled the sweet smoke. Maybe I needed this too. What was the old blues song, ‘I Got Trouble in Mind’? I let my breath out reluctantly, a thin flag of white smoke. He smiled at me, his eyes smoke-narrowed. He held out the joint pinched between his index finger and thumb as if he were signing, ‘okay’. My lips nipped at the short piece of sparking paper, as I stuffed its hot smoke inside me once more. What was the scientific name for those big white high-piled clouds, cirrus, cumulus, strata-cumulus? Yeah, that was the one. I felt very strata-cumulus right now. The roach was harsh. I took a last drag. When the white hot ash fell, like a tiny comet, to my big toe, I jumped. Warlock roared, his face turned red as he laughed and coughed at the same time. I couldn’t help but join him, as I squeezed my red toe.
I woke up on the floor. The hands on the clock on the desk spiraled and cannibalized the black numerals that circled like carrion birds.
“We need to go! I jumped up. “ The time!”
“Shit! The time!” He leaped up and grabbed his guitar and slung it over his shoulder before he realized he needed a shirt, and grabbed one.
We were half-way down the hall, his shirt half on, when he shoved the guitar into my arms and sprinted for the restroom. I cracked the door and heard him retching in one of the toilet stalls. He walked out pale, splashed some water on his face at one of the sinks and drank from the faucet.
“You, okay?” I asked.
“Sure. Finest kind,” he said, as he took back his guitar.
The sidewalk rolled out straight as a stick of gum. In front of us a group of four girls cut across the street. The flow of students continued to increase, a trickle became a stream, a stream, a river of bodies, all flowing toward the stadium.
“So who do you know on the Union Board?”
“Someone you don’t. Let’s leave it at that.”
“It’s a girl isn’t it? She got you in so you could play for the Airplane. Right? Am I right? ”
“Jase, what difference does it make? We’re getting in to see the band.”
“You’re getting in. I’m just tagging along.” I stared at the orange paisley top of the girl in front of us. “Grass makes everything so vivid! The colors!”
“You’re right, okay.”
“What’s her name?”
“Debbie.” He shifted the guitar case on his shoulder. “That’s all you’re getting.”
“Yes, sir!” I saluted, and he punched my arm.
“Keep walking.”
Students overflowed the track area in front of the stage and were washing up into the stands. Metal scaffolding stood at all four corners and supported a large canvas roof over a stage area cluttered with stacks of speakers and amps. Behind it were several large white tour buses, with solitary wide red stripes wrapped around them. The whole area was surrounded by shoulder high chicken wire. Clusters of V.I.P.’s stood, lanyards with passes dangled from their necks, as they clutched paper cups in their hands.
“How do we get in?”
Warlock peered intently through the fence and ignored me. Then he jumped up and down and waved his arm over his head. He was hailing someone on the other side, most likely the mysterious Debbie.
A dark-haired girl in a pink top and tight slacks that exposed a band of bare waist, ran up to the wire. A white card jerked around her neck spelling out, ‘Union Board Promotions’ in black letters.
“You’re here! What took you! I was just with them! Are you Jase?” She glanced at me. “Hi, Jase, I’m Debbie. Follow me.”
We stepped through a make-shift opening in the fence. A cop that looked like a parody of a cop stood at the entrance, his shiny black-billed cap pulled low over large obsidian sunglasses. He had us check in before we could proceed. As we passed, groups of students clustered around various waylaid performers. I saw Clarence White of the Byrds and Paul Kantner surrounded. B.B. King dressed in pale blue from head to toe was off to the side posing with an admirer.
Debbie led us to the white tour bus and knocked on the narrow curved door.
“Yeah?!” Someone yelled from inside.
The door clicked open and a soup of smells spilled out. The tall rangy figure of Jorma Kaukonen, the Airplane’s lead guitarist, filled the passageway . He was wearing a bright red poncho fringed in blue. His hair billowed out, majestic as a lion’s mane, and framed his long angular face.
“Oh yeah, righteous! Climb aboard and let’s hear what you can do.” He looked past Debbie to Warlock and his guitar.
Warlock looked at me, took a deep breath, then placed his foot on the lowest step. I followed him. Jack Casady, the bassist, slouched on a bench seat to my left . He was hard to miss in an orange tie-dye shirt and blonde shoulder-length hair that framed a soft face. He wore round lensed glasses that resembled twin suns in eclipse. At the very back, there sat Grace Slick behind a small fold down table, a clear bottle and a glass in front of her. I remembered that quote, ‘the voice that launched a thousand trips’. Her hair was scooped on top of her head, flowing to her shoulders, dark as my deepest dream. Even from this distance I felt the beams from her burning blue eyes. I tried hard not to stare.
Warlock had pulled his guitar out and was busy tuning it between talk of Gibsons with Jorma, ‘Jumbos’ and ‘Trojans’, ‘L’s and ‘J’s and assorted numbers. To me it was another wall, like French, I didn’t choose to climb. I sat in one of the seats opposite and something poked me. It was a guitar pick. I pocketed it.
“Hey, Jorma!” It was Grace. “Who are these guys?”
“This is...”
“Warlock.” He raised his arm.
“Who’s pretty boy?”
I looked around. She couldn’t be talking about me. Hunter could be considered handsome, I was just average. “Jase.” I finally answered.
“You have a last name, pretty?”
My stomach clenched like a fist. Why would Grace Slick care who I was, let alone be interested in my last name. “Jase, just Jase.”
“Well, Jase, just Jase, come back here and keep me company, while your friend plays. I enjoy meeting the fans.”
Emotions churned inside me, expectation and fear, excitement and dread. The aisle and seats were littered with cans and wrappers and articles of exotic clothing. She smiled at me, her eyes were razors; her white teeth, uneven. I sat down beside her.
“I don’t bite, Jase, just Jase. Scoot over here!”
She was stunning, her face perfect, her eyes a blue I had never seen. She wore a loose fitting white tunic embroidered all over with stars and designs. The Vodka bottle that sat on the table was half-empty.
“You dig our music, Jase, just Jase?”
“Yeah, you sing really good.” What a stupid thing to say, how stupid. And why didn’t I say ‘well’?
“Thank you, Jase, just Jase. But I don’t how good those two are, up there. She nodded to Jack and Jorma. I don’t think they hold up their end.”
“Oh, no, you’ve got to be...” I caught myself. She was putting me on. She smiled at me as she tipped her glass to her lips. Not pot, although I smelled it, not pills, or acid, but Vodka, plain old alcohol. I heard Warlock stumble over a chord and apologize. From the stage outside, a band boomed through a song unfamiliar to me .
“Your friend tripped up, Jase, just, J...”
“Jase! I’m...call me Jase, you don’t have to...
“I stand corrected. Did it bother you? I won’t do it anymore I promise. I just wanted to have a little fun. You like fun, don’t you...Jase?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”
“What type of fun?”
“What do you mean?”
“You really are dense. What do you think I mean?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know, hanging out with friends.”
“Do you have an old lady?”
That question again. “There’s someone.”
“Do you fuck?”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what I had heard.
“Are you deaf, too, or just stupid? Do you ball her? Do you two fuck?”
My mouth went dry. The sweat across my body formed a second skin. Why was she asking me this? Why did she want to know?
“Do you have a big thick one or a pencil dick?” Her eyes locked on mine and she bit her lip, as her hand clamped around my crotch.
I jerked in pain and surprise. “Oww!”
She laughed, “I throw the little ones back,” and released her hold. “Now get the fuck out! There’s that stupid look again. I’ll say it slower. Get-the-fuck-out or I’ll call security!”
I jumped up dazed, shaken, not sure what had just happened, and staggered to the front of the bus. They had stopped playing to watch the scene play out.
“Grace,” Kaukonen yelled, “what the fuck are you doing?!”
“Mind your fucking business, Jorma!”
“ Shut it, Grace! Sorry, man, when she climbs in the bottle...”
I just kept walking, wanting to get off that bus, away from her.
“I’ll catch up with you later, Jase.” It was Warlock. “Thanks for everything!”
I stumbled down the black rubber steps. The sunlight seared my eyes. I wanted it to cauterize my brain. There were more people standing around than before. It must be near to show time. I strained to get through the congestion and to the opening in the fence. I slipped through, but not before the blue city policeman’s once over.
All I wanted to do was find Ingrid, hold Ingrid, fill my eyes with Ingrid. I felt dizzy in the confetti swirl of students. I looked and looked.
“Jason!” An arm waved, a flash of red and white, like a flag under siege. I wedged myself into the throng and didn’t let my eyes lose sight of her face until our fingers touched. When I at last hugged her, it was like salve on a bee sting.
“It was good? Warlock played for the Airplane? He played well? Tell me all, I want to hear!”
“He’s still on the bus. Yeah, I think it’s going, okay.”
“You did not have to leave. You could have stayed with him. I would wait.”
“No, it was too much for me. And you’re here. You’re here!” I kissed her and held her to me. “Let’s find a space to sit if we can.”
A local group was on stage, the one whose music had invaded the tour bus, thrashing guitars and thudding drums, overlaid with the shredded vocals of the lead singer.
Ingrid leaned over to me. “You like? I do not like.”
“They’re not much, all bread and no meat.”
Ingrid sat down beside me, then adjusted her position slightly and laid her head down in my lap, her eyes squinted closed to the sun. She laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You,” she said. “You are funny.”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead. Still blind she pursed her lips and I bent further and our lips crossed. I stroked her warm hair that lapped across my thigh.
“This is nice.”
“Yes,” I answered, as I gazed at her face, so content. She didn’t sit up until B.B. King stepped upon the stage, a business man arriving for work. Except his job was to play the blues on a hollow body, cherry red, Gibson electric guitar, he called, ‘Lucille’.
“B.B. King, I love,” Ingrid said. “‘The Thrill is Gone’, he will play this? He must!”
His band included a tight horn section and a bass and drum that percolated behind the staccato bursts from his guitar. He picked the silver strings in short stabs, his eyes squeezed shut, his face contorted in pain or ecstasy, or both, then cast his arm down until he’d got a verse out, then pick the strings again, each note a dialog, each song a special dish in a banquet. He didn’t disappoint Ingrid. With her head down, she swayed to, ‘The Thrill is Gone’, her fingers snapping in rhythm above her head. At the end of his set she stood and applauded loud and long.
There was the interval between groups. B.B. King’s roadies took down their equipment while the roadies for the Byrds scurried across the stage to set up. The stage area was a clot of people. In the confusion I thought I saw Warlock off to the side, he was with Debbie, and they looked like they were arguing, but bodies pressed in to obscure my view, and a moment later, if it was them, they were gone.
Roger McGuinn, the lead guitar and singer, for the Byrds strode across the stage in a black turtle neck, and faded jeans, like a gunslinger. Applause and shouts from the crowd followed him as he headed for his 12-string Rickenbacker. If B.B. King’s guitar talked, Roger McGuinn’s chords rang and jangled.
The group had just come out of their spaceman phase and were heavy into their country-rock period, although they still played the occasional Dylan cover. A brief introduction and they launched skyward with an extended instrumental foray into ‘Eight Miles High’. For a too brief, hour, McGuinn’s nasal voice sang of spacemen and chestnut mares, a tambourine man and a truck stop girl. His guitar wove them all into a seamless whole. They had to play two encores before the audience let them leave.
As the afternoon dipped toward early evening, Jefferson Airplane finally began to set up. Hunter and Joey emerged from the crowd and joined us.
“Hey, buddy!” Hunter sat down beside me.“You two dig this concert? Pretty awesome, so far.”
“B.B. King was the best!” Ingrid said. “I love American blues.”
Hunter elbowed my arm and whispered, “Glad you caught her. About time!”
I looked at him and half-smiled.
“Did you hear that Marty got busted and they’re going on without him?” Joey said. She swiped at her long hair and leaned into Hunter.
“No! What for?!”
“What do you think? Drugs! Pot.”
“Bummer. Maybe that’s why.”
“Why, what?”
“Oh, nothing.” I was thinking about Grace Slick’s behavior that I had witnessed first hand.
“How did Warlock do?” Hunter asked.
“Okay, I guess.”
“You don’t know? Weren’t you two together?”
“Well, right, yes. But I sort of got kicked off the bus.”
“What! How? Why?”
“It’s a long story I really don’t want to get into.”
“I have to know, come on, buddy!”
At that point the crowd noise rose to a roar, and everyone stood. The Airplane filed onto the stage.
“I’ll tell you later,” I shouted, as I stood.
They tuned up. Paul Kantner, lantern jawed, sandy haired, in wire frame glasses, wore a denim work shirt and a bullet laden bandoleer, for a guitar strap. Jack Casady in his orange tie-dye adjusted the knobs on his amplifier. Jorma wasn’t wearing the red poncho he had on earlier, just a white t-shirt. Grace looked cool. Cool? Cold as marble, her face, a mask. She turned and took a drink from a glass sitting on a stool behind her. I now wondered if it was water. She announced to the crowd that Marty Balin, their lead singer, had just been busted for marijuana and wouldn’t be able to make the show. We would just have to put up with her. I already had and lost. Then she conferred with Paul Kantner, looked over her shoulder to Jorma and Jack. She nodded and Jorma thrust his guitar, like a shield against his amp and ripped feedback, that snarled and churned, from the speaker, as he rotated his guitar. Familiar notes began to emerge, bolstered by Spencer Dryden’s marshal beat and Jack’s fluid bass line. Grace’s siren’s wail crested the waves of sound with the opening lyrics to ‘The Ballad of You and Me and Poohneil’.Casady was intent, hunched over his instrument, his long fingers, plucking out a fluid, bass line, as his eyebrows twitched up and down to the rhythm. Jorma assaulted the song with a barrage of notes torn from his guitar. The music roared around Grace. She stood implacable, holding the microphone to her lips with one hand, while the other was pressed to her ear.
The crowd was still on their feet and now dancing. Ingrid faced me and yanked my arms up and stretched them out like wings. She let loose my wrists, when she knew I would fly, and our arms undulated in unison, our eyes raptured as our bodies bumped together. She smiled, and laughed at me.
I heard Hunter call, “Wow, Jase, I never thought you had it in you! Go, man!”
The song stumbled to a ragged end, Dryden’s scatter shot sticks, like fat exclamations, beat it down.
Our arms flopped over each other’s shoulders, Ingrid’s face bobbing back and forth until her lips caught mine. Her cheeks shiny with sweat.
“Jase, it is fun dancing, is it not?”
“Yes...something...I needed.” I was out of breath.
Hunter smiled. “We’re leaving, Buddy. Catch you later, okay?” He raised his open hand, his arm around Joey.
“So soon?”
“We’ll still be here. Some of my rugby buddies are in the stands.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I want to hear that story, don’t forget! Ingrid,” he called to her, “ take care of my man here! You understand?”
She gave him a dismissive gesture. “We take care of each other!”
The Airplane drove into, ‘Won’t You Try/Saturday Afternoon’ and ‘Fat Angel’. Kaukonen and Casady’s sound was a sonic force intricate and dense. Grace again stood center stage for ‘Greasy Heart’, a song I now liked less. I had glimpsed the mind behind the lyrics. They now cut sharper, seemed harder. Her voice was like an iron fist in a satin glove.
Things slowed with a long blues workout between Jack and Jorma. His guitar rode high and soaring on the deep swell of Jack’s bass. My palm slipped under Ingrid’s shirt to rub her back slowly. Her fingers curled around my left thigh, as the music vibrated through us. Then, from the stage, Jack’s fingers tapped out a slow bolero beat on his bass, the opening notes for ‘White Rabbit’. Ingrid squeezed my thigh and our eyes met, trailing our secret smiles. I wondered if she noticed what she was doing to me.
“‘One pill makes you larger...”
Of course girls noticed those things, didn’t they? Why did Grace Slick say what she said to me. It wasn’t true.
“‘and one pill makes you small’...”
I had looked around, and I was average. But that was okay. More than okay, really.”
“‘and the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all...’”
It was just a game with her. Don’t read anything into it, just a game. She was bored and drunk.
“‘Go ask Alice...”
I put my arm around Ingrid and pulled her close and let the song carry us. It picked up more power. The beat propelled Grace’s vocals into full frenzy, and she exhorted the crowd, ‘feed your head’, and the drum cracked like cannonade and the Airplane slammed into their final song,‘Somebody to Love’. It ripped everyone off the ground, to stand one final time in unison, to a shared anthem. The sound roared across the people filled stadium, spilled out across sidewalks and grass berms, streets; reverberated off the sides of the limestone buildings, saturated the campus, Grace’s voice, hard as metal, bright as light, soaring over it all. Then a shouted goodbye, waves, and like a circus, gone. The Airplane back on their bus. The stage once again swarmed with workers, now disconnecting plugs and rolling up cords.
Students sluiced out of the stadium. I did not let Ingrid go, our hands together, white knuckled .
“This was fantastic, yes!?”
“Most, if not all, the concert definitely. I wonder where Warlock went to?”
“What do you mean by this?”
“I said the concert was great. I just thought Warlock would meet up with us, tell us how it went.”
“He will be around. Let us eat something.”
“Great, idea! Do you want to catch a movie, too?”
“Fellini! Do you know 81/2 is playing?”
“No, but I know 7 3/4ths.”
“You, tease!” She balled up her fist and wagged it in my face, then pushed me.
“Not, tonight. I had, ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’, more in mind.”
“Oof! Hollywood,” She laughed.
“I’m feeling like a submarine at Pasquale’s. Come on.”
It wasn’t long before we found ourselves at the ivy-covered pizzaria, and shared a sub in a cozy wooden booth. Afterwards we wandered around Kirkwood until time for the first showing of, ‘Butch Cassidy’.
She didn’t say much in the theater, except slouch down in the seat next to me, warm, and soft, and close. After the movie she had plenty to say as we walked back onto the campus.
“Your Paul Newman, he is too...” She rotated her hands in front of her mouth, trying to spool the right word out, before giving up, “too perfect. Jean Paul Belmondo is more real, more masculine. He has a...”
“Smashed in face,” I helpfully added.
“No! No, no, no. More sexually dangerous.” She lit a Gitane.
“Maybe, I should have somebody punch me in the face.”
She coughed, laughing .
I took her hand. “Are you happy?”
“Oui, and you?”
“Yes, I think I am. Look, there’s the Well House, remember?”
“Oui, yes. I think people are most happy there...if for a little bit.” She half-smiled her eyes lowered.
“It was good.”
“Oui.”
“Listen, let’s go back to my room? I could put on some Airplane.”
“No. I think you will come to my room. But, I have to call first.”
It was that simple. I guess my heart beat a little faster, as I considered all that her invitation implied.
She called from a phone booth. I heard Verlaine on the other end before Ingrid folded the door shut. She laughed and talked low in a conspiratorial tone, as she glanced over her shoulder at me. Afterwards, she folded the door open and smiled. “It is okay!”
We stood silent in the elevator on the ride up to her floor. As we walked down the hall, I put my hand on the small of her back. She unlocked her door, then locked it behind her when we were inside. Verlaine’s portrait was leaning against a book shelf on her desk, Ingrid walked over to it and picked it up by the edges with her palms and leaned it against the back of Verlaine’s chair facing the wall.
She walked back to me, where I stood in the center of the room. Her hands by her sides. “So,” was all she said.
I placed my hands on her hips. She tilted her head to one side and leaned into me and rested her chin on my shoulder. I curled my arms around her.
She went over and switched off the light. Only the parking lot lights below suffused the room in their dim orangeness.
“Take off your shirt,” she said softly.
My fingers clutched the back of my shirt and skinned it over my head. The room felt cool around me. “Now you, fair is fair.”
“You do it,” she replied.
She stretched her arms up and I slipped her shirt over her head and let it fall on top of mine. Her back felt warm under my cool fingers, as I pressed her soft breasts to my chest. I kissed her and she kissed back, a small animal, cornered. Two steps and we turned and fell back on the dark blanket of her bed.
“Not all the way, Jason, no. You must understand this.” Her palms pressed against my chest.
“Okay.”
“You are here because I trust you. You understand?”
“Yes.”
Her hands slipped around me and once again our skin touched. She was like she was earlier, thousands of hours ago, when I sketched her, her skin the pale, her nipples shadows. I wanted to map her contours with my lips. I felt her hands slip from my back and slide to the front of her pants, open them. I helped them off of her, before we toppled together again. My head rested beneath her chin, her fingers tangled in my hair. She caressed my head and pressed down, the pressure gentle, but sure, she guided me lower, lower.
Softly, she murmured over and over in French. “Mon petit chien. Mon chiot,” as she stroked and petted my hair all the while, until her words broke apart into the sound of vowels only and her hands pressed to the sides of my skull. I only existed in my five senses. My hands resting on her thighs felt her tremor, her heat beneath me. Then she pulled me quickly up, as if I were a drowned man, and wouldn’t stop kissing me in her embrace. Her arms fell away and she rolled me over on my back.
“You don’t ha...” I began.
“S-h-h. Fair is fair. Oui?” Her smile reflected what little light there was. She divided my chest with her index finger and I involuntarily shivered. She laughed then took me in her hand. I closed my eyes, as the curtain of her hair fell across her face.
I pulled up my pants. “ I will help you sneak down the back stairs. It will be safe,” she said, as she helped me on with my shirt. She faced me. “Mon chiot,” she repeated, as she brushed my hair.
I pushed her arm down and kissed her.
“Jason. Do not see this for more than what it is,” she said. Her eyes gleamed in the dim light. “Now come, I will lead you.”
She wrapped herself in a yellow raincoat, clicked the door open, and peeped into the hallway like a spy. She motioned me with her arm and we walked rapidly down the hall to the exit door. She held the door open and peered down the stairwell, she listened, then again motioned me. Our feet beat a rapid tattoo that echoed off the empty stairs until we were at the ground floor out of breath. The security lights lit the shrubbery just outside the door. She turned to me.
“This was nice, again. You are special.” She gave me a peck on the cheek. “Now, go. It is late.”
“Ingrid, I...”
“Go, go, go. I will see you tomorrow.” With that, the door clicked locked behind me, Ingrid on the other side of the glass, huddled in her yellow coat, blew me a kiss and waved goodbye.
The night air was chill. I walked back to the dorm in my own embrace.
My hand was shaking when I put my key in the outside door and turned it. I went straight to Warlock’s room, although I could have slept in my own tonight. His room was the aftermath of an explosion, clothes everywhere, books looked like they had been thrown against the wall. Warlock was sprawled across his bed, still dressed, his breathing rhythmic. His beautiful acoustic Gibson had a big gash in the side, the wood splintered, two strings sprung in crazy curls from the fret board. What had happened? What had transpired to cause this? I was too tired, suddenly to care. I lay down on Wolfman’s bed, pulled a blanket over me and dreamed of catastrophes.