Coming back from New York. Tail between legs. Our way cool band gone to Manhattan on fumes. Through a friend in Seattle, we met Miles, a guy who was supposed to be Mink DeVille’s manager. Coke dealer more like it. Leather-jacket-skinny-pimple man with a line of shit. He was going to book us in N.Y.C. Got us free tickets to see Al Kooper when it was free anyway. You call Miles day or night he would say,‘Right, you got it.’ The ball never came out of the air for Miles.

The gigs promised on the phone, the bragged-up contacts, the opening shots, he was working on it. Still working on it. We couldn’t even find a place to rehearse, let alone gig.

The band, we lost weight. Girlfriends at home wrote us off. I caught the Greyhound from the west side terminal. Me and the bass player. He with pleurisy; me depressed. No money. Clankity clank. I tried to read that ‘Garp’ novel. Only paperback I could afford at second hand store. I wish I could have pinched a Bible. Got to Chicago in the beginning of Christmas. Three Vietnamese kids got on with their mom. The kids took one look at us deadbeats and cracked their seats full-on back so their black-top heads were in our laps for the next 1200 miles. Bass player coughing chunks; me with no sleep. We got off in Bismarck for NyQuil and what whiskey our pooled pocket change would buy. Hell to pay.

Green lipped, wake up at a pit stop in Missoula, a Burger King, because at the time Greyhound and Burger King owned by same corporate entity. My partner slammed back in his easy chair looking dead except for the blue-vein eyelid that pulsed with each sing-song syllable from Vietnamese kids having the time of their lives.         

I get off with my guitar and a hand bag. Some money in pocket, too dumb to count. So mister rock star, with my gig bag and polished jeans, walks down main street at 2 AM to the Central Hotel. How original.                                                                    

The guy with the oxygen tank checks me in. Twelve bucks a night. Cool.                                                       

My room, classic bare bulb palace, is heaven after bus torture. I can lay flat on sprung bed and listen to all night coughs and dream of oxygen tanks ignited by nearby cigarettes.                            

Wake up with bed spring coils digging new pathways through thin blankets. Claude, the night man, wheezes by dragging oxygen tank singing ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’. My brain is not reliable.

“Claude,” I call. I hear squeaks from the wheels of his dollie. ‘Lemon drops’ is the last word he says before coughing. I slide into cold jeans, happy to be free of the bus and the band. I got money for breakfast, maybe two more nights in the Central Hotel but no money for travel.                   

At the desk where I leave my key Claude says, “Bless us oh Lord,” blue eyes bleeding into the yellow lobby daylight. He sniffs air from his tank and smiles. “For this day of living.” Hard to argue with a man on life support as cheerleader.                                           

“Claude,” I say, “I got the key to the highway.”                

More wheezing, flash cough, “Like hell,” he says.                    

I got forty six bucks and my first fool plan is to buy my girlfriend a present because I missed her birthday and I am broke. This same thinking got me off the bus in middle of Montana so I remain suspicious.                                                           

Slight detour to coffee shop for hash browns and coffee with free refills. It was the free refills that got me. Two dollars and change I tank up for the day, breakfast being the most important meal when destitute. I listen to local chop chop about the price of feed, wounds caused by barbed wire and that life-support-system-for-a-cunt, Connie, who everyone seems to know and love in spite of her obvious flaws.                                                                       

I step outside into crisp white daylight and the cold takes to my face like sandpaper. But the grit feels good after all that rag chewing and throat clearing in the cafe. Sometimes I wish I didn’t understand the King’s English so I could nod along in a stupor of vowel sounds and make up my own meaning for each and every dead end conversation that went in one ear and out the other.                             Two or three side streets off the main drag I find a small shop with a vintage pair of cowboy boots in the window next to a garbage can full of rocks. An old ski sweater flies through the air on a wire hanger. A few kid drawings of snowmen and maple leaves are stuck up with tape. A hand-lettered sign says ‘Classic Clothes’.                      

I step in and the hot wood stove air makes my eyes water. A bell rings as the door closes behind me. Old floorboards squeak underfoot as I walk and I think of dime stores and penny candy.  A girl is holding up a Western shirt to the daylight inspecting for rips, tears, stains. I can tell she’s got a fierce eye for detail because of the frown on her forehead. The brand is H bar C, pale yellow with embroidered cactus and donkey. “Nice piece,” I say because it is true and I know such things from when I was in the swing band before punk came along and turned everything black.                                      

“What size are you?” she shoots back without looking up. I can’t answer. The question, I realize, is way too hard for me because since I left New York I have new dimensions. I feel pressure to come up with the right reply. After a very long pause I say, “medium”. The word hangs dead in the air along with the bell and the ticking of the wood stove.

“Would you mind?” she says holding the shirt more or less in my direction. “There’s a dressing room right around here.” She steps from behind the counter and I see she is wearing some sort of rock-a-billy skirt over her jeans and saddle shoes from God knows when. On top, disco polyester, making her a walking cross section of my own past.

I take the shirt and do as I am told. It is then I notice the kid in the playpen standing mute against the mesh with a chewed up stuffed rabbit clutched in small pink fist. My smile goes by without a flinch of recognition from the gnome. The strong silent type.

First I have to peel off my coat, sweatshirt and ribbed thermal underwear. It was cold in New York and I got used to the layers as I walked block after block in whipping west side wind. Was it only last week the final shit hit the fan and flew all across my small universe? The gig at CBGB’s. We went on at 3AM and played to a crowd of 12. We had to buy our own beer and bribe the sound guy. That morning I walked back to the apartment as people headed off to church in bright December sun. I wanted to be going to church.                      

I get the shirt on, not a bad fit, since all the walking compensated for the beer I drank and the food I didn’t eat. The front snaps up good, sleeves a little short but I never button those anyway. I liked the faded lemon custard tone with green and brown details. But I’m not buying for me. It’s the girlfriend needs a surprise.                                                           

I tuck the shirt in as is the custom with the cowboy freaks. “I know a gay guy in the West Village has a closet full of these. All in their own cellophane bags,” I say from behind the door as I latch up my belt.                                                            

No answer. I step from my phone booth and she’s there holding the gnome on one hip, the two of them staring at me like I’m a column of smoke. She puts one hand under her chin weighing the letter grade on my look.                                                            

“How are the sleeves?” she says.                                        

“The only place it shrunk,” I say. I’m not in the store two seconds and I’m already working.

“My dream boyfriend would wear that shirt,” she says turning to deposit the gnome back in the play pen.           

“How much?” I hear myself say.                                        

“Just came in. Needs pressing.”                                

“Probably can’t afford it.”                                         

“Turn around,” clothes girl says zooming right up into my breath. She twirls me with efficient fingers pulling at shoulder seams. I stand there letting her hands give me chills as they zig and then zag out of my tickle zones. When she yanks at an armpit thread I snap my arm down with an involuntary shudder.                         

“Ticklish?”                                                       

I am red in the face and sweaty from the wood stove. In the dressing room I worry about my next move and feel the ghost of her warm fingers on the nape of my neck. At the counter, she is writing out price tags in small black felt-tipped swirls. Watching her write gives me a slight electric shock that moves the hairs on the left side of my body. It is a feeling of pleasure I used to get watching my mother peel potatoes with a paring knife.                           

“I was really looking for women’s clothes,” I say.                      

She turns her dark eyes to me and speaks like a waitress reciting the lunch special. “I’ve got some really nice suede jackets.”               

I wander off in the direction of her stare and find the jackets.    

“For your wife?”                                             

“A friend,” I answer.                                                  

Joan, the longtime girlfriend would be expecting a call soon. I would have to explain about the bus and make my case for getting off, for not coming straight home after all that time in the city with nothing to show. There would be a grace period where I could recuperate before looking for work again. I would tell the stories of how we were the last to go on at CBGB’s at three in the morning with nobody there. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade made better by the rain and the High School marching bands puffing steam out of their horns and the goose-legged girls high-kicking and shaking a tail feather for all of us with collars turned up against the wind. Then I would give her a nice present, pack my duffel bag and my guitars and move out.     

The suede jackets are a blur. I pull a few out just for show because I have already made up my mind to slip out the door and away. Come back later when I could think, after I find out how I might get the rest of the way back to Seattle.

Clothes girl says they will be open till five as I make my getaway. I leave the store with a silent promise not to return. Some part of me still needs to come up for air and when it does, I’m sure it will take a dim view of these surroundings.

Back on the street I start thinking about her face, the sharp bones and wide apart eyes. The gnome has her eyes, brown for now but changing to hazel or rust. “Dream boyfriend,” I say out loud. “What a crock of shit,”               

Air brakes from a passing truck shake me awake. I am a block from the Central Hotel, my new home. First thing I should pay Claude for two more nights. That would nail down one small detail.                  

Claude is at his post in front of the pigeon holes for keys and mail. “Another day of sunshine,” he says wheezing.                  

I pull out two twenties. “Till Friday,” I say.                       

He takes one of the bills and reaches for my key. “The longer you stay the cheaper it gets,” he says.                                            

“Amen,” says a guy with a ponytail sitting on the stairs.            

My room is unlocked, door cracked a foot wide. My guitar, the only thing of value, is still there in a cheap case to disguise its real worth. My bag with toothbrush, lip balm, deodorant and socks, zipped where I left it. The bed has been made, or at least re-folded. Cigarette smoke lingers from the housekeeper.                   

I should bring clothes girl here. We would have wine and baby corn on toothpicks. The gnome could bounce on the bed until it broke. Claude would sing one of his happy songs. Later we could fall asleep in each others arms, gnome too, as pool balls in the bar downstairs crash together like atoms in an accelerator. And the snoring up and down the hall would be a chant from the monks of the wild west. That’s what clothes girl does to me: She makes me dream.

         *

         Claude wanders up the hall with the wheels on his oxygen tank squeaking like mice. He stops at my door which is cracked open, knocks anyway.

“Tomorrow is Day-Old Thursday,” he says. Like it is supposed to have meaning. “Got to get there early for the best goodies.”

“Get where early for what goodies?”

“I’ll come by and wake you,” He said drifting off trailing smoke as the soft screech of wheels goes silent.

More like 8:30. We are in the darkened bar with neon beer signs carving holes in my night vision. A pool table is covered with various pastries spread out under sheets of plastic wrap. Row upon row of Butter horns, Bear claws, Cheese Danish filled with oozing berry filling, cinnamon rolls, coffee cake sliced in swirling rounds all on bakery trays.  The smell of sugar cuts through the stale beer and blends with the tang of coffee from the church-size urn sitting on the bar.

Stacks of restaurant plates and real forks nested in piles sit next to the white truck-stop mugs lined up in neat rows. The dark room fills in around the edges as unknown (to me) faces take shape in the blue grey atmosphere. “The rest of the family,” Claude says. He is sitting next to me to show me the ropes since this whole thing comes at his personal invitation. I am half-asleep, not being a morning person, and the first thing I usually eat after finding myself upright is a banana, sometimes not even that. But the way the pastries looked in the glare of pool hall light actually makes my stomach growl.

“What are we waiting for?”

“The schedule,” Claude says. “Can’t mess with the schedule.”

Nine O’clock means nine O’clock. Sharp.

I notice the juke box glowing gold with a red arc of neon over the top. I thought of what this place could’ve been like on a Saturday night. Honky Tonk heaven with stone-faced men— like these old boys sitting in the dark— their hair slicked back wearing a fresh shirt. And the ladies? Where were the ladies?

Nine O’clock rolls around and a man from the shadows walks up and pulls a quarter out of a jar sitting next the the Jukebox. He slips it in and punches up a song. There is that moment as the machine thinks and searches then slaps down a record, the hiss followed the by the sweet boom of guitars and drums. Is that a dobro and an electric piano? The song sounds familiar but I can’t quite place it. The style suggests regional; from some backwater. Only thing I know for sure is that I wish I knew who it was so I could buy it.

The song is the starting gun and like zombies, men gather round the pool table filling plates and circling past the bar for mugs of coffee.

Claude smiles and gave me the elbow. “Better get in there. One hog don’t wait for another.”

I take my inner hog to the table and make a plate. Somebody else put a quarter in the machine and the music floating out through the booths and empty barstools has an Irish twinge with African Drums. A man and woman sing a tight duet, almost country, about a land of milk and honey. I want to write it down so I would remember but I am too busy loading a cinnamon roll on my plate.

We eat  without talking untilClaude urges me to put in a quarter Jukebox and pick a song. Not to be rude I walk up to the machine and snag a quarter from the jar. They are all painted red, meaning for use in the house only, not part of the till.

The problem was there are no song names, no artists, all letters and numbers. I turn back to Claude and raise my hands in the universal ‘What now?’ signal. “Just pick any letter, any number. Doesn’t matter.”

I face the machine and punch N-19 for my birthday, November 19th. The hiss, the pop and then the booming sound of song. Oh my God. This one is even better, but it’s slow and somehow sad. The man’s voice I recognize as a big pop star from some bygone era, or is it?

*

I am standing in front of a Gothic building and it is night time. All around people are holding candles that circle their faces in moving shadows as they sing. Everybody knows the song. I seemed to know the song but not well enough to sing it. That or I had lost the ability to sing because my voice is choked with tears. I noticed other people crying and they are holding signs with messages like it is a protest or some sort of vigil. I have been here before but not with all these people and not with the snow in the air and the tears falling and that numb feeling and the pain that comes as you warm up.

*

I wake up in my room. There is a plate of pastries next to my bed covered with a napkin and a cold cup of coffee. How did I get here? And When?

I pull the guitar out and try to plink out the melody of a song from the juke box. The Jukebox. I sing nonsense lyrics to what I could remember of the tune. I must have dreamed the thing with the building and the candles. But even if I dreamed it, I am the Dreamer and it is real for me. Claude would know.

I go to the desk and Claude looks at me waiting, “Back with the living?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You got real quiet and then left. Wound up back in your room, crying like a baby. We got worried.”

Claude reaches back in the mail slots and hands me an envelope. “Here’s your money back. There’s a bus tonight heading for Seattle, 10:44 PM. You should be on it. Tomorrow you’ll be back  home. This ain’t the right place for you. Or the right time.”

“What if I don’t want to go?”

“You can always come back.”

*

I slept most of the way, twenty hours, the usual stops at Burger King for limp fries and coffee. In Spokane I called Joan and told her when I would be in and could totally understand if she had better things to do than pick me up. But she met me anyway.

She had to teach the next morning but woke me up early and I could hear the TV was on in the living room. It was some news special. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but John Lennon is dead.”

I sat on the couch with her looking at the same faces on TV, people with candles and signs, crying and singing together. It was the dream that was not a dream. The songs had not been imagined but foretold like this terrible moment in history. I had known. I had time. I could’ve  done something.