Second Chance (9 page)

"God damn the pusher man," said Frank. "You know, Alan, of all of us who sold out, I think you sold out the most."

"And fuck you too."

"I'm serious. Is this the guy who campaigned for Gene McCarthy? Who wanted to become a liberal politician? So he moves to Washington and in a few years he's a whore for the tobacco industry."

"Hey, look—"

"Face it, pal, you're right out of
Doonesbury
."

Judy gripped her husband's knee. "You'll have to forgive Frank. He tends to get a little obnoxious after a few beers."

Curly raised both hands in the air, palms up. "Hey, let's mellow out, man. Like, everything is supposed to be groovy tonight, right?"

"And I guess you think you're really ‘groovy,' Frank," Alan said, leaning toward his tormentor. "What's so revolutionary about selling band instruments? I thought you were gonna be such a great musician—"

"Oh, Alan, don't be so bitchy," Eddie said. "You either, Frank. We all sold out. Me, I wanted to be the next E. Power Biggs. But I let crass money stand in the way of my artistic vision." He looked coolly at
Sharla
. "And what about the former president of the Huey Newton Fan Club here, who got her teaching degree to prepare little black children for the revolution? Teaching in the whitest suburb in Cleveland."

"I taught inner city, Eddie,"
Sharla
said. "Four years. So don't lay any guilt trip on me." Her hand trembled as she took a quick, angry drag on her cigarette.

"Sorry," Eddie said dryly. "
Sharla's
hereby registered as having paid her dues. She shall be presented with a gold-plated afro pick in appreciation." He looked around the room. "Anyone else want to justify their lives? How about you, Judy?" Eddie said, turning to the woman next to him. "You used to make statements with your art. So what are you saying now?"

"Plenty, Eddie. Folk art's just as valid an expression as that agitprop crap I used to do."

"Yes, but you don't even
do
the folk art, do you? Am I wrong, or haven't you become a capitalist gallery owner, feeding off the sweat of the workers?"

"How do you feed off sweat?" Curly said.

"Aw, this is horseshit," Alan said, standing up and pacing in the small space available. "What's this ideals crap anyway? Doesn't anybody stop to think that ideals are something that can't be met? Shit, that's why we call them
ideals
. But the world
ain't
ideal. It's hard and tough and it kicks your ass, and the more you think you're going to change it, the harder you get kicked. And the faster you learn you
can't
change it, the better off you are." He threw himself back down on the couch so that his legs flew up and the people on either side of him bounced.

"Alan's got a point," Frank said. "We were damn
naïve
about the way the world worked. We didn't realize all the compromises we'd have to—"

"Oh,
shit
."

They all turned and looked at Diane, sitting lotus position in the corner. "Can we just can all this crap? I can hear this on reruns of
thirtysomething
, you know? I came to have
fun
, guys. Hell, almost all of us would rather do something else. I live my life teaching kids how to bang on rhythm sticks for
crissake
. But for one night I just want to pretend I'm a dumb little hippie again, is that so much to ask?"

The room was silent, except for Judy Collin's sweet voice. Finally Frank spoke. "I'm sorry. You're right. We came to have fun, not to argue."

Eddie dropped his cigarette butt into a beer can and shook it. "I'm sorriest. I started it." He took a deep breath. "I suppose because my own life didn't turn out the way I wanted, I like to think that neither did anyone else's. I'm sorry, Alan. Sorry,
Sharla
. Judy . . .”

It was the first time Woody ever saw tears in Eddie Phelps's eyes, and the sight shook him. But the discomfort was replaced by affection as Judy gave Eddie a hug from one side,
Sharla
from the other. Eddie hugged them back.

"Yeah," said Curly, "it's really like being back there, if we let it be. Let's forget now, forget the hassles, the things we don't like." His voice was soothing, hypnotic, and Woody recalled
Curly's
acting ability. "I mean, listen to the music, look at this place, at each other, smell it,
feel
it. It hasn't been like this in over twenty years."

And it was true. The accusations that had filled the air were now replaced by a peace that Woody could feel from the relaxed set of his jaw down to his sandaled toes.

"Peace, love, freedom," Curly intoned, and the others smiled in spite of self-knowledge and knowledge of the world, and sat for a long time listening, sensing.

“Just one thing missing," said Curly, a sly grin sliding onto his face. "We need to get stoned."

It was a tribute to
Curly's
crooning influence and the magic of the night that the protests were feebly voiced. The place, the music, the memories all made the suggestion acceptable, and he went on, Woody thought, with the smoothness of the devil offering to buy souls.

"I don't do this stuff anymore," Curly said, taking a baggie and a pack of rolling papers from his pocket. "But I thought for old time's sake . . . and you can get it so easy in L.A."

"What about the nation's war on drugs?" said
Sharla
dryly.

Curly winked. "Hostilities can resume in the morning." He began to roll joints with unpracticed fingers. The first one fell apart, and he started again. "Been a long time."

"You brought that in," Alan said with a touch of awe, "on the plane?"

"On my person. Doesn't set off the alarm if it's not metal."

"We really shouldn't do this," said Diane. "Some of us are teachers. We get busted, we could lose our jobs."

"What's life without risk?" said
Sharla
, a sad little smile tightening her lips. "Just like the old days."

And it was. There was the same potential for harm. In 1969, if they had been found using marijuana, they would have been arrested, and then have had to answer to their parents, the college, and the civil authorities. It was a three-edged sword that maturity had reduced to two.

But there was the same excitement too. Life had never seemed as sharp as when they had smoked grass. There had been nothing like the gut-churning, erection-causing thrill of it, that intoxicating paranoia that gave way to a belligerent euphoria. The act alone was enough to make them high, the flaunting of rules, silent inhalations, secret blows against the empire, the way the smoke filled up the cars with their rolled-up windows, the darkened rooms of rebellious years.

"We need some different music," Frank said. "A little
psychedelia
.
Jimi
again? Or the Airplane?"

"The Doors," said Woody. "The first album." Frank found it, took it out of the sleeve. "Just let the first side repeat," Woody said.

"Break on Through" was the first song. The well-known riff began with a measure of drums, a measure of bass, a measure of guitar, and then the cold, cutting, commanding voice of Jim Morrison. The song played on to the end while everyone listened, and it seemed the only movement in the room was Curly rolling joints.

As the Doors began "Soul Kitchen," Diane said, "This is the one with 'Light My Fire,' isn't it?"

Others nodded, and Woody knew what they were all remembering, how it was Tracy's favorite song, and how, when Ray
Manzarek's
organ riff kicked in, she stopped whatever she was doing and danced, her movements cool and controlled, but her gray eyes revealing the frenzy the song unleashed in her soul. The first time they made love, here in the apartment, "Light My Fire" was playing.

"What is that stuff anyway?" Eddie asked Curly.

"Pure Panamanian, so I'm told." Curly kept rolling, stacking the twisted rolls like a tiny pile of logs. "Very good shit.”

“How many are you making?" Eddie said.

"Nine. One for each of us . . .” He paused, licked a final joint twice as large as the others, and said, more quietly, "and one in memoriam. For our friends."

"Like pouring brandy on Poe's grave," said Alan without a trace of a smile.

Curly handed a joint to each person, then picked up the ninth and held it aloft, like a priest holds the host on the paten. "Let's pass the first one. Like the old days. Pass it and remember our friends. Say their names if you want. Let's remember them."

He stood up and gave the joint to Woody. "You made it possible, Woody. You should start."

Woody took the joint, looked at it as if at an artifact of a time far more distant than the sixties, then licked his lips so the paper would not stick, delicately put the joint in his mouth, and leaned into the burning match Curly offered.

He took a deep drag, nearly retching at the bitter taste, the acrid smoke, but held it, held it in strong, reed man's lungs until he felt them burn, felt euphoric heat bubbling upward to his head, felt light and heavy and hot and cold, and closed his eyes and let the little smoke that had not entered him drift out like remnants of a dream. He wondered for what seemed like hours if he should say her name, and then he did, without even being conscious of it.

"Tracy," he said.

"Tracy," the others whispered, and he felt the joint being taken from his hand, and he sat on the floor, watching the others.

Slowly they celebrated their strange communion, sharing the bread and wine of their youth, speaking names of those gone away:

"Keith," said
Sharla
, and the glowing ember moved on, and Woody's ears were filled with a sound of flame, as if the burning end of the joint was starting to set the world on fire, and the flame seemed so much brighter now, and the name of
Keith
sang with a crackle of fire.

"Dale," Eddie said, and
Dale
, they all breathed, the sound reverberating in the air, becoming one with the music, the song of lighting fires, and the fire burned now, it was blinding, and he could not see who bore it, what new Prometheus was passing its wisdom on.

Another name, another voice. Was it Diane? He couldn't tell, because his voice and the voice of the others all chanting, praying, singing the name engulfed his memory, until the name and the flame filled the world.

Other names were spoken, and he repeated them, not recognizing them now, and the fire song had stopped, and another song was being sung again, the song about breaking through, and when Woody peered through the glare of the fire, it seemed to him that his friends' faces were as they had been years before, that time had rolled backward, that the great white flame shone on bright, unlined flesh, glimmered on dark,
ungrayed
hair, and their eyes looked at him in the same way, filled with wonder and delight, and they came together, slowly, deliciously, as through water they could breathe.

Hands touched, arms embraced, and he thought what they all thought, that they were here now and here then and would be here forever, that they were pure and ideal and immortal, and that all their ideals, their hopes and dreams still blazed inside them, never dead, never dead, but sleeping, and reawakened now, set on fire once more by the night, the music, by each other, by love and peace and freedom and happiness, and they were one, thinking with one mind, speaking with one voice, linked by flesh and soul, a human
mandala
that spun around and around, until all the faces blurred into one, and he was Diane who was Frank who was Eddie and round and round and
Sharla
and Curly and round and Judy and Alan and round and round and Tracy . . .

She was alive and in them and of them and everything dead was alive again, dead lover, dead friends, dead dreams, and he moaned and laughed and howled and wept and prayed to God, who was himself and all of them, the living and the dead, all immortal, eternal, ageless, infinitely wise—

until the fire began to diminish, its song to fade in his, their, its ears, fragmenting the holy consciousness of what they had become, the senses of God dulling, the universe leaking through the void so that stars, nebulae, self grew cold, silent, black.

Black.

Chapter 8

His eyes were closed.

That was why it was dark, why it was so black. It was like the joke, wasn't it? I can't see . . . so open your eyes.

He did.

They were on the floor, all of them, shoulder against shoulder, hands holding arms holding hands, legs touching, knee rubbing knee, eight of them in a closed circle of flesh. All of them appeared as dazed as Woody, their eyes blinking as if confused, heads shaking in an effort to bring their thoughts back to reality and the present. There was something else too, something Woody couldn't immediately define, a change of some kind.

Woody's left hand was holding
Sharla's
right, and his right wrist was wrapped by Eddie's long fingers. Slowly they released their holds on each other. Woody's fingers felt stiff as he rubbed the red marks Eddie's grip had made.

"What the hell happened?" said Alan. His voice sounded thick, as though no words had passed through his throat in years.