by P. F. Kluge
“Not like a president or a movie star,” he said. “What I mean is achieve distinction at something. And have people know it.”
“Yes. I guess so.”
“Me too. Yeah, me. Believe it or not. And Eddie was my shot at it. I thought we could go all the way together. After he died, I got crazy. Still do, sometimes, when I hear about the deals they make these days. Or hear some dipshit kid doing one of our songs on television. Or watch one of those big concerts outa doors, a helicopter delivering some British junkie to an audience of thousands just waitin’ for the noisy squirt to rip ’em off. Yeah, it gripes me when I think how big we coulda been.
“But I can handle that, these days. Because I remember Lakehurst. And in my heart I know that I wouldn’t have gone all the way. Because I was countin’ on friendship to carry me along. That was my mistake. I know it wouldn’t have happened. I’da got dropped off somewhere along the way.
“Yeah, some nights it’s like he was still alive. I get mad at him all over again—want to slap him around and shake him up. I’m mad at him for livin’, and I’m mad at him for dyin’ the dumb way he did. But then I remember Lakehurst, and I say, ‘So be it,’ and I keep on living.”
8
“Hey, Wordman!”
I was walking back to my room, past the swimming pool, and she was sitting on the edge, dangling her feet into the water.
“Pool’s closed.” I pointed to the sign. “No lifeguard. Swim at your own risk. Guests only.”
“I’ll tell them I’m your guest. All right?”
“I guess.” I sat down next to her.
“No late show tonight,” she said.
“I’m sure that’s okay with Sally.”
“Were you with him all this time?”
“Yes. Where were you?”
“Here. Waiting.”
“Where’s Mannheim?”
“He left.”
“Did he get what he wanted?”
“I suppose. He always does. He works hard.”
“It seems out of proportion. This Eddie Wilson revival can’t last forever. They’ll have to find someone else to rediscover, I guess.”
“What will you do then?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I like what you’re doing now.” It came so out of the blue, I couldn’t resist a double take, checking to see if she were talking to me or to someone standing in back of me.
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Going back into the past. I find that very interesting.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“It’s worth trying. You’re doing what everybody thinks of, one time or another. I mean, the future just comes to us. It arrives, no matter what. But turning back into the past takes work. And pain.”
“Sure,” I joked. “Like a fish swimming upstream to lay eggs and die.”
“You shouldn’t think of it that way,” she scolded, and that surprised me. There was no reason for her to mind the jokes I cracked at my own expense. “Will you let me know how it turns out?”
“How do I reach you? Through Mannheim?”
“Not necessarily,” she said.
She pulled her legs out of the water and reached for her shoes.
“Well, goodnight,” I said.
“I’m wet up to my knees.”
“They took in the towels.”
“Do you have any?” she asked.
“In my room. Hang on, I’ll go get—”
“Wait!” She put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me down, like there was something I’d missed, but she didn’t tell me right away. Instead, she laughed at me some more, the way she’d laughed when I clumsily inquired if Elliot Mannheim were her “boyfriend.”
“You really are a product of the fifties,” she said. Her lips were at my ear, and I could feel her hair touch my face—that funny feeling halfway between a tickle and a caress. “What do I have to do to get in your room, Mr. Ridgeway? Jump all the way into the water and ask to borrow your bathrobe? My hair takes hours to dry. I’ll jump in if you want me to, if it’ll make you feel better. But then you’ll be fucking a woman with lots of long wet hair.”
She stood up. “Shall I jump?”
I held her.
“Don’t jump.” And then I laughed. She was right. A product of the fifties. I was the same kid who’d sat reading poetry in Vince’s Boardwalk Bar because it seemed like a cool thing for a drifter to do.
“Good,” she said. “What I want now is a towel. And a bed. And a long carnal evening. I want to sleep late. When I get up, I want a big breakfast. I’ll be hungry as a lumberjack.”
She stretched, tipping up on her toes and reaching out her arms, as if she were just awakening.
“How does that sound to you?”
“Fine,” I said.
“You don’t have to be someplace in the morning?”
“No.” And then it occurred to me. “I’m taking some time off.”
I awoke the next morning and studied the stranger in my bed. Susan Foley plunged into sleep as completely as she cast herself into sex, like she was riding a bobsled into sweet oblivion. Arms thrown wide, and light brown hair spilling over the pillow, and a smile on her face that I still couldn’t quite believe had anything to do with me.
Being unfaithful after so long was like losing my virginity all over again. I didn’t feel guilty, and I hadn’t thought I was evening the score with Doris. But I was nervous. If I hadn’t pleased my wife—and I evidently hadn’t—how long had it been since I’d satisfied anyone at all?
“Remember last night when Sal needled you?” she asked.
“About what?”
“He said, ‘Should I tell about the first time you got laid?’ You blushed and changed the subject.”
“Because you were there,” I admitted.
“You had your eye on me!”
“Yes. From when you met me at the bar. No, before. When Sally’s act was dying, and I caught you looking at me. That’s when.”
“What would you have done about it?”
“Nothing.”
“You miss a lot that way.”
“I know. That’s what Sally was kidding me about.”
“What happened?”
“It’s embarrassing. Why do you think I blushed?”
“Positions have changed since then. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I supposed they had. She sat astride me after we finished, reluctant to dismount, and I enjoyed staying inside her, waiting to see if the tide was washing in or out. She leaned forward so her elbows were at my side and her breasts against my chest, and she gazed into my eyes like I was a book she was eager to read.
“Tell me,” she said.
The longer Eddie and the Cruisers played at Vince’s Boardwalk, the better they got. Night after night you could watch it happen, the group staking out a sound, a tone, a style that was distinctively its own. That summer was our time. And that tacky stretch of shoreline—humid, tar-blistery streets, rotted wood, salt air, deep-fried food—that was our unchallenged territory. We were lords of the plywood jungle, those miles of jerry-built beach homes with barely enough of a yard between them to hang out a wet bathing suit or toss an empty beer can. You can look up who was big that summer—Pat Boone’s “Love Letters in the Sand,” Debbie Reynolds’ “Tammy,” Elvis’ “Teddy Bear,” all Number One. But not in our neighborhood.
I’ll never forget the round of cheers that sounded as soon as Vince unplugged the jukebox, no matter what was playing, and the Cruisers moved toward the stage. It was like the national biggies were okay, but what we were into was the real thing. Eddie would bounce up and down in front of the mike and shout his trademark, saying, “Let’s get on with the music!”
Vince never had a better summer. From ten o’clock the bar was jammed, and the action flowed out onto the parking lot, the streets, the nearby beach. More than once they nearly drank Vince dry. I’m not kidding! The draft beer went first, then the cans and bottles, even warm ones, and
by God, that wasn’t the end of it. They started in on the hard stuff. Not just Scotch and rum and bourbon but those dusty, weird hair-tonic bottles you get one call for a year: anisette, rock-and-rye, Fernet-branca!
In mid-August, at the season’s manic crest, there came the night I dreaded: my first appearance as a Parkway Cruiser. I was scared to death, and Sally didn’t help much; he took out a newspaper ad, “See Frank Sing and Dance!!”
Eddie wanted to make it as easy as he could, so he decided that he’d bring me on for the last show on a Saturday night. “Smuggle him onstage,” Sally said. “By then they’ll be so polluted they won’t care if he wets his pants. Some show business debut!”
The closer it came, the more jittery I got. I dropped things, I spilled drinks, the resin slid off my perspiring hands. I had no business being up there with Eddie and the Cruisers. What a colossal miscalculation, to presume that I had anything to offer that crowd of seasoned drunks and dancers. I could hardly sing, I didn’t dance, I barely played. Did I have any business up there with savage Sally and heartbreaking Hopkins and black, mysterious Wendell and Eddie the boss magician? Frank B. Ridgeway in this group?
I rushed over to Eddie as soon as he came offstage, convinced I was at last telling him what he’d waited to hear.
“What’s the matter, Wordman?” He was in the back room with Joann. They retreated there often between sets: they even called it “our house.” Sometimes they closed the door, but I didn’t mind. Eddie was my closest friend, I thought, and Joann—well, just knowing that she was in the room, on my couch, could set me up for the day. Remember Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin, right when she came out of the water? Joann Carlino was like that all the time. She was the most potently sexual woman I’d ever seen. I craved her in a way I never craved my wife. But that wasn’t all. Because she surely knew my feelings and she handled them well. She didn’t laugh or tease or put me down. I thought—still think—that in an odd, funny way, she liked me. Don’t ask why. But she was certainly the first to spot what was wrong with me that night.
“You’re ready, aren’t you, Frank?” She knew I wasn’t. “Eddie, he’s trembling!”
“What is it?” Eddie asked.
“Eddie—Christ, Eddie, it won’t work! You know it and I know it, so please, please don’t put me through it. Joann, tell him.”
“What won’t work?” she asked.
“You’ve done this stuff a dozen times in rehearsal, Word-man. You wrote half the stuff.”
“But that’s different. It’s not like being up there in front of them!”
“I think you’re ready,” Eddie said, “and I’m the leader of the band. I want you on board after summer, just like we talked about. It’s not that you need us. I think we need you.”
“Eddie, I’ll write, I’ll read, all that. But I can’t perform. Sally’s right!”
“Sally’s full of shit. Ask him in a nice way, he’ll admit it himself.”
“Eddie, I watched that last set. Not just you guys but the audience, too. I saw the look in their eyes. They ate you up, every one of you! And I just can’t picture it. I just can’t see them looking at me the same way.”
“Calm down, Frank,” Joann said. “Think about it. Who are those people? You’re so much smarter.”
“Yeah,” said Eddie. “You know that crowd. What’s so special about them?”
“It’s not like they’re your jury,” Joann added. “They’re not out to get you.”
“I look at them, they’re tougher, they’re older. They’ve done so many things I haven’t.”
“Like what?” Eddie asked, before Joann could stop him.
“It’s …” It was out now. Maybe she’d always known. I guessed she had. But now I couldn’t even pretend. “They’re experienced,” I stammered, “and I’m not.”
Usually, Joann was the sly, smiling kind who took everything in. But now she jumped up, led Eddie out to the door, and closed the door.
I sat down on my cot, a choked-up, perspiring wreck. If I could have locked the door from inside, I would have stayed there all night, let them pound away and plead till they had no choice but to go on without me. At dawn I’d be at the bus terminal. I’d be home for lunch, I swear it. It was that simple.
The door opened and I jumped up, ready to start protesting all over again.
Joann came in with another girl who’d been in and out of Vince’s all summer long. If I saw her now, I wouldn’t recognize her. But that night I saw tight short-shorts and a braless T-shirt and black hair and olive skin that looked still warm from the beach.
“Carol,” Joann said. “You know Frank, don’t you? The newest Cruiser?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ve seen him. The cute one.”
“See, Frank,” Joann said. “You’re a hit already.”
She hit the light switch and slipped outside the door. Through the crack, I saw where she was standing guard.
“Joann says you’re nervous about joining the Cruisers,” Carol said. “I don’t blame you. But you must be good if they let you join.”
She approached the couch, slipping off the T-shirt with her first step, her shorts and sandals at the second, and then she was sitting next to me.
“You play the guitar?” she asked. I’d never touched bare breasts before or felt them swell. Hers filled my hands.
“Well?” she asked.
“The guitar. Yes, I play it.”
“Do you?” She’d undressed me now and lay down beside me.
“And I sing background behind Eddie,” I told her while she pulled me on top.
“Terrific.” I felt her legs winding around me, her heels moving up and down the small of my back.
“And lyrics too.”
“You’re ready, then.”
“I’ve rehearsed …”
“You feel ready. Oh, for sure.”
She guided me inside, and before long, the years, the walls, the nerves and life itself came tumbling down, then and again, till it was time for the Cruisers’ third set.
The door cracked open and Eddie stuck his head inside.
“You in there, kid?”
“Yes.”
“You all right now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Now we got that out of the way, let’s get on with the music.”
I never saw Carol after that night. The next day, Sally mortified me with the report that a marine drill sergeant had been through looking for a wife named Carol. They all kidded me a while. Except Joann. She never mentioned it, which was just as well, because as painless and fine as the initiation had been, and as easy as women were in the months ahead, I already knew that in a perfect world, she would have been the one who shared the back room with me.
• • •
Susan Foley did have a lumberjack’s appetite. It was a good thing I’d done the talking during breakfast.
“This Joann Carlino,” she said, “was Eddie’s mistress?”
“I always thought of her as his girlfriend.”
“But Eddie was married … and not to her.”
“Yeah. But I didn’t know it then. Not until the funeral. I went there expecting to see Joann. Instead there was this other woman, and old Mr. Wilson said she was his daughter-in-law. Could have knocked me over. It’s the only time I ever saw Mrs. Eddie Wilson.”
“What did she look like?”
“Blond, trim. Nice … Pretty. But not a rock-and-roll girl. Not the type for Vince’s Boardwalk.”
“No Joann.”
“I looked around the edges, checked the cars. She wasn’t there. I felt bad about that. I wondered how she was spending the day.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
“No.” It came out like a confession. I wondered why I hadn’t even tried. Now it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Yet it had been beyond me: character is fate. “Later that week I stopped off at Vince’s for a beer. One of those sentimental things you do, even though you know they’re corny. A beer fo
r Eddie. A couple minutes in the back room. Their ‘house.’ And Vince told me she’d been in the day of the funeral. And she said to tell all of the Cruisers goodbye. End of story.”
“I’m not sure how we should leave things,” I told Susan Foley.
“There’s no problem with me. You don’t have to do anything.”
“What if I want to? What if I want to see you again?”
“Sure.” She scribbled her address and phone number on a napkin. “Where do you go from here?”
“I’ll keep checking into things.”
“The tapes?”
“Yeah …”
“I thought they didn’t exist.”
“Well …” I stopped. I didn’t like how quickly she’d caught me up. And how readily I lied to her. “Whether or not they exist, it’s fun looking for them.”
“What if you found some tapes? What would you do with them?”
“I don’t know. Listen to them first. …”
“I mean, would you sell them?”
“Hold on! Finding is one thing—owning is something else. I mean, if someone has them now, why should they give them to me? And whom do they belong to? Really. The current owner? The estate of Eddie Wilson? There’s a lot of questions.”
“Don’t get too tangled up in questions,” she said. “That’s a piece of free advice. Want more?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” She smiled and touched my hand. “You’re a nice man. I’d hate to see you hurt.”
“Who’d want to do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m just suggesting that if you find the tapes, they might be … a little too hot to handle by yourself. I know Elliot looks like a kid to you. But he has connections. Lawyers, agents, industry people …”
“Did he ask you to tell me this?” I interrupted.
“Yes,” was the disarming answer. “But I would have told you anyway.”
“In that case … thanks.” Remember, I thought: friends and how to use them. Mannheim had something to teach me in that line.
“Who’s next?” she asked.
“Kenny Hopkins.”
“Do you know where to find him?”
“It’ll take some phone calls.”
“And the other fellow?”
