Chapter Two
Joe and Jenny napped, and when they awoke, the light outside the windows became less natural and more artificial from one of the few lights for the alley. Joe put on an old cotton robe and Jenny borrowed one of his Max's staff shirts, just saying the club's name in white on black and Staff printed on a sleeve, the extra-large size just reaching her thighs, covering ass and genitalia, "In case the roommates are around," he explained, and they crept into the bathroom and shared a shower despite the tight fit. Despite cleaning each other and Joe sporting proof of his sexual interest, just the cleaning and the sensuality prevailed.
Joe put on a Misfits t shirt, covering it with a chambray shirt, and put on the black jeans that had been his uniform pants for work, while Jenny pulled out fresh panties, panty hose over it, and a cute cotton jumper, keeping the Max's shirt to wear under it. The bigger items had been rolled up in her backpack to make room. No bra, and to Joe, none was needed.
Jenny wanted Joe to show her his town. "And can we go to Max's?" she pleaded.
"Sure," Joe grinned.
Finally they finished with Joe's black leather jacket, nothing fancy but his favorite find in a second hand store which he had a tailor add cuffs so it fit his long arms, and she put on the peacoat.
The common area of the apartment, which included a small kitchen, neither the stove nor oven working, only the fridge--the roommates tended to eat out exclusively--a card table with metal folding chairs and a decrepit couch found on some corner and covered with a stained floral bedsheet, mostly yellow originally, and the small black and white television with its antenna as large as the TV doing its work fairly well, the TV always on when people were up, had all but one roommate crowding it and one guest, rock and roll and junkie legend JT...
"Are you Johnnie...?" Jenny started.
"Hey John," Joe interrupted. "What's up?" It didn't surprise Joe that Johnny checked out Jenny, notorious for his attraction to blonde waifs, a famous LA groupie one, and supposedly his wife, though Joe had never met her.
"Trying to get a book for eighty for some good shit. We're twenty short," Johnny explained.
"I'm off the shit John," Joe responded.
"Sure you are," John smirked.
The last of Joe's roommates emerged from her room waving a twenty. An attractive blonde, her dark roots showing, Gail seemed to woo trouble like it was a fun date, energetically making one mistake after another including dating a scary Puerto Rican coke dealer ending in a shouting match lasting rudely for hours, somehow coming out of it unscathed as she somehow always seemed to do. He'd spent a night with her early in her residence, at one point fingering her to orgasm but nothing further, probably because he didn't provide her cocaine. She was a classic coke whore.
"Just coke, Johnny," she whined.
"Of course. Just coke Joe. She'll let me borrow some for a speedball."
"Whatever," Joe muttered, pulling out his wallet and handing Johnny a twenty. "Knock yourself out."
"You gotta go downtown Joe," Johnny insisted. "You know you're our lucky charm."
Joe had a reputation for escaping trouble in the dangerous downtown drug territory, partly because of his tallness but mostly knowing when to run.
"I'm showing Jenny the city."
"What better part than the underbelly."
"Please Joe?" Jenny asked.
"Are we talking the alphabets or Clinton."
"Tenth."
Joe sighed. "You guys can hang with a friend if he's home. If not I'll meet you at the park."
"Cool."
"Can I come?" Gail asked.
"Why not?" Johnny chuckled.
Johnny headed right instead of left when they hit the street.
"Where are you going?" Joe asked.
"Getting a ride."
Joe shook his head following his sort of friend. He'd gotten respect from the famous junkie who tended to use his status to use people, but when Joe kicked him out of his room one morning back when he stayed at one of the front rooms, the one the couple, Maggie and Greg, Greg a great guitarist presently stuck in a junked out inertia and Maggie working a strip bar uptown for their money, their band, formed in England when Greg got kicked out of the band he'd been in, one of the first punk bands touring the British isles, for his drug habit, and he hooked up with the Maggie, an English Rose brunette beauty, their band in which she sang lead breaking up after one gig in New York, Joe became appreciated by Johnny for displaying balls.
Two and a half blocks later, Johnny stopped at a row house and pressed a buzzer, bringing down Waldo, the second guitarist in the band who towered over the diminutive Johnny at about six foot tall and wearing his usual garish costume, this time a polka dot shirt and lime green sports jacket, his hair sticking up and brassy looking from a purposefully poor bleach job.
The four followed Waldo to a mundane white Dodge Dart. "Best sit up front," Waldo told Joe. Legroom.
But it provided Jenny with direct access to Johnny which she immediately exploited. "I saw your band at the Minnesota State Fair!" she exclaimed. "You guys were so cool!"
"You played a fair?" Waldo laughed.
"Some little stage," Johnny remembered.
"Young America!" Jenny exclaimed. "It was great because it was intimate, and you guys rocked! I bought your albums afterwards and they're great!"
"Thanks kid," Johnny chuckled. "What were you, ten?"
"Fourteen actually. My friends were there too and a couple of them started a band! They've gotten pretty good, do their own songs and shit, but there wasn't any really decent place to play until recently, a place called the Longhorn. You heard of the Suicide Commandos?"
"I have," said Waldo. "Them and Pere Ubu both are on some label owned by the same assholes that put out your shit."
"Blank, owned by Mercury," Jenny agreed. "But the Commandos play there at the Longhorn, a lot more than my friends who I think are pretty great but I guess they're not unique enough or something."
"This Longhorn a bar?" Johnny asked.
"I know what you're asking but I've got a friend whose dad actually made us fake IDs. I think he's into some shady shit, but he's cool."
"Let me see."
She extracted a wide metal clip from her small black leather purse with a long leather strap that went around her neck and pulled out the card. Johnny noticed twenties clipped to other side.
"You're holding out," Johnny smirked.
"It's all I've got," Jenny murmured.
"Leave her alone, John," Joe growled.
"Just fucking with you kid," Johnny responded. "Let's see the ID."
"You can compare," Jenny said, handing him two.
"Impressive," Johnny said. "How old are you?"
"Eighteen as of today."
"You didn't say," said Joe.
"I didn't want to make a big deal about it, and it's been a lot better birthday thanks to you."
"Glad to help," Joe chuckled.
"I thought it would be cool seeing the double take when they checked my ID," Jenny added.
"You don't look eighteen," Johnny commented.
"My curse looking young."
"It won't be in a few years," Waldo predicted.
"I suppose."
"You should drive over to 9th between B and C," Joe instructed.
"Got it," said Aldo.
The block was like an island of new and restored buildings amongst a sea of destitution. Joe never could understand how it could survive with so many desperate junkies around, but there it was, and a couple friends from Bard had gotten an apartment there in one of the new ones. At Bard they'd started a band with another friend, a rather freakish looking guy as lead singer, one of the first punk bands Joe had seen, and had quit school like him and actually had a couple gigs at Max's.
Joe hopped out when Waldo parked in front of the building and rushed up to the buzzer. The guys lived on the entire second floor, one of them coming from considerable money, some Brahmin family from Boston.
"It's Joe," Joe said into the intercom when a voice responded. "And friends."
The door buzzed and Joe waved the car's occupants out, holding the door for them. "Second floor," he told them.
Waldo led the charge upstairs with Johnny behind him, Joe following Jenny, appreciating the view of her shifting butt under her dress. A woman Joe didn't recognize, untamed brunette hair and a nose ring, her face pale and pretty, held the door for him.
