Second Chance

by Chet Williamson

  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."

  "No. I gave Carla more than sizes—little descriptions of each person so she'd know the kind of things they'd wear. As I recall, you were country chic—denim bells, Dingo boots, work shirt, bulky knit sweaters."

  "Love it," Frank said as they climbed into the car. "God, I was cool, wasn't I?"

  Woody laughed. "Groovy, man."

  The smiles faded and the laughter stopped as they pulled into the parking lot in back of the old apartment building. "It hasn't changed at all," Frank said softly. "It's eerie."

  Woody forced a chuckle as he backed into a space in the empty lot.
"And we haven't even been inside."

  They both sat for a moment, looking through the windshield at the dark windows.

  "Well," Woody said, "are we going to sit here and wax nostalgic or are we going to move some furniture?"

  Frank brightened. "I didn't know I had a choice."

  Though Frank trailed as they climbed the squeaking stairs, Woody could sense his nervousness. It was the same as his own. He put the key in the lock and turned the knob quickly. The door opened with a soft squeal he remembered well, and he stepped inside.

  He drank in the place with all of his senses, and knew what Odysseus must have felt upon reaching home after twenty years of wandering. It was not sight or smell that captured him, but an ambience, a sense of time turning on itself, sweeping over him like a warm blanket, and it seemed that he saw the place, not as it was now, but as it had been, and a great joy filled him.

  "Woody?"

  It was Frank's voice, but it sounded younger, and Woody knew his friend was with him, sharing the escape back into time, and he turned to him, beaming.

  But then he saw that Frank was old, and knew that he was older too, and the joy ran out of him.

  "It's really weird," Frank said, shaking his head. "I didn't think it'd hit me like this, but it's really weird."

  "I know," Woody said, turning back and looking at the furniture he had never seen before. "I thought for a minute . . ." But he shook his head, denying the past its hold on him. "Let's look around."

  The living room still had two sofas, an easy chair, and a coffee table, but the furniture was too contemporary to suit Woody's purposes. The only things that could remain were the tall brass lamps whose style hadn't changed since the fifties, and the brick and board shelves, the perennial college student excuse for bookcases. The walls were no longer their sickly, institutional, pale green, but an off white marred here and there by chipping and dirt, and a wall to wall carpet had replaced the thin, worn, oriental whose design had been lost years before.

  As they walked into the dining room, Woody thought he saw, from the corner of his eye, a figure leaning against one of the pillars. He turned quickly, but no one was there.

  "What is it?" Frank asked.

  "Nothing," Woody said, thinking of Keith's habitual station, holding up the left hand pillar. But then he saw the sideboard, and gave a breathy laugh of disbelief. "My God, it's still here."

  They had always called it a sideboard, although it was actually a dressing table minus its top. It had always made a convenient place to put serving dishes if the table was full, though they had filled its three wide drawers with underground comics and magazines rather than tablecloths and linen napkins.

  "Table's gone, though," Frank said, examining the dining room suite with its woodgrain formica top. "I liked that old metal table. Made me think I was at my grandma's house."

  "Then you'll be happy to know I've got an exact copy downstairs. All we have to do is haul it up."

  The kitchen had changed the least. The sink was the same, a hulking expanse of yellowed porcelain that nearly filled one side of the small room. Next to it was a white metal cabinet with an assortment of mismatched drinking glasses and unbreakable dishes. The refrigerator had square corners instead of the soft curves Woody had remembered and hoped for, but it was all right. After all, everything couldn't be perfect. Dressed up or not, the people would still be in their forties, living denials of the illusion Woody wished to perpetrate.

  "Still no shower," he said as they looked in the bathroom. Then he turned, walked around the short wall that separated the bedroom from the kitchen and bath, and entered the bedroom, to find that the beds he had bought at Sid's were nearly identical to those in the room. He should have realized it. Frames were sturdy. Only mattresses and springs needed to be replaced. Good.

  Fewer things to carry up and down the stairs. Even the dressers looked the same.

  The three beds were in the same positions they had been decades earlier, two with their heads against the inner wall, the third with its side against the outer. He heard Frank in the bathroom, pulling open the door to the medicine cabinet, so he sat on the bed in the place where he had slept, where he and Tracy had first made love, and wondered if it was the same bed. There was no way to know. Certainly not the same mattress after all this time.

  But still, he lay down, put his cheek against the smooth material, breathed in very gently to see if some trace of her remained, yet fearing that he would inhale some other, unknown, unpleasant scent instead.

  There was only the aroma of cheap aftershave, and he sighed and rolled over, staring up at the flyspecked ceiling that had greeted him on so many bright mornings of his life.

  "Still a dump, isn't it?"

  Woody turned and saw Frank leaning against the door frame. "Yeah," Woody said. "But it was our dump."

  Frank looked around the bedroom. It didn't take long. "So what do you think of it?"

  "I think," Woody said slowly, "it seems haunted."

  "That's . . ." Frank searched for the word. ". . . projecting, don't you think? Haunted by who?"

  "You know," Woody said, watching the ceiling. “By Keith. By Dale . . ." He took a shallow breath, then said it. "Tracy."

  "Is that what this is all about?" Frank said after a pause. "Tracy?"

  Woody shook his head. "No. It's . . . nostalgia, that's all. I'd just like it to be the way it was—just for one night. And if I'm lucky, I might get enough inspiration out of it to make some music." He hopped off the bed and patted Frank on the shoulder.

  "Don't worry. I'm not going to go freaky on you, okay? Now, enough nostalgia for a while. Let's get haulin'."

  Woody buried the ghosts in his work. Together he and Frank brought the furniture down the stairs and into the bookstore, then carried up what Woody had bought from Sid's. By the time they took a break for dinner, the heavy work was finished. All the furniture and boxes were in the apartment, and they began to put up posters, arrange rows of books, and set up the stereo. They searched their memories for the small details that would make their re-creation as authentic as possible, recalling that they always kept magazines here, a pile of records always lay there, there had sat Woody's pipe rack, and there in the corner Frank's trombone case and Woody's first oboe, resurrected for the night, and Keith's Martin guitar, represented by an empty, black simulated leather case.

  "I could go for a brew," Frank said, stepping off the couch after putting up the map of Middle-Earth with masking tape. "Wanta get a six-pack?"

  "You go," Woody said. "I'll keep working."

  "You're so dedicated to illusion," Frank said as he walked to the door. "Iron City?"

  "Sure. The good old days."

  The feeling overtook Woody as soon as Frank was gone. As he looked about him at the icons of a lost and loved age, he felt that he was in that time, that if he looked in a mirror he would see himself, lines of age vanished, hair untouched by gray.

  Then he smiled and shook his head at the conceit, remembering Frank's words—"dedicated to illusion." He was indeed, so much so that in another moment he thought he might be seeing his friends all around him, the living and the dead.

  Keep it in perspective, he thought. A party. It's just going to be a party.

  And then he saw someone out of the corner of his eye.

  He was glancing down at the base of the hall tree in the corner near the door, trying to remember what always sat there, when there was a trace of movement, a blur of white, in the darkness of the hall.

  Woody gasped, whirled, looked, his arms held protectively in front of him, a chill burning his spine, the hair at the back of his neck slithering.

  But there was nothing there.

  There had been, though. He had seen it, and now tried frantically to see it again, to shape the air into the form he had glimpsed. But only unmoving, unyielding darkness remained.

  Imagination. Just imagination. It could, after all, do wonders. There was no limit, he thought with grim self-reprimand
, to what the imagination could create, if someone wanted to see it badly enough.

  Or see her.

  The sound of the door opening made Woody jump, and Frank paused in the doorway. "I scare you?"

  "I'm all right," Woody said, hoping that Frank didn't notice the way his voice trembled. "But let's call it a night. Drink our beer back at the motel, huh?"

  Frank eyed him. "Had enough of this place for a while?"

  "I just don't want to overdose on it," Woody said, trying to smile. "Not until it's time. Not until tomorrow."

  They turned out the lights, locked the door, and walked down the stairs, Woody in the rear. At the bottom, he listened for a moment after Frank stepped out onto the sidewalk, but heard nothing from above. The building was as silent as an empty building should be.

  "Tomorrow," he whispered, and stepped into the night.

  Chapter 6

  Tomorrow came, and Alan and Diane Franklin promptly left their home in Alexandria, promptly checked in at the Delta ticket window at Washington-Dulles Airport, and promptly boarded the plane to Pittsburgh. At all junctures of the trip, conversation was minimal.

  Alan and Diane had been married for over twenty-three years, and had not cared for each other for most of that time. They had no children to hold them together and no lovers to pull them apart. Their marriage survived through adhesion. Two people whom God had joined together simply stayed together, neither happy nor discontent. Both had their own jobs and their own friends.

  A crisis had occurred two years earlier when Diane's father, a two-pack-a-day man for fifty years, had died agonizingly of lung cancer. Alan had, for the last fourteen years, been a Capitol Hill lobbyist for the tobacco industry. These two facts did not sit well with Diane, who, unfairly or not, blamed her husband for her father's death.