Billy Lives

by Gary Brandner

  “What does the title mean?” she said. “Yesterday’s Years?”

  Hardeman rolled his head so he was facing her. “It’s from a poem, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.”

  “How does it go?”

  “The verse I took it from goes like this:

  Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clears

  To-day of past Regrets and future Fears:

  Tomorrow! — Why, Tomorrow I may be

  Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years.”

  Iris was quiet for so long that Hardeman thought she had fallen asleep. Then he heard a muffled sob and raised up on one elbow. She turned her face toward him, and her cheeks were wet with tears.

  “That’s beautiful,” she said. “Oh, God, that’s so beautiful. Is there more?”

  “The poem has a hundred and one verses. That’s only one of them.”

  “Do you know any of the others?”

  “A few.”

  “Tell them to me. Please.”

  Hardeman lay back on the pillow while the girl moved close to nestle her head in the crook of his arm. The author reached back into his memory and recited as many of the quatrains from the Rubáiyát as he could recall. Iris lay still beside him and never spoke, but he could feel her catch her breath at some passage she found particularly beautiful. Hardeman had not thought much about the poem since he was a freshman at Columbia. Now he let himself discover all over again its simple rhythmic beauty and its uncomplicated philosophy. It seemed more meaningful to him now than it ever had before.

  When at last he had turned down the empty glass, Iris hugged him close to her body for many minutes. She spoke with her lips against the hollow at the side of his throat. “I’d give anything I have to be able to write something as beautiful as that.”

  Hardeman stroked the flesh of her firm young body. “No you wouldn’t,” he said. “Some of the things you have are too valuable to give up, even to be the best writer that ever was.”

  Iris Was quiet again for a long time, and this time she really had fallen asleep.

  CHAPTER 26

  The night he spent with Iris Ames was like a transfusion of vital juices for Dean Hardeman. In the week that followed, the words flowed in an unbroken stream from his head through his fingers to the typewriter keys and onto the paper. And the words were good. Hardeman had no illusions about what kind of a book he was writing. Stripped to essentials, he was doing captions and text for a picture book, the purpose of which was to help sell tickets to a rock concert. But if a man is a pro, Hardeman had often said, he can write catalog for plumbing supplies that will have something to say to the reader.

  Also, if it were not for this picture book, Hardeman reminded himself, he would still be sitting alone in the big house in Great Neck, complaining about fate, writing nothing, and slowly drying up.

  He checked the pile of completed pages with satisfaction. At the rate he was writing now, he would beat the publisher’s deadline, and have a day or two to spend giving the work a final polish.

  With that happy prospect, Hardeman was in an exceptionally good mood when the telephone rang on Wednesday morning and he heard Iris Ames’ voice on the other end of the line. It had been exactly one week since she had shared his bed.

  “Hi, famous author. Working hard?”

  “Always, but not too hard to talk to you.”

  “I thought you might call. It’s okay any time, you know, except on Thursdays. That’s when my little record man comes over.”

  “I’ve been writing,” Hardeman explained.

  “That’s okay. Just so you didn’t forget me.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Hey, I showed your book to a lot of people.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Some of them knew who you were, too.”

  “Very gratifying,” Hardeman said, smiling.

  “They said you really were a famous writer. The ones who knew who you were, I mean.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “One of these days when I have the time I’ll have to read some of your book.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But that’s not what I called about. What it is, there’s a party tonight at the Hackett House for Wildflower. Want to go?”

  “Slow down a minute,” Hardeman said. “I know the Hackett House is a hotel up on the Sunset Strip, but what the heck is Wildflower?”

  Iris made a small sound of exasperation. “Oh, Dean. Everybody knows Wildflower. They’re the most fantastic thing to come over from England since The Who.”

  “It’s a rock group.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Naturally,” Hardeman agreed.

  “Anyway, they open Saturday at the Roxy, and the party at the hotel starts tonight.”

  Hardeman considered for a moment. He was ahead of schedule on the book and could use some recreation to break up the long work days. Besides, he had heard reports of some of the exotic parties thrown by and for rock groups at the Hackett House, and a first-hand look might give him some added material for the book. “Sounds good,” he said. “What time?”

  “The party will get going about nine o’clock, but first we’ve got to get you something to wear.”

  “Why?”

  “Dean, you can’t go to the party in those icky clothes you brought from New York.”

  “Not funky enough, eh?”

  “Not even close. Can you meet me at noon?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll be at the corner of Sunset and Alta Loma. We’ll go shopping.”

  After he hung up, Hardeman sat grinning at the telephone. It had been a long time since anybody took him shopping. It might be fun. Then he went back to work until it was time to leave.

  The Sunset Strip by day, at least the few blocks west of La Cienega, wsa not the same street it was after dark. The huge billboards advertising recording stars, cigarettes, and Las Vegas hotels were less imposing in the daylight. The sidewalks were alive with people, as they were at night, but the day people moved with a purpose in their stride. These were the people who worked in the show-business-connected offices and the expensive shops. The freaks and wandering weirdos would come out later.

  Still, the Sunset Strip would never be mistaken for Spring Street downtown, or Wilshire Boulevard. The people here were young and eager and colorful. Even wearing his sportiest turtleneck and checked slacks, Hardeman felt old and drab. An outsider on the Strip.

  At ten minutes past twelve Iris arrived. She stood back with her hand to her chin and looked him over critically.

  “Not so good, huh?” Hardeman suggested.

  “You’ve got possibilities,” she said. “Come on.”

  Iris took him by the hand and led him down the block and across the street. There, set back from the boulevard, their names on bronze plaques in front, was a small cluster of stores with leaded window panes.

  “You’re not going to put me into something all tight and glittery are you?” he said.

  “No way. You’d look like a clown.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  She steered him to a shop called The Jeans Experience. “I think denim is the best way for you to go,” she said.

  “You mean those tie-dyed affairs?”

  “No, no, that would look stupid. After all, you’re fifty years old.”

  “Forty-nine.”

  They went into the store. The interior was quiet and cool and smelled of sandalwood incense. Easy-listening rock played softly from hidden speakers. A salesman who looked like Sonny Bono came to greet them with a pleasant smile. Iris took over immediately and described in detail what she wanted for Hardeman.

  Twenty minutes later the refurbished Dean Hardeman stood before the store’s three-way mirror and studied himself in the glass. Iris had selected a Western-cut jacket and pants of faded blue, brushed denim and a fitted shirt of gray muslin with needlework flowers across the yoke. On his feet were natural suede ankle boots.

  “
How do you feel?” Iris asked.

  “Like Roy Rogers.”

  She ignored the sarcasm. “It’s too bad we can’t do something about your hair.”

  “What’s the matter with my hair?”

  “It’s so short.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t grow it out in time for the party, and if you’re thinking of a wig, forget it.”

  “We’ll just have to make do, I suppose.” She reached over and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Letting your chest show. You’ve got plenty of hair there, and chest hair is in, anyway.”

  Hardeman took another look at himself with the top four shirt buttons open. “Don’t you think that’s a little too bare?”

  “A medallion will take care of that,” she said.

  “Around my neck?”

  “Where else would you wear a medallion?”

  Hardeman settled for a modest sunburst on a plain silver chain, which Iris reached around to fasten behind his neck. He grinned down at her as her breasts pushed against him.

  With his old, non-funky clothes packed into a shopping bag, Hardeman paid the bill with a Master Charge card and walked back out to the boulevard with Iris.

  “How about some lunch?” he said. Then, looking down at his Western flavored outfit, “Or, would you cotton to some chow, podner?”

  “Can’t, I’ve got to run. I’ll meet you in front of the hotel tonight at nine.”

  “Okay.” He was getting used to the girl’s impulsive comings and goings.

  She looked up at him seriously. “One thing I hope is straight between us. I won’t actually be with you at the party.”

  “You won’t?”

  “I mean, I’ll get you in okay, but there will be a lot of people there I want to see, so I won’t have much time to spend with you.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “And I can’t promise I’ll go home with you, either.”

  Hardeman took both the girl’s hands in his and smiled down at her. “Don’t worry about it, Iris, I’ll find my way around. You don’t owe me anything. As a matter of fact, it’s closer to the other way around.”

  She flashed him a dazzling, youthful smile. “You’re okay, famous author. See you.”

  “See you,” he said, and watched, still smiling, as she walked away up the street.

  As Hardeman strolled along Sunset, he contrived to get repeated glimpses of himself in the store windows. The soft brushed denim felt good against his body, and a fresh breeze cooled his bared chest. Suddenly he did not feel so much apart from the other people on the Strip. Suddenly he felt younger.

  CHAPTER 27

  At night the Sunset Strip was transformed once again into a carnival midway. Dean Hardeman made it a point to arrive in front of the Hackett House an hour early so he would have time to observe the sidewalk show. Fans and friends of Wildflower were out in a kaleidoscopic array of costumes.

  There were boys with their faces painted in wild designs, girls wearing bib overalls with nothing underneath, young people of indeterminate sex in net stockings, leotards, loin cloths, and dashikis. One grotesquely fat transvestite strolled continually up and down the sidewalk holding hands with a soulful-eyed bearded boy. There were wild wigs and hot pants and glitter-sprayed eyelids. A few of the celebrants wore denims — not the neat, brushed style that Hardeman wore, but jeans with the coveted thrift shop look, bleached and patched and ragged at the cuffs.

  From the number of young people who flowed on and off the terraces on the fifth floor overlooking Sunset, the party was already underway. They shouted down at passersby and occasionally threw something, especially when a police car went by. The hotel had thoughtfully installed a screen at the first-floor level, angling out over the sidewalk to deflect missiles from above. Hardeman wondered if the screen would stop a falling body.

  Curious about how a hotel could exist in such a chaotic state, Hardeman went into the bright-colored, mod-decorated lobby and asked to see the manager. He was a man named Spangler, who the author reckoned to be no more than twenty-seven years old. He had hair to his shoulders and wore dark-tinted aviator glasses. When Hardeman introduced himself, the manager agreed to talk to him, but only for a few minutes as this was obviously a busy night.

  “What I’m curious about,” Hardeman said, “is how your hotel can afford to cater to groups like this Wildflower.”

  “Listen, we can’t afford not to,” Spangler said, speaking in a faint Bronx accent. “Ten years ago this hotel was going after the tourist trade, and they were flat not making it. The tourists would take one look at the Strip, realize the Mocambo is gone, and split for Disneyland. The hotel was near broke and desperate when they started to take in the rock groups. Nobody else would touch them because they raised hell and drove off the straight trade. The Hackett didn’t have that much straight trade to lose, so they put out the word that the groups were welcome here and started replacing the old employees with younger people to make the rockers feel more comfortable. They also raised the prices to forty dollars a room and fifteen hundred dollars for a whole floor like Wildflower has.”

  “Didn’t that discourage them?” Hardeman asked.

  “No way. Money doesn’t mean zip to these people. Any time they need pocket change they can give a concert and fill a fifteen-thousand-seat auditorium at seven dollars per seat.”

  A loud metallic crash sounded from somewhere toward the rear of the hotel. Hardeman started at the noise, but Spangler hardly blinked.

  “What about damage?” Hardeman said, gesturing in the direction of the crash. “I would think these kids might tear the place up a little.”

  “Tell me about it,” Spangler said ironically. “I’ve had motorcycles in the hall, stereo equipment thrown out the window, walls painted with blacktopping tar.”

  “And the groups are still welcome?”

  “You can believe it. The damages are always paid immediately with no questions about the figures. Like I told you, money means nothing when you’re making a million dollars a year.”

  “Well, it sounds like the new policy really works for the Hackett House,” Hardeman said.

  “It’s all that saved the place. The really weird thing is that we’re getting more straight trade than ever. Word has gotten around about the crazy action here, and now the tourists check in when they know a group will be stopping here and stay up all night to watch the happenings.”

  A young man in red velvet hot pants and bracelets up to his elbows rolled past the two men on a skateboard.

  “You won’t see something like that at Disneyland,” said the manager.

  “Amen,” Hardeman agreed.

  Spangler excused himself then and went to attend to his managerial tasks. Hardeman strolled back through the lobby and out onto the street.

  Iris arrived at a quarter past nine. Compared to some of the earlier arrivals, she looked almost conservative in tight pink cutoffs and a black T-shirt with LUST spelled out in sequins across her unrestrained bosom. She was accompanied by half a dozen other young people who seemed to be somewhere in orbit. Iris did not bother to introduce anyone, and no one offered to shake hands.

  The girl linked her arm through Hardeman’s and led him into the hotel and down to the last in a bank of six elevators. A man stood in front of the elevator door with his arms folded, biceps bulging out of his sleeves. He eyed Hardeman suspiciously.

  “It’s okay, Marcus,” Iris told him. “He’s an author. He’s with me.”

  This seemed to satisfy the muscular security man, and he stepped aside while the party piled into the elevator. All the floor buttons, Hardeman noticed, were sealed, except number five. Iris touched that one with a fingertip, and the car rose swiftly.

  When the elevator door slid open on the fifth floor, the first thing Hardeman saw was a couple fornicating against the opposite wall. The girl was holding the hem of her long skirt up at throat level while the boy whanged away with determination. T
he girl, whose back was against the wall, seemed more interested in checking out the new arrivals than in the boy’s lovemaking efforts.

  All the doors up and down the hall were open. There seemed to be no coherent conversations going on, just a general meaningless gabble. Groups formed and dissolved and reformed with no apparent pattern. Young people wandered up and down the hall, in and out of doors. The elevator came up and disgorged another load. Nobody paid any attention to the couple screwing on the wall.

  Hardeman felt a tug at his sleeve and looked down to see Iris peering up at him.

  “Are you going to be okay now?” she asked.

  “Sure, I’m fine. You go ahead with whatever it is you’re going ahead with. I’ll just look around for a while. If I don’t see you again tonight, I’ll call you.”

  She raised on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth. “Don’t forget,” she whispered, then danced off down the hall and vanished into a room.

  Hardeman let himself be carried along with the surge of new people from the elevator into a large room where people were dancing to the music of half a dozen transistor radios, each of which seemed to be tuned to a different rock station. Forced to the far wall, Hardeman saw that his only way back was across the space where the young dancers cavorted. He gyrated out among them in a middle-aged version of whatever the hell the kids were doing. Moving in this way he was able to make it back to the door and escape into the hall.

  Delighted laughter spilled out of the next room. Hardeman looked in to see what was happening and immediately recognized the burning-hemp aroma of marijuana. Someone thrust a thin tube of yellow paper, pinched at both ends, toward him, and Hardeman took it. Somebody else lit the joint for him and he inhaled deeply. He had not smoked much grass since his early bohemian days in New York, and he enjoyed the old tingly feeling that spread from his lungs out to his fingertips and down to his toes.

  A young man whose face was obscured by hair sailed past. “That’s good shit, man,” he said, nodding at the marijuana cigarette.