Jeffrie Phillips had come to the end of the book. Arthur Kill eyed him keenly from the piano which he had no ability to play. His music was death. Death to Big Black Smoke, death to Cathy Love Peace Hippie Child, death to perhaps Jeffrie Phillips too. If he so chooses. The eyeing continues.
“Well… what did you think?” asks Marty from a nearby stool about the tome detailing the history of the bar and Urqhart in general. Spanking new girlfriend Linda Halsey, fresh from a broken relationship down in Adgatetown on the lower coast, was by his side, holding his arm even preoccupied with her own thoughts at the moment. I wonder how David Newton Jasper is doing, alone with his Chalcedony and other progressive math rock albums? Fine, she then thinks, imagining him playing air guitar again. How many times? She had to leave (like all the others), looks be damned.
Jeffrie Phillips decides to answer Marty since Linda’s internal monologue seemed to be over. “It was… interesting.”
“Do you understand now why we have to eliminate “Love Peace”, eliminate the smoke screen that was the Summer of Love, ’66 or ’67 take your pick? There is no Love. There is no Peace. This must be *revealed*.”
Arthur Kill nods agreeably from the dormant piano. This is why he sticks with Marty. Through thick and thin, the cynicism always shines through. It attracts him like a dim moth to bright light. I think of the bug again here…
Jeffrie stares out the dappled window beyond the bikes in the parking lot into the heart of the Indian Lake/Sox Pond basin. Started right here in this bar, eh? 1919 huh — double 19’s. Scandal. Black. Indian… red. White.
Phillips rezzes a local, vanilla style paper without any red atall to take his mind off the quandary, which gives Arthur Kill his cue (*pop*!). Our story must continue elsewhere.
