Seventeen. The Kids
Pete and Sera lived in the highest apartment in the tallest building on campus. Which was impressive, considering that Sera had been kicked out of housing twice. But every time they kicked her out Sera just re-applied, and the university was so disorganized no one had ever noticed.
Crossing over into the apartment was like entering Berlin at the dawn of the Third Reich. Some walls had been painted, somewhat. Others were draped in gold and red fabrics that tumbled down like waterfalls and bunched up at the chair legs and spun a wandering turtle in dizzy circles. On the coffee table sat the Tao Te Ch’ing and an array of porn magazines. Green and purple and red feathers were scattered about the couches. There were mermaid paintings and glittering posters from past protests. An old player was surrounded by records.
In the corner a tall drink of water in khaki grew ever more nervous and stiff as Sera strode topless towards the fridge. "Hey," she said blasé as she passed.
"My GOD!" He shielded his eyes with a hand.
Sera stood across from him and stared. "Uh, what are you doing?"
"I am averting my eyes!"
A bull honing in on a glimpse of red. "Why?"
"Why?” The spectacles nearly flew from his nose. “I am being decent! I am properly dressed.” His glasses forever sliding down, but never falling off. “Why can't YOU be?"
Sera stretched backwards, her exposed breasts heaving before popping eyes. “I don’t see why we should we be ashamed of our bodies.”
The boy scrambled for the door.
Pete was spread out over two chairs and a coffee table, bending mournful notes on an amber guitar. "It was as if the boy had just seen a woman for the first time,” he mused, staring at the guitar through thick curls, “and had no idea what to do with himself.”
Sera twisted her straw. “So, tell us about your new roommate, Pete.”
Pete scratched his head, his face slackening in a lazy smile. “I don’t really know him. He was willing to go in a double... good enough for me.” He took another swig of his drink and looked over at Sera. “Is it true Meg is thinking of leaving?”
Sera shrugged indifferently. “I can’t help it if she doesn’t get along with Mister Torty.”
Sera hung out the window, her long legs dangling above the dozens of stories below, contemplating the park that stretched out in a perfect square.
“Do you like it?” she asked, blowing smoke into the apartment.
“It’s beautiful.” I was smitten with the view. “How did you manage to get something like this?”
Sera chose to ignore the question. “What do you think about nudity?” she asked instead.
I shrugged. “It’s convenient.”
“Good.” Sera swaggered over, one hip at a time. Then she spotted bowed heads in the windows of the library next door and stopped. “Are they studying?” she asked, incredulous. “I know how to make them stop…” She wriggled and shimmied and pressed up to the glass.
“What are you doing, you fools!” Sera screamed out the window to the bowed heads in the library next door. “It’s a Thursday night!”
“That girl is just asking for trouble.” Pete shook his head.
“Oh, to each her own,” I mused. “Whatever makes you happy, you know?”
"Come on." Pete laughed. "Do you think Sera acts like this when there are no people around?” I pictured Sera alone, her face in the flickering iridescent glow of a television, watching infomercials in pajamas.
“You should live with us," Sera demanded.
There were a thousand reasons I should have said no. Yet I was drawn to this fiery tempest with sparkling eyes. Smoke oozed from her fingers lily white. And that name. Que sera, sera. So pretty. I had stepped into a perfect situation I couldn’t refuse. Besides, it sounded dangerous. "I’ll do it."
Sera straightened her shoulders and headed downstairs. Five shrieking minutes later a door flew open and a girl stalked out, her face covered in angry red streaks. I caught her, consoled her and solemnly offered her my room on the other side of campus.
“How can you stand her?” She pointed a long finger at Sera, who was engaged in some kind of half-naked tribal shuffle in the hall. “She acts like a six-year-old!"
Soon after the Scot left – and was even all smiles about it. What was his name – I always confused it with Andrew, couldn't ever really remember, something with an –ew. We paid lip service and asked him to stay, but after finding me brushing my teeth naked in the bathroom he insisted with a wide smile that just wouldn’t do. Sera drew another notch on the wall. “Another one gone. Let’s celebrate!”
All in all it seemed like the flat dynamic could work. Pete kept Sera from engaging in her favorite bar pastimes of manipulating, teasing and conning sorry old men. It was her form of public service, a sort of cleaning up the streets. Sera would stalk to the corners and trace her tongue around shaking ears and whisper all sorts of licentious things. At which point Pete would drag Sera out into the street for a raucous fight that often ended with either one of them storming off in a cab. Not that Sera would ever do anything – it was all a game, a liberated stand against the conniving black hearts of men, a daring counter strike to the oppression she felt had been unfairly dealt on women in the West. She was also quite good at turning out on Saturday mornings impeccably dressed for the Sabbath.
That Saturday there were friends and guests and people Sera had invited in from the street, plus extras, plus some musicians, looking for space on the coffee table to tap their cigarette. Pete roared with laughter in the corner with Chris, who was arguing some kind of philosophical bullshit and there’s ten million other people I don’t recognize but everyone’s easy, everything’s all right, smiles are genuine and laughter is going round in circuits and no one’s talking about becoming consultants, instead the kid with the crazy hair is showing how to crack off my beer bottle top with a lighter but I can’t quite do it and Charles is on the floor getting pummeled by some other guy despite being twice his size.
Sera changed the record and clambered to the top of a chair. “Everybody motherfucking TWIST!”
And they all did. Every last person stopped, made fists, bent their knees and swung their hips.
Over the days the clusters of empty bottles on the tables grew into fantastic geometric patterns. The record player grew hot in the autumn haze. Dexter Gordon and Zoot Sims and Philly Joe Jones took turns coding the air with sensual rhythms and syncopated measures, while I swung my legs in time out the window, Traherne in hand, and Sera swung her hip pouring milk over cereal, and Pete swung open the cabinet filled with vodka under the sink, with a crashing sound heard shortly thereafter.
Over time his demeanor would change, as he grew louder and faster, until midway through the bottle when he turned into a merry tornado, blowing through girls and grins and gin and anything that came his way until he collapsed facedown on his bed, not to emerge for days.
Though it all looked the same – with wide easy laughs and long endless nights, I was surprised to find that I only wanted to cry. I found myself longing for deeper conversations, rather than piles of shallow parties filled with people I didn't know. In my head I was back on the beach, with my longboard under an arm, tossed on the waves, sliding on belly first, and paddling away from the shore. I wanted to whimper, to back into a corner and slide down, prove that I wasn’t growing up and slowing down, that this world wasn’t as lucid as the white smoke that curled up into the air. I’m still here, I said, gripping myself. I’m still here.
But I was back in that turquoise city. Where the kids spun in circles in the night on weird streets. When I closed my eyes I saw their smiles. But what was the cost of that easy smile? Maybe they had all that time because they had no dreams. Only unforgiving darkness that swept people out to sea.
“What are you dreaming about over there?” Pete asked.
“Nothing,” I said softly.
Sera sniffed the air, as if the music had just turned foul
. “Can we listen to something other than this atonal drawl?”
Pete was aghast. “It’s Jimmy Forrest.”
"It's Night Train!" I cried.
"The original,” Pete smiled.
“James Brown did it better,” Sera insisted. Then she slapped her forehead. “Shit, I almost forgot. I have to cover Jazz ‘Til Dawn.” The thought depressed her enough to take an unusually long swig.
"I’ll cover it,” Pete said.
I turned to him. “That’s awful nice of you.”
“That’s all right. Being on air is a privilege. Besides,” Pete smiled, “at one am on Saturday night, would life be better if I was in a room with ten thousand jazz records?”
“That sounds amazing,” I admitted.
Pete smiled. “Would you like to come?”
“Yes.”
The station in question was tucked on the corner of Broadway and 114th. It played old music from the past to help people forget the present. Most hadn't heard of it – especially not since the towers fell. The station’s $1 million antennae went down with them, and insurance being what it is these days, their claim was rejected. And so the radio signal was reduced to a blinking six-block radius from the decrepit church where they now broadcast their lonesome American music.
“So, station manager.” I extended my legs onto an empty chair. “You must practically live here.” Pete shrugged and I saw it was true. The rounded toes on his giant feet sat familiar on the carpet that had gone muddy from visitors and neglect. The chair that sat before the gleaming panels slouched for him, as if in agreement, like a loyal dog. Even the microphone hanger curled in sweet interest around his reclining figure. It was his home.
Pete pushed the desk and his chair swung back, and with one practiced glide of his foot slid effortlessly over to the crates.
“I’ve known about this radio station my whole life,” he began as his fingers passed casually over the discs. He settled on one disc, flipped it into the air as he kicked the chair back and caught it in the other hand with a flourish. “I still remember running around the lawns in front of the steps as a little kid, with the football game playing on the radio – on this station.” I imagined a smaller cloud of hair flouncing in happy pursuit of a football.
“Visiting college campuses as a kid – impressive ambitions for a young child.”
Pete’s eyes flared. “I was only there because I grew up across the street.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Going to college across the street from home. Isn’t that a bit odd?”
“It’s not like I had a choice.” He bowed and the cloud of hair dropped forward in front of his face like curtains politely obscuring his disdain. “There was no way I was getting sent anywhere else.”
“Why not?”
He let out a chuckle and the curtains billowed. “Tuition was free.”
“Free.” I repeated. “How does one arrange a deal like that?” Pete shook his head back and forth with a solemnity that suggested it was both obvious and terrible.
“When your dad is a professor.” He coughed out a short laugh and shrugged his shoulders. “I hate this place.”
The clacking opening of the song started up, giving our conversation a kind of strange and sudden frivolity, as if we had gone to the circus together and just stepped up to the ring toss. “Good song.”
The vibrations from the speakers caused Pete’s curls to bounce in time with the bass. “It’s the best.”
I nodded along, watching a series of gold rings sail into the air in rapid succession, descend just beyond their white sticks and vanish into vapor moments before clattering to the floor.
“What is it?”
Illinois Jacquet,” he drawled, dragging out the last syllable like a bored cowboy.
“A good man.”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.” I considered this. “I’ve actually never heard of him,” I admitted.
Pete’s curls slunk slightly inwards, as if they were saying incredulous, "Look at you girl, stuck on the blues. How could you miss jazz?"
“I only know some jazz. There’s a Max Roach piece I’d like to hear. It’s called The Hunt, and was recorded with Dexter Gordon.”
“Max Roach played that with Dexter a million times. Unless you know–“
“July 6, 1948.” Kerouac used to write to it.
Pete’s eyebrows raised. “You’ve got one hell of a memory.”
“Only for the most useless things,” I assured him.
Pete’s brown eyes bored into mine as his lips curled into a smile. “Standby.”
One final flurry of his hands exploded across the blinking orange dials. The lights dimmed, the music faded, the orange glowed phosphorescent on his skin. He inhaled sharply, froze and flicked his microphone on. As he let roll that low tongue all the tension spilled off his body like water sliding off his back into a pool. His voice hung in the air, suspended above the twinkling panel of lights – “This is the sound of Illinois Jacquet.” The levels slid down like two bowing fans. The horns popped and brayed. Pete’s hair bounced in time to the music. I stifled a yawn.
“If you’re looking for a nap, try under the desk,” he offered. “I usually spend most of the fourth hour down there.”
I sank to my knees as Pete slid his voice back onto the air. The low grooves of his steady rhythms loped out over the night sky, patiently listing the names of forgotten heroes.
I crawled under the desk and rested my head at his feet. After he was done talking, Pete ambled to the door and turned the lights down to a gentle glow.
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