May 1976
For the next few weeks, the group would appear at Blue’s apartment window at all hours by climbing the fire escape. There
was Cat, who was tiny and liked to perch on the backs of things and was quiet and watchful and fierce. Sally was named for
a song called “Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley” because she was good at sneaking around, or so everyone said. New York was
full of alleys; she was in them sometimes. Sweet Jane was gentle and kind and got her name from a song by the Velvet Underground.
Lacey could sew and loved scarves and frills.
Denver, Cat, Sally, Sweet Jane, Lacey, and Dean. Of the entire group, he was the only one who seemed to use his own name.
Blue always had food on standby for these unexpected arrivals—her fresh bread, homemade brownies and cookies and granola.
She kept this stash hidden under her bed so her stoned roommates didn’t eat it. She became Blue with the food, a necessary
part of their schedule. They ate every morsel and showed their appreciation by drawing her into their circle, their jokes,
their songs, their wanderings around town.
They lived, Blue learned, somewhere outside the city, in the mountains.
They came into the city on what they called “supply runs,” which Blue quickly understood to mean buying pot and doing some light pickpocketing.
They worked uptown and never targeted anyone who looked like they couldn’t spare the money.
They took wallets from people coming out of the opera, and purses from women going to the Russian Tea Room.
On one occasion, they managed to steal a pair of Gucci loafers off the feet of a vice president of the Xerox company.
They explained how, but not why, since they didn’t need or want Gucci loafers and ended up giving them to a man begging on the street.
Redistribution seemed to be the point, and Blue was fine with that.
“We were thinking,” Denver said one day near the end of April as they sat on the balding grass in Tompkins Square Park, “why
don’t you come up and live with us?”
This seemed like a cruel joke. They couldn’t be serious. Could they?
“No game,” Dean said as if reading her mind. “We want you to come. You’re already one of us. We were hungry, so fate drew
us to you, our baker. Sweet Jane knew you were coming, and there you were.”
“It’s true,” Sweet Jane said, her eyes wide and sincere. “I was reading for all of us this one day and I put down a King of
Pentacles, a Four of Wands, and then the Sun. I said to Dean, someone is coming—but not just someone. Abundance is coming. It’s like home is coming to us.”
“And then right after that,” Sally said, “you walked by us in the park and it hit us all at once. Like, we all looked at each other. That’s how strong it was.”
“That’s just the bakery smell,” Blue said. That got a laugh.
“Come on,” Dean said, leaning closer. The plume on his hat brushed her cheek up and down. “Please come with us.”
“You really want me to?” she asked.
“So bad,” Denver said. “We want you to come with us so bad!”
so bad so bad come on Blue come with us come with us
Why not? Nothing of value would be lost, and there would be everything to gain.
Less than two months after getting her name, Blue was riding in the back of the green van as it plodded its way out of the
city, one passenger too heavy for the trip, along with that passenger’s humble possessions. Seven sweaty people crammed into
a pile of stuff, a joint constantly on the move around the vehicle. They left the city behind and moved into greener territory.
It was a stunning day, big and juicy, with all the promises of spring.
Blue could feel the soft change of pressure in her ears as they got higher, but Dean calmly negotiated the progressively tighter turns as the road snaked through the embrace of the trees.
Blue was far enough to the front of the van that she could see the approach to one turn, where there was nothing below but a sheer drop.
Panic seared her system for a hot moment.
What the hell was she doing? But Dean handled it easily as a song about a summer breeze blew out of the radio.
Sweet Jane must have seen her tense up and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
“You’re safe now,” she said, handing her a joint.
Blue’s body eased.
Minutes later there was a gentle crunch of gravel under the tires and they stopped at a small house with pale green siding
and a stone chimney. It was surrounded by an unkept but wild and healthy lawn, dotted with small islands of weeds, rusted-out
chairs, a lopsided table, and assorted piles of bricks and debris.
A house surrounded by nature, with birdsong in the air—not a cramped East Village apartment with a room the size of a closet
where you could barely breathe.
“The house has been in my family forever, but no one really uses it much anymore,” Sally explained as they removed Blue’s
things from the van. “I made a deal with my parents that I could have it if I go back to Swarthmore in a year. Come in! See
the place!”
They walked up five concrete steps to a screen door that hung slightly off its hinges and creaked as they entered the kitchen.
It would, Blue would learn, never really close, letting in a stream of moths and flies. The kitchen had a foul, sour odor
of trash and never-dried dishrags that had gone moldy. Someone had put a collection of tiny blue and green medicine bottles
along the kitchen windowsill to catch the light. The wood-paneled walls were the color of rusty coffee, and the cabinet doors
had been painted mint green at some point in the past. The mint was now muddy under a patina of aged grime.
There were only a few rooms—including an airy living room with a big stone fireplace.
The house had been simply furnished: wooden tables and chairs, a rocking chair.
Thin cotton tapestries and tie-dyes hung over the windows as makeshift curtains, softening the light and giving the room a cozy feel.
It was dirty, though, with junk on the floor—cans, bits of glass, endless cigarette and wood fire ash.
There were two tiny bedrooms. The beds in these had been disassembled, the frames resting against the wall.
The mattresses had thin blankets bunched up on them with no sheets.
But all the mess was forgotten when she stepped out the back onto the porch and saw the view. It was like she was standing
on the rim of a god’s bowl. The clouds were below them, draped over the valley. It was like she could have walked across them, a white carpet stretching to the undulating
waves of mountains behind.
“Tell me what you see,” Dean said, coming up beside her and leaning on the wobbly porch rail. These splintery boards protected
them from a rough drop onto sharply sloping and rocky ground.
“It’s beautiful,” Blue replied.
“No. What do you see?”
“The mountain ridge we’re on,” Blue said, studying the vista. “The sky. The clouds.”
“Sometimes,” he said, speaking so softly she had to lean in to hear, “when someone asks you what you see, tell them what you
don’t see, because that’s what’s important.”
That was confusing, but maybe there was logic in it. What didn’t she see?
“Other houses,” she finally said. “Other people. Cars.”
“You got it,” Dean said, rapping his knuckles against the rail. “Right on. No houses. No cars. No people. Just us and the sky. What you see is our freedom.”
He smiled at her—a wide smile. Dean had large teeth, somewhat square, yellowed from nicotine. This was oddly charming. Warmth
seemed to come off him in waves. And he looked at her so directly. No one had looked at Blue like that before. It was possible
that before Dean, no one had seen her at all. She had been a ghost, and now she was corporeal and lived in the clouds.
“Come on!” Denver called from the patch of grass next to the driveway, where the chairs were gathered and a hammock hung between
two shady trees. There were blankets on the ground, and Blue’s things had been spread over them, like a yard sale display.
Two warm Cokes were going around and everyone was drinking from them. Blue didn’t share drinks—that was disgusting. Yet, when
the Coke reached her, she drank.
“Okay,” Dean said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
They began to go through Blue’s belongings like children going through trick-or-treat hauls. Her records and books. Her address
book. Her underwear. They giggled at her La Perla bra and snapped it like a slingshot.
“Oooh.” Lacey grabbed a blue silk scarf that Blue’s grandmother had given her on her sixteenth birthday. It was hideous, with
five mustard-yellow galleons sailing in a deep blue silk sea. Still, the scarf was Hermès and she had been raised to respect
fine things, even if they were awful. She wanted to tell Lacey to be more careful with it, but she caught herself.
“Okay,” Dean said. “The wallet.”
Denver dug it out of Blue’s deep leather satchel and tossed it over. Dean examined the contents and laid Blue’s paper money
out on the blanket, bill by bill. Blue had withdrawn all her cash before leaving the city and now her worldly fortune was
on display. It amounted to eight hundred and sixty dollars.
“How much was your rent?” Dean asked, not looking up.
“Seventy dollars a month.”
He removed three twenties and a ten from the money on the ground and handed them to her.
“Here,” he said. “Take these. Rip ’em up.”
“What?”
“Tear them up.”
“Don’t we need it?” Blue asked, looking around the group in confusion. All smiles, a little sly grin here and there. A giggle.
“That was your rent money,” he replied. “Our price? Get rid of it. That’s the only price we ask.”
It was a strange price, to be sure. Blue took the bills, which hung limply in her hand. Used money, soft from going hand to
hand. It was hard to build the will to destroy it. She had worked hard for these little pieces of paper—hours and days and
weeks of her life had gone into them, filling jars and cooking and standing by the counter.
She tore them in half.
“More,” Dean said.
Well, they were torn now. No point in stopping. She reduced them to shreds and tossed them into the air.
“Now,” he asked, leaning back on his hands, “how do you feel, doing that?”
“Kind of stupid, honestly,” she replied.
This provoked a big, warm laugh from all around.
“Stupid is good,” Dean said. “Stupid is the first step as you get away from all the old stuff. We love stupid.”
“Love it,” Denver replied, wiping a laughter tear from under her eyes.
“Feels weird, tearing up money,” Dean said, leaning in. He had deep brown eyes, bright, that fixed on Blue and didn’t let
go. “We get so attached to it. We think we’re not. We think we can just let it go. But then when you destroy it, you understand
the hold it has on you. Do you feel it? Do you feel the release, even a little?”
“There it is,” Sweet Jane said, smiling. “I see it. She feels it.”
They really did know what she was feeling—and they cared. Why they cared, she had no idea, but they did. Which made it hard for her to ask what was about to happen to her remaining
seven hundred and ninety dollars. If that got ripped up, she would truly have nothing, not even enough to call her parents
and beg for help.
Dean could see it all on her face. She felt him reading her like a sign.
“When I was a kid,” Dean said, fingering the bills, “I loved money. Loved it. I thought about it all the time. Any way to make a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars. I was always counting it in my head. I walked down the street and thought about the value of everything in money. How much a bicycle was, or a car, or a can of Coke. So I learned how to pick pockets and reach into cash registers. I stole bikes and tires and sold them. I lifted things from shops. Finally, I was worth something, you know?”
The others had settled back, resting on their arms, nodding.
“My mom—it was just me and my mom—she didn’t pay much attention to what I was up to, but I suddenly had money. When I brought
money home, she loved me more. You get it? Money was love. And then I got busted the first time and went to juvie. I met all
these kids, just like me, with holes in their hearts, trying to shove fistfuls of money in to stop the bleeding. All hungry.
Hungry for love. Hungry for friendship. Just plain hungry. You, Blue, you know when people are hungry. You feed people.”
yeah you do Blue feeds everyone Blue gets it
“So, what do we do with money here?” she asked uncertainly.
“We use what we need to use,” Dean said. “We give the rest away.”
“We’re like the real Robin Hood shit,” Denver said, pulling herself up into a squat, exposing her dirty knees. “But magic.”
“Time to celebrate,” Dean shouted. “She’s finally here! Blue’s finally here! Come on!”
Cat jumped up and took Blue’s record player up the steps and stretched the cord into the kitchen.
Lacey and Sally sifted through Blue’s box of records and picked out her newest Electric Light Orchestra album.
Soon the air was full of pulsing strings and celestial choirs singing about One Summer Dream and Strange Magic, and there were plenty of joints, and the world came together as the evening fell.
It was like she had always been there and had simply forgotten.
At some point, she looked over to the spot where the rest of her money had been, and it was gone, absorbed into the household. Her house. Her family.
Eventually they drifted inside, dragging the record player, the easy atmosphere, and all of Blue’s possessions. There was
a pleasant tiredness now.
“I sleep up there,” Dean said, pointing to a loft space that overhung the living room. “You can sleep where you like. Your
choice.”
Blue wasn’t sure if the mention of the loft was an invitation. She’d gotten the impression that Dean and Denver were a couple,
but Denver stretched out on a rug by the unlit fire, her head on a floor cushion. Blue wandered into the nearest bedroom and
tumbled onto the closest mattress. It smelled a bit moldy, but it wasn’t too bad. The fresh air from the window above her
balanced it out. Sweet Jane flopped down next to her and smiled.
“We’re so happy you’re here,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because you were meant to be. We missed you when you weren’t here.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Blue replied.
“Things don’t have to make sense to make sense.” Sweet Jane took Blue’s hand in hers. You’ll get it. You will. And it feels
amazing when you do.”