Janey’s Song
written by: Stephen Michael Berberich
I
But It Was Long Ago
Michael raced the ‘silver bullet’ at high speed around the hairpin curve off the interstate and onto his old college campus. “Damn right. It’s the ultimate driving machine, indeed,” he recalled the BMW salesman’s pitch yesterday about the sporty little Z4 car. “Called her the silver bullet. Perfect.”
His fabulous brand-new rag-top Z4, however, was not enough to ease Michael’s fear and anxiety. He eased off the gas pedal and drifted to a slow speed as he began to remember what happened here, oh, so long ago. His mind could not hold back intense feelings of nostalgia about a bus stop at the campus center, and the night that bus stop changed his life on campus, and his fate for the next 30 years.
His return in the fall of 2010 was the first time he’d been back since 1980. His heart was racing. He drove past clusters of monolithic high-rise student dorms. “Damn ugly, right at the college entrance.” The salmon-colored brick monoliths were not there in his day.
Despite such a disappointing first impression of the current campus, he was set on reliving old times if possible. “What a kick this is. Man-o-man, the old campus again.” He’d been anticipating returning for a very long time, especially to find that special bus stop. As he drove toward the center of campus, he wondered, Will it still be there, just the same? Would he be privileged to see her there again? “No, of course not,” he disciplined himself.
Michael also yearned to experience the entire atmosphere of his alma mater: the spacious center mall of manicured lawn, the shade of the 100-year oaks, the grad and undergrad libraries, the student union, ancient classroom buildings of liberal arts, business, health, and nutrition, botany, chemistry, and more.
However, as he drove toward the center of campus, he passed more unfamiliar sites, highly developed buildings where Michael recalled seeing pastoral lands of fields and woods. He slowed the silver bullet to a crawl as he confronted the unfamiliar sights. He looked up at the gigantic Jordon Athletic Center, which replaced the dinky old Franklin Field House where skinny white kids on the court once shocked the world by winning the NCAA men’s national basketball championship. “No wonder they tore down the old relic,” he mumbled.
He then cruised past the new Perlman Fine Arts Theater neon sign ‘Now playing: A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ on the side of a sprawling Fine Art Center, a multi-level structure in flat lines of glass and steel. “Wow, I remember students of the arts attending classes in those old, musty, chicken-shack-like wooden dormitories constructed for us, the baby boomers.” He frowned and shook his head in disapproval. Michael wished everything would still be the same. He didn’t recognize the campus yet as he drove the silver bullet across expansive parking lots marked ‘Lot A, Visitors’ and ‘Lot B, Student Permits Required.’ “Oh no, stupid parking lots? There was nothing but pastoral fields and barns here where Aggie students tended the cattle herd, the sheep and goat pens, and the milking parlor. Pity.”
He was pleased to see the campus center was unchanged, however. “Ah, all the Georgian red brick megaliths all over, where they should be. And good to see the monstrous concrete pillars still holding up the Student Union portico. Of course, they are,” he chuckled.
The familiar English ivy, much more of it, was still creeping over the Lockheed Physics Building and into the lab windows, inviting creatures and vermin alike. “Bugs don’t have a chance with the nasty stuff in those labs.” He smiled, lifting the memories to the surface.
Nothing, new or old, however, could quell his desire to remember that bus stop where it all began, where the world changed, where he was transformed.
“Oh, my, there it is,” he said out loud. Just as it was, in front of the campus infirmary, the same bus stop kiosk appeared, covered with paper flyers and bulletins as always. “I thought it would be long gone. Oh, my Lord, I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” Janey’s song came to mind instinctively when he conjured up those lyrics. Michael sighed and only then remembered it all vividly.
He reflected on when he was drifting downhill in his old 1966 Malibu past the bus stop on the right side of Campus Drive, just as he now glided in the silver bullet. Back then, as now, it was nothing special, just a common, plexiglass 6×12 shelter covering two plastic benches where college kids waited for rides off campus.
He was filled with intense anxiety again, hooked on the memories he feared. “Just a bus stop, man,” he slapped back at his conscience. His silver bullet BMW also seemed possessed, enough to slow on its own to a crawl as its driver became a prisoner of his memories. For the first time, Michael wondered, Is returning such a good idea? It was so very long ago.
“I can’t help staring,” he was puzzled. The bus stop was unchanged. Only the 2010 flyers and bulletins on the plastic kiosk were different, instead of the flyers in 1980, back in his day. Still trashy, still fading from sunlight.
While he let the car coast, Michael tried to read one poster of a musical concert date coming up, but lost sight of the road.
“Hey, look out!” someone shouted. A girl at the bus stop pointed at him. He slammed on the brakes, returned his eyes to the road, and stopped within an inch behind a campus shuttle bus idling at a red light for students at the bus stop. A foolish close call. “Damn, I nearly ruined everything.” He realized then why he was distracted, “Those students look so very young, mere babies. Did we look all that innocent? No.”
Still stopped behind the shuttle bus, he enjoyed the college kids gawking at his slick sports car. He began to chuckle. “They’re clueless about the real world, just like I was that night. Good for them. Enjoy, kids.”
He punched hard on a dashboard button as if he were a submarine seaman launching a torpedo. “Let’s have some fun. Fire number one.” The silver bullet’s convertible top slid back. Students passing on the sidewalk stopped to witness a hot car delivering an old man back to his lost youth in a midlife extravagance.
Bet if I tooled around campus in this baby back in the day, instead of my old Malibu, things would have been different, he thought. He tried but failed to act smirky. Not his nature. The thought instead made him sad. He pretended an image of his Janey, who was, all along, the object of his reminiscing trip. He had denied himself his raison d’être until that very moment. Without another thought, he inhaled a deeply painful breath, which he exhaled slowly to feel its effect, a full-body sedative. His head tilted down as if craving sleepy relief. He slumped against the steering wheel, exhausted.
He contemplated why he had to see that bus stop again. It is where Janey, that night, walked out of the infirmary nearly naked and into young, impressionable Michael’s life. Seemed like yesterday. But it was so long ago.
II
In the Darkness with the Radio Playing Low
He began to feel foolish on display behind a shuttle bus, which was loading kids loitering a bit to check him out. They held expressions of ‘What’s with the guy in the sexy car? Like showin’ off or something?’ Or simply “What’s he doing here anyway?’
Okay, kids, he thought, I’m the foolish older guy hanging around campus. What must they be thinking? He stared too long. Reality faded to fantasy. He let his mind bring up her image. “Janey is there. No, stupid. That can’t be,” he thought. Yet, his heart was racing. “Okay, now she is gone. Oh no, she is there again. Get a grip, man. This is not a good idea. It is not Janey. When is this damn bus going to move? Did it break down?”
He punched another button on the console and commanded, “Fire number two. These kids should love this,” he assured himself. The top-of-line Harmon Kardon sound system with its subwoofer kicked on the radio, blasting at high volume. But his car radio, pre-set on the oldie station, betrayed his swag by teasing him with Janey’s song from 1980 by the old rocker Bob Seger, ‘Against the Wind’.
Same place, same song 30 years ago, when the introverted student, shy Michael, was drifting his old Malibu down Campus Drive at the same spot.
“Oh my God, that’s the song I heard that night,” he said loud enough that the students at the bus stop heard him.
As the shuttle bus started down Campus Drive again, he froze, hearing more lyrics. Janey was lovely, the song lamented. She was the queen of ‘my’ nights. With the radio on low, said the song.
During the past 30 years, as Michael was locked away from society, he never heard Janey’s song again. He’d forgotten it. Now, the words brought him close to tears. He reflected, “She stayed in my dreams, while no one knows for sure if she is dead or still alive today. So why am I here?”
Car horns behind shocked Michael back to reality. He nervously slipped the Z4 into its tightly torqued first gear, popped the clutch, and stalled the motor, as the song continued with less purpose, reminding him of the secrets they shared and mountains they moved long ago.
“I know the rest. It goes, ‘Caught like a wildfire out of control’. It was all out of control, Janey. I miss you. Where are you?”
“Sir, is there something wrong?” A girl came to the car, just as Janey did that night, oh, so long ago. He saw Janey’s face on the girl. His mind flashed to the incredibly unlikely night when he met her just there.
“Sir, are you okay? “Sir?”
He focused. The girl was just a stranger, very young, just like Janey, but bore no resemblance—brunette and fully dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, unlike Janey, who was blonde.
“Oh,” he said to himself, slightly, embarrassed. He started the car again and drove down the familiar hill on Campus Drive.
Intuitively, he stopped at the campus chapel’s small parking lot. He listened to more lyrics of Janey’s song on the BMW radio as memories continued to fill his head. Once again, he and Janey were runnin’ against the wind. “Well, yes, I’ll say, we were complete opposites for sure.” He dreaded hearing the heartbreaking lyric, the unlikely promise, that, indeed, his Janey, too, had once sworn to Michael it would never end.
Yeah, that’s right. I know the rest, thank you: she held me oh so tight. And by gosh, I wish I didn’t know what I didn’t know then,” he said as tears ran down his cheeks.
He flipped off the radio. Without effort or even awareness of his actions, he let the little sports car drift to a stop under the shade of a familiar great white oak next to the tall chapel steeple.
He turned the ignition key off, adjusted the seat back, and gazed up at a crescent moon crossing behind the steeple spire, the same crescent moon, the same chapel, the same spire, the same love, but lost.
He closed his eyes as he pictured her at the bus stop again. His memory was clear, obedient now. He relived the highly unlikely, and yet wonderful moment when he first saw a pretty blonde girl, intoxicated and seemingly helpless, leaning on the bus stop just outside the infirmary. She was barefoot and wearing that big man’s white dress shirt.
He dozed off in his precious silver bullet car with the top down and keys in the ignition, lost in the memory of Janey’s enchantingly deep blue indigo eyes. Whatever became of her? he asked himself as he dreamed of that Sunday night, about 2 a.m., fall semester in 1980:
The campus is empty as the academic world sleeps in anticipation of a new Monday of classes and lectures as usual.
He is woozy and mumbles, “Yeah, I know where.”
He sees young Michael in the dream, the college sophomore driving the old 1966 Malibu, white with a black interior, 99,000 miles on the odometer.
Older Michael mumbles again in the silver bullet. He rolls over, remembering the old car, “That’s the one, 99 K, right.” He dives back into deep sleep. In the dream, he dreams of the naïve small-town boy overwhelmed with big campus life:
Aimlessly, young Michael drives around on that fateful night. He is still wearing a dress shirt and pleated slacks from church that morning. Through the heavy static of the AM dial on his old Chevy Malibu, he is trying to keep up with the play-by-play of a baseball game from St. Louis, a thousand miles away. The introverted, skinny boy with close-cut straight brown hair is gangly and awkward. His social life consists entirely of books and a private passion for baseball.
He and the Malibu find themselves cruising downhill on Campus Drive, passing the college infirmary, where the campus at night is always devoid of human activity. But on this night, a ghostly white image emerges from the campus infirmary and into a pool of light over a bus stop. Michael slows the Malibu as he sees the ghost transform into a pretty blonde girl, her bare legs under a bright white shirt. She looks pale and frightened. The baseball game on the AM channel fades. Rocker Bob Seger’s new hit song, Against the Wind, scratches through the airwaves to replace the game.
She waves and runs toward Michael’s Malibu. Bob Seger sings on the radio, “We were running against the wind,” Michael senses a connection to the song as the girl reaches for the door handle. He measures the fear on the girl’s face and is frightened for this person. She frantically opens the passenger side door handle while her eyes beg the boy inside to invite her in. He just stares. She seems comforted simply because the door is unlocked.
III
Her Tough Attitude
As he continued to dream, the odd man on campus in the hot sports car was still sound asleep after half an hour with the convertible top down, parked next to the campus chapel.
His dream again visits 1980 and forms the image of the pretty blonde girl in the ghostly big white shirt hopping into the 1966 white Malibu he owned in college;
The shy boy is not frightened by the girl’s intrusion, but oddly intrigued. Out of sheer human compassion, the boy momentarily disregards his usual self-pitying demeanor because the girl needs help desperately. She is in some kind of trouble.
He realizes she has no alternative but to trust the nerdy boy in the 14-year-old heap with a hole in the muffler and scratchy AM radio. There is no one else around. There are no other cars on Campus Drive. The campus is still.
“Hey, can you get me out of here? They don’t know I escaped the infirmary over there,” she says breathlessly. With a reassuring glance from the stunned boy driving, she climbs in.
He watches without objection as the girl lands on the passenger seat. She slouches herself down as an escaped convict might do to flee the cops.
Her quick, jerky movements inadvertently flip up her oversized shirt to her waist, exposing herself for a second. The incidental flash is long enough for the shy boy to see the nakedness of a real girl for the first time in his life. No panties. Nothing. She quickly pulls the shirt down and sees him look, but is unfazed. She yells, “Quick, quick. Please, can you take me with you?”
“Where?” he says, bewildered, not moving at all.
“Just go … anywhere but here.”
The boy virgin surprises himself with confidence, eager to help her. He was not anxious about what he saw, despite a momentary shortness of breath. The vibrant young female who hurdled herself into his car is just a person in need of a quick decision. His job is to behave and rescue her.
He drives down the hill on Campus Drive with his pretty passenger nestled into the black bucket seat of his ‘66 coupe, knees to her chest, face toward the window to her right, ignoring the boy.
“Do you need clothes?”
“Well … do you think so? Whatever gave you that thought?” she snaps and turns to face him. She softens when they exchange a look that neither would ever forget. It was a look of trust, belonging, comfort, and true affinity with another soul, completely unrehearsed, unexpected, and unlikely.
He is dumbfounded. After a few pounding heartbeats, he recovers, “I’ll get you some clothes, okay? We have to go to my apartment.”
She looks cross, perhaps a bit threatened. But again, they exchange an intriguing glance, as if their mutual fate was transcendent, time had stopped, their curious eyes now staring. He would always remember the epiphany of two hearts, minds, and souls without a single word spoken by either, each idly adrift in the shadows of a lost evening found.
She breaks the spell, “Fine … I mean, okay … thanks. ” She turns quickly back to the side window, and then slowly returns to study his face. What had just happened between them?
He somehow senses that her tension has relaxed in her shoulders and back. She is breathing easy for the first time, perhaps in hours of some ordeal he may never know. “My name is Michael,” he says without looking at her. Although she doesn’t respond in kind, he thinks the girl is likely harmless, despite being so loose and sharp with her words.
He drives on in silence. They say no more until 2:35 a.m. when he is unlocking the three-bedroom apartment he shares with two other boys, also students. “Stay here on the couch. I’ll be back with some clothes.”
“Where am I going to go?”
The sarcasm hints at her true nature, he considers, her fast social life. He is strangely fond of her tough attitude. Michael figures he was not dealing with just a stormy girl wild in the streets, but a hurricane. It is exciting.
He steps back out to a hallway of the two-story apartment building set in a complex of 12 identical structures. “Jeez, why me,” he mutters. Is he simply lucky to meet such a girl? Or is it bad luck to mix with such people? He wonders, Should I be scared of this? No, he decides.
Jane is a sexy sorority girl with a habit of sleeping around, hard-drinking, and a foul mouth. After less than two years at college, she was a rock star socially, a racy chick with a winning personality around the clubs and bars.
Yet, that night Jane, the party girl, crossed paths with a mere boy, who is about her age, but a loner at the same college. The last guy she would ever want to meet or get to know.
On the couch, she probably can hear him pounding on a neighbor’s door across the hall, the apartment of a friend, an older single woman. In a few minutes, with borrowed clothes, including underwear over his arm, he stands over the couch, “I’ll put these in the bathroom, okay? Just let me know where you need a ride home tonight,” he says politely. “As I said, I am Michael. I have two nice roomies. You are safe here.”
“I’m Jane,” she murmured half-heartedly.
She tugs down the big white shirt to help hide her legs as if she’s suddenly modest. She appears to like Michael and acts a bit grateful, he thought, and perhaps slightly embarrassed for the first time over her situation. She watches him as she walks across the room, noticing he is not gawking at her as most boys do. She notices that he is at a kitchen table writing something, the address of the woman next door to give to the girl who should return the clothes.
Young Michael is a studious recluse. He fears spells of attractive females who easily cast over him with one word, gesture, or comment in class, even without flirty intentions or suggestive looks. He usually fears any girl half this attractive. But to Michael, this one is different. She is as gorgeous as any of them, but not spellbindingly gorgeous. Just different.
But perhaps the difference is that she needs him. He likes that. He likes her.
He nods to her with a kind smile as she emerges again, fully clothed in baggy jeans and a Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt. “Here is the name and address of the lady whose clothes you borrowed, if you want to return them or mail them to her.”
“Listen, you’ve been so kind. I don’t think I can get back into my sorority house this late. I don’t have a key. Can I crash on the couch?” she says sweetly and a bit flirty while twisting the ends of her hair seductively with one hand.
Again, Michael ignores or doesn’t understand his rare opportunity to make time with a pretty female. If she is hinting or teasing about sleeping with him, it goes right past Michael. “Okay. I’ll get you a blanket and a pillow.”
He spreads a cover over her gently as she stretches out. “Goodnight. I have a class at 9 a.m. I can get you home before that.” He walks toward his bedroom but feels her eyes on him.
She says, “Goodnight, sweet Prince,” and turns her head away, to the pillow.
That gets straight to his heart. He softly whispers enough not to be heard, “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” Safely behind his bedroom door, Horatio from Hamlet tries to sleep. He lies a mere 20 feet and one thin wall from his sexy guest. “Who is that girl?” he asks himself over and over.
IV
It’s Me, Janey
The dream faded as older Michael, in the Z4 silver bullet at the chapel, shook his head and blinked, eyes half open. With the car’s canvas top down, he recognized the chapel steeple and mumbled, “Oh yeah, just a dream.”
He shifted his head on the soft leather seat rest. The sun’s rays flickered through the giant oak onto his half-shut eyes. He stayed barely awake just long enough to pull a cap over his eyes as he remembered sunlight 30 years ago waking him the morning after meeting Janey. He smiled at the thought and then dozed off again. His mind picked up the dream about young Michael the morning after helping the near-naked girl:
As he shuffles out of the bedroom, he is delighted to see the girl at his kitchen table.
“Didn’t you say you have a 9 o’clock?” she remarks sharply. “Your roommate Freddie left. He made me coffee. What a dear.”
“Drink your coffee, Janey, relax. I woke up too late to make class anyway. Couldn’t sleep.” He sits opposite her at the little Formica table. “How ’bout you? He asks, “Sleep okay on the bumpy couch?”
“The fucking name is Jane, not Janey, okay Mike?” she demanded and quickly regrets the comment, staring at the table. “Oh, shit,” She then looks up to him, “Hey, I’m sorry about that.”
“And, my name is Michael, not Mike, okay?” he says with an affectionate smile. He’s been wondering about her for hours. Now he can learn something. “What happened, Janey? And, I do think you are a Janey.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What happened that you were all alone, standing in a big white shirt, otherwise naked to the wind at 2 a.m.?”
“There was no wind.”
“How could you know? You looked smashed to the gills.”
She sips from her cup, “You wouldn’t know if I was smashed. That was nothing.”
“Drugs?” he asks.
“That’s none of your damn business.” She sighs deeply, and then says, “Look Mike, Michael, whatever, you are a nice, sweet boy. You are like sweet candy and I’m … I’m a sour persimmon…, no, like poison to someone like you. You should never have stopped for me last night. Can I go home now?”
He lets that go.
“Michael, I do appreciate all you did. Who knows who might have grabbed me.”
“Exactly. Guess what, Janey?”
“Stop calling me that, please.”
“No. You are not so tough, you know. And you owe me something for being the one who came along,” Michael says, blinking and shuttering his head, disbelieving his sudden boldness. He is teetering on the perilous verge of falling for a tough girl of the night.
Janey shook her head and asked, “I owe you? What? What do you want? I have no money on me. I’m not a hooker. What can I possibly give you? Maybe when you take me home, soon please, I can get some money for you if …..”
“Janey?”
“What?”
“Please shut up. What you owe me is a respectful explanation. Or I … eee, I … I’m not letting you go.” He is bluffing.
Janey bursts out laughing at the top of her lungs. She keeps laughing as she leans over her coffee, and then looks up at him, only to laugh harder.
He feels repelled and then reasons quickly that she was expressing great relief somehow, or maybe taking the upper hand—he doesn’t care—just as long as she is still there talking to him.
She finally manages, “You know, you are just precious. You know that? You won’t let me go? What a joke.” She laughs again.
He laughs with her and gets up to retrieve more coffee from a dented aluminum percolator on the stove. She follows, still laughing.
“Michael?” she says, putting her hands on his shoulders and staring into his big, innocent, sky-blue eyes. “Thank you for being that guy who stopped. She hugs him and kisses him lightly on the cheek before retreating quickly to her chair at the table as if barricading herself there.
Like so many men in Jane’s life, Michael is instantly charmed. He is hooked and cannot help admiring her flirtatious smiles. He studies his prize. It is a great triumph over his shy nature.
She removes a ribbon from her canary yellow locks that flow past her shoulders as she smiles with cute dimples on both cheeks and sparkling blue eyes, even with a hangover.
“You’re welcome,” he unconsciously touches the memory of her kiss on his cheek. “Look, Janey, I’d really like to know.”
She studies her coffee cup. He fills it. She looks up at him. They each feel a calm feeling of a budding attraction again. He stares at her, anticipating an answer.
She lightly bites her bottom lip in thought. She offers, “Let’s make a deal. If you knew what happened to me last night, how someone treated me badly and dumped me dead drunk at the college infirmary, you would be upset. So, here is the deal: If you agree to let me keep my secret, I will entertain you with a home-cooked meal at my sorority house this Friday. I’ll get a couple of culinary wizards who are my sorority sisters, to help put on the best meal you’ve ever had, dessert and all. We can talk about anything you’d like then. Deal?”
Michael tries to contain anxiety overtaking him. “Well … okay. Deal.” He reaches across to shake her hand. She begins to get up, perhaps for another hug, and then decides to stay sitting, accepting his handshake lightly.
Friday is a hot, late spring evening, but for the mere boy Michael, it could not have come too soon. He is sweating profusely as he drives toward Fraternity Row. He parks his old Malibu along a circular street of big fraternity and sorority houses.
As he approaches Janey’s sorority, he hears rock ‘n roll music getting louder from the windows and front balcony. He likes hearing Bob Seger’s Against the Wind again. Closer in, he hears girls giggling and macho males boasting and laughing. “Bummer,” he mumbles. His shoulders slump in disappointment. A party crowd of drunks is the last thing Michael wanted to find there. His heart is set instead on imagining himself and Janey on a quiet romantic evening, whatever that is, he wonders.
His fantasy keeps him advancing toward the sorority door, though. He continues up three steps and stands by the heavy front door. He can’t bring himself to knock on it. He stands stiff, admiring the stained golden oak grain, denying himself his only chance to fulfill his vision of the lovely girl again.
As he turns to retreat, the party noise blasts past him as the door opens.
She is in the door frame. Janey is smiling and still holding the doorknob as she sways her hips playfully with the beat of the music.
He is trying to remember clever lines he’d rehearsed. He can’t speak. Janey forms a fine, delicate figure in her light pink cotton dress well above the knee and with tiny straps at her bare shoulders.
“Come in, Michael. Just don’t stand there with your tongue out. Damn, I can’t look that good!” she tries humor to unlock his frozen, pale face.
He hesitates. “Can we talk out here?” The music is deafening.
Instead, she waves him in, swaying her shoulders alluringly, with raised eyebrows and a wink.
That’s just too much for him. “No, I can’t,” he says, turning to see where his car is.
“Michael, why are you nervous? It’s me, Janey. Don’t you trust me? I trusted you.”
“Of course I do.” He sits down on the doorstep, his back to her.
“Okay then, come on in,” she says. “What’s wrong?”
“Janey, this maybe, ah, is not such a good …”
“Michael, just shut up,” she demands. She crouches and strokes his hair. “Okay, let’s sit. Ever been to a sorority?”
Embarrassed, he speaks after a long pause, “I know this seems stupid to you. You are a popular girl on campus. I’ve asked around. Guys don’t believe I’m going out with you.”
“Who said we are going out?”
“Oh, God. I’m going.” He gets halfway up, and she pushes him down and sits close to him with their backs to the big oak door and the muffled music.
“It seems to me I’m out with you.”
“Yeah, out on the steps. Got to start someplace, Casanova,” she quips with a mock jab to his ribs, laughing delightfully.
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Right on, bro. Solid observation there,” she teases.
As she begins to talk again, the door swings open behind them. Party noise drowns out their conversation.
Four beefy guys sprint out the door and step around them. One of them says in mock anger, “I want my damn shirt back, Jane.” The guys explode with mocking laughter. Another turns back halfway down a front walkway and says, “Hey Jane, make sure you break in your boy right, so he knows where the hell you end up tonight.” They jump into a gleaming new, white Cadillac Seville convertible without opening the car doors. Their heavy chariot shakes and rocks under their weight and then zooms off.
“Friends of yours?” Michael asks. “The white shirt at the infirmary?”
“Pay no attention to them. That’s stupid, Bart, the middle linebacker? I don’t know where he is getting the money for those wheels. He thinks he owns me ’cause we used to go out. He and his jock friends are jerks.”
Michael considers her explanation to be more than necessary.
“Michael, tell me what you are thinking. This time, it’s me who really needs to know.”
He takes more than a minute to answer. Then, “Something is good about us meeting by chance, Janey, something more than me accidentally saving you from some rapist, or because of you feeling contented sleeping over at my place.”
“Yeah. I know.” Janey’s face takes on an expression of a little girl pondering a grown-up issue. She draws her knees back, wraps her arms around them, and rests her chin on her forearms.
He gazes over her lovely facial features, looking for her true interest in him. He is no longer nervous. Michael reaches his arm around Janey’s shoulders without a second thought, “I know you are a wonderful woman, Janey. I knew that as soon as I laid eyes on you. You may be out of my league,” he says, sweeping his left hand across the vista of big brick houses of Fraternity Row, “but not with me. I don’t understand it. I’m, I’m, ah, a man when I’m with you. … Hey, can we walk and talk? I’ve already said too much.”
Janey giggles fondly, “You haven’t said enough. Who needs hot dogs and beans anyway,” she lied about the steak dinner and key lime pie she and her friends had cooked up.
He loves it and squeezes her shoulder gently.
They walk across the campus holding hands. In silence, they cross the marching band’s practice field, toward the tranquility of the university chapel, the lone structure on the expansive lawn.
Janey breaks the silence, “Let me do some talking now, Michael. Your sporty white Malibu seems like a nice ride. I bet you are paying for it yourself, right?”
“Yeah, bought it used, but I worked at the steel mills to pay for it, top wages for summer work.”
She says, “My dad worked the mills in Pittsburgh. He died of cancer last year. I think it affected his lungs. Mom was already gone; ran off with a rich guy from New York. I finished raising myself from age 12, raising hell mostly while living off my alcoholic Uncle Joe in Canada.”
“You seem to be having a good time all the time.”
“Yeah, guess so.” She slumps and sniffles, letting go of his hand.
“Are you crying?”
“Who me? No. Well, maybe a bit. Tears of a clown, huh?”
“Not always upbeat, are you?” he asks.
“I’m a big fake. God, I’m glad I met you, Michael,” she says as he wipes a tear from her cheek with a white handkerchief. “Who would have guessed?”
“I wouldn’t have. I was cruising around that night feeling sorry for myself, convinced I was flawed and too awkward for a relationship. Then you … you were just there. I thought you were a hallucination at first.”
“I was out of it, alright,” she concedes,
They pass into the dark moon shade of a great white oak. They embrace. Neither understands what they have together. They just know they have each other.
V
The Chase
Older Michael was sound asleep in his open-top Z4 sports car, cap over his eyes, when his dream ended with young Michael’s first kiss of adorable Janey in the shade of the great oak 30 years earlier. His contented smile revealed being pleasantly pleased with the memory.
But in the real world outside of his silver bullet, something was wrong. Still groggy, he caught a glimpse of a man’s hand reaching into the convertible on the right side. As he woke, his body stiffened in fright. He uttered, “Hey, you. What the hell are you doing? Give that back.”
His big, leather overnight bag was flying out of the car on the huge hand of a man in green coveralls. Michael was shocked to see the man running with it across the marching band’s field toward the highway. The green man was much younger and leaner than him. It was too late to chase on foot. The thief had a lengthy head start.
With no other options, Michael turned the ignition key, and the little, powerful Beemer roared to life. He whipped the steering wheel around, driving off the chapel parking lot and onto the practice field. The silver bullet was ripping up turf in pursuit of the thief in green overalls.
Pedestrians along the highway noticed a man in green running with the bag and the silver Z4 chasing him across the field.
The man in green raced through a garden of vintage rose bushes, the pride of the dean of the Fine Arts College. The car cut a hard gash through the prized specimens, hurling a cloud of thorny limbs and rose petals of shades of pink and red.
The thief jumped a low, brick retaining wall at the highway. The car did the same, vaulting high above the bricks using mounds of raised rose beds as a launching pad. Shocked pedestrians ducked for cover as the car landed on all four tires on the sidewalk. They watched as the little silver convertible pulled alongside the man running on the highway. It was a show stopper as more and more people noticed the chase. They saw the driver reach out toward the man. He whacked the running man in the back of his head. The runner fell unconscious. Michael’s overnight bag tumbled away from the fallen man.
Catching and striking the thief caused Michael to lose focus on the road.
People watching nearby let out a collective groan, and many streamed as the little attack car went out of control. The car side-swiped a Greyhound bus, which veered sharply, then flipped onto its side toward incoming traffic. Five other cars crashed with deafening impacts to the underside of the upended bus. At the same time Michael’s Z4 slammed into the front windows of the Town & Country Bank, and into the lobby, setting off burglar alarms amid screams of terror.
Half-conscious and wedged tightly into the driver’s seat, Michael could see the thief in his rearview mirror wake up and run away. He also thought he saw his bag still in the street. But that was all he saw before passing out. He was jammed tightly into the wreck.
Three hours later, at the county jail, two officers approached Michael, lying on a cot in an unlocked cell. They were in starched, neatly pressed gray-blue uniforms. He noticed shiny silver badges and holstered pistols. He sat up to greet the cops.
One of them said, “Doc said you are okay. We need to get a deposition, mister.” The officers took him to the examining desk in the precinct office. The contents of Michael’s overnight bag were scattered onto the desk—clothes, toiletries, towels, and such.
“We picked this up on the highway,” said one of the two clean-cut officers. “Wallet was inside. Your name, Michael?”
“Yeah, that’s mine, alright.”
The sheriff, dressed in a dark blue uniform, came into the room next, “Buddy, those must be pretty valuable drawers. Chasin’ that bag of underwear, you and that silver scooter of yours left a trail of destruction from the chapel to the bank.”
“It was the principle of it,” Michael muttered under his breath.
“What were you doing on campus?”
“I was looking for a ghost.”
“Don’t get smart.”
Michael was getting impatient and barked, “She would be the ghost of a girl I met here when I was a student long ago; her name was Janey, if you must know. Haven’t been back here since the 1980s. I wouldn’t have gotten robbed in broad daylight on campus back then. What the hell kind of security is there, nothing? I was just parked at the chapel, for God’s sake. Officer, you’d be pissed off too if it happened to you, and you would have chased that bastard.”
“We got your man in the green jumpsuit. He’s a slow wit, a clean-up man at the chapel. And, it’s sheriff, Sheriff Doyle.”
“Good, thanks, Sheriff. Can I have my bag now?”
“Wait just a minute,” Sheriff Doyle said, wagging his finger at his prisoner. “You say her name was Janey? Janey is your ghost? And your name is Michael?” said Doyle, raising his voice to a high pitch. “Great Holy Jesus, guys! Hey guys. Do you know what we have here? Michael and Janey! Ring a bell?” He pointed to a faded poster on the far wall. A room of several officers turned to see a wanted poster, enlarged and framed directly over the sheriff’s desk.
On the poster was a much younger Michael grinning devilishly. Posted next to his photo was a photograph of a rather haggard Janey—blonde hair matted and wet, makeup running down her cheeks.
Back and forth, the officers looked from the older, heavier Michael to the thinner young Michael in the poster and back again. They were elated and gathered around the desk covered by Michael’s belongings.
One officer asked the prisoner, “Sir, may I have your autograph?
VI
Is She Dead Then?
Michael was astonished to see serious-minded lawmen acting like groupies. They were gawking like they’d met their rock star. At first, Michael was confused, but then he got it, “Oh, yeah. You, sir, are Officer Doyle, who arrested me for the murder way back then.”
“Bingo!” said the sheriff. “It is Sheriff Doyle now, Michael.” He reached out and shook Michael’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you, sir,” the sheriff said, refusing to let go of the hand.
“This is too weird,” Michael admitted, scanning the giddy expressions of the officers.
The sheriff took some steps away and said, “Michael, tell me. Did you get parole or bust out of prison? You got life, you know.”
“I was just released on good behavior after 30 years.”
Doyle said, “I am truly sorry for the way things worked out, Michael. If you hadn’t killed that thieving creep Brad, you know, the star linebacker? Well, we might have done him in ourselves. The cocky son-o-bitch was on a football scholarship. Yet he was robbing banks, spending dough like a Rockefeller.”
Michael nodded, “That’s okay, Sheriff Doyle. No grudge. I admitted killing the creep because I thought he was messin’ with my girl.”
Sheriff Doyle eagerly offered, “What you and Janey did is still the most notorious crime that ever happened around here. Feel like telling us what happened? All we know are court records.”
“No,” Michael snapped.
“Come on. That bastard deserved to be killed. We got his partners, two football players, the quarterback and center, convicted for armed robbery and murder. They killed the security guard right there at the Town & Country Bank, where this afternoon, people are likely still extracting what’s left of your car.”
“Gosh darn, what a coincidence. I didn’t know they robbed banks,” said Michael, putting on an innocent face.
“Come on. It was all in the papers, man. Of course, you knew. Don’t play us. Yep, his partners admitted they hid upwards of a quarter of a million bucks. I bet you know where the dough is, too.”
“Gosh. I’m sorry. Don’t know about any money.”
“Oh well, had to ask. You did save us a lot of trouble with that one.”
Michael pondered before replying, “If I tell you everything—after all, double jeopardy, guys—will you let me go?”
“Fuck yeah!” one of the youngest officers shouted. Then the sheriff, “I’ll consider it, yes. Officer Stevens, get this man a cup of fresh coffee. This is going to be a doozy.”
“Okay, here goes,” Michael began. “I parked my car today by the chapel steeple to remember I first kissed Janey under the big oak tree. I remembered how she held me oh so tight. Damn. Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”
Doyle growled, “Oh, isn’t that sweet. Get to the good stuff.”
Michael insisted, “Hey, you said you wanted everything.”
Doyle grumbled impatiently, “Sorry, go on.”
“We got married there, too. Bliss, man. I was a nerdy physics student. Janey was lovely. She was the queen of my nights, as that song says. It was Janey’s song, ‘Against the Wind.‘ That was us.”
“Good song, yeah. Still waiting,” said Doyle, “Go on.”
“She was the most popular girl on fraternity row, a dynamic party girl. We met by accident. That night we met, she had gotten drunk with fuck-head Brad. She said he pushed her from his Cadillac at the infirmary naked, wearing only his shirt.”
“And?”
“And I came along in my Malibu. I remember being there in the darkness with the radio playing low. It was that against-the-wind song; the first time I heard it. And brother, did it fit us?
“And there she was on the curb of the campus bus stop. She hopped into my car, and I helped her get home. We got interested in each other, to my great surprise. Weird though: I gradually became fascinated with her lifestyle, wallowing in her party life—drinking, flirting, the kind of sweet lifestyle I hadn’t tasted in my nerdy conservative life to that point. Meanwhile, she admired my studious nature and knuckled down to earn her degree in criminology. We practically assumed each other’s lifestyle.”
Doyle asked diligently, “Where is she now?”
“I’m afraid she is dead. Guess that’s why I got all sentimental today.”
Doyle said carefully, “We had an APB out for her as your accomplice for murder.”
“I shot her.”
“What?”
“It was an accident. A few years after we were married, she said she’d leave me if I didn’t straighten up, sober up, and go back to college.”
“You didn’t finish?”
“I am ashamed to say, but no. Too much partying. Too many drugs. As I said, I became her in a way. She sort of became me, landed a nice job in criminal justice in D.C.”
Doyle didn’t seem convinced, “She’s dead, you say?”
“Yeah,” Michael wiped a tear. “She left the house after we had a fight and was gone two days. I thought she went back with Brad, her old love, to his luxury suite at the Hilton. You know, the same Brad who mistreated her. Broads? Who knows them? So I borrowed her pistol.”
“Sure, sure, that figures. But the bullets in Brad’s gun were the ones that matched an FBI Beretta,” Doyle explained. “Hers?”
Michael shrugged off the question and instead said, “When I got to Brad’s suite, I used a key I’d found in her purse she left at our place. I was burning mad and high as a kite. I let myself into his suite with the key. I heard Janey yelling. She was not dressed like it was a lover’s rendezvous. She was in office clothing, a pantsuit like a cop would be wearing. The first thing I saw was blood on her jacket and blouse. He was hitting her. She rushed him. He pulled a knife. I panicked and shot at Brad. They moved, though, and the bullet hit them both.”
“She was dead then?”
“Not yet. Still alive, I carried her to my car to go to the hospital.
But I was stupid-crazed and had left her gun up in the suite. She was conscious but said she was alright. She insisted that I get it, evidence, you know, fingerprints and all. I ran back to retrieve it and …”
Doyle cut in, “That’s when the hotel security captured you. I arrived and cuffed you. Remember it well. Are you sure you didn’t shoot them both on purpose?”
“No, Sheriff. I swear. Janey was dying in my arms and said she hated Brad. She was playing him to gain his trust. The FBI was going to bust Brad’s gang. She was on a case, goddamn.”
“You asked us to get her to the hospital if we had her, but your car was gone, she was gone,” said Sheriff Doyle. “Funny.”
“What’s that, Sheriff?”
“We never recovered Brad’s loot. And, we never saw her again. The money wasn’t in the apartment. Did she say anything to you?”
“No,” Michael said, resolutely. “Her cell phone died. I could never reach her. And she lost too much blood to survive, believe me.”
“Oh well, it was bank money, federally insured,” said Doyle. He looked suspiciously at his prisoner/hero.
“Can I go now?” Michael asked.
“Don’t leave town. You’ll get notice of the trial date for damages.”
Several days later, on the busy streets of downtown Toronto, Michael pushed through heavy glass doors of the Toronto Savings and Deposit Bank. At a small kiosk, he opened his overnight bag for the guard. He walked then alone to a corner table, his body shielding the bag from guards and tellers. With a pocket knife, he cut open the bag lining. “Ah, there,” he mumbled as his fingers found a safe deposit key taped tightly inside the lining of the bag.
He then flirted with a pretty bank teller. “Don’t I know you from somewhere, Miss?” She smiled appreciatively with no answer.
“Whew? I thought I lost this.” He showed her the safe deposit key.
She let him into the deposit box room and spoke formally, “We have the duplicate key of course and I’ll get your paperwork identifying you with the box, which you can sign when you are through in there. Be back in a flash,” said the pretty teller as she walked out of the vault’s massive door holding her head up proudly. He knew he’d made a friendly impression.
With her out of sight momentarily, Michael tried the key, which opened box #80. He removed a cloth sack marked ‘TSDB Property’ and dumped many wads of large bills from it into the overnight bag. He discreetly zipped the overnight bag closed and folded the bank cloth sack into his inside coat pocket.
Leaving the deposit room, he handed the bank key to the teller, saying, “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. Sorry, it took so long to return it. You are so kind, Miss. See you later, okay?”
He walked confidently onto the bright, sunlit street.
“I’ll take that bag, mister,” the voice of a middle-aged woman stopped him from behind. Her hand grasped the bag’s handle. He looked down and saw the sleeve of a policewoman’s uniform. Janey was dressed in a snappy red uniform of the Royal Canadian Police. She was now a brunette, still a pretty sight, beaming with delight to see her man again.
“I knew you’d be here,” Michael beamed.
They hopped into a new silver BMW Z4, hardtop this time, and headed north to her Uncle Joe’s cabin hidden deep in the woods near Fire Lake, Ontario. They were never seen again in the States.
***
The legend of Janey and Michael lived on campus and the surrounding communities with unconfirmed mysterious sightings of the two fugitives in the press and rumors of the stolen money turning up here and there.
Over Sheriff Doyle’s desk hung a framed 8×10 mug shot, signed “Runnin’ against the wind … again, Michael.”
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