CHAPTER 2

2

© 2010 GREG DUNAJ 

                                               

            Freedom.

            Finally.

            They had escaped from the here and now, the everyday grind. Whatever had bound them to family or lovers, whatever corners they had painted themselves into over the years, had been forgotten. They were young again, running the backstreets in their car. Twenty years had been given back to them in the blink of an eye, the slam of a car door. Once again they were immortal teenagers and the blood that coursed their veins was afire. Forget parenthood and marriage, Harry and Carlo once again had their entire lives available to them, splayed before them like an empty, macadam highway.

              Into the arms of sweet remembrances they had been thrust. The day was theirs and Dedalus, the idol of their youth, was within their grasp. They only had to drive like maniacs day and night. No worries with that, adrenalin would keep them up forever. All systems were go, every traffic light from New Jersey to Dallas had turned green. With the car's engine roaring like a rocket turbine, Carlo made quick work of the side streets in Harry's suburban development. The tires squealed as it rounded corners. Carlo's heart pounded with rapt anticipation, but Harry's gut growled darkly. Despite the new-found, teenaged outlook, Harry still ate like an armchair quarterback.

              "Food," said Harry with a finger pointing at the pale, white light of a supermarket.

            The word quickly quenched the fire that smoldered in Carlo's heart.

            "Hey, we gotta put some miles in."

            "Food. Hungry. Stop. Store right there."   

            "What are you Tarzan?"

            "We're going to be on the road for a long time. We'll need supplies. Better to stop now than in the middle of some swamp."

            "Ah, hell, some things never change. How many double dates were we late for because you'd make us stop to get something to eat?"

            "How many clothes did I ruin because you'd drive like a nut to make up the time."

            "You started wearing spotted clothes so you couldn't see the stains."

            The visit to the supermarket proved positive, for planning the trip with the requisite foods psyched the men up further.

            "Gonna need these Twinkies right about when we hit North Carolina," Carlo had said as he threw two handfuls into the shopping cart.

            Laden with chips, pretzels, candy and lunchmeats, bean dip, a broiled chicken, sodas, milk and cereal in those little boxes you can eat from, plastic forks and spoons and a Styrofoam cooler, a grinning Carlo pronounced them ready to hit the road, but Harry wanted Carlo to make one more stop. Carlo had given up hurrying them along.

               "I've got to get my supply of cigars. This is going to be a long trip."

            "How could I forget, you and your stogies."

            "The only time I can smoke them is when I'm away from the house. Kris won't even let me smoke a cigar in the backyard. She says the smoke drifts up into the babies' room."

            "Paranoid, huh?"

            "Well..."

            They laughed.

            "Can you even get good cigars around here?"

            "Not as good as the cigars you can get in Paris."

            "Oh, you mean Cuban cigars. I guess I should've brought a box over for you."

            "What a pal, always thinking of me, even if it's too late."

            "You're making me feel real bad. What makes them so special anyway?"

            "It's that Cuban spit. When they roll up the cigars it's their spit that keeps the leaves together. It must be the water they drink."

            "They don't spit on the tobacco. You're yanking my chain."

            "It's true. 'Smokers World,' gets a lot of their cigars from Union City, New Jersey. There's a huge Cuban community there. The cigars taste great...they've got the right spit."

            "The right spit," repeated Carlo with a chuckle.

              Smokers World was located in a fairly deserted end of town, past the highway and near the river. Music drifted out the store onto the street as Carlo maneuvered the car curbside. A heavy, sweet, burnt smell enveloped them as they opened the door. It was smoke, but not cigar smoke. 

              A bell attached to the door jamb rang as Harry opened it and this set off a lot of commotion in a back room. The needle of a record player scratched to a halt while a man's voice cursed and admonished someone about not locking the front door. Carlo was alarmed, but Harry laughed.

               "Hey Jonah, Isabella... it's only me, Harry Days."

            "Hey man," came a gravelly voice from the backroom. Its owner emerged, an extremely thin, bearded man wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt. His long, grey-streaked hair was corralled in a pony tail. He wore small, round glasses. Behind him loomed a large woman dressed in a tie-dyed muumuu. Large curls of shoulder length hair ringed her round face. She possessed deep, dark, unsmiling eyes. She stared at Carlo with her meaty arms crossed beneath her breasts. 

              "Isabella, Jonah, this is a guy I grew up with in Harrison...Carlo. Carlo, these are the Hornbuckles."

            "Wha...Beltbuckles?" 

            Carlo laughed at his pun. Only Isabella reacted. She closed her eyes briefly and snorted. 

              "Gotta say there Harry, you gave us a scare," said Jonah as he walked over to the front door and tested the lock. "Thought Izzy had us shuttered down for the night."

              "The lock’s broken. You gotta get a new one," said Izzy in an unexpectedly chirpy voice.

              Jonah checked the lock again. 

            "Why yes, my little turtledove," rasped Jonah, "I believe you're right. But you boys take your time. I'll stay open for you."         

              Smokers World was an old, renovated railroad flat. Long and narrow, one wall was a humidor filled with cigars. It had sliding glass doors. On the other side was a counter with candies, cigarettes, wooden humidors and little statues of movie actors like Charlie Chaplin and W.C. Fields for sale. At the far end was a section for pipes, roaches and other drug paraphernalia. The Hornbuckles also sold rock posters, though Carlo could not see them as Izzy was standing in front of the display, still snorting.

              "She's not very friendly," whispered Carlo in Harry's ear.

              "Isabella is very nice," said Harry as he ran a finger along the glass door of the humidor.

            "Well, she's standing over there snorting at us."

            "She's probably meditating or something," said Harry, laughing. "I think it's because we crashed their little pot party. They must use an incinerator."

            Harry slid open a glass panel of the humidor and began grabbing cigars.

            "You're friends with them," said Carlo. "Maybe we can get some pot from them."

            Harry gave Carlo a little sideways glance.

            "We've got a long ride. We start smoking, we'll never get anywhere."

            "Oh, come on," said Carlo, as he hit Harry in the shoulder with his fist. "And look whose talking about long trips and finally getting somewhere."

            "Hey, these are necessary things."

            Harry pulled out a double handful of cellophane wrapped cigars and handed them to Carlo.

            "These are necessary?" Carlo said of the long, thick cigars.

            "Yes, of course. These are chewing cigars."

            "What are these?"

            "Chewers. They're good for card games and walking and bars and driving."

            "You better get some more then. I'll be joining you, especially with no pot."

            "Fair enough."

            Harry grabbed six more 'chewers' and handed them to Carlo.

            "And these," Harry said, grabbing a half dozen warm, dark brown cigars from a cedar box in the humidor, "are relaxing cigars."

            There was a silky, pleasant texture to the long, slender cigars. They were not wrapped in cellophane.

            "Smell," said Harry and he held one up to Carlo's nose.

            "Nice, I guess."

            "They're the best. Strong, but flavorful. The best for after dinner."

            "They'll go well with our Twinkies."

            Harry laughed and scratched his head.

            "They'll be excellent for the concert."

            "Yeah...I guess."

            Carlo arched an eyebrow and followed Harry to the counter with his cache of cigars. He dumped the pile onto the counter. Izzy walked over and started counting them out.

            "You've been coming in here for a few years Harry," said Jonah from a worn, comfy chair just inside the backroom. "Never had you buy so many cigars at once. You either bought a humidor or your wife had a change of heart."

            "Neither one, she still won't let me near the house with them. Carlo and I are leaving town for a few days. We're driving to Dallas."

            "Dallas? Who's playing there?"

            "How did you know that," asked Harry.

            "What?"

            "That we're going there to see a concert."

            "I dunno, just a shot. I mean you two don't look like you're heading out on a business trip."

            "Concert it is," said Harry. "Don't think we're crazy do you?"

            "What, to drive to Dallas? Of course not. Izzy and I had been known to pack up our bags for a Grateful Dead show when we were younger. Used to follow them everywhere...all across the country. Now, it can't be more than a few hours driving. I can't sit in a car that long because of my back. I guess I'm getting older."

              "One time we drove all the way out to San Francisco to see them," said Izzy.

            "All the way to the west coast?"

            "No, we were living out in Denver at the time," said Jonah.

            "No, no, no. We were back east."

            "That is where you're wrong my darling sugarplum. It was when we were living in tepees outside Denver and I had that job building geodesic domes."

            Isabella thought for a moment, meaty fingers thumping the counter, and finally agreed with the tepee version.

            "Why yes," she chirped. "Our daughter was born during that concert and the band made an announcement about it."

            "Yep," said Jonah between teeth clenched on a corn cob pipe. "You can say that was the hi-light of our life. We had a wild youth."

            Carlo sighed. Jonah yawned.

            "That's a wonderful story. A real memory," said Carlo as he watched Jonah lower his chin onto his chest and fall asleep.

            "He doesn't have the stamina anymore," said Izzy, walking over to her Jonah. She gripped his jaw and pulled his pipe free. She left him on the comfy chair, his mouth now wide open, and walked back over to the counter and the cigars.

            "I didn't know you had a daughter," said Harry. 

            "She was the most precious thing," Isabella said as she searched for a strand of wiry hair and played with it; her big eyes straying toward the ceiling. "She had a big, round face and the cutest eyes."

            "You said she was born during a concert?"

            "Conceived at one too," Izzy said, blushing. "She was born at an outdoor show. We buried the afterbirth at the very spot, and a few days later Jonah went back and planted a tree there."

            "What did you name her," said Carlo, "Ashley?"

            "Well, I wanted Clarabella. I dunno...something about it just sings off my lips. Clarabella!" she sang.

            Carlo and Harry winced but said nothing. Isabella caught herself and gave a look back at the sleeping Jonah.

            "Ooh," she said, fingers covering her lips, "don't want to wake my lovey. Anyway, Jonah named her Jerry...after Garcia...in the band."

            "The lesser of two evils," whispered Carlo.

            Harry prodded him in the gut with an elbow.

            "What does Jerry do now?"

            "Investment banker, New York."

            "Funny how things work out," said Carlo.

            "Who did you say you two were driving out to Dallas to see?"

            "Dedalus. Remember him?"

            Isabella's eyes grew wide immediately and her voice took on a deep, husky tone.

              "Of course I do! He's still around? I thought he died or something. He obviously didn't die...but it was something, something else. Oh, remember that hit he had, it's gotta be twenty years already. How did it go? "Gonna go where my heart can breathe. Scale that wall and swim that stream....'"

              Carlo laughed as Izzy sang the first two verses to 'Escape' with Harry joining in on the second verse and completing the song.

              "And he was such a good-looking guy," she continued after the song. 

           Jonah began to stir in his chair. Isabella gave a side-ways glance at him.

           "Of course, Dedalus couldn't hold a candle to my snookums over there. Too bad Jonah can't stand Dedalus. He'd call him a 'flash-in-the-pan'. But me, I'd love to go."

              Harry gave Carlo another quick look as Carlo laughingly told her she was welcome and that there was ample room in the car. 

            When Izzy thudded over to Jonah to tell him the news, Harry admonished Carlo.

              "Come on, I thought Izzy was your pal."

            "Aw geez, this is for us. I buy cigars here, that's all. I don't want to take her along."

            Carlo gave a look at Izzy's rump thrust high in the air as she fawned over Jonah, who had just launched into a coughing fit.

              "It's big enough for both of us."

           "Aw geez, don't do this to me," said Harry as Jonah kept coughing and coughing.

            "Jonah, Jonsy," chirped Isabella.

            There was a worried edge to her voice. Jonah kept coughing and it got rapidly worse; a wet, viscous hack. His eyes bulged and the veins on his neck and one on his forehead swelled with every violent convulsion. Isabella turned to Harry and Carlo, a desperate look on her face.

              "My Jonsy, my Jonsy," she kept repeating. 

            At one point she got behind Jonah and lifted him off the ground in a professional wrestling attempt at the Heimlich maneuver.

            Jonsy kept coughing. His face was turning from bright red to blue.

            "We better do something," said Harry. "I'll call the police."

            The telephone was in the backroom and Harry had to leap over Jonah and Izzy to reach it. She now had him on his back and was pounding his chest. Her wild mane flew everywhere. Her face glistening with the effort.

            Carlo rubbed his eyes, lighted a cigarette and sighed.

             "We're never going to get out of here," he groused.