“ We smoked it.” Max chortled, “Unless you got more on you.”
Max knew he didn’t. They always knew who had what on them- how much money, what kind of drugs, things of that nature.
“When? We didn’t… Oh, yeah… No, that was yesterday.” Peter couldn’t remember smoking the last joint. He had to find it. He tore off his coat, pulled off his sweater…
“After I got that falafel on Sixth St. We smoked in that alley next to that new tattoo shop.” Max informed the now half naked Peter.
Peter stopped his search. “Oh, yeah!” Relieved he was not losing his mind, he started to pick up his clothes and began to dress.
“So you want me to walk you home, or you want to come my way.” Peter looked closely at his friend for an answer, then his eyes diverted.
“Peter…Peter… Hey, stony.” Max wondered what it was this time.
Peter seemed miles away, his eyes not focused on anything in particular, his head cocked at an angle, he seemed to be listening to something.
“What is it man?” Max’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Don’t you here it? Listen, that sound- I’ve been hearing it for a while now.”
Max interrupted, “So, you’ve been hearing this sound all night and just decided to let me in on it?”
“No. Not like that. I’ve heard it every so often for the last month or so. Don’t you hear it?”
Max put his ear to the wind trying to concentrate on listening- half wondering what he was listening for.
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Last year Peter had heard a city bus with a hole in its manifold. The bus would make a strange, almost bagpipe like sound. It was deemed, “the singing bus”.
Since the busses would run different routes all the time, you wouldn’t know where you would be in Manhattan and suddenly you would hear this weird sound that didn’t quite fit in. “The singing bus”.
Now it wasn’t a sound that one would hear unless being alerted to it. It would sort of float under all the hustle and bustle of the city, remaining unnoticed by the majority of the city’s inhabitants.
Max knew this for a fact. One night after drinking in a bar with a party from school, upon leaving, he heard, “the singing bus”.
He shouted out happily, “the singing bus, the singing bus, I hear the wonderful singing bus.”
Since that night that same group of friends won’t allow Max to drink more than two beers while in their company. They say he can’t handle it. Needless to say Max doesn’t see them socially any longer.
“I don’t hear anything, maybe…”
“Shhhhh. Man. Can’t you hear that?” It was like Peter was in a trance, listening wholly.
Max wanted to get there, to where Peter was, able to here this sound.
“Man, it’s like the generator at work, I can almost feel it in my bones. It’s like it’s under us, but at the same time its like all around us man.” Peter said in a hushed voice.
“The singing bus?”
“Nah, this is something else. Something I’ve been hearing for some time, too.”
As Max tried to use those cryptic clues to hone in on this strange sound, Peter snapped out of his trancelike state.
“Let’s go cop a bag down by the park.” Peter wanted to smoke another joint before he was to go home.
“You know the weed is for shit and there are plenty of cops out on a night like tonight.”
“Yeah but I just figured that…”
Max interrupted Peter’s train of thought by offering a cigarette. Don’t you have work in the morning?” Max finally asked after lighting his cigarette.
Peter gave a long pull on his Camel Light, not his particular brand of choice but a smoke’s a smoke. “Why? What time is it?”
Max didn’t need to look at his watch; he’d been watching the time for a couple of hours now. In fact, he was the one who suggested that they start to get going back at the bar. “Well it’s getting late, it’s about quarter past two. How about I start to walk you home? I’ll go with you up to Fourteenth.” This being their usual custom- walking each other most of the way home.
The two friends didn’t live too far apart. Peter was living up on Twenty-Fourth Street, between Second and Third with his girlfriend, Fiona. Max was on Tenth Street between First and Second. Their walk together would take them past Max’s block but Max would walk with Peter up to Fourteenth Street.
Once past Fourteenth the neighborhood would change for the better. Fourteenth Street being the borderline, beginning and ending the East Village, depending on which direction you were walking, north or south.
Max elected to walk with Peter rather than being left at his door for fear of leaving Peter to walk the rest of the way through the East Village alone. For some reason that Max could not figure out, Peter had this aversion to going home when it would get late. Despite the facts that he had to get up early for work in the morning and that one of the world’s most beautiful women was waiting for Peter each night when he got there.
Peter really needed to get home. It was getting late and he had work the next day. Max headed up Second Ave. Peter followed. It seemed the night was coming to an end.
