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  "No, original tunes. I don't know what style or what mix of elements, I don't know anything yet—just that I have to explore this. And I do have the time."

  They both knew it was true. A concert album was already in the can for fall release, and the next studio album wasn't contractually due until the following March. Once the music was written, the group could put it together in just a few sessions.

  "Yeah, you have the time. But be careful, man. The sixties are gone for good. People really don't give much of a shit. Remember how Woodstock's twentieth anniversary flopped? A cautionary tale, Woody."

  "Yeah, but wait until '94. Silver anniversary's the real thing. But don't worry, I'm not going the nostalgia route. I don't want specifics, just the underlying spirit."

  "Well, don't go too far off the deep end. The sixties are over. This is the New Age."

  Woody laughed deprecatingly, as he did every time Chuck used the term. "Bite your tongue. I don't play New Age.”

  “Maybe not, but you helped create it."

  Woody's face sobered. "I play music. That's all."

  "Okay then. Play it."

  "I will. But I have to find it first." He stood up, stretched his arms and legs to make himself feel all his muscles prepare for what was to come. "Got to go back and find it."

  And just maybe, he thought, find something more. And he remembered how Tracy felt in his arms, just days before she died.

  Chapter 2

  The group was, for the time being, dissolved. Ron and Michael and John would go to other groups, tours, gigs, recordings. A date was made for the following January to finish Woody's album, and Woody, alone in his house in Half Moon Bay, began to think about the party.

  His epiphany, as Michael Lester had accurately called it, had been real. The combination of scent and sound had pushed him back into the sixties, made him look at his own past, and the glimpse remained with him, seeming more real than today.

  That apartment had more of the truth of living in it than did Woody's home, the simple but spacious three-story beach house he had bought with the royalties from his last three albums and a good chunk of his income from a four-month European tour.

  Now he sat in his living room whose windows overlooked the Pacific, glanced at the ceramic ashtrays he kept for his friends who smoked, recalled the beer cans in the apartment, and smiled. No cleaning afterward, true disposables.

  The thought of smoking reminded him of the pipe tobacco he had smelled in the studio, so he trotted up the stairs to a third floor room where he kept several boxes that he had dragged on his twenty year odyssey from home to home—New York to Denver to Portland to San Francisco, and finally to Half Moon Bay—without ever opening along the way.

  The packing tape that held the flaps closed was so dry and yellow he was able to peel it off, and he quickly found what he was looking for. There were five pipes, each wrapped in a paper towel, and below them a pipe rack and ashtray his father had made for him for his twentieth birthday, in spite of his disapproval of Woody's smoking.

  Woody picked up the pipes one by one and sniffed the bowls. The traces of odor smelled more like burned briar than the ghosts of tobacco, but it instilled in him an urge to pack one with moist flake and light it, drawing the smoke down the stem and breathing it into the air, filling the room with its heavy perfume.

  He stuffed the largest-bowled one in his pocket and ran downstairs to the telephone, where he looked up tobacconists in the yellow pages. The first one he called stocked MacBaren's Virginia Blend No. 1, and Woody drove to the shop, bought a tin, and hurried back to his house, feeling like a junkie scoring. He knew that what he was doing was absurd, but he was caught in the web of a past he had denied for too long, and its ultimate triumph had possessed him totally.

  In the living room, he put the Doors' first album on the turntable, sat on the couch, listened to the music, filled the pipe, and awkwardly lit it. At first the smoke tasted foul, and he accidentally inhaled and coughed several times before the plug was burning. But finally the sweet lump of tobacco ignited, the aroma filled his nostrils, the room grew hazy, and the taste turned back the years, letting him remember how it was.

  When the album was over, he arose, the pipe clenched in his teeth. Now he was puffing gently, actually enjoying the taste, disregarding the warnings of lip and gum cancer that had made him stop years before. He riffled through his older LPs, and put on a Dylan record. The first song was an old favorite that Peter, Paul, and Mary had covered, but he scarcely remembered the second song, and could not recall the title.

  It was about a dream the singer had. He was in a room again with old friends, and it was as if the intervening years had never passed. It ended with a wish that he and his friends could sit in that same room in reality, and how he would gladly give ten thousand dollars if such a thing could be.

  Another song began, but Woody Robinson didn't hear it. His pipe had gone out during the last song, so he set the pipe down on the coffee table, stood up, turned off the stereo, and realized that he finally knew how to go back.

  Ten thousand dollars. It might take that much or more. But now that the idea had come to him, it would not go away. It was as inescapable as death, and he sat and wondered if it could be done, and then, deciding that it could, he thought about how to do it. When his mind was filled with ideas, he called his college roommate, Frank McDonald, in Atlanta.

  He had seen Frank and Judy three months before, when a promotional tour had taken him through the south. He had done a few radio talk shows, and made an appearance on Atlanta Today, then had dinner at the McDonalds' house and talked until midnight. After Judy had gone to bed, Woody and Frank had gone barhopping, and closed several.

  Frank had changed little since Iselin State University. There were some wrinkles, the temples had lightened to gray, and there was a splash of white in the beard. But the figure was trim, the hairline the same strong widow's peak as in 1969, and the liberal politics were intact.

  Judy, on the other hand, had gained a good twenty-five pounds. But she bore the extra weight well. Instead of making her look fat, it made her more intimidating, an asset in her position as co-owner of a folk art gallery. Irritated artistic egos were less likely to explode when confronted with Judy's motherly, no-nonsense bulk.

  She answered the phone now, with a business-like hello. "Judy, it's Woody. How are you?"

  "Don't you ever call when we're not having dinner?”

  “Damn, that's right, you're three hours behind, aren't you?”

  “If you weren't so simple, Woody, I'd have to get mad at you. You want to talk to Frank." It was a statement, and the next thing Woody knew, Frank was on the line.

  "Hey, bud, what's happenin'?"

  "A party, Frank."

  "Can it wait until I finish dinner?"

  "No. I want to have a party, Frank. Back at Iselin. The old apartment."

  There was a slight pause. "I haven't been back there in years."

  "Me neither. I want to make it as much like the old days as possible. The same place, the same people, clothes, music . . . especially music. Everything."

  "You can get the place?"

  "I don't know, I haven't checked on anything yet."

  Frank paused again. "So when do you want to do this?"

  "As soon as we can. I want to ask Alan and Diane, Fred, Eddie . . .”

  "What about Curly?"

  "Yeah, sure. And Pete and Zipper and Sharla. Hell, there are so many."

  "Right, right. Just one question."

  "Yeah?"

  "Why? I mean, why do you want to do this, after all these years? It's been a long time."

  “Just for fun. For old time's sake. They were pretty good times."

  "And they were pretty lousy times too. Sad times."

  Woody knew what Frank meant. He meant Tracy and Keith and Dale. He meant friends—and lovers—dying young. "Yeah. Yeah, that's a part of it. But we're not going to concentrate on that. It's not going to be a wake, Frank. It
's going to be a party."

  "This have anything to do with your music?"

  There was no point in lying. "Yes."

  "Fucking artists," Frank said, and Woody heard Judy caution him about his language. No doubt the kids were at the table.

  "I need to make some new music. There was a lot of joy back there, Frank."

  "Sure. But there were other things too—there was rage, there was frustration . . . this was the sixties, pal. And confusion and loss, remember them?"

  "They can all make music."

  "How about pain? Can you make pain sing? And is it gonna be a song that anybody can stand to hear?"

  Pain. Frank was right. In all the long years, he had never sung Tracy's song aloud. But it had always been there, floating way in the back of his mind. "You're overplaying this. I just want to party, okay? I just want everybody in bell-bottoms and crocheted miniskirts, Jimi and the Doors on the stereo, beer and cigarettes and greasy pizza . . . and us passing around the new Playboy and Judy getting pissed off."

  That got him. Frank laughed at the memory they shared of his then-girlfriend grabbing at the centerfolds as he and Woody ogled them with theatrical appreciation. "Better be a 1968 issue," he said.

  "1969. A better year for Playboy."

  "’69, huh?" Frank chuckled, but Woody heard the knowledge in his voice. 1969 was the year Keith and Tracy had died. "So you're inviting us? This is why the call?"

  "Inviting you, but also asking if you want to help. Maybe just the last few days. I want the party to be on a Saturday night—“

  “Naturally."

  "So I thought if you could get off the Thursday before, you could give me a hand."

  "Woody, what's there to do? Get in a keg or something?"

  "No, I . . . I think there's going to be a lot. I mean, the idea is to recreate a night in '69. As close as we can come. Just make everything the way it was."

  "Woody, this sounds neat, okay? But what makes you think that people are gonna come from all over the country to just a party, for crissake? I mean, we ain't all as rich as you."

  "That's why I'm going to pay everybody's way. Put them up and everything."

  "And everybody's going to take your charity?"

  "It's not charity—it's my party. I'll send tickets along with the invitations. And reservation numbers at the Iselin Holiday Inn. It's far enough in advance that people can make plans."

  "What about spouses?"

  "I thought about that. Judy's invited. And Alan and Diane are married, and that's cool. But anybody who wasn't really there, well . . . no."

  "That's not going to go over real well with Curly's new bride.”

  “You met her?"

  "Last time we visited Judy's mom in California. She's fifteen years younger than Curly. Typical California beach cattle. In fact, I think he met her on a beach. Chick can fill out a bikini. You haven't seen her?"

  "I don't get to L.A. much. I bet Curly'll come anyway. He never let girls push him around."

  "That's what got him his first divorce. So where you gonna start with this little Saturday night time machine?"

  ~*~

  Woody Robinson started by flying to Pittsburgh, where he rented a car for the hour and a half drive to Iselin, home of Iselin State University.

  He drove east of Pittsburgh, and then north, driving for miles without seeing another car. The road wound up and down hills, through valleys gently greened by the first shoots of spring. The land, at least, had not changed. It was still as wild as it had must have been when the pioneers traveled through it two hundred years before.

  Or maybe, Woody thought sadly, it only looked that way. Maybe acid rain was eating away at those trees even as they budded, ruining the water in the streams and creeks he crossed.

  Woody had done benefit concerts for environmental causes, but had not been active otherwise. He was pessimistic about the planet. Pessimism made him fearful, and fear stole his creativity, so he could not afford to be active. But he was aware of the problems. It was impossible not to be, especially among the musicians who played his kind of music and the people who listened to it.

  Woody drove on, passing through a series of small towns, none of which contained more than a dozen houses. The terrain was more familiar now. The trees began to thin, exposing hillsides shaved bare by strip mining, pocked by slag heaps, and he wondered how the area had ever been chosen as the site of a university. Did the founders think of it as "Iselin Normal School for Those Wishing to Escape the Drudgery and Early Death of the Mines?"

  Still, it had been founded and it had survived and grown from Normal School to State Teachers' College to plain old College, and finally to University status. But when people asked Woody where he went to school, he always said Juilliard, which was where he had done his graduate work, because he quickly discovered that most non-Pennsylvanians had never heard of Iselin.

  However, he always thought of Iselin as his alma mater. Iselin was where he had grown up, where he smoked his first cigarette, drank his first beer, lost both his virginity and the solipsism which had been his philosophy in high school, where he learned that there was more to the world than his own needs and desires.

  He seldom thought about those days, but now, nearing the college he had not revisited for over two decades, he wanted to look back. It was only natural, he supposed. The past few years had made it more difficult than ever not to look back.

  Every week was the silver anniversary of something—the so-called Summer of Love, the release of Sgt. Pepper, the 1968 Democratic convention, the assassinations that shook the sixties—even the Manson killings. Good and bad events alike were rearing their gray and wizened heads. America was aging, and looked to the days of its youth for comfort. Even the Vietnam war had been granted the imprimatur of nostalgia. Jesus, how things had changed.

  Iselin had changed too, Woody saw, as he drove into it from the west. As the university had grown, so had the town. Back in 1969, the stretch of road he traveled had only a shopping center, a Burger King, and car dealerships. But now, before he came to those familiar landmarks, he passed two other malls, a Sheraton, and a strip of half a dozen fast food chains. The stores in the old shopping center were all different. The drug store where he had bought a bizarre assortment of cigarettes, including English Ovals, Fatimas, and Gauloises, which he had smoked for several months, had been replaced by a T. J. Maxx.

  By the time he got to the campus, things looked more familiar. The utilitarian and boxy dormitories, new in the sixties, were still there, but now there were other buildings around them. He couldn't tell if they were classrooms or dorms, for there was a gray sameness about them. He thought of parking and walking around, seeing what was left of the grove of trees in the campus center, but decided to go to the apartment first. That was what he had really come for.

  He swung the car north on Ninth Street, driving past the music building where he had spent most of his undergraduate years, and the theatre on his right, where he had watched Keith and Tracy and his friends act in plays and musicals, and had himself played in concerts beyond counting.

  Then he was off campus and into the town, driving down narrow, tree shaded streets, remembering walking down those streets with Tracy, or staggering down them late at night after a party, and God, yes, there was the tree in front of Dr. Leffler's house where he had thrown up a bottle of Orange Driver. He made a face. Frank was right. All the memories weren't so wonderful.

  Now he was a block away from Lincoln, the town's main street, and he saw the building ahead on the left, and his throat tightened, his hands clenched the steering wheel.

  It hadn't changed. It looked the same as it had over two decades before, when he and Keith and Frank had shared the second floor apartment. Oh Jesus, he thought, 4 South Ninth Street, still alive after all this time, still crazy after all these years.

  The entrance was in the back of the building, and Woody drove his car into the loose stone parking lot and parked between a Tempo and a Subaru,
both of which had university parking stickers on their bumpers. He got out, locked the car, and stood for a long time staring up at the building.

  It was weathered, red brick, three stories high with a flat roof, and semi-detached from the building next to it. Woody noticed that the woodwork needed a coat of paint as badly as it had when he moved out in the spring of 1970. The window sills were chipped into an appaloosa texture, and he saw that one of the windows on the west side of the building was partly open. There was someone living there then.

  Before he mustered the courage to go upstairs, he walked past the enclosed stairway onto Ninth Street, but his hopes that the bookstore was still there were dashed when he saw the vacant storeroom through the grimy windows. When he stepped back to the edge of the sidewalk, he could make out the ghosts of letters that had been scraped off the plate glass window—The Alternative Book Store.

  It might have been there not too long before, he thought, for apparently no other business had occupied the place since its closing. In its time, the "Alt" had been a gathering place for the local heads. Although it sold rolling papers and bongs, its main business was books and magazines, and, along with the stacks of used paperbacks, it also was the only place in Iselin to go for Ramparts, Evergreen Review, and Grove Press books.

  Woody had spent hours there talking jazz with the owner, a short, bald man named Riley, capable of carrying on as reasoned a conversation with Keith about explosives, or with Frank about radical politics. Riley also dealt in military collectibles, and many patrons remarked on the store's weird juxtaposition of peace sign posters and Nazi banners. But it was the sixties, and everything was cool.

  And now it was the nineties, and everything was empty. The store may have stood vacant for years, and Woody reevaluated his theory that it closed only recently. The dust was thick, and the walls near the window showed only traces of where the bookshelves had stood. Though the sun had shone on them only a few minutes a day, the paint the shelves had covered was bleached to nearly the same pale shade as that of the rest of the wall.

  Woody hadn't really expected the store to still be there. In fact, he had been pleasantly surprised to find the building was there. He walked down the sidewalk to Lincoln Street, hoping that Dom's would still be alive.