Chapter 1 – Now

“We’re gonna be late!” I hate being late for anything, especially when I’m going to the airport. Logan always seems to have terrible traffic, especially when you are in a hurry. Jack LaFerriere waits for no one, or so I thought. It wasn’t even my idea to make this stupid trip. Josh thought this would be a great way to get all of my bullshit problems out of mind. Unfortunately for us, Cardinal, another of our trip mates, has terrible dart skills. “Throw a dart at the map”, he says, “We’ll go there!”

So here I am, bound for Nashville, country music capital of the world. I can hardly control my excitement. On top of it all, I’m going to be late. So here I sit, bags packed waiting on the never on time Joshua Black. A real best friend would be on time. Ok, I know what you’re thinking. A real best friend wouldn’t say things like “…a real best friend would…”. Well, you don’t know my relationship with Josh.

Together we have done it all. He would pretty much do anything for me and vice versa. He is the only human being that could cuss me out and not get a good ass-kicking! On the flipside, I’m pretty sure that I am the only one to get away with all of the short jokes. It isn’t that Josh is short, but whenever I see him coming my way all I can do is sing that Lollipop Guild song from “The Wizard Of Oz”, not to mention all of the Leprechaun jokes. Anyways, we are tight as tight can be.

Our flight is scheduled for 9:00 AM. I suppose that my New England Patriots clock on the kitchen wall screaming 8:30 AM is not a good omen.

My one bedroom apartment in the Chestnut Hill area of Boston is quiet…too quiet. Maybe I need a drink to mellow me. I guess that I am just anxious to leave. A nice single-malt Scotch should do the trick. The sunlight through the window in the living room reflects off of the flying dust and all I can do is light another Marlboro and daydream. This trip was to help me get my mind off of everything. Everything bad, that is. So why am I thinking about her again? Hurry up Josh, damn you! I can almost smell her. The baby powder perfume, the metallic roughness of fresh nail polish, the leather of her new shoes. I can even smell her minty toothpaste. Her eyes always mesmerized me. They always remind me of the Mediterranean Ocean pictures straight from those nature magazines. You know, the ones they had in our junior high school library that all of the teenage boys would flip through to see the topless African women. They start us off young telling lies to our mothers that we read it for the articles.

The mad knock on my door shook me back into consciousness. “Josh, I know that leprechauns don’t wear watches but we have a flight to catch!”

“Hurry up and grab your bag, Grizzly Adams”, he spat back. “Cardinal is blocking the street with Gremmie.” Grizzly Adams was a pretty good jibe, but I won’t tell Josh that. I may have to finally shave this damn beard off during our trip. That would surprise them all and stop the jokes. I have had this beard since my senoir year in high school. Alvirne High, class of ‘93. Alvirne was the only high school in the tiny southern New Hampshire town of Hudson where I grew up. Josh is a Bangor, Maine native. I think Stephen King is from there, too. I hope that Bangor has more than King & Josh as their claim to fame. I met Josh freshman year at Boston College. His freshman year. Not only is Josh short, but he is the baby of the group. He was pledging Delta something-or-other, I was pledging to get drunk and sleep with every co-ed girl I met. Neither one of us accomplished our goals. Josh got black-balled for sleeping with one of his frat brother’s girlfriends. I met Emily.

That November day of my junior year I was trying to have lunch at the student cafeteria and shake off the grogginess of the prior night’s suarez when some punk freshman interrupted me. “Excuse me?”, resonating throughout my head. Now, one would think that the scraggly beard and bloodshot eyes would be indicators for a smart, well-adjusted person to walk away. “The Uni-bomber is right here in Beantown, not Montana!”, was the first snide remark he ever gave me. Apparently, not all great minds think alike because he sat down.

“What do you want?”, I sneered. The story was always a little blurry until Cardinal regurgitated the tale years later. According to Cardy, and Josh agrees, that this bright and chilly day, Mr. Black was serving a fraternity type punishment. Apparently, due to his lateness to the ever important pledge meeting, he had to go on a campus-wide scavenger hunt to prove his worthiness and dedication to the brotherhood. One of the many required items was a salt shaker from the cafeteria. Now this doesn’t sound so tough to someone who has never eaten at the cafeteria; however, BC staff could not keep the things stocked. Why students felt the need to constantly swipe the logo-emblazoned condiments is something that I do not understand to this day. This particular day, one Jackson Nolan LaFerriere was privy to the rare college artifact and thus the Lollipop Guild leader was in need of interrupting my midday meal. I never did find out where he managed to procure the bowling pin he was carrying around, though.

I know that this sounds like a pretty lame way to begin a life-long friendship, but if that was the end of the story I wouldn’t have mentioned it. It didn’t all begin with sodium. A few days later, I was at my usual table in front of the big bay window at my favorite watering hole, The Broken Bat. I still love going there on occassion to watch my beloved Red Sox and get hammered on Sam Adams beer and Jack and Cokes.

Cardinal and I were in the midst of tying one on whilst spitting out many anti-Yankee epithets. Josh strolls in with a few of his Delta pledge buddies. It is around midnight but the Sox are playing in Oakland that night. We yelled the anti-Yankee sentiments regardless of who we were playing. It was just fun questioning their sexuality from time to time. Although we were in the heart of Red Sox Nation, the occassional group of New York fans would stumble their way in and were always willing to start some crap with the locals.

I, of course, being the group’s trouble maker, had to run my mouth right out of the gate. I always felt that I had to live up to the expectations. I was voted Most Likely to Pass Out in high school. This one particular night, a seven-top of die-hard Derek Jeter lovers tried to get the channel changed. The Yanks were playing the first of a three game set in Seattle that night. There never seemed to be problems when I opened my mouth, Cardy used to say, it was when the words came out that always did us in. It is apparent that Italian-American New York Yankee fans do not approve of a local beer rat who bad mouths the mother’s of their much loved Bronx Bombers. Maybe it was when I started on their own mothers that got them angry. I really can’t remember anymore. I can understand that they felt the odds were in their favor. Seven angry New Yorkers versus two drunks and at worse Tully the bartender, too. Well, they were right in their assumptions. Cardinal talked a big game but had a chin like a white heavyweight boxer…glass! Nevertheless, I got my ass handed to me but Josh backed me up. He always said that it was because he hated the Yanks, too and that he couldn’t stand idly by as his salt benefactor got thrown around like a Mexican wrestler on Univision. We have been tight ever since.

Josh had my bag loaded in the green hatchback and called shotgun before I had my deadbolt slammed. I dragged my feet coming down the hall steps to the street just to make sure that I had remembered everything. I had all the arrangements taken care of. My landlady, Mrs. Gonzales was going to hold my mail; however, I had to sweet talk her to feed Gilmour, my black and brown Basset Hound.

Cardinal was blocking Clement Street with Gremmie. Gremmie was Trey Cardinal’s 1978 AMC Gremlin. It was the only one of its kind in the world I’m sure. Gremmie was black and Bondo colored with fake spinning hubcaps. I think that he paid $14.95 at the local Wal-Mart for those spinners. Three times he paid that much for those wheel covers for each time that they were stolen by the local denizen.

As Cardinal mashed the accelerator I swore I heard him yell, “Hold on to your whiskers, Jack!”, over the bumping bass of one of his local rap musician CD’s. Boston traffic is generally terrible ever since they started realigning the streets and interstates. There was no way that we were getting to Logan on time for our flight. I was hunched over in the backseat of Gremmie, inhaling the burning oil fumes and sweating out another six-pack in the August heat. I slapped Cardinal in the back of the head, “Why are you so damned late?”

“We aren’t that late, bitch! They delayed our flight for some unknown reason. I thought I’d surprise you. We’re actually on time for once.” At least Trey wasn’t a complete screw up.

Cruising through town, weaving between the nice cars in the city with the bass beating my ear drums numb, I started to daydream some more. I could see myself running my fingers through Emily’s blonde wavy hair. I could see her in my mind’s eye. I remembered the first time she walked into my life as she snuck into Professor Townsend’s Psychology 102 class. The only open seat was on my right hand side. She never sat anywhere else which was very handy for note and test taking.

Josh ripped me from the dream world back into reality. We were actually headed through the tunnel below the Boston Harbor into Logan Airport. Our stupid trip was really going to happen and not get messed up. Cardy wanted to leave Gremmie in a mostly safe looking Long-Term Parking space. He parked it next to a BMW hoping that a potential vandal will ignore the easy pickens of the ‘78 AMC and risk a super-alarm of the German-made Z3. We hoofed it to the terminal to check our bags and get our boarding passes. The red-headed girl at the ticket desk apparently was telling us some technical jargon about how our flight and some hydraulic issues and we had to wait for another plane. The three of us were looking attentive as we thought of a way to ask her out to no avail. At least an hour wait required us to kill some time. Josh, Cardinal & myself huddled up and called an audible. “To the bar!” it was.