Off the Road - 42

a jazz novel on a typewriter

Seven

1

“Don’t smoke! It will stunt your growth.” The words came from Faith even though both knew that they were the full height they would ever be.

It was late; they had just passed into Nevada and were setting their sights on Reno not for the gambling but to untie their faces and drowse down to utter doze. They had just stopped for doughnuts at Jelly Donuts because they had not eaten in half a day and a growling in Sal’s stomach told him that it was time to make the donuts and consume them. And so they stopped in a hole in the wall that has holes in the wall and partook of the delights of grape and sugar mixed with cinnamon in the neon dim. And it blowed hot and scoured on their cream-soaked face.

On the radio, they had found what both were looking for when Miles plowed across the miles on a note of deepest blue and the paired instruments of birth of cool in impressionistic swagger. Faith watched Sal listen to Miles and then smiled. I didn’t know that you were a fan of jazz.”

“It is one of the things that I picked up from Dean the string to the radio when it played a station that had Miles, Coltrane, or the Bird. I did not understand at first why this music affects people like it does but then I came to realize that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, born in bebop and forged in the Younger Irony head made the Beat sound supreme and challenged the authority of all that went before.” Then he rested as any good soloist does and waited for his next entrance whenever that might be-bop be-bop.

Faith listened as if he was experimenting in coalescence and acting as if this was his chronic state with which he used to provoke discussion in long lazy terms. She applauded his efforts though she knew that it was with the typewriter where he typewrit even though there were complaints that it wasn’t writing. But she reflected that that was the point: the typewriter having typed is not a fig or a fancy for the reader who is catching up like a Cheshire cat. And all the fame, fashion, and flourish will not slow down even for an instant the clang of the bell and the ripping of the carriage because they have a deeper destiny, and it waits for no one least of all of thee.

They stopped at Circus Circus because it would tempt them in with a low rate and shove slot machines and roulette wheels in their wake to get to the door. But now they were immune to the enticements because they knew that the enchantment of the enrichment was an illusion piled on with a phantasm that never ever turned out well. But they looked at the other players with that stoned look that they wore, each and every one of them, hoping, needing, praying for just one more hit. They had a room that was far away because the check-in cashier knew that they were among the hardened and the hardened never opened either their wallet or their heart, because it was first the beating of the heart with its rumpled thump thump that first enticed and after that the balls would follow. And then the napalm would do the rest leaving the bodies naked and hot to the touch.

 Then they settled down in two what the brochures would call a room, but which really was a closet in disguise and Faith eventually pulled out some of the leaves of it disguised as paper. “I know what I felt when I that you thought I didn’t know it until I read what you had written and knew what you meant.”

“It will have to explain because I see those as sheets with scrawling on two sides and notations in the middle.”

“You speak like a virus but type like a genius.”

“Now you’re getting nasty, I should deny everything immediately and throw my life in the arms of the court and hope for forgiveness for my innumerable sins.”

“Look at this this whole page is written in iambs. And this here has a tone row of triplets buzzing around like a honeybee on steroids. You have potential.”

“I’ve always had potential in spades but it’s money I need in diamonds because love in hearts and muscle in clubs all have eluded and alluded my grasp.”

“What is here on the paper is wild and free.”

“I can tell you it’s free that much is true and if you mean by wild like the flowers, I will get hip with that but that cat leaves once an hour on the if.”

“You’re just not convinced even by what you scribed.”

Sal looked down but he saw just sheets in the wind and very little else: narcissists off duty and egoist off duty considering his fate as a simple little note to be broken with spires and gargoyles. A band with a horn section that could not breathe in or out even for the supercilious sacrifice he had been committed. Drum roll, please.

But he looked at Faith's face and saw the pleading smile on the lips and if he did not believe he could see that she did with a purity that defied all perniciousness. But then tiredness and its cousin who lives in dream stole up and enraptured. And they slept like it was 1999.

But still, the narrative is not finished, and they woke up to the light like the rays in a beam warmed their bones and tortured their skin. And they plunked around getting themselves together like two zombies looking for a brain to nosh upon.

And so, they left with the smallest large city in Nevada waiting for good dough and finding it in a small place that is out of the way. They caught a few tunes from the review station of last night but then everything grew quiet and quiescent and the long, strange trip across the Western States with dust as its companion. Be summer sirocco still had one more gust to go. And it would not end until the Rocky Mountains burst from view.