Roc and Roll Cliches

Bobby needed a date for the Monster Mash Ball at the House of Blue Lights. Surely someone wanted to be Bobby's girl!

He tried Gloria first. "I want to give you my love. Way down inside, honey, you need it!"

Gloria smacked his face, hard enough to sting. "Get lost, mister, you're no good!"

Next he tried Peggy Sue. "I want to give you every inch of my love!" he declared.

Peggy Sue shoved him into a wall and ran screaming down the hall.

Then Bobby approached Layla. She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes. "Darling, won't you ease my worried mind?"

He looked kind of nice, and so Layla said she might take a chance. "I want to hold your hand," she proclaimed with a grin. "Come go with me! Take me to the river!" As he took her hand and they crossed over the dirty old river that kept rolling into the night, she explained, "I'm a new kid in town, but yes, I think you've seen me before? It was that Saturday in the park. I think it was the Fourth of July..."

"Huh," Bobby said. "Must have been my afternoon out of my white room, with black curtains. I was shut in there a while."

"Where was that?"

"The Heartbreak Hotel. They sent me up there after I lost my Honey. The Lord took her away from me, you know."

"Rapture?!" Layla asked, her eyes as wide as saucers.

"Oh, no," Bobby corrected. "We were out on a date in my daddy's car, and it stalled on the tracks. We got out okay, but she had to go back for my class ring! Of all the stupid...ah, but it's wrong to speak ill of the dead. Besides, I was finished with that woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind."

"No wonder they sent you to the Heartbreak Hotel," Layla said. "When did you get out, Bobby?"

"You never really do get out," he told her. "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave."

They walked down to a dirty old part of the city, where the sun refused to shine. "People put me down 'cause that's the side of town I was born in," he explained as they sat down together on a bench overlooking the river. "But I love that dirty water!"

Layla gazed across the river at a burned-out husk of a building on the other bank, just across the bridge over troubled water. "Troubled times have come to your hometown, huh?"

"Well, we all used to come here to dance. Those factory girls, they'd take a chance! But they all decided to look askance, the day the music died!"

"The music never stopped!" Layla countered.

"It did across the river, down at the Twist and Shout," Bobby said. "Used to be you could say 'come dancing,' and somebody's sister always did! Right over there. Well, you could rock it, you could roll it, you could stomp and you could stroll it at the hop! If only they'd have those dances again, I'd know where to find you, and all of my friends!"

"Whatever happened to it?" Layla asked.

"Oh, some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground."

"Ain't that a shame," Layla mused.

"Next day when we drove around this town, we had the cops chasing us around, too. But we didn't start the fire!"

"Well, hey, who needs music?" Layla asked "I love dancing in the moonlight. I'm happy just to dance with you!" She took him in her arms and spun him around in the grass.

"Whoa, careful!" Bobby said. "Don't step on my blue suede shoes!"

"Oh, you can't dance anyway," Layla said. "Whatever. Never mind."

"Don't do me like that," Bobby said, more gently now. "Come on, I know a place right over the hill, down on the corner in the lobby of the Commodore Hotel. How's about something to drink?"

"Alice's restaurant?" Layla asked.

"You can get anything you want there," Bobby confirmed.

"Honey child, I've got my doubts," Layla replied. "You can't always get what you want."

"Oh, don't worry, baby," Bobby said. "I mean, it's almost Saturday night! Let's live for today! Now, what's your pleasure? Some red, red wine, maybe?"

"I'd prefer a little nip of gin," Layla said. "But no one here seems to know my brand. Cotton. Get it?"

"Got it," Bobby said, holding the door for her. "But I've never heard of it."

"I told you, no one here has."

"Go ask Alice," Bobby advised her. "I think she'll know."

But Layla didn't need to go ask Alice, because she appeared at their side as if by magic. "Evening, folks," she said. "What can I get for you?"

"I'll have a whiskey on the rocks and change of a dollar for the jukebox," Bobby said.

"And I'd like a Cotton Gin if you've got it?" Layla asked.

"Sorry," Alice said. "We haven't had that spirit here since 1969."

Layla settled for a glass of champagne, with Alice's reassurance that it tasted just like Coca Cola. "Why not just listen to the radio?" she asked as Bobby took up his change and headed for the jukebox.

"I like that old time rock and roll," he explained.

It was six-thirty, and no one knew she was there. Soon they were holding hands, making all kinds of plans, while the jukebox played their favorite songs. The drinks flowed like water, and Layla found the look of love was in his eyes. It wasn't long before the room was spinning around, like a record, and Bobby leaned in for a kiss.

"Hold it!" Layla said. "Before we go any further, I've got to know right now. Will you still love me tomorrow?"

"Love?!" Bobby said. "Lord above! Now you're tryin' to trick me in love?"

"Trick you?!" Layla demanded. "Listen, Bobby, you don't own me! You think you can love me and leave me to die?"

"Hey, I ain't looking for nothing but a good time!" Bobby protested. "You want to make a martyr out of me? It ain't me, babe! I was born a ramblin' man."

"And here I thought you had a heart of gold," Layla grumbled. "You look like an angel, you talk like an angel, but..."

"Hey, two out of three ain't bad!" Bobby said. "Besides, we've got tonight!"

Layla called out for another drink. The waiter brought a tray.

She was looking better every beer, and Bobby's money flowed like wine. But when he saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, it was time to leave. It was time to leave, but Bobby was stuck. He got scared in case he'd fall off his chair. "I cannot move!" he said. "My fingers are all in a knot!"

"I put a spell on you," Layla explained. "But what's confusing you is just the nature of my game."

"Set me free, why don't you, babe?" Bobby exclaimed.

"Not so fast," Layla said. "I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight, with a billion stars all around!"

"Wonderful," Bobby said. "If you let me up -- I've had enough! -- then we can take my little deuce coupe."

"You have a deuce?"

"I don't call it that anymore, because people always thought I was saying 'douche'," Bobby explained.

"Yeah, well, this ain't no summer's eve," Layla said. "It's October. And all the leaves are stripped bare of what they wear. What do I care?"

"You don't care about me," Bobby noted bitterly. "Unchain my heart!"

"Not before I put another notch in my lipstick case." But she did release him with her invisible touch, and they were off.

Bobby's little deuce coupe was stalled -- the engine was dead -- so Bobby got another idea. "Let's go strolling by the candy store," he said.

"No need," Layla countered. "Baby, I'm just as sweet as anybody could be." She took him by the hand. "Come on, we're off to never-never land."

"Or off to the House of Blue Lights, anyway," Bobby said. "I'm all dressed up for the dance."

Hand in hand they walked the night, but never knew each other. The house was a-rockin', but Layla preferred to walk on by. Bobby didn't. "It's close to midnight," he noted, looking up at the whole night sky. "Something evil's lurking from the dark under the moonlight."

"Nah." Layla put her arms around them and they tumbled to the ground. "I think we're alone now!"

"You can love me tonight if you want," Bobby warned. "But in the morning make sure you're gone!"

"But why?" Layla demanded. "We'll sing in the sunshine!"

"What sunshine? I'll just end up walkin' in the cold November rain!"

"Forget about tomorrow," Layla declared. "Tonight you belong to me."

"Oh, very well," Bobby said. "Close your eyes and I'll kiss you."

"Tomorrow, I'll miss you!" Layla rejoined.

"I'm so cold," Bobby complained. "Let me in your -"

"Shut up and kiss me!" Layla interrupted. She'd already decided, the green grass behind the stadium was a lot better than the desert anyway.

"It's only words," Bobby noted between kisses.

"I want more than words!" Layla whispered in his ear.

"Yeah, well, Just wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims, and strap your hands 'cross my engines!"

And with that, Layla spread her wings and let him come inside.

It done got cloudy and started to rain. "Oh, it's raining again," Bobby grumbled, and he stood up and took her by the hand. "Come on, we can go to my car."

"The deuce? It wouldn't start!"

"My other car. She's Detroit-made."

There was laughter in the rain as they found their way to the stadium parking lot. "All I want to do is make love to you!" Layla called out.

"We can make love in my Chevy van."

"And that's all right with me!"

Soon they were warm but not dry. She shook him all night long, and he fell asleep drunk with a double shot of his baby's love.

In the morning, the parking tickets were just like flies stuck on his windscreen. And that wasn't the worst of it. "She's gone," he said as he sat up in the back of the van. "I'd better learn how to face it!"

But that wasn't the worst of it either. As he hurried on his clothes, Bobby realized she'd stolen his blue suede shoes. "Dammit," he grumbled, "The LAST time I was down here, I lost my shoes!" He started the van and hightailed it through the part of town where when you hit a red light you don't stop. Bobby hit a red light and didn't stop, and soon he heard a siren wailing behind him. Should've known in this neighborhood, he thought -- police and thieves, in the street!

Bobby swore under his breath. He did not need the cops on his back, for he'd fought the law before and the law won. "Mister state trooper, please don't stop me!" he whispered, and remarkably, the trooper didn't. Thanking his lucky stars, Bobby went back to watching the sun coming up, the freeway, cars and trucks, and the wayward wind that seemed to be searching for his ebony eyes.

A strange force pulled him to the graveyard. He arrived there just in time to see Annie leaving. "Annie, are you okay?" he asked.

"Fine," she said. "I've been workin' on the graveyard shift, you know," she said, and she was gone as sure as yesterday.

Bobby looked out at the sea, and it seemed to say, "I took your Layla from you away!" Then he looked and saw his blue suede shoes, lying there upon her grave. And at first he was afraid. He was petrified.

But then he read the inscription on her gravestone. "I traded all my tomorrows for one single yesterday, holding Bobby's body close to mine."

"I've got to remember that's a fine memory," he thought, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walked from the grave. "Strange things happen in this world."