Summer of Love

by Tyler Carey

"This is a great package," whispered Danny, the jackass who I'd sat across from for the past two years. "I tell ya, last time I got laid off I got nothin' nowhere near this." Danny whistled softly to himself, as he looked over the severance package information.

"Shut the fuck up, Danny," I whispered out of the corner of my mouth.

Danny looked back at me, and then back down to his paperwork, enrapt with his buyout. "Come on, man. This is enough to live on for quite a while. I can sit around my house watching Springer and farting around for a month or two and then start looking for a new gig."

"Fuck you, Danny." I stood up and walked out of the meeting. I didn't need Danny telling me why I should be a happy little shit, and I didn't need to hear about how to fill out the paperwork. I'd been laid off before.

"Looks like you're moving out for good," said the guy in the elevator. I had all of my stuff packed into two cardboard boxes, and I had two paintings slung over my shoulder on their hanging wires.

"Yeah, it was clean out your desk day," I said.

"Moving onwards and upwards?" asked the stranger.

"I don't know yet," I said.

He sighed. "Damn. It's a shitty economy, but I'm sure you'll find something. You look like a good guy!"

I rolled my eyes. "Are you hiring?"

"Uh…uh…no…but…"

DING. First floor. Time to run.

One, two, three. Three elephants! HAHAHAHAHAAAA!…But, there's no way that he can be the father. This paternity test is wrong! Wrong! It's wrong!…Two. Practice saying it with me. 'Two.' Now try writing the word out on paper. Two…A tragedy in the literary world, today. Author Leon Uris has passed away at the age of 78. His groundbreaking novel Exodus discussed the founding of the nation of Israel, while his book Trinity covered Ireland…Jo Bob, you know I love you, that's why it really hurts to say this. You remember that family party we went to in August?…Two teenagers are dead today, after a post-prom party that went wrong on the Jersey Shore. Newscaster Jose Ruiz Ochodos is in Belmar, reporting…

I shut off the TV. It had been three days of this shit. Sitting around in my bathrobe, watching bad day-time TV, surfing monster.com for a new job… My steady supply of pork-and-beans was running out. I might have to go grocery shopping, soon, but I'd yet to receive that severance check. It would direct deposit into my checking account in another week and a half or so. Well, there's always plastic, I thought to myself. That prick Danny had said that he'd just tap his savings account for the time being. Savings? People actually have savings accounts these days? That trust fund asshole.

I walked over to the phone in the living room and checked my voicemail. After only a few hours of being home on Tuesday, I'd turned off the ringer. The steady stream of telemarketers and well-wishing relatives had been most unwelcome.

"You have…three…voicemails," said my phone. I pushed the button to hear the first message.

"Good morning, Mr. Wilson, this is Steve from WidgetCo's human resources department. You forgot to turn in your key and photo ID on the way out, so a five dollar processing fee will be removed from your severance pay. I hope that you're having a great day!"

"Yeah, I'm having a great day, you little shit," I muttered. I pushed the button again.

"Hi, Jack. It's Aunt Marilyn." There was a long sigh. "I heard about what happened to you. Oh my god, Jackie. I know that it'll turn around. Me and my friends are praying for you at our prayer group. It's gonna turn around. I know it will. God Bless."

I pushed the button again.

"Jack, it's Margaret." I nearly dropped the receiver. "I know that we haven't spoken since the break up, but…well, Roger told me about what happened…y'know, with work. Look, I just want to help. Would you like to go see The Dead in Camden this weekend? Y'know, just for a lark. C'mon, we'll break out the tie-dyes from college. I know you still have yours. They were in the bottom right drawer in your dresser when I moved out, and I don't believe that you re-decorated the place in the past three months…wait, that's not fair. I'm sorry. Look…if you want to go, just give me a call this afternoon, and I'll buy us some tickets. I…I miss you, Jack."

Well this job I got, it's a little too hard,
Talk about a-money, Lord, I need more pay,
I'm gonna wake up in the morning, Lord,
Pack my bags,
Gonna beat it on down the line.
Margaret turned down the radio. "So, how've you been holding up?" We were riding along the Garden State Parkway in her VW Passat.

"How do you mean?" I asked. "Money-wise? I'm…I'm okay. I, uh, should get a severance check in a few weeks."

"Is it a good package?" Margaret asked. "Not that it's really any of my business, anymore, but…"

"You mind putting out that cigarette?" I asked. "Not that it's really any of my business, anymore."

"Ah," Margaret said, nodding. "Well, I guess that's fair enough." She put out the smoke in the ashtray. "So, you'll be alright?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," I said.

"I was, uh, thinking…now, this is really a far out idea, but…look, if you need a place to stay, you're more than welcome to crash in the office I've got set up in my apartment. I'm not looking to rekindle things or anything, Jack, but…"

"Wow, yeah, that is a really far out idea." I shook my head and snickered to myself. "You move out three months ago, and now you want me to shack up with you…"

"Y'know," Margaret said, "You're not making this ride any easier."

"Look, I'm sorry," I said. "That's a very generous offer, but I'm sure…I'm sure you realize that it just seems very foreign, considering what we went through."

Margaret nodded. "I hear ya."

"So," I asked, "When was the last time you saw the Dead?"

Margaret chuckled to herself. "You remember seeing them with me in Vermont in 1995?"

"Sure, with Dylan opening? That was the show where the parking lot crowd pushed down the fence and stormed the show, right?"

"Yup. What a sour note for the band to go out on."

"Huh. So, you haven't seen 'em since Jerry died?"

"It's not the same thing," Margaret said. She surreptitiously rolled down the windows and lit another cigarette, as we zoomed down the highway at seventy miles per hour.

"So, you didn't check out any of the festival shows or anything?" I asked.

"Wouldn't you remember? We were living together most of that time."

I nodded. "This is true. That's right, I saw most of those shows with Roger."

"Damn," Margaret said. "For a guy who hasn't smoked pot in almost six years, you've got a shitty memory."

"I'm an old twenty-eight, Margaret. We've discussed this before."

Margaret laughed. "Oh, ha ha. That's right. How many senior citizens were you friends with in college?"

"Oh, most of the ones in southern Vermont," I said.

"What was with you and old folks?" she asked.

"They always have the best stories. Why would you want to listen to a bunch of twenty-something a-holes moan on and on about their horrid yuppie lives when you can buy an old-timer a beer and a bump and let him tell you his stories of the Great Depression?"

"You always were a character, Jack." Margaret smiled to herself. "I'd kind of forgotten how much fun we used to have."

"I haven't," I thought to myself, as the Trenton skyline faded into the highway's distance.

I'd seen Dead shows and Phish shows in cities all over the Northeast, but never before had I seen them in a city as dumpy as Camden. How the whole hippie ideal could exist in a town full of urban blight like this was beyond me. Then again, I understand that much of San Francisco in the early 70s was fairly frightening, so maybe that rustic-loving peace movement can prevail and even thrive in areas such as this. The venue itself was great - brand new, polished, and tidy. But, the parking lots were full of cracks and unpaved stretches, and a vile smell hung over the whole area. It reminded me of when I had applied to work at a pig farm in Vermont when I was in college, but left before I even filled out the paperwork.

There was no parking lot scene to speak of. At most shows, the lot is a carnival of characters, with folks selling food, drink, and various and sundry herbal supplements. This time, though, there were just a bunch of yuppie tailgaters eating sausages and drinking Fosters. The plethora of rent-a-cops rounded out the parking lot, making for a very bad vibe, as I would have said a few years ago. Margaret and I went inside and got six-dollar hot dogs and crappy daiquiris that came in goofy guitar-shaped glasses. I looked around the pavilion, and felt like I might have been at a Jimmy Buffet concert. The crowd consisted of mostly fifty-something's, wearing far-too-bright-to-be-homemade tie-dyes, sipping cocktails and admiring the display case of Beach Boys memorabilia. The second largest group of folks were kids who looked to be eighteen at the oldest, drinking cans of beer, and living it up like it might have been their first can of beer. I got the feeling that like me, these kids gravitated to The Dead as the seemingly last outpost of sixties hedonism that was still on the market. While I looked at the kids and laughed, I couldn't help but think that that was me only ten years ago. The last camp of people that seemed to exist as their own group were the rednecks. There were tons of folks in cowboy gear, heading out of the pavilion and towards the lawn. These were Willie Nelson's people. He was to open the show in only a matter of minutes.

"Wanna go see Willie?" I asked Margaret.

Margaret laughed and ordered a second daiquri. "Are you kidding? I'd rather get my teeth pulled."

"Keep chugging drinks like that, and they could pull 'em without you caring," I said. That was low. I always picked on Margaret's drinking.

Margaret furrowed her brow. "Listen, go have fun. I'll catch up with you when the Dead come on."

"Okay," I said, looking out towards the lawn. "I'll be the guy in the tie-dye t-shirt."

"What's this country shit?" said one guy, sitting off to my right. He was sitting in a beat up lawn chair that he had rented from the venue. I smugly laughed at him while I got my ass wet on the grass.

"That's Willie Nelson," I said.

"Well, no shit, asshole," said the fella. "Tell me something I don't already know."

I shook my head. "Y'know, the Dead are kind of a country-rock band. It's not so far fetched."

"Fuck you!" he said, spilling beer out of a big plastic cup as he talked. "The Dead ain't country! They're psy-kee-dellic rock! They're rockers!"

"Okay, okay!" I said. "Easy."

"Come on, Janet," he said to his woman, who was built like a pickup truck. "We're moving. This guy's trying to pick a fight with me." His woman shot me a dirty look as they shuffled off to another spot of grass.

Willie played all the classics: "You Were Always on My Mind", "Angel Flying too Close to the Ground", "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain", "On the Road Again", "You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time", "Momma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys". I always appreciate when an artist just plays what you want to hear, instead of trying to be creative and play long-forgotten songs that are long-forgotten for a reason, or even worse, when they try to wow you with their dreadful "new material". All of these songs brought back memories for me. Mostly, they reminded me of working in the yard with my father, when I was a kid. He'd always have country radio stations playing while we worked on the garden or repaired his beat up car. Also, I thought back to those good ol' boy bars that I hung out in during college, where I'd go to drink and pretend to be a local. Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard were often playing on the juke, which more often than not was still filled with 45s, instead of CDs.

The crowd barely seemed to notice when Willie said "Thank you," and walked off the stage. They didn't beg for an encore, and barely acknowledged his presence. The poor guy. Opening acts are never treated well, but when the opening act actually ties in to the main act's genre, you'd think that they would go over better. Sadly, no. Goddamn it, these folks paid to see the Dead, and if the Jefferson Airplane reunited to open the show, they would have been booed off the stage. I looked around for Margaret, as the techs finished tuning the Dead's instruments and doing the mic check. She was nowhere to be seen, probably still chugging awful beverages from the tiki bar in the pavilion.

"Say, man," a voice to my right said, "is anybody sitting here?"

I turned to see a balding, long-bearded hippie wearing a tunic. Five or six folks were standing with him, all dressed in peasant dresses and tunics.

"No, go ahead," I said.

"My name is Brother Juniper," said the hippie, as he sat down on a batik sheet.

I smiled. "I'm Brother Jack." I extended my hand and he shook it.

"Pardon the formality," he said, as he shook my hand. "I know that my title may be a little off-putting. We're part of an order," he said.

"Ah," I said. "So, the convent sponsored a trip to see The Dead?"

He smiled. "Something like that. This is Sister Amaryllis. This is Brother Lichen. This is Sister Lily. This is Sister Wormwood. And this is Sister Cyrus." I shook hands in turn. "Would you like something to eat?" Brother Juniper asked me.

"Sure. Whattya got?"

"Well, we have some hemp seed loaf and some marijuana brownies. We generally don't get high except in sacred services, but we make an exception when we go to see the Dead and their family."

"Their family?" I asked.

"Y'know, Ratdog, Phil and Friends, even Phish," Sister Amaryllis explained.

I nodded. "Sure, I haven't had any space cake in years. I'll try a brownie."

Brother Juniper opened a brightly-colored hand-woven pouch that he wore around his neck, and unfolded a large sheet of waxed paper that was in the pouch. He handed me a small square of brownie, maybe two inches on either side. "It packs quite a punch, friend," he said. "Enjoy." He nodded solemnly.

I wolfed down the space cake and waited. As I recalled, it would take almost a half an hour before anything started to happen to me. I just kind of sat around waiting, listening to the techs finish tuning the guitars, and to the occasional comment that Brother Juniper would say about how he feels it to be almost a religious experience to see the Dead play. Sister Amaryllis edged closer to me, and began asking me questions. I told her that I was from Connecticut and that I'd recently been laid off. She expressed her sympathies to my plight, and then told me that she's originally from Greenwich, Connecticut, the ritzy suburban town a few miles away from where I'd grown up.

"What's your real name?" I asked her.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Well, I assume that Amaryllis isn't your real name," I said. "It seems that everybody has a botanical thing going on with their names."

"I gave up my original identity when I joined the Order of the Spiral Rose," she explained. "I am Sister Amaryllis."

"But you own up to the fact that you come from Greenwich," I said. "So, you haven't entirely left your old identity behind."

"Where I'm from isn't as important as where I'm going," she said.

"Where are you going?" I asked her.

"Well," she said, "We're going to the Midwest next, to see the Dead shows that have Bob Dylan opening."

For some reason, I had expected something more existential than that. "Okay, well instead of talking about the past, let's talk about the present. Where is your order based?"

"We are everywhere," Sister Amaryllis said. "There are sects of the order all over the world. We started in India, under the teaching of Brother Lotus, formerly Guptesh Epstein, formerly Ira Epstein, an American student who synthesized the world's religions in 1968."

My head was beginning to feel wobbly. "Brother…Ira Grupta Epstein Lotus?"

"Guptesh," she said.

"God bless you," I replied, and laughed far too loudly. "I…I'm sorry. Sorry. Just trying to break the…ice." Shit, my mind was feeling all fuzzy. "So, he…uh…synthesized the world's religions, huh? That's uh…pretty heavy."

Sister Amaryllis giggled. "You're getting pretty fucked up, huh?"

I flushed deeply. My face felt very hot. "Uh…heh…yeah…it's uh…coming on a little fast…"

"Don't sweat it," Sister Amaryllis said. She put her hand on mine and smiled. Man, her eyes looked huge. I thought I saw some movement over her shoulder, and I looked past her quickly. Whatever it was, it was gone. Probably just somebody walking past or settling onto their blanket. Marijuana, especially when eaten, always hit me hard. I'm a cheap date that way.

Then the music started. The crowd went nuts. They stood up and didn't sit down again until the set break. Joan Osborne was a new addition to the band, taking over many of the vocals - never the band's strong suit. Willie Nelson even came out to play a tune or two. The band took a lesson from Willie, and played only gems.

A song or three into the set, I felt my pocket vibrating. It seemed to be making a whistling noise, too. I was confused. My tracking of time was off, so I'm not sure if it was going on for just a moment or several minutes. "I think your cell phone's ringing," said Sister Amaryllis. I looked up and saw all the brothers and sisters shaking their heads in disdain.

I picked up my phone. For a moment, I wasn't sure how you answer it. "Geez, Brother Juniper," I said, "You weren't lying about that space cake being a big kick in the pants." I opened the phone. "Huh---lo?"

An angry sigh answered me. "I…I see that you've made some new friends, Jack."

"Margaret?" I asked.

"Yes, it's Margaret! Look asshole, I bought you tickets to this thing, and what do I see when I come out to the lawn, but you holding hands and playing goo-goo eyes with some frikking earth momma!"

"I…I don't think you…hold on…"

"Are you stoned?" Margaret asked.

I laughed. "Why not? You're drunk, right?"

"Fuck you," Margaret said, "I'm not drunk!" She was right. When she was drunk, she was sloppy. Right then, she was focused and pissed. "This shit isn't about me," she continued. "This is about you. Me trying to do something nice for you and you fucking crapping all over me."

"You're acting awfully…y'know…protective for someone who walked out on me."

"Damn it, Jack, I'm past that!"

"No, I don't think you are."

There was silence on the other end of the phone. I checked the display panel to see if I was still connected. "Fuck you," Margaret said. "I'm going home. Find your own way back to Connecticut." She hung up.

I looked at the cell phone to make sure that she was really gone this time and turned it off. The band was playing "The Race is On," a song of heartbreak and love lost. Willie was sitting in on acoustic guitar.

"Was that your girlfriend?" Sister Amaryllis asked.

The adrenaline from the surprise call from Margaret had cleared my head a bit. "Uh…A long time ago she was," I said, as I put the phone back in my pocket. "I uh…Y'know, I lost my job recently, and she took me here, y'know, to try to make me happy… Now she's just angry."

"That sucks," said Sister Amaryllis. "I would think that you could really use her support right now."

"Well, I think I'm partly to blame," I said, fairly loudly, speaking over the music. One of the other brothers shot me a look. I forgot which one he was - Brother Gardenia, Brother Geranium, Brother Petunia? Who knows. I lowered my voice. "I think I was kind of blind to the fact that she was trying to rekindle things. She saw me with you, and thought that something was going on. I uh…inadvertently hurt her."

"We can't blame ourselves for actions that we didn't know we took," Sister Amaryllis said.

"Is that one of Brother Epstein's koans or something?" I asked.

"No, I think I heard it on Dr. Phil one afternoon."

I nodded. "Yeah, Buddha, Gandhi, Dr. Phil…all great gurus. Mine was Sally Jesse Raphael, but she isn't on anymore."

Sister Amaryllis giggled.

"So, you guys watch TV?" I asked.

Sister Amaryllis nodded enthusiastically. "Sure! We might be devout, but we're not ascetics. You see a lot of groups hanging around these shows - some of which are kind of heavy religious dudes. We've got sacraments and beliefs, but we're not some sort of cult."

I nodded, not quite believing her, but believing her a bit more and more every moment. I wanted to believe her, at least. She continued, "We don't live on some sort of freak farm up in Vermont or anything, we live in an ecovillage in Hadley, Massachusetts."

"A what?"

"An ecovillage. It's kind of like an intentional community of earth-minded people. There are dozens of them all over the country. Most are just condos that have earth-friendly utilities and food co-ops. Ours is a little more involved. It's got a community garden, and a kind of communal system of living."

"Cool," I said. "So, are you guys self-sufficient, or do folks have jobs and things?" I asked.

"Well, some of us work. We've got to bring in some cash to cover expenses, but as many of us as possible trade goods for services. Brother Juniper, for instance, works part-time on a dairy farm working a milking machine. Instead of being paid in cash, he brings home canisters of milk, which we turn into yogurt and cheese."

"Far out. How about you?"

Sister Amaryllis blushed. "I'm not as good at pulling off manual labor gigs. I'm one of the breadwinners instead. I'm a librarian at a public library near our home."

"Really? Well, you're a lot more attractive than most of the librarians I remember from childhood." A few heads turned in surprise, most notably Brother Skunk Cabbage's, again. "I'm…I'm sorry. Did I talk out of turn? I apologize," I said to Sister Amaryllis. "I didn't mean to em…embarrass you or make you uncomfortable."

She smiled back at me. "Not at all. I'm flattered. We're just a little…nervous about outsiders."

"Well," I said, "Does everybody drink beer? I'd love to keep breaking the ice…er…y'know what I mean."

"Yes, we all drink beer," Sister Amaryllis said.

"Cool. I'll be right back." I jumped up and staggered through the crowd of folks who were cheering and singing along with the Dead's set closer, "One More Saturday Night."

The line for beer was short. In about five minutes, the lines for everything would be insane. The bathrooms would be overflowing with folks who had-to-go-right-then-and-there-so-please-for-chrissakes-finish-up-and-let-me-in. Decisions, decisions. Budweiser, Heineken, or Fosters. What was the fashionable hippie drinking these days? Probably Heineken, but that was the most expensive of the lot. I just wanted to do a nice gesture for these people, not spend a fortune. The middle ground was probably the way to go. "Uh…six…no, seven Fosters, please." Most of 'em seemed like a good lot. That Brother Cactus was a stern looking dude, but Brother Juniper was really nice. The rest of them just seemed either disinterested or stoned. "Two trays, please?" It was going to be a bitch carrying all of these back through the crowd.

"Don't mind if I do, Jack-o," said a voice, as I turned around. That dumb, fat fuck Danny swiped one of the beers. "It's a surprise seeing you here," he said, raising the beer to his lips.

Quick as a whip, especially considering I had been pretty zonked for about an hour or so, I put down a tray and nabbed the beer from Danny before his foul lips could defile the hoppy brew. "Nice try, Danny. Buy your own."

"Is that any way to treat a fella who's down on his luck just like you?" Danny asked indignantly, as he rubbed his ample belly, which was stretching out an old Grateful Dead tour t-shirt.

"I didn't know you were a deadhead," I said, picking up the tray, and starting to walk away.

"Sure!" he said. "Is there any better excuse to get a little high and do a little toot than a Dead show?"

I shook my head and walked towards the exit of the pavilion.

"And the girls!" Danny continued, as he walked alongside me. "All these horny little hippie girls who are just dying for some cock. Fuck, man!"

"Sheesh, Danny, unemployment hasn't changed you any," I said, stopping in front of some tables near the door. I didn't want Danny following me out to my spot on the lawn.

"Please donate to bail out your brothers in need!" said a guy of no more than seventeen, who was seated at a table labeled "Fight the Drug War!"

"Y'know," I continued, "Some of us undergo a little introspection when shit happens. We have a little Frank Capra moment where we realize that reevaluating our way of life might be worthwhile. But not you, Danny! Fuck no! You're still the same self-centered narcissistic asshole I've had to put up with for years!" I put the beers down on the table while I yelled at Danny.

"Are these for me?" asked the kid at the table.

"No!" I said. I turned back to face Danny.

Danny smiled that dumb-fuck grin of his and shook his head. "You think you're sooo different from everyone. Don't you, Jack? I saw you on the lawn earlier talking with that hippie chick. She was what, nineteen?"

"Does everybody know my business at this concert, today?" I asked.

"I don't," said the kid at the table.

"Shut up," I barked to the kid. "Danny, don't you try to fuck shit up for me. I've got very little in life that's stable right now, and I don't need an asshole like you making things any worse."

"Aw come on," said Danny. "You and me are gonna be fine. I've already lined up an interview at another joint. If they take me, I'll recommend you, even despite today's little…confrontation. But, you've gotta be honest with yourself, Jack. All that you want out of today is to take that little hippie chick back to your car, give her some beers, and ride her bareback while you talk about free love. Am I right? I'm right!" Danny smiled his grin even wider.

I wrapped an arm around Danny's waist, and placed one across his throat and slammed him against the Drug War table. "If you so much as look in my direction at this concert, I swear to God that I will cut you down where you stand." I tightened my grip on his throat. "Do you hear me? I will kill you." I let go only because Danny had wet his pants and my own jeans were growing damp because of it. Danny ran off into the crowd.

"Oh…my…god…" said the kid at the table. "Were you really going to hurt him?"

I shook my head. "No. It's thanks to donations to a legal defense fund from guys like you, that guys like me can still walk the streets." I picked up my beers. "You're doing a great job, kid."

A security guard came over and asked me what was going on. "Oh, that whole mess? Some dude I know was saying shit about my old lady. Sorry. I'm cool." He eyed me suspiciously and then walked away.

"Beers for everybody," I said, sitting down with the two trays.

"Thank you," said each of the brothers and sisters, except for Brother Prickly-Briar.

"You can't just buy our love," he said, leaving the beer in the tray.

"Calm down, Brother Lichen," said Brother Juniper. "I gave Jack here a bit of brownie a few hours ago, and he's just returning the favor."

I extended a hand towards Brother Lichen. "Look, I'm sorry if I made an ass out of myself, before, talking over the music and all that."

Brother Lichen stared at me and reached for the beer instead of my hand. "All is forgiven," he said, offering a sardonic smile.

The second set started right about then. It opened with a drum duet between Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman. The audience went nuts, as this was really the first full-scale tour to reunite the entire band, including the two drummers. Gradually members of the band came on stage and began jamming. The off-kilter, tuneless jamming along with the drums was often known as "Space" by the fans, because it was kind of a meandering, cosmic journey. Towards the later years of the Grateful Dead tours, the late Jerry Garcia would even play the theme from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" as a little joke. I generally used "Space" as a bathroom break, but I'd already taken care of that during the beer run. So, I just sat with the brothers and sisters. A few of them had dropped tabs of acid a little over an hour earlier, so they were rolling pretty strongly, by then. Brother Juniper was babysitting everybody, to make sure that everyone was okay. Most of them seemed almost catatonic, just listening to the music with big goofy grins on their faces, their eyes glued to the big display screens that featured psychedelic swirls and patterns rushing forward. Brother Lichen just kind of looked side to side, fairly underwhelmed with everything. Sister Amaryllis took advantage of the growing darkness and cuddled up next to me, her arm around me. I gave her a chaste little kiss on the cheek, and she smiled.

The band jammed from the meandering boringness of "Space" into one of their classic epic tunes, "Playin' in the Band." Things really got down to business, right then. Each member of the band stepped up to the plate to do their own little solo, and then they meshed each of their bits into a larger tapestry, playing away into the night, as the last bits of orange sunset finally disappeared from the Philly skyline across the river, and we were plunged into total darkness. Sister Amaryllis kissed me on the lips as the nighttime enveloped us all. Maybe I was still a little high, or maybe that 20-ounce Fosters had gone to my head just a little, but that kiss felt absolutely magical. There I was, a single guy, out of work, with an apartment I couldn't afford, but damn it, I had a pretty woman in my arms and some groovy tunes playing in the background. We kept shyly necking throughout the second set, through the "St. Stephen" closer, and into the encore. None of her fellow-travelers seemed to pay us any mind.

As the band returned to the stage for the encore, and everyone jumped up and down, Sister Amaryllis and I lay on the ground whispering in each other's ears.

"Come on," I whispered, "What's your real name?"

She sheepishly looked at the others to see if anybody was eavesdropping. They all seemed to be wrapped up in the show. "Gaea," she said.

"Gaea?" I asked. "Really?"

"Yeah," she said, "My parents were hippies, too."

"Oh, I dig," I said.

"Listen," she said, "What do you have planned for after the show?"

"I dunno," I said. "I guess just finding a way to go home. I'll probably find my way to the local bus depot and see what I can do from there."

Sister Amaryllis, nee Gaea, bit her lip. "Look, this may seem a bit forward but, seeing as how you're not working and trying to sort things out, would you uh…would you like to ride out to the Midwest on our bus?"

"Huh?" I asked, surprised.

"We've got a bus. That's how we get around the country, from our ecovillage in New England all the way out to sects of the Order of the Spiral Rose out in California." She paused. "Yeah, I know it's cliché, but it's actually a pretty cool bus. We've all got little curtained off areas to sleep in. Kind of like a tour bus."

"Far out," I said. I thought it over for only a moment - go home to an empty apartment and surf monster.com for weeks, or take off and try my hardest not to look back. "Sure. What the fuck, right?"

"Ohh!" squeaked Sister Amaryllis. She gave me a deep kiss, and wrapped her arms tightly around me. The audience went crazy, begging for one more song. I looked up and saw Brother Lichen staring down at us.

"I'll go start the bus, and pull it up front," he said, stalking off through the ecstatic crowd.

Brother Juniper looked after him, as Brother Lichen took off, and then looked down at us. He nodded, understanding. "Envy is a dangerous quality," Brother Juniper said. "Hopefully, through our good acts, we'll break him of that, one day." The brother and sisters, including Sister Amaryllis, nodded.

Realizing that the show was over, we all stood up and prepared to leave. Sister Amaryllis gave me a wink and pointed her head to the side. I understood her meaning, and stepped aside, while she spoke with her brothers and sisters about the arrangements we had discussed. A few heads looked in my direction, and aside from one half-hearted shrug, nobody seemed to object. I wondered how Brother Lichen would take the news.

We walked off the lawn, and towards the parking lot. A big old Greyhound, painted with day-glo mandalas all over the sides, was idling near the entrance to the main lot. The lyrics of a Dead song struck me just then, "The bus came by, and I got on, that's when it all began. There was Cowboy Neal, at the wheel, on the bus to Never-Never-Land." "The Other One", the autobiographical song about how the Grateful Dead hopped onto Ken Kesey's acid-filled tour bus in 1965 and changed their outlook on life and music. They had the quintessential "long, strange trip". It looked like I was about to embark on my own.

Sister Amaryllis squeezed my hand. "Are you ready?"

I looked down at that beautiful smile, and nodded. "Let's go."

We followed the brothers and sisters on to the bus. I was the last one on. Brother Lichen was sitting at the wheel. I paused. "Well?" he said. "Get in."

"Um," I said, "Are we cool?"

He nodded and smiled that sardonic grin. "Cool as school, my friend. Cool as school."

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I nodded and returned the grin. The interior of the bus was actually fairly plush. I was expecting a trashed, ransacked nightmare, but this was all fairly well maintained and lush. There were six curtained sleeper bunks on the right, and a few old sofas on the left. Towards the back, I could see a kitchenette, and what must have been a bathroom. I walked down the aisle towards where Sister Amaryllis was laying in a bunk, beckoning me with her hand. I sat down on the edge of the bunk, kissed her and took off my shoes. As I looked up, I saw Brother Lichen's eyes staring at me, through the large rearview mirror.

Sister Amaryllis hugged me from behind. "Ready for bed?" she asked.

I locked eyes with Brother Lichen's, in the rearview mirror, and stared him down.

"Yep," I said, laying down next to her and pulling the curtain closed.

Sister Amaryllis put her arm around my shoulder. "Putting it all behind you…" she said with a grin. "Are you scared?"

"More than you realize," I said.