Second Chance (5 page)

. . . that's right,
Sharla
—
the
apartment, site of uncounted late night political discussions, plots to overthrow the world, and Jesus, how many times did you call me a honky
muthafuckah
? I hope that Cleveland is as dull as it used to be, and that you're continuing to imbue your students with those good, home
cookin
', revolutionary ideals . . .

. . . So, if you can break away from your power lunches for a weekend,
damn
, but I'd love to see you again. To help make an offer you can't refuse, enclosed is a ticket from L.A. to Pittsburgh, leaving Saturday morning, going back Sunday afternoon, so I'd keep you away from your new bride for as short a time as possible. Curly, I'm sorry I can't invite her too, but since she wasn't part of the original mob of crazies, she'll have to swelter in the L.A. sun alone. I know making these reservations is forward of me, but if I didn't do it would you come? This way, you put me to the bother of canceling your ticket . . .

. . . and I know you wouldn't want to do that. So hop that plane, Eddie. You probably have to play the organ Sunday morning, but they even gave
slaves
a day off, right? . . .

. . . I really hope you'll come. If you've got any of those old funky clothes left (and they still fit),
wear
them. If not, let me know (and your sizes) and I'll furnish you with a wardrobe. Yes,
dammit
, I
have
thought of everything. So come, huh? It won't be the same without you . . .

. . . Please try to come . . .

. . . Please come . . .

. . . Please . . .

Woody had his replies by the end of April. He had invited eleven people, of whom seven agreed to come. Three others had commitments and sent their regrets, along with their unused tickets. The only news Woody had of the fourth was his returned letter marked, "Moved. Left no forwarding address."

The first to accept had been
Sharla
Jackson, who called him two days after he had mailed the invitations, and asked if the "honky
muthafuckah
flute player" was at home. He recognized the voice and the inflection immediately, laughed, and was delighted when she said she wouldn't miss it, even if her transportation was derived from "a running dog capitalist musician."

"God, it's great to hear your voice," Woody said. "Even if you do sound a little different."

"I don't sound as black as when I went to school, do I?" He heard her laugh gently. "Well, I'm a school teacher now, baby. Besides, a lot of that was put-on. After all, my dad was a doctor in Forest Hills."

"What? You used to tell us your dad was a janitor, and your mom was a cleaning woman."

"It made better PR, okay? You didn't suspect when my folks came to homecoming in that big old Buick Riviera?"

"Well, no, I mean . . ."

"You mean
all
blacks drove those great big cars, don't you?”

“You're still baiting me,
Sharla
."

“Just you wait till the party, white boy."

Alan and Diane Franklin had been delighted at the prospect of the party, but insisted the only way they would come was if they could pay their own expenses. Woody refused, explaining that he had to pay for everyone so those who
couldn't
afford it wouldn't feel like charity cases, and the Franklins agreed.

The same day the Franklins called, Woody also heard from Eddie Phelps, the organist at the Fifth Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He told Woody he had six weekends a year free, and this, God damn it, was going to be one of them.

The next letter Woody got was from Curly Rider in L.A., who ended:

>
Linda is pissed off that she's not invited, but when I told her there wouldn't be any producers of teen beach movies (she's an actress,
don'tcha
know), she felt better. Then when I told her that the evening would consist of a bunch of old farts like myself reminiscing through dope-wasted brains and telling each other why we haven't
really
sold out, she decided that another Saturday night around the pool looked pretty fucking good. Kids today . . .
sheesh
.

Woody kept trying to write, immersed himself in sixties music, kept practicing on the half dozen wind instruments he had mastered. Sometimes late at night, unable to sleep, he played records by the Doors, or Jefferson Airplane, or the Beatles, and created fantasias on the tunes with his oboe, its voice piercing the darkness like a laser through ice.

But none of the tunes that he wrote completely satisfied him, except for the one he had heard in his head on the stairs to the apartment. The others lacked what he could only think of as authenticity.

Two weeks before the party he flew to his parents' home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They had lived in the same house for the past forty years, and prided themselves on never throwing anything out. This was the first time that Woody found their pack rat mentality an advantage, for his years in college still existed in a corporeal form. All his back issues of
Rolling Stone
, piles of the Iselin student newspaper, the paperbacks he had bought by the armful from The Alt's used bins—they were all there in the large room above the old two car garage.

There too was the stereo he had in college, a little Panasonic component set which he had played through his sophomore year until Frank and his larger Magnavox/Garrard combination moved in with him.

In a back closet, he found his old TV, a GE twelve-inch encased in a plastic, red-orange cabinet. He plugged in the cord and turned it on, but nothing happened. Good, he thought. Who wanted to watch MTV or a film from the eighties when you were recreating the sixties? It would help set the scene, that was all.

The crowning touch was the cardboard tubes that still held the posters he had
Plasti
-tacked on the apartment walls—a map of Middle-Earth, psychedelic Day-Glo landscapes, a Fillmore West poster advertising Big Brother and the Doors, and Keith's poster of Jesus with a gun. Woody had kept that one. It was hardly the thing to return to a pair of grief-stricken parents.

He felt relieved as he drove his father's big Ford from Scranton to Iselin. Now he wouldn't have to search all over for proper artifacts to help dress the apartment, but, more importantly, the things would be authentic, his own, the books and records and posters that were actually present when he and Frank and Keith had lived there.

His clothes should be all right too. He had tried on an assortment of things his mother had saved in plastic bags that hung like fat cocoons in the attic. They fit, though the bellbottoms were snug around the waist.

Several guests had written to tell him that they could dress themselves, while others, like Alan, said they had thrown away all the old stuff, and enclosed lists of sizes. Ron Dewey's wife was a costumer in the Bay area, and Woody had hired her to hit the thrift stores and outfit his party. At last report she was doing well. After all, if you couldn't find hippie duds in Berkeley, where else could you find them?

It was while Woody was hauling the stereo, TV, and piles of
Rolling Stone
into the old bookstore that the question hit him, and he sat on the dirty floor, gazed up at the ghosts of bookshelves on the otherwise bare walls, and asked himself aloud, "What the hell am I doing?"

The total re-creation he was after, his insistence that no one come who could not have been there in 1969, his concentration on this future night that was, after all, just a
party
, had blocked out the rest of the world. It was all he thought about. Even his music, when he deigned to write, was bent toward that night, that coming time, future yet past.

Did he really want to go back? Yes. Yes, he did, with a desire that bordered on savagery. But why? To try and see Tracy again, if only in his mind's eye?

And what would he do in that impossible occurrence? Tell her he loved her? Tell her what he had trouble telling himself—that she was the only woman he had ever really loved in his life? Tell her, or God, or fate, that he would do anything to have her back again?

Absurd. Ridiculous. He tried to tell himself that if she had lived and they had gotten married, the same thing would have happened to them that happened with Connie—disinterest, boredom, minor indiscretions, major affairs, cruel divorce.

But even as he told himself that, he knew it was a lie.

Lie or truth, it didn't matter. He would never see Tracy again. She wasn't coming to the party. Only the living were.

And maybe that would be enough. Maybe that was all he really wanted, a sharing, not only of a specific time and place, but of the mass consciousness they all once seemed to be a part of. Something that would, as he had told Frank and Chuck Hansen, give him new songs to sing, music to play. Maybe that would be enough.

But maybe, just maybe there would be more. Was it too much to hope for, he wondered, to recapture some of that magic?

Besides, he thought as he stood up and brushed the dust off his jeans, the party was going to happen now no matter what. Why not just wait and see if there was a little magic?

Chapter 5

By May 17th, Woody Robinson had made three transcontinental flights preparing for the party. On that day he made the fourth and last of them, and met Frank McDonald at the Pittsburgh Airport. Frank smiled when he saw Woody, and gave him a brief hug.

"
Friggin
' 6:45 flight out of Atlanta," Frank said. "Man, as a travel agent, you're a hell of an oboist."

"Have to get started early," Woody said. "We've got a lot to do before tomorrow night." Together they moved toward the Hertz counter. "So how's Judy?"

“Judy's great. Unlike some of us I could name, she absolutely loves her work."

"She still do any painting?"

"Stenciled the dining room a few months ago.
Distelfinks
, or some goddamned folksy design. Feel like we're eating in a barn."

Woody laughed. "You know what I mean. Any more of those ten foot wide canvases of red and orange?"

"What, like 'Napalm Study No. 7?' Shit, no. She's found her real talent—managing. Makes more money than I do now with that gallery of hers."

Woody picked up his keys, and they started toward the car. "Any avant-garde shows?"

"Jesus, no. I told you about it—'The
Buckhead
Folk Art Gallery,' man. You never remember a thing, Woody. You always have your head too full of music."

"Come on, I remember stuff."

"Okay, what's my daughter's name?"

Woody looked up quickly and grinned. "Easy. Henrietta.”

“You asshole," Frank said, laughing. "
Rebecca!
"

"I knew it ended with an A."

On the drive to Iselin, Frank told Woody more about Judy's gallery. Then he grudgingly answered Woody's questions about his own work.

"Selling instruments never changes, man. Seen one high school band room, you seen 'em all. I should've kept gigging. If I'd stuck with you I'd be a
decajillionaire
today."

"I'm not a
decajillionaire
, Frank."

"No, but
I'd
be."

Woody smiled. "You played a
helluva
trombone."

"Yeah, but how many New Age trombonists have you seen on
Downbeat's
charts?"

"
Downbeat
doesn't have charts, and I don't play New Age."

"No, but I
woulda
. Had the whole field to myself. Fame, fortune, sitting with
Arsenio
,
talkin
' jazz . . . I saw him with Miles a couple years ago, when Miles was still alive, talking embouchure, that little spitting thing he did? And old
Arsenio
says it's like spitting out a hair, the audience goes nuts. I don't believe the shit they get away with on TV."

"We only have ourselves to thank."

"Huh?"

"Our generation. We made 'fuck' an acceptable word."

"And fucking an acceptable act. Yeah, weren't we wonderful? You can trace the roots of AIDS and the drug problem right back to us
freewheelin
' youth of the sixties. And now our kids
gotta
live with the mess." Frank sighed. 'There are times I think we were shitheads, Woody."

"Everybody's a shithead when they're young. God willing, we're not quite as big shitheads when we get older."

Frank sighed. "I don't know. By that time it's too late anyway. What do they say, reap the wind,
sow
the whirlwind?”

“Other way around."

"Farming was never my strong suit."

When they reached Iselin, Woody drove to
Parini's
Realty, where they picked up several boxes of clothing Carla Dewey had shipped, as well as records and other artifacts Woody had sent from California.

"Good God," Frank said as they loaded the boxes into the trunk, "you having a party or a rummage sale?"

"Don't complain. Your clothes are in here somewhere."

"I just hope this friend of yours hasn't costumed me as a tie-dyed hippie."