Sometime in New Haven - The Story of the New Haven Berlin Survivors - Part V
OK - so this is what Fitzwilly's looks like now, an empty building looking for someone to make it home. Back in the day, though, it was a thriving restaurant with the cast iron lettering "This is a Restaurant" on the side. When it first closed, around 1993, it reopened as a Goth Night Club. Quite depressing. But that, of course, is a story for another day...SOMETIME IN NEW HAVEN
Part V
I watched Rudy walk out of the room. I couldn’t believe what she just said. I wanted to call after her and ask her to repeat it. I wanted to call out but nothing would come out of my mouth. I had a lump in my throat.
What the fuck, I thought. I felt sick. How could this be? What about ‘Imagine’? What about ‘All the people living life in peace?’ This isn’t right, I thought, starting another cigarette.
This is a mistake. I stood up, then sat back down for a minute. Then I got up and walked to my room. I walked slowly, hoping to hear someone else awake I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to see if it was really true. I put on the radio in my room. Another John Lennon song.
I laid back down on my bed. I felt I had to do something. I didn’t know what to do besides have another cigarette. I felt like crying. I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. My mind was racing. How the fuck could this be? I thought. This is a person who would have his name associated with peace. He wrote about love; he wrote ‘All You Need is Love.’ He wrote the song “Love.” He had a billboard put up in 11 cities that said “War is over/If you want it/Happy Christmas.”
He wrote the song “Happy Christmas (War is Over).” What the fuck? How the fuck does this happen? What the fuck? What the fuck? In 1969 he returned the Member of the Order of the British Empire medal to the British government. What the fuck? The lump in my throat made my face hurt and tears were rolling from my eyes. Things would be very different from now on, I thought. I felt like the love and peace stuff was just a lie.
Jack came in and sat down on the cushion chair facing the window in my room.
“You know what happened,” Jack said in a matter-of-fact manner.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess we aren’t going to the dairy farm.”
“No, we’re not.”
We didn’t talk for awhile. We just listened to more John Lennon songs on WPLR. Every once in a while, one of the housemates would stop into the room. This happened often at the house, people walking into each others’ rooms. I think I even dosed off for a short while.
Jeff, who regularly visited the house, walked into the room and sat cross-legged on the floor. We would often find Jeff sleeping on one of our couches in the morning. None of us are sure how Jeff came to hang out at the house or who he was originally friends with. But he was a nice guy who would buy beer and even groceries on occasion. He was also a Jesus freak. Jeff was an artist, of sorts, and would spend hours at the kitchen table with his colored pencils and pens creating art on dollar bills; coloring in the existing design and creating new designs. We would call it “Jeff’s Psycho Dollars.”
“Would you guys like to join me in prayer?” Jeff asked. “I think we could all use one.”
“You pray, I’ll listen,” I said, still staring at the ceiling.
“I think you guys will find comfort in prayer,” Jeff said. “Especially today.”
“Why?” Jack asked.
“Why pray?” Jeff asked. “Because on a day when we lost a brother, we need God to embrace us so. . .”
“No,” Jack said. “Why would God let this happen?”
“God didn’t let this happen,” Jeff said. “It’s not like God is controlling people’s actions, moving people around like he’s playing a chess game. God has given us each the ability to make choices that will grant us eternal life.”
“Is that what God granted John Lennon?” Jack asked.
“Probably,” Jeff said. “But God also gave us the ability to find comfort in him. If anything, this is teaching us that we need to embrace God more. This shows we are becoming Godless.”
“And it’s all that easy,” Jack said, shaking his head.
“No, it’s not easy,” Jeff said. “But Jack, think about it, you might find comfort in prayer. Think about it. Just try.”
“I’d feel like a hypocrite if I prayed now,” Jack said. “You pray. I’m with Rory. I’ll listen.”
Jeff mumbled a prayer under his breath. I couldn’t really hear him, but I said “Amen” after he did. Jack said nothing.
“God bless you,” Jeff said as he walked out of the room.
“Who sneezed?” Jack asked.
Every once in a while, Jeff would try to get people to pray with him. There were never any takers.
After staring at the ceiling for another song or two, I looked over at Jack, who was thumbing through a Village Voice. “Well, I can’t just lay here, but I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Do you want to play?” Jack asked.
“Yes, I mean, no,” I said, not wanting a reminder of how bad I could play. “Not right now. Maybe we should go to New York.”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I think I want to keep a distance from what’s probably there.”
“But there will probably be a lot of Lennon fans there,” I said.
“Yeah, a lot of mourners,” Jack said. “John Lennon was a man of peace. He had a vision. He was so full of life. That’s what I want to hang on to. I can’t hang out with mourners.”
“You know, looking at everyone’s face as they walk in and out of here reminds me of how that guy Sgt. Hiser acted when he found out Elvis died.” I said.
“Sgt. Hiser?” Jack said. “You remember that?”
We all had Hiser pegged as a bit of a square. He was a teenager in the 1950s, so by the time he had to deal with us in the 1970s, we thought the train had left him far behind. And by that time, we were all grunt workers and he was the authority. He was a really nice guy and all, but we just couldn’t associate with him.
The day Elvis died, though, he walked into the storeroom of Eifel Hall – or Awful Hell, as we all called the dining hall at Bitburg Air Base – and sat down while Jack and I were talking. He looked up with red, teary eyes and a blank expression on his face and said, “The King is dead.”
“Shit Jack, you gave the guy a hug,” I remembered.
“Hey, he looked like he needed one,” Jack said. “He looked lost. His soul was hurt.”
“His world was shattered that day,” I said. “I couldn’t understand it then. I mean, we had fun going to the NCO club that afternoon and listening to old timers talk about Elvis.”
“And the occasional Elvis sing-alongs that happened throughout the evening,” Jack interrupted.
“But I didn’t really understand the whole thing,” I said.
“And now you do?” Jack asked.
“Maybe now I understand a little better about how they felt,” I said. “But I’m sure this is much different. John Lennon is much bigger. John Lennon was. . . Fuck, he’s dead I can’t believe it.”
Jack looked like he was about to cry, but quickly composed himself. “I’m going upstairs to play. I don’t want to see people.”
“I want to see people,” I said. “I’m going downtown for a while. If I go to New York, do you want me to call you? Just in case?”
“Sure,” Jack said.
Jack walked past David, who was standing by the door with tears streaming down his face.
“Do you want to go downtown or anything?” I asked David.
He shook his head no, and walked away.
I took the bus downtown and, probably because I was in a daze (coupled with a slight hang-over), I walked straight to Fitzwilly’s. I figured I’d see if Ronnie survived the evening.
“Rory, what are you doing here?” Michael said as he dropped a napkin in front of me.
“I was looking for Ronnie, do you know if he’s here?”
“Actually, he left a while ago,” Michael said. “He was having a rough day. He was pretty upset about John Lennon. I think he said he was going over to your place.”
“That’s alright, there are people there,” I said. “Could I get a cup of tea?”
“Sure, are you feeling alright?” Michael asked, walking away. “You’ve got me serving tea?”
I walked upstairs to the kitchen to see who was working. The kitchen was laid out in an “L” shape and was only as wide as a hallway, so it was never easy to maneuver around up there.
“Rory, what’s up?” asked Pat, one of the prep cooks, in a deep Jamaican accent. “Hey, someone told me Aragon moved to Boston. I know he wouldn’t do that without saying good-bye to me.”
“He just might have,” I said.
The song “Cold Turkey” was blasting out of the portable radio in the prep area. I couldn’t help but smile because it reminds me of how my sister Cathleen Emily once drew a picture of a turkey chasing a person while listening to that song. She was only six-years-old at the time and would sing, “A turkey/ has got me/ on the run.”
I had “Cold Turkey” on a cassette with a mix of other Lennon tunes, including “Imagine” and “Working Class Hero.” Cathleen and my little brother John Francis, who was five at the time, would try to sing along with the songs.
I had no idea, though, that the kids were taking my John Lennon cassette and playing it on their little play cassette recorder when I wasn’t around. My father, of course, hit the roof when he found out.
It seems John Francis was walking around singing “A working class hero is something to be.” When my father asked him what he was singing, John Francis said, “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He played it on his plastic cassette player. My father started a slow burn while listening to it but went into an immediate rolling boil when he heard the line, “But you’re all fucken peasants as far as I can see.”
When I got home from a tough day at high school, my father was waiting for me. “Is this the type of shit you want your brother to hear?” my father asked, tossing the cassette, which he broke into three pieces, at me. “Why don’t you get a fucken haircut and cut the crap.”
It was actually very reminiscent of the time, years earlier when I was in elementary school, when my father pulled one of my sister’s Beatles’ albums off the turntable, while the needle was still on it, because, “I don’t want anyone bringing that shit into this house.”
The Beatles seem so mild now, especially the early albums, compared to other bands that have come and gone. But, at the time, they were disrupting what most of these old folks saw as the proper way to sing, play, look, perform, talk; …everything!
My father would listen to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, Jerry Vale and the big bands. Of course, if he was feeling really wild, he would toss in some Johnny Cash. “I don’t know how you kids can listen to these assholes that haven’t learned yet that you can’t sing, dance and play instruments all at the same time,” my father would say. “I don’t even know how they can see what they’re doing with all that long, dirty, disgusting hair falling in their faces.”
I, of course, took great pleasure in watching him hit the overload level whenever bands like The Rolling Stones or The Animals would be on the Ed Sullivan Show. In high school, I also took a liking to leaving Frank Zappa albums by the downstairs turntable so he could see the album covers. Zappa perfected the look that all the old folks hated.
My father did like one album I had. Once, while listening to the Kinks, “Everybody’s in Show Biz,” my father sat down during the horn-driven song, “Look a Little on the Sunny Side.”
“Hey, this is almost listenable,” my father conceded, looking over the album cover. “It swings. That's Dixieland. It’s bouncy. I like it.”
It was a nice, brief, break for us: talking – not arguing – about music.
I found the album on the turntable a few times, so I know he listened to it again.
Of course, there were a few other things besides just music that got my father upset. He hit the roof one Saturday when he thumbed through my copy of Jerry Reubin’s “Do It” that I accidentally left on the dining room table. I loved the book because at one point Reubin suggested that people should pay for the car behind them at highway tolls, although he later reasons that we should just blow-up tollbooths because they have no right charging us to drive on the highway. One page had nothing but the word “Fuck” written over and over.
Once my father got a hold of that book, I never saw it again.
The Beatles, though, were always public enemy number one because they started it all, my father reasoned. And John Lennon was even more hated by the old timers because he became involved with the anti-war movement.
“So, I heard you and Aragon were trying to get a hold of me a couple of days ago,” said Heidi, a prep cook with deadly beautiful eyes and a fondness for Frank Zappa music.
“Yeah,” I said. “We were having a small send-off for Aragon and we thought you might like to join us.”
“When’s Aragon leaving?” Heidi asked. “Some people think he’s gone already.”
“He’s gone,” I said.
“You guys are crazy,” she said.
Being cute, tough, and a Zappa fan may make Heidi the perfect woman. And Aragon and I thought she would be the perfect woman for Jack. Although they work in the same restaurant, they both work different shifts. We figured if we could get them together, they may hit it off.
Jack, of course, knew nothing of the discussions.
“So, what are you up to today?” I asked.
“Working,” she said. “And I’m working tonight for Arizona. I know it’s a sad day for everyone, so when Arizona called me at eight this morning, on no sleep and lots of JD, I figured I’d help him out.”
“That was nice of you,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I did want to attend this talk at Yale this evening, but Arizona sounded like he was in rough shape.”
“Are you a Yalie?” I asked.
“No, but I hit some of the seminars,” she said. “I couldn’t be a Yalie, though. I have too much fun working for a living.”
I wished Aragon was still around. I walked back downstairs to the bar and figured I’d have a cup of tea while I figured out my next move.
I lit another cigarette and watched the fire burn on the match as I held it over the ash tray.
“Hello Rory,” a voice next to me said.
“Oh, Sara, hello. How are you?” I asked, trying not to make faces as the fire burned my finger.
“Playing games with matches again?” she asked. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with fire?”
“Yeah, but it seemed like such a good idea until I got burned,” I said nervously. She looked beautiful as usual. She was wearing jeans, a sweater and heavy jacket. She was also carrying what looked like her work clothes folded in a canvas bag.
“Are you working today?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I thought I was working a double. But it’s not until next Tuesday. I read the schedule wrong. Now I’m stranded here until I can get a hold of my mother. My car is getting fixed. And I don’t really like New Haven.”
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Madison.” she said.
“Figures,” I said.
“Hey, Sara, nice job reading the schedule,” Michael said as he placed a cup of tea in front of me. “Remind me never to ask you to check my schedule for me. Can I get you anything?”
“I’ll have a coffee,” she said.
“Oh, sure, doesn’t anyone drink alcohol anymore?” Michael asked.
"Why don’t you like New Haven?” I asked.
“It’s not that I don’t like it. I guess it’s because I really don’t know New Haven that well,” she said. “I haven’t been here that long, I just moved to Connecticut from New Hampshire and I don’t know what, if anything, there is to do here. I know there is the art gallery on Chapel Street and a few theaters. What else is there?”
“There’s quite a bit, really,” I said, taking a deep breath, ready to take the plunge.
The diving board was quickly pulled out from under me, though.
“Sara, what’s up?” asked Brian, walking to the bar. “Hello Cookie.”
“Hey Brian,” Sara said.
“What’s up with you?” I said, irritated at being called Cookie.
“Work, but it won’t be a long day,” he said. “Sara, you working?”
“No, I thought I was,” she said.
“I think a few of us might hit Rudy’s after work and then maybe grab some Mexican,” Brian said. “Are you going to be around?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I may be getting a ride out of here soon.”
“Brian,” some preppie hostess called. “Table three needs you.”
“I’ll be back,” Brian said.
“Look,” I said to Sara, wanting to get my foot in the door before any other offers popped up. “If you’re stranded here, let’s hang out. We can take the walking tour of New Haven.”
I became suddenly terrified when Sara looked into my eyes as she paused.
“Sure, that sounds like fun,” she said. “I just have to try my mother again. If she got the message at work to pick me up and is on her way here, we’ll have to make it another time, alright?”
“Sure,” I said, praying that her mother never got the message.
Sara left the bar as Michael stopped back with her coffee.
“So, that sucks about Lennon,” Michael said. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink? I can pack your bags here and put it all on the owner’s tab.”
“And won’t he notice?” I asked.
“He’ll look at it in the morning and figure he had a great time. Hey, do you know this hostess?” Michael said, signaling towards a new hostess walking through the bar area. “She’s a real obnoxious bitch.”
“Oh yeah? She looks harmless enough,” I said. “Maybe a little stuffy.”
“She was complaining about emptying the garbage yesterday, and it’s in a plastic bag so she doesn’t even have to get her hands dirty,” Michael said. “So I said, joking around of course, ‘Oh stop your bitching and empty the trash,’ and she gets an attitude with me saying she doesn’t appreciate that type of language in her presence.”
“What year is she?”
“She’s a Yale grad student, a biology major or something,” Michael said. “She thinks she’s going to be a fucken doctor or something. I’ll fix her. Is she alone at the host station?”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing over while Michael reached for the telephone under the bar.
“Just let me know if anyone is coming over this way,” Michael said, frantically dialing.
Sure enough, the telephone rings at the host station and little miss grad student picks it up.
“Hello, I am supposed to meet a few people there for lunch and I can’t make it, there was a death in the family. Actually, my wife died and I need to get a message to the people I’m supposed to meet, who are probably already there,” Michael said in a deep, shaken-sounding voice. “Yes, well thank you, but I need you to page the people I’m supposed to meet. Please. The person’s name is Mike, uh, do you have a pencil on hand? Oh, okay, the last name is Hunt. The first name is Mike. Thank you so much, sure I’ll wait.”
“Hey Cookie, where did Sara go?” Brian asked walking towards the bar.
“Making a telephone call,” I said. “And, man, don’t call me Cookie.”
“Alright, I’ll call you Rory,” he said.
“Actually, don’t call me anything.”
“Hey, Michael, I just saw you checking out the new hostess,” Brian said.
“Oh, God, no,” Michael said. “I was just watching her to make sure she wasn’t looking this way.”
“Yeah, sure,” Brian said. “It’s cool. She’s cute. I’ll be hitting on her soon. I have a few other women I’m trying to get out of the way first.”
“Yeah, and what if someone else tries to hit on one of them first?” Michael asked.
“You can go ahead and try,” Brian said. “But if you get into that hostess’ pants and bump into anything, it will be my dick because I’m fucking her first.”
“It won’t be me,” Michael said. “Actually, you two probably deserve each other. She’s all yours.”
Brian walked back to one of his tables.
“My mother never got the message, so you’re stuck dragging me around New Haven,” Sara said, walking towards me.
“That’s great,” I said. “It will be a fun day.”
“I left my bag with my work clothes in the office, so we have to end up back here, alright?”
Meanwhile, Kelly, the manager, went flying through the bar area to the hostess station. It seems what when little miss grad student kept saying “There’s a telephone call for Mike Hunt” into the microphone–which was blasted through the restaurant – it sounded like something entirely different.
As Kelly walked back through the bar area, probably heading to the downstairs office, she gave a wave to the bar.
“Hey, Kelly, I really don’t appreciate that kind of language coming from the hostesses while people are trying to eat lunch,” Michael said.
“Get off it, Michael, before I have that call traced,” Kelly said trying to look stern.
“So, you ready?” I said to Sara, excited about the ensuing adventure.
“Sure, where do we start?” she asked.
As we headed to the door, Brian intercepted us at the host station.
“We’ll be at Rudy’s at about two if you’re around Sara,” Brian said.
“You can come too,” he said, glancing my way.
“Gee, thanks Brian, how nice of you to invite me,” I said, although my sarcasm was lost on him as he scurried back to his station.
“Maybe we’ll stop by,” Sara said.
“Oh, wait,,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I walked to the bar and placed a ten dollar bill in front of Michael.
“Take it,” I said.
“That must have been one great cup of tea,” Michael said. “What are you, fucken nuts?”
“No, I want you to see to it that Brian gets three or four shots after work, from an anonymous donor, of course,” I said.
“You know he’s even a bigger asshole when he drinks? You know that, right? You are nuts,” Michael said. “OK, I’ll do it. I’ll pack his bags.”
Leaving $10 left me with only about $35, but I figured it may be a good investment in case we ran into Brian later.
Part V
I watched Rudy walk out of the room. I couldn’t believe what she just said. I wanted to call after her and ask her to repeat it. I wanted to call out but nothing would come out of my mouth. I had a lump in my throat.
What the fuck, I thought. I felt sick. How could this be? What about ‘Imagine’? What about ‘All the people living life in peace?’ This isn’t right, I thought, starting another cigarette.
This is a mistake. I stood up, then sat back down for a minute. Then I got up and walked to my room. I walked slowly, hoping to hear someone else awake I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to see if it was really true. I put on the radio in my room. Another John Lennon song.
I laid back down on my bed. I felt I had to do something. I didn’t know what to do besides have another cigarette. I felt like crying. I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. My mind was racing. How the fuck could this be? I thought. This is a person who would have his name associated with peace. He wrote about love; he wrote ‘All You Need is Love.’ He wrote the song “Love.” He had a billboard put up in 11 cities that said “War is over/If you want it/Happy Christmas.”
He wrote the song “Happy Christmas (War is Over).” What the fuck? How the fuck does this happen? What the fuck? What the fuck? In 1969 he returned the Member of the Order of the British Empire medal to the British government. What the fuck? The lump in my throat made my face hurt and tears were rolling from my eyes. Things would be very different from now on, I thought. I felt like the love and peace stuff was just a lie.
Jack came in and sat down on the cushion chair facing the window in my room.
“You know what happened,” Jack said in a matter-of-fact manner.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess we aren’t going to the dairy farm.”
“No, we’re not.”
We didn’t talk for awhile. We just listened to more John Lennon songs on WPLR. Every once in a while, one of the housemates would stop into the room. This happened often at the house, people walking into each others’ rooms. I think I even dosed off for a short while.
Jeff, who regularly visited the house, walked into the room and sat cross-legged on the floor. We would often find Jeff sleeping on one of our couches in the morning. None of us are sure how Jeff came to hang out at the house or who he was originally friends with. But he was a nice guy who would buy beer and even groceries on occasion. He was also a Jesus freak. Jeff was an artist, of sorts, and would spend hours at the kitchen table with his colored pencils and pens creating art on dollar bills; coloring in the existing design and creating new designs. We would call it “Jeff’s Psycho Dollars.”
“Would you guys like to join me in prayer?” Jeff asked. “I think we could all use one.”
“You pray, I’ll listen,” I said, still staring at the ceiling.
“I think you guys will find comfort in prayer,” Jeff said. “Especially today.”
“Why?” Jack asked.
“Why pray?” Jeff asked. “Because on a day when we lost a brother, we need God to embrace us so. . .”
“No,” Jack said. “Why would God let this happen?”
“God didn’t let this happen,” Jeff said. “It’s not like God is controlling people’s actions, moving people around like he’s playing a chess game. God has given us each the ability to make choices that will grant us eternal life.”
“Is that what God granted John Lennon?” Jack asked.
“Probably,” Jeff said. “But God also gave us the ability to find comfort in him. If anything, this is teaching us that we need to embrace God more. This shows we are becoming Godless.”
“And it’s all that easy,” Jack said, shaking his head.
“No, it’s not easy,” Jeff said. “But Jack, think about it, you might find comfort in prayer. Think about it. Just try.”
“I’d feel like a hypocrite if I prayed now,” Jack said. “You pray. I’m with Rory. I’ll listen.”
Jeff mumbled a prayer under his breath. I couldn’t really hear him, but I said “Amen” after he did. Jack said nothing.
“God bless you,” Jeff said as he walked out of the room.
“Who sneezed?” Jack asked.
Every once in a while, Jeff would try to get people to pray with him. There were never any takers.
After staring at the ceiling for another song or two, I looked over at Jack, who was thumbing through a Village Voice. “Well, I can’t just lay here, but I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Do you want to play?” Jack asked.
“Yes, I mean, no,” I said, not wanting a reminder of how bad I could play. “Not right now. Maybe we should go to New York.”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I think I want to keep a distance from what’s probably there.”
“But there will probably be a lot of Lennon fans there,” I said.
“Yeah, a lot of mourners,” Jack said. “John Lennon was a man of peace. He had a vision. He was so full of life. That’s what I want to hang on to. I can’t hang out with mourners.”
“You know, looking at everyone’s face as they walk in and out of here reminds me of how that guy Sgt. Hiser acted when he found out Elvis died.” I said.
“Sgt. Hiser?” Jack said. “You remember that?”
We all had Hiser pegged as a bit of a square. He was a teenager in the 1950s, so by the time he had to deal with us in the 1970s, we thought the train had left him far behind. And by that time, we were all grunt workers and he was the authority. He was a really nice guy and all, but we just couldn’t associate with him.
The day Elvis died, though, he walked into the storeroom of Eifel Hall – or Awful Hell, as we all called the dining hall at Bitburg Air Base – and sat down while Jack and I were talking. He looked up with red, teary eyes and a blank expression on his face and said, “The King is dead.”
“Shit Jack, you gave the guy a hug,” I remembered.
“Hey, he looked like he needed one,” Jack said. “He looked lost. His soul was hurt.”
“His world was shattered that day,” I said. “I couldn’t understand it then. I mean, we had fun going to the NCO club that afternoon and listening to old timers talk about Elvis.”
“And the occasional Elvis sing-alongs that happened throughout the evening,” Jack interrupted.
“But I didn’t really understand the whole thing,” I said.
“And now you do?” Jack asked.
“Maybe now I understand a little better about how they felt,” I said. “But I’m sure this is much different. John Lennon is much bigger. John Lennon was. . . Fuck, he’s dead I can’t believe it.”
Jack looked like he was about to cry, but quickly composed himself. “I’m going upstairs to play. I don’t want to see people.”
“I want to see people,” I said. “I’m going downtown for a while. If I go to New York, do you want me to call you? Just in case?”
“Sure,” Jack said.
Jack walked past David, who was standing by the door with tears streaming down his face.
“Do you want to go downtown or anything?” I asked David.
He shook his head no, and walked away.
I took the bus downtown and, probably because I was in a daze (coupled with a slight hang-over), I walked straight to Fitzwilly’s. I figured I’d see if Ronnie survived the evening.
“Rory, what are you doing here?” Michael said as he dropped a napkin in front of me.
“I was looking for Ronnie, do you know if he’s here?”
“Actually, he left a while ago,” Michael said. “He was having a rough day. He was pretty upset about John Lennon. I think he said he was going over to your place.”
“That’s alright, there are people there,” I said. “Could I get a cup of tea?”
“Sure, are you feeling alright?” Michael asked, walking away. “You’ve got me serving tea?”
I walked upstairs to the kitchen to see who was working. The kitchen was laid out in an “L” shape and was only as wide as a hallway, so it was never easy to maneuver around up there.
“Rory, what’s up?” asked Pat, one of the prep cooks, in a deep Jamaican accent. “Hey, someone told me Aragon moved to Boston. I know he wouldn’t do that without saying good-bye to me.”
“He just might have,” I said.
The song “Cold Turkey” was blasting out of the portable radio in the prep area. I couldn’t help but smile because it reminds me of how my sister Cathleen Emily once drew a picture of a turkey chasing a person while listening to that song. She was only six-years-old at the time and would sing, “A turkey/ has got me/ on the run.”
I had “Cold Turkey” on a cassette with a mix of other Lennon tunes, including “Imagine” and “Working Class Hero.” Cathleen and my little brother John Francis, who was five at the time, would try to sing along with the songs.
I had no idea, though, that the kids were taking my John Lennon cassette and playing it on their little play cassette recorder when I wasn’t around. My father, of course, hit the roof when he found out.
It seems John Francis was walking around singing “A working class hero is something to be.” When my father asked him what he was singing, John Francis said, “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He played it on his plastic cassette player. My father started a slow burn while listening to it but went into an immediate rolling boil when he heard the line, “But you’re all fucken peasants as far as I can see.”
When I got home from a tough day at high school, my father was waiting for me. “Is this the type of shit you want your brother to hear?” my father asked, tossing the cassette, which he broke into three pieces, at me. “Why don’t you get a fucken haircut and cut the crap.”
It was actually very reminiscent of the time, years earlier when I was in elementary school, when my father pulled one of my sister’s Beatles’ albums off the turntable, while the needle was still on it, because, “I don’t want anyone bringing that shit into this house.”
The Beatles seem so mild now, especially the early albums, compared to other bands that have come and gone. But, at the time, they were disrupting what most of these old folks saw as the proper way to sing, play, look, perform, talk; …everything!
My father would listen to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, Jerry Vale and the big bands. Of course, if he was feeling really wild, he would toss in some Johnny Cash. “I don’t know how you kids can listen to these assholes that haven’t learned yet that you can’t sing, dance and play instruments all at the same time,” my father would say. “I don’t even know how they can see what they’re doing with all that long, dirty, disgusting hair falling in their faces.”
I, of course, took great pleasure in watching him hit the overload level whenever bands like The Rolling Stones or The Animals would be on the Ed Sullivan Show. In high school, I also took a liking to leaving Frank Zappa albums by the downstairs turntable so he could see the album covers. Zappa perfected the look that all the old folks hated.
My father did like one album I had. Once, while listening to the Kinks, “Everybody’s in Show Biz,” my father sat down during the horn-driven song, “Look a Little on the Sunny Side.”
“Hey, this is almost listenable,” my father conceded, looking over the album cover. “It swings. That's Dixieland. It’s bouncy. I like it.”
It was a nice, brief, break for us: talking – not arguing – about music.
I found the album on the turntable a few times, so I know he listened to it again.
Of course, there were a few other things besides just music that got my father upset. He hit the roof one Saturday when he thumbed through my copy of Jerry Reubin’s “Do It” that I accidentally left on the dining room table. I loved the book because at one point Reubin suggested that people should pay for the car behind them at highway tolls, although he later reasons that we should just blow-up tollbooths because they have no right charging us to drive on the highway. One page had nothing but the word “Fuck” written over and over.
Once my father got a hold of that book, I never saw it again.
The Beatles, though, were always public enemy number one because they started it all, my father reasoned. And John Lennon was even more hated by the old timers because he became involved with the anti-war movement.
“So, I heard you and Aragon were trying to get a hold of me a couple of days ago,” said Heidi, a prep cook with deadly beautiful eyes and a fondness for Frank Zappa music.
“Yeah,” I said. “We were having a small send-off for Aragon and we thought you might like to join us.”
“When’s Aragon leaving?” Heidi asked. “Some people think he’s gone already.”
“He’s gone,” I said.
“You guys are crazy,” she said.
Being cute, tough, and a Zappa fan may make Heidi the perfect woman. And Aragon and I thought she would be the perfect woman for Jack. Although they work in the same restaurant, they both work different shifts. We figured if we could get them together, they may hit it off.
Jack, of course, knew nothing of the discussions.
“So, what are you up to today?” I asked.
“Working,” she said. “And I’m working tonight for Arizona. I know it’s a sad day for everyone, so when Arizona called me at eight this morning, on no sleep and lots of JD, I figured I’d help him out.”
“That was nice of you,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I did want to attend this talk at Yale this evening, but Arizona sounded like he was in rough shape.”
“Are you a Yalie?” I asked.
“No, but I hit some of the seminars,” she said. “I couldn’t be a Yalie, though. I have too much fun working for a living.”
I wished Aragon was still around. I walked back downstairs to the bar and figured I’d have a cup of tea while I figured out my next move.
I lit another cigarette and watched the fire burn on the match as I held it over the ash tray.
“Hello Rory,” a voice next to me said.
“Oh, Sara, hello. How are you?” I asked, trying not to make faces as the fire burned my finger.
“Playing games with matches again?” she asked. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with fire?”
“Yeah, but it seemed like such a good idea until I got burned,” I said nervously. She looked beautiful as usual. She was wearing jeans, a sweater and heavy jacket. She was also carrying what looked like her work clothes folded in a canvas bag.
“Are you working today?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I thought I was working a double. But it’s not until next Tuesday. I read the schedule wrong. Now I’m stranded here until I can get a hold of my mother. My car is getting fixed. And I don’t really like New Haven.”
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Madison.” she said.
“Figures,” I said.
“Hey, Sara, nice job reading the schedule,” Michael said as he placed a cup of tea in front of me. “Remind me never to ask you to check my schedule for me. Can I get you anything?”
“I’ll have a coffee,” she said.
“Oh, sure, doesn’t anyone drink alcohol anymore?” Michael asked.
"Why don’t you like New Haven?” I asked.
“It’s not that I don’t like it. I guess it’s because I really don’t know New Haven that well,” she said. “I haven’t been here that long, I just moved to Connecticut from New Hampshire and I don’t know what, if anything, there is to do here. I know there is the art gallery on Chapel Street and a few theaters. What else is there?”
“There’s quite a bit, really,” I said, taking a deep breath, ready to take the plunge.
The diving board was quickly pulled out from under me, though.
“Sara, what’s up?” asked Brian, walking to the bar. “Hello Cookie.”
“Hey Brian,” Sara said.
“What’s up with you?” I said, irritated at being called Cookie.
“Work, but it won’t be a long day,” he said. “Sara, you working?”
“No, I thought I was,” she said.
“I think a few of us might hit Rudy’s after work and then maybe grab some Mexican,” Brian said. “Are you going to be around?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I may be getting a ride out of here soon.”
“Brian,” some preppie hostess called. “Table three needs you.”
“I’ll be back,” Brian said.
“Look,” I said to Sara, wanting to get my foot in the door before any other offers popped up. “If you’re stranded here, let’s hang out. We can take the walking tour of New Haven.”
I became suddenly terrified when Sara looked into my eyes as she paused.
“Sure, that sounds like fun,” she said. “I just have to try my mother again. If she got the message at work to pick me up and is on her way here, we’ll have to make it another time, alright?”
“Sure,” I said, praying that her mother never got the message.
Sara left the bar as Michael stopped back with her coffee.
“So, that sucks about Lennon,” Michael said. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink? I can pack your bags here and put it all on the owner’s tab.”
“And won’t he notice?” I asked.
“He’ll look at it in the morning and figure he had a great time. Hey, do you know this hostess?” Michael said, signaling towards a new hostess walking through the bar area. “She’s a real obnoxious bitch.”
“Oh yeah? She looks harmless enough,” I said. “Maybe a little stuffy.”
“She was complaining about emptying the garbage yesterday, and it’s in a plastic bag so she doesn’t even have to get her hands dirty,” Michael said. “So I said, joking around of course, ‘Oh stop your bitching and empty the trash,’ and she gets an attitude with me saying she doesn’t appreciate that type of language in her presence.”
“What year is she?”
“She’s a Yale grad student, a biology major or something,” Michael said. “She thinks she’s going to be a fucken doctor or something. I’ll fix her. Is she alone at the host station?”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing over while Michael reached for the telephone under the bar.
“Just let me know if anyone is coming over this way,” Michael said, frantically dialing.
Sure enough, the telephone rings at the host station and little miss grad student picks it up.
“Hello, I am supposed to meet a few people there for lunch and I can’t make it, there was a death in the family. Actually, my wife died and I need to get a message to the people I’m supposed to meet, who are probably already there,” Michael said in a deep, shaken-sounding voice. “Yes, well thank you, but I need you to page the people I’m supposed to meet. Please. The person’s name is Mike, uh, do you have a pencil on hand? Oh, okay, the last name is Hunt. The first name is Mike. Thank you so much, sure I’ll wait.”
“Hey Cookie, where did Sara go?” Brian asked walking towards the bar.
“Making a telephone call,” I said. “And, man, don’t call me Cookie.”
“Alright, I’ll call you Rory,” he said.
“Actually, don’t call me anything.”
“Hey, Michael, I just saw you checking out the new hostess,” Brian said.
“Oh, God, no,” Michael said. “I was just watching her to make sure she wasn’t looking this way.”
“Yeah, sure,” Brian said. “It’s cool. She’s cute. I’ll be hitting on her soon. I have a few other women I’m trying to get out of the way first.”
“Yeah, and what if someone else tries to hit on one of them first?” Michael asked.
“You can go ahead and try,” Brian said. “But if you get into that hostess’ pants and bump into anything, it will be my dick because I’m fucking her first.”
“It won’t be me,” Michael said. “Actually, you two probably deserve each other. She’s all yours.”
Brian walked back to one of his tables.
“My mother never got the message, so you’re stuck dragging me around New Haven,” Sara said, walking towards me.
“That’s great,” I said. “It will be a fun day.”
“I left my bag with my work clothes in the office, so we have to end up back here, alright?”
Meanwhile, Kelly, the manager, went flying through the bar area to the hostess station. It seems what when little miss grad student kept saying “There’s a telephone call for Mike Hunt” into the microphone–which was blasted through the restaurant – it sounded like something entirely different.
As Kelly walked back through the bar area, probably heading to the downstairs office, she gave a wave to the bar.
“Hey, Kelly, I really don’t appreciate that kind of language coming from the hostesses while people are trying to eat lunch,” Michael said.
“Get off it, Michael, before I have that call traced,” Kelly said trying to look stern.
“So, you ready?” I said to Sara, excited about the ensuing adventure.
“Sure, where do we start?” she asked.
As we headed to the door, Brian intercepted us at the host station.
“We’ll be at Rudy’s at about two if you’re around Sara,” Brian said.
“You can come too,” he said, glancing my way.
“Gee, thanks Brian, how nice of you to invite me,” I said, although my sarcasm was lost on him as he scurried back to his station.
“Maybe we’ll stop by,” Sara said.
“Oh, wait,,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I walked to the bar and placed a ten dollar bill in front of Michael.
“Take it,” I said.
“That must have been one great cup of tea,” Michael said. “What are you, fucken nuts?”
“No, I want you to see to it that Brian gets three or four shots after work, from an anonymous donor, of course,” I said.
“You know he’s even a bigger asshole when he drinks? You know that, right? You are nuts,” Michael said. “OK, I’ll do it. I’ll pack his bags.”
Leaving $10 left me with only about $35, but I figured it may be a good investment in case we ran into Brian later.
posted by Kane | 11:04 AM
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