CHAPTER 35 - FREDDY

Innocence tinctures all things with brightest hues. -Edward Counsel

I breathed a canvas of steam onto the window of the Greyhound and drew a heart in it. I had seen that corny move in a movie. Oklahoma hadn't worked out for me. Life didn't always imitate art. 

I was heading from Worcester, MA to Mystic, CT for the summer. The fantasy of being a waitress in a quaint seaside village enchanted me. I saw myself pouring coffee for some swarthy sailor who would romance me by singing Vandy, you're a fine girl. What a good wife you would be (such a fine girl.) But my lover, my lady is the sea.

It wasn't Mystic Pizza. That movie wasn't out yet. Maybe it was Van Morrison's Into the Mystic that motivated me:

We were born before the wind. Also younger than the sun. I wanted someone to rock my gypsy soul. 

I wanted a city. I wanted to distract myself from my feelings. The two most important men in my life had just vanished. I didn't know how to feel about all that. You know how people say I went down a rabbit hole? You can turn your whole life into a rabbit hole. I think that's what the summer of my 18th year was all about. 

When the bus pulled into New London, it was more like a stop than a bus station. I saw a restaurant, 'Never on Sundays.' I had seen the movie. I decided to get off the bus. 

I walked by a dingy, formerly grand, 11-story building with 'Mohican Hotel' on a marquee. The hotel must have been part of the town's social services. It housed seniors, people with schizophrenia, and almost street people.  I asked the clerk for a room.

On the outdoor promenade that night, I met a short, Puerto Rican guy named Freddy lying on the grass, minding his business, listening to Marvin Gaye on a new thing called a boom box. I had to let him know I was all about the Puerto Ricans. 

He had a scant mustache on his upper lip and wore a Pork Pie hat, which usually looks old-man square, but Freddy made it look cool.

 

"Habla 'panole?" He left the "s's" out of everything.