We were deliberately being influenced by the I Ching and Subud, a combination we thought singularly hip at the time.
By the end of the first verse, between 38th and 39th Streets, everyone but Mike was sitting cross-legged in a large semicircle around the band. Little Micky was muttering, “Oh wow! Dig it, baby! Wow! Oh, dig that, man!” under his breath as he usually did. Sean was watching Pat’s left hand like a rabbit watching a snake. Lots of people were smiling and nodding in time, and Gary the Frog was lighting up a joint.
I thought next to nothing of this at the time. It didn’t seem at all odd or out of place. People are always lighting joints at band rehearsals. I remember being a bit surprised that Gary the Frog had his own grass for a change, but I didn’t think twice about the grass itself, and when the joint came by me, I took a good hearty toke before swinging into the second verse.
Mike had somehow managed to get us to Broadway and 42nd, Times very own Square. It was early evening, clear, warm, and summer, so the Square was packed past endurance with all manner of machines and funny-looking people, and traffic was moving by appointment only and as seldom as the laws of chance allowed. And there we were, motionless and grooving, stuck in the very middle of it all.
We attracted a crowd instantly. Even when it’s empty, the Tripsmobile gets a lot of staring at and gawking. With the band on board and playing, we were a free show, a very swinging free show, and everyone who could hear us — almost everyone — had suddenly nothing on his mind but getting close enough to see us, too.
And so the crowd gathered. I didn’t mind. I like crowds — especially when I’m playing. I’ve often said that playing without an audience is just a form of aural masturbation. So I smiled at the people outside and they smiled back at me, they waved at me and I nodded at them, and I felt in general absolutely great.
Then somebody passed me the joint.
Once again my poor mind boggled under the strain. (Mind boggling was becoming a habit with me.) There in my right hand was an incredibly illegal marijuana cigarette. There, just a few feet away, were tens of thousands of strangers and countless cops — witnesses! — who had watched that criminal cigarette pass from hand to hand around the bus, to end up in my very own newly moist and lightly trembling paw. This was clearly not a healthy situation.
I knew better than to stop playing, or do anything else that might call outside attention to the seven-year sentence I had in my hand. Instead, I palmed the joint — burning my palm in the process — and staggered into the least sincere third verse I’ve ever played.
We were still there. All those people were still there. The smoldering joint was still in my right hand. There didn’t seem to be any way to get rid of the damned thing. If I dropped it, people would notice. If I just put it down on the top of my harpsichord, oh so very casually, it would be aggressively visible for miles around. I didn’t have any pockets loose enough to get into in the scant free time “Songwind” allowed my right hand. So I took the standard, traditional out — something I’d never had occasion to do before — and, with a gesture faster than snake tongues, I popped the joint into my mouth.
It was still burning. So was I, but I didn’t dare show it. I extinguished the joint with saliva and undertook to swallow it, while the first verse reprise rolled past without my hearing it.
It seems that cigarettes aren’t all that easy to swallow, not even little skinny marijuana cigarettes. It wouldn’t go down whole, wouldn’t dream of it, so I soaked it and chewed at it and broke it up fine. But a mouthful of loose pot isn’t a snap to swallow, either. The stuff has — or this stuff had — the texture of rough sand, gritty and hard, with tiny sharp edges. No amount of saliva soaking seemed to soften it perceptibly, and my throat was reluctant to have anything to do with it, but by the time we’d finished “Songwind,” I’d managed to get the stuff down and was able, aside from a convulsive racking cough, to breathe freely once again.
And then I saw Gary the incredible Frog getting ready to light yet another joint! He picked the damnedest times to be affluent.
“Gary,” I said gently, “please put that away.”
“Had enough?”
He was ready to say more, but I didn’t let him. “I never have enough,” I said, still gently, “but put that thing away just the same.”
He stared at me as though I’d lost my entire mind, and made no move to put away the joint. By then he was the only person there who hadn’t noticed what was happening. The silence of horror had frozen every tongue but his.
“If you don’t want no more, that’s cool,” he gibbered, affronted, “but I want some more, if you don’t mind.”
I remained gentle. “Look around,” I invited. He did, reluctantly. He looked around twice, in fact. At last it began, slowly, to dawn on him. His jaw dropped with an audible click.
“Now then,” still very gently, “put that goddamn thing away before I shove my boot down your stupid throat. Understand?”
He panicked, of course, but he put the joint away. I didn’t think his panic hurt us much. Gary the Frog’s the kind of creep whose panics go unnoticed.
Then everybody started breathing. “Wow!” they all said, and went on talking. It sounded like lunchtime at your local junior high. I scurried to the front of the bus to relate the gory incident to Mike.
I needn’t have bothered. He was having gory incidents of his own.
22
“AND WHAT do you call this thing, now?” The Man was standing tall and grim beside Mike’s seat: an extravagantly Irish cop just dying to arrest himself a whole truckload of Us. (I’ve never really adjusted to policemen.)
“Right now?” Michael was being a wiseass, naturally. He liked to get away with things. Any things.
“Oh, Michael, I cautioned softly.
The cop gave me a disapproving glance. The two cops waiting on the steps gave me disapproving glances. The two or three cops waiting outside made it unanimous. Cops make me nervous.
The rest of the tribe hadn’t noticed our uniformed visitors yet, which was a blessing of sorts. They were all clustered about Gary the Frog, telling him in redundant detail exactly how uncool he was. Just a waste of redundant detail, that’s all, but a harmless enough pastime for the nonce.
“What do yez call this thing?” The Man rumbled.
“You mean the bus?”
“Oh, it’s a bus, is it? You got a license to operate a bus?”
“License?” Mike hesitated. “But we just call it a bus, officer. I mean, it isn’t a real bus; it’s more like a very big station wagon, if you get what I mean. That is…” He ran down. The policeman was unmoved.
The cops on the steps were committing the contents of Michael’s wallet to memory, which must have been interesting for them, not to mention educational. Mike’s wallet was always well stocked with oddball ID — a National Association of Warlocks, Conjurers, and Wizards membership card, for instance.