November 1963:
Everyone knows where they were when they heard the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
I’m in Sacramento working at Fulton Trailer Sales. My job is to clean and repair mobile homes. I mop the floors, wash the windows, swab the toilets, and polish the stainless steel. I also put air in the tires, patch the leaky roofs, repair wiring, unclog drains, and flush sewage tanks. It’s a good clean job. I don’t really want a good clean job or any other job, but having to do something for money, this job is as good as any.
Two or three nights a week I play bass with a young jazz group led by a curly-headed Jewish kid they called Bebop. Bebop is actually kind of bashful, fresh out of high school, innocent, a nice kid. But when he picks up his saxophone he becomes assertive and daring, sometimes monstrous. His sound is big and sweet in the Coltrane style. He practices technique constantly and plays his solos with abandon, trusting his instincts, usually landing on his feet. But even when he falls off the stand, so to speak, pushing the tune beyond its limits and leaving the rest of us squinting at him with that where-the-fuck-are-you look, he is unapologetic, shrugging it off with a foolish grin and busting ahead into the next tune.
I clean toilets in the day time and play music at night. I sometimes hang out with the musicians and odd balls that gravitate around jazz and the jazz mind. But most of the time I am a loner because I know I can trust myself best.
It is about eleven in the morning when I hear my name on the squawk box booming over the Fulton Trailer Sales lot: Tom. Come to the office. Telephone.
I drop my pipe wrench and back out of the tiny bathroom in the Sunrise 10’ x 40’ one-bedroom “Getaway” mobile home and step out into the gray day.
In the office, the salesmen, Roger and Ferderburger, are playing gin rummy. I admire them for getting paid for mostly hanging around doing nothing. Someday I hope to do that. Alice, the bookkeeper, and the engine that makes the place run, hands me the black receiver. It’s my sister.
“They shot the President!” she says.
“They what?”
“They shot President Kennedy. He might be dead!”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s on TV!” she wails. “Go watch it!”
“Okay, I’m going.”
I tell Alice and the boys what’s going on and they decide to close the lot for the rest of the day.
My bungalow sits on the lot behind the landlady’s two-story house and the machine shop where her sons run their business. When I walk in, Dwayne is sitting at the piano. He often shows up any time of the day or night to practice.
When I tell Dwayne what is happening in Dallas, he just looks at me for a long moment, shrugs his shoulders and leaves without a word, pointing his index finger to the air, which he often does. I have no idea what that means.
I switch on the TV. All the major networks are on the story, repeating the details over and again. Dallas, Texas. The President is riding in a convertible with the First Lady and Governor Connally, waving to the crowds that line the streets. Two or three shots, they don’t know how many. A police officer is killed. Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested. Secret service. Nation in shock.
After an hour or so I can’t look at the TV anymore. I feel smothered and confused. How could this happen here? None of this makes sense. I decide to go for a drive, but there’s no getting away. It all comes with me. At a stop sign I notice a woman in the car next to me. Crying. She looks at me and shakes her head in grief and I do the same back to her. We share something intimate, then she drives on while I sit there trying to pull myself together.
A couple of hours late I can’t look at the TV any more. How could this happen here? None of this makes sense. I smoke a joint, climb into the car and go for a drive, but there’s no getting away. It all comes with me. The whole city is hushed. At a stop sign I notice a woman in the car next to me crying openly. She looks at me and shakes her head in grief, and I do the same back to her in sympathy. We share something intimate. She drives on while I sit there for a moment.
Driving past the Alhambra Theater I impulsively pull to a stop in front of a Sambo’s Pancake House to look up at the moving neon sign that sits atop the entrance. It is of a little black boy dressed only in blue shorts being chased around a palm tree by a tiger. The little boy’s eyes are big and white; the tiger is snarling. Around and around they spin, day and night, without stopping. I am fascinated. The tiger never stops snarling. The boy never gets caught.
Just as I slip it into low to move on, a young woman walks out of the restaurant and up to my car. She opens the passenger door, looks in, sweet smile on a friendly face, and climbs in without a word. She shuts the door, points down the boulevard and says, “Drive.”
It takes me a moment to recognize her. It is Jessie, the wife of a trombone player named Jerry Stone. Occasionally Jerry and I play together, sometimes on gigs, sometimes in a rehearsal band called Big Foot. I have met Jessie a few times before but don’t know her well. After a couple of blocks I look over at her wondering what’s going on. She looks at me with an empty face, chewing her gum, saying nothing, smiling slightly. I drive.
“I guess you heard about Kennedy,” I say, breaking the silence.
“Yeah, sure. It’s been on the radio in the kitchen. Really weird.” She pauses, looking out at the passing buildings. “All this crazy shit going on. Who’s going to eat pancakes on a day like this? They finally sent a few of us home.”
“Where’s Jerry?” I ask.
“On the road with Maynard Ferguson.”
“That’s a good band,” I say. “Mr. Screech.”
“I guess. Two weeks ago they were in Vegas. Now they’re in L.A. for another week, as usual,” she says, emphasizing the last two words.”
She looks out the side window. I watch her out of the corner of my eye.
Her hair is cut in an even line just above the shoulders, sandy, straight, and hip. She reminds me a little of Peggy Lee – the silky hair, the face of experience, a few crow’s feet. But not the high cheekbones that Peggy had.
“You play bass, right?” she asks.
“Yeah, bass.”
“So, what were you doing parked outside Sambo’s?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was just driving around and stopped for a minute. How did you know it was me when you got into the car?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” she says, without further explanation.
I continue down Alhambra and then turn up Folsom. It’s mid-afternoon, yet there seems to be no one on the streets.
Sitting next to her I can’t help but feel her feminine charisma. It is her power. She is not unusually beautiful, but her light hazel eyes create a mystery that stirs my interest. I peek at her breasts. She catches me and rewards me with a slight grin. I say nothing, keep driving. She studies me for a few moments.
“Here, turn here,” she says suddenly.
We are in a residential neighborhood where I presume she lives. I’m wrong.
After another turn, she says, “Stop there by that tree.”
I pull up to the curb right next to a graveyard. There is a huge oak tree that reaches out over the sidewalk, forming a canopy above the car. She considers me for a moment and then seems to relax and smiles that small Peggy Lee smile. I feel her warmth filling the car.
I return the smile, then ask, “What’s goin’ on, Jessie?”
“I was just thinking,” she says, turning to me. “What I like about you right now is that I don’t know you, yet I feel safe with you. A friendly stranger.”
“In some ways I guess we’re all strangers,” I say without thinking. Then I remember the lady crying at the stop sign, the moment we shared. “And yet we’re not, really.”
We look at one another with a silence between us. She seems to be searching for something in my face. For a moment I feel self-conscious.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
“I guess I’m wondering why you should feel safe with me. We hardly know each other.”
“Well, you were there outside Sambo’s, waiting for me. Serendipity? Who knows?” After a beat she says, “Look. Let’s forget we know anything about each other for a while, okay?” She reaches over and puts her hand on mine. “Okay?”
“S-sure,” I stumble. Her hand is soft.
She looks at me for a long moment, then leans towards me. I do nothing. She tilts her head a little and raises her eyebrows with a questioning look. Finally, I slide over and put my arm around her shoulder, drawing her to me. My heart is beating. I know I’m out of my safety zone. I look into her green eyes and feel as though I’m losing my balance. I search her face, her lips. She kisses my mouth, lightly, touching my face. I close my eyes and return the kiss. She relaxes and then pulls me to her, pressing hard on my mouth.
As passion gathers, our daily burdens dissolve. There is no thinking, no calculating. We are just here, alone together. A short time ago we knew nothing of one another. Now we are close and she is pulling at my belt. Finally, she straddles me, looking into my face, breathing heavily. Then she bites my neck just below the left ear and does not let go.
Here we are in the middle of Sacramento at five-fourteen PM on November 22nd, 1963, in the fading afternoon, locked together as if we are alone on our own private cloud. This is crazy. Anyone might walk by—the mailman, a funeral march, a rosary of nuns. But today the whole world is nuts and torn asunder. Why should this have to make sense? We are together now in this silence where there are no cars, no oak trees, no mailman, no Little Black Sambo, no assassination. There is a blindness in our union, an unconsciousness where Jessie and I are one, silent in that place of no time. Gone.
As we flow back into this world, we rediscover ourselves together in the front seat of my car with a new tenderness between us, an understanding.
I look into her moist eyes and draw her to me, pressing my face to hers, whispering, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” We breathe together. We know this is a moment outside of life, a kind of death. And now I am tasting the salt of her tears.
We part and she wipes her face and blows her nose. Gathering herself together, she looks at me, damp and flushed, then smiles.
“Let’s go somewhere,” she says. “Let’s get out of this town.”
“How about the City?” I say. “I have friends there. Maybe we can stay with them for a night…”
She interrupts, “No, somewhere completely different, where we have no friends. Just us.” She studies me a moment. And then, “How about Reno?” She breaks into a grin. “Let’s go to Reno!”
That’s the last place I would have suggested. I have been there a few times helping to shuttle mobile homes back to Sacramento for the business. I never liked the casino scene and actually passed up a couple of gigs I could have played there. But I would like to get away from this sad city tonight. And here sits Jessie.
“Okay, Reno. Are we getting married?”
“Absolutely,” she teases, grinning, eyes sparkling now. “First I’ve got to call my mother and see if she’ll keep the kids tonight.”
We pull into a Texaco station where I gas up while she makes the call.
“My mom’s the best,” says Jessie, slipping back into the car. “Knows me like a book,”
She slides over next to me putting her hand on my leg like we have been together for years. I pull out into the traffic, find Highway 80 East and head into the foothills. It’s cold, there might be snow, we’re in my ’47 Chevy, I don’t have chains. I’m supposed to work tomorrow at the lot, but now I’m heading off to Reno with a woman I hardly know. There is magic crackling in the air. So be it.
As we climb into the mountains there is hardly a sign of life, animal or human. This is a national day of silence and disbelief. But inside the Chevy the heater is on, music on the radio, the gas tank is full and a lady named Jessie sits close to me with her hand resting on my leg. Two hours ago I was roaming the streets without a purpose. Things change.
Jessie takes two smokes from my pack of Pall Malls, lights them both and puts one in my mouth. It is a gesture of familiarity, and coming from a woman I hardly know it gets me to wondering about her.
“Jessie, it’s not just about the Kennedy thing for you, is it?”
She looks at me with a sweet grin, but blank face.
“Are you okay? I mean,” I try to smile, “You get into my car, we fool around in the front seat in a residential neighborhood next to a graveyard in broad daylight, and now here we are, driving to Reno.”
“Are you complaining?” she asks.
“No, no. Not in the least. I just want to be sure you’re okay.”
“Trust me. I’m doing what I want to do because I want to do it. And I’m very happy that you were there waiting for me.” She gives me a nice smile. “It is the Kennedy thing. And everything else,” she sighs. “Don’t wonder so much, okay?”
After a minute she turns to me and says, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four. Want to see my ID?”
“I think I like you better with your mouth closed and your pants unzipped,” she says, but with a little Peggy Lee grin. She leans over and bites my ear really hard and I yelp.
“That’ll teach you to mind your own business,” she says, and then kisses me on the mouth while I strain to watch the road.
She gives me a squeeze between the legs and whispers in my ear, “It is what it is.”
I say no more.
We reach the summit and pull in to the rest stop where there are no other cars. The air is cold and sharp as we head to the restrooms. In a few minutes she joins me where I am shivering but happy sitting on a picnic bench breathing in the fresh mountain air. The stars hang clear and sharp, a shield of diamonds. There is no evidence of a moon. The heavens shed a silver light on the tall fir, standing silent like witnesses in the darkness.
I start to go back to the car but she stops me, puts her arms inside my jacket, pulls up my shirt and slides her cold hands up my back. She gives me a long soft kiss and I slip my hands inside her sweater and hold her close. Here we stand alone in the purity of the cold air among the dark trees in the glow of starlight. This is peace, a long moment of peace and purity, and absolutely nothing else exists. Time has stopped in a beautiful way. The warmth of a woman. Two creatures standing together on the top of a high mountain, drifting silently through the universe, alone.
As the highway winds down to Clear Lake and then further down the mountain into Nevada, leveling out just before reaching Reno, she begins to tell me about herself.
“I’m four years older than you,” she says, lighting another smoke.
The radio is off, leaving us with only the hum of the Chevy to frame the silence.
“From the time I was ten years old I wanted to be a singer. My father was a tenor player and would often go out with the Stan Kenton band when they were still doing tours. One time I went to a rehearsal and met June Christy. I was nineteen and when my dad told her I wanted to be a singer she said, ‘Sing something for me’. Of course I was embarrassed but I was also brazen. Without hesitating I sang, ‘Something cool, I’d like to order something cool’. She clapped with joy hearing me sing one of her most famous songs and joined me for a few lines, and then they had to go back to work.”
She stops now, looking away again and I can feel her emotion. I had no idea that she was a singer and that her dad was an accomplished saxophone player.
“About a year later my dad got cancer and we moved up from L.A. to Sacramento so my mom could work as a Legal Secretary in the Capitol Building. When he died I decided I didn’t want to be a singer anymore. I just wanted to get married and have kids. Then I met Jerry.”
She stops talking.
“So why are we together tonight?” I ask.
She considers me for a moment and replies, “We don’t know anything about each other, remember? It is what it is. And besides, you talk too much.”
Reno sits like an oasis on the edge of the high desert, glowing like a distant Christmas tree in the darkness. We glide under the glittering arch that names the town: The Biggest Little City In The World. There doesn’t seem to be much to the place other than a few streets of brightly lit casinos and hotels. We check into the El Dorado as Mr. and Mrs. and look around for something to eat.
The food is plentiful and cheap in the casinos. They want you to have a full belly when you take your money into the gaming rooms. The restaurant is a five-dollar, all-you-can-eat buffet. Pay at the door and the exit leads you into the casino where the first thing you see is a poster of a man and woman smiling with delight over stacks of glimmering coins. “Another Big Winner!” the sign shouts, “Who’s Next?” There are rows of slot machines boisterously ringing for each new winner. Blackjack and dice tables. A woman squeals at a roulette wheel nearby. Behind a glass wall, the poker room where the high rollers face off like businessmen hard at work.
I feel uneasy and out of place. There is the dissonance of machines spinning, bells ringing and coins clanging into metal trays that smothers one’s senses. We stop a moment to look around. Everything tells me to turn and run. Instead, I pull a twenty out of my jeans and say to Jessie, “Let’s see how long it takes to lose this.”
I change the bill for twenty silver dollars and head for the big dollar machine with the long arm and large images of fruit, bells, and stars. The twenty represents ten hours of work for me, ten hours of cleaning trailers and swabbing toilets. When I put a coin in the slot machine, it emits a recorded clicking sound, colored lights flash, and the wheels spin. Two cherries. Three silver dollars clank into the tray.
“Hey, that was easy,” I say dropping in another buck.A lady wearing a tutu and fishnet stockings comes by and asks if we want a drink. Drinks are free when you are spending your money. We order scotch and water. The next coin doesn’t pay off, nor do the next ten. I give Jessie five coins, but she wins nothing. This isn’t going to last long, I am thinking, and that’s just fine with me. I’ve got my mind set on a long night between the sheets with Jessie.
With just a few coins left in my pocket we pass by a dice table with a small crowd gathered around. I’ve never played craps before and have no idea how to make a bet. Casually, as if I have it all figured out, I put the five dollars on the table on the EVEN sign, not knowing the odds of my bet. I look at Jessie and shrug my shoulders. “Let’s see what happens,” I say, ordering two more scotches as the drink lady passes by.
A skinny woman with fire in her eyes throws the dice down the table. They bounce off the padded walls and finally come to rest.
“Easy four,” says the dealer, and puts five silver dollars on top of my bet.
“Look at that,” I nudge Jessie.” Now we’ve got ten bucks!” I let it ride like a millionaire as the dice roll again.
“Six ‘n two is eight!” calls the dealer with a nasal voice, and puts ten more dollars on my spot. I’ve got twenty dollars total! I let it ride again.
“Ten!” he shouts and stacks twenty dollars more around my bet. The excitement around the table is rising. The drinks lady brings our scotches and I’m feeling dizzy and uncomfortable.
“Fuck it,” I say, “Let the forty ride,” secretly hoping I’ll lose. But I win again and feel a shiver of panic run through my body. I reach for the money but before I can get it off the table I win again and the silver dollars pile up. Jessie is laughing but I’m hyperventilating. The crowd around the table stirs with interest as my coins continue to multiply. Now everyone is watching me. I’m not sure what to do. Should I change the bet? Over…under…hard…soft…I hear around the table. I have no idea what any of that means. After two more wins the money is in a big pile on the table and the dice keep rolling.
“Hard six!” The crowd cheers. Jessie gives me a funny look, wondering why I’m so disturbed. I grab at the dollars and start filling my pockets just to get them off the table. Soon my jacket pockets are full and then my jeans pockets, front and back. Everyone is happy except me. I don’t want this. I’ve never slobbered over money and I don’t want to get rich quick. It’s not mine; it’s not even money anymore.
“Double fives!”
Mayhem. I am losing my cool. I imagine myself running out into the street and throwing the money into the air. People come pouring out of the clubs and restaurants, scrambling for the money. And still the dollars keep coming. They have no value to me. They are just round coins with images stamped on them.
“Double sixes!”
Pandemonium! I’m throwing the money away as fast as I can, but my pockets keep filling with more and more coins until my pants collapse around my ankles. There’s a riot in the streets! Everyone is fighting for the money, clawing each other, punching their friends and neighbors, their own wives and children, stepping on fingers and hands; noses bleeding, teeth shattered. A silver dollar rolls through a grate and down the sewer. Two men and a boy snatch off the sewer grate and dive in after the dollar. I can hear them fighting for it down below, their voices echoing down the sewer pipes, reverberating, magnifying, until finally the police arrive with batons at the ready. The cops dive into the melee swinging their clubs and cracking skulls, grabbing for the sparkling coins. And since it is money, here come the politicians with red-white-and-blue neckties, tailor-made suits with a carnation in each lapel.
“Whoa,” they shout, having forgotten the assassinated President, and they pile in with the cops and the gamblers and the bartenders and cab drivers and prostitutes and maids and still the dollars flow like gravel down a cement-chute into the street. The boy emerges from the sewer, wet and putrid, with the silver dollar between his teeth, the screams of the two men fade away down the endless sewer pipes of Reno, Nevada: The Greatest Little City in The World!
“Fifty-four is nine!” says the dealer.
“Ohhh,” sighs the crowd around the table.
I start to lose.
“Here,” I say to Jessie. “Take twenty to cover our original investment and then we’ll be playing on their money.”
The echoes of the sewer are fading away. I empty my pockets as I continue to lose, dollar after shiny dollar.
“Here, take another twenty to cover the room. And another twenty for the meals and gas.” The wild streets are clearing.
I keep trying to empty my pockets. I don’t want all these things. I feel heavy and ill. Somehow, I have racked up six scotch and waters because I forgot to drink. Or there wasn’t time. And then it is over. My pockets are dry. My head is woozy but I’m feeling a little better. The people ignore me and the streets are empty. The politicians are tucked away in their beds. The dead President is in his casket awaiting burial. And Jessie is tugging at my sleeve.
“Let’s go to the room,” she urges.
Yes, yes. To the room. To the refuge of our third-floor hotel room with the clean sheets and the puffy pillows and new carpet, and the freshly scrubbed toilet seat. Yes, let’s get up to the room, Jessie, and crawl in between those sheets. I want to be near you tonight. I need to bury my head between your warm breasts and drift away from this fractured world. I need to swim with you beneath the surface, flowing with the current that urges us together, floating us down into the depths of our dream. Glide with me down deep, Jessie, with your blonde hair and those green eyes gleaming like jewels in this opaque silence. I want to know nothing, Jessie, hear nothing, and feel only your body and your soul enveloping the empty man that I am, filling me with wonder, and grace, and the peace of your tenderness.
I want to die with you, Jessie, at least for this long night – this night of assassination, this night of the gleaming bright stars, this night of mayhem and confusion, down here on the ocean floor where the current rocks us gently to sleep, where dreams are all that is real, and the silent fish watch over us with eyes that never close.
