CIELO HANGOVER - SIDE 4

Every Sunday evening they would turn off all the lights in the house and watch the street lights of Los Angeles from their balcony as if it was a TV show. It was the closest Mike had ever managed to meditating; which he had typically scoffed at in the past when Patricia had mentioned it before her brief affair with hippy spirituality. But after all they'd been through together and apart, he now embraced the stillness of their connection at night. It was perhaps the closest feeling to God he'd felt outside of his memories of falling asleep on his grandmother's lap when he was little, those blissful days before the creeping encroachment of the adult world made its presence felt.

"It's our very own galaxy of stars."

Somehow the line didn't sound as good out loud as it did in her head but Mike got her point, though any mention of stars brought to mind Reynolds and the shooting up in the canyon. As much as Mike had forgiven himself for his mistake, he still needed Patricia to persuade him that he could enjoy life beyond the accident.

"We can't live in the shadow of what happened," Patricia said, sounding as if she could be talking about Los Angeles post Manson and not just her and Mike's own situation.

"I think you're right, babe. In fact, I know you're right."

They kissed as if sealing their mutual agreement on the matter.

"Why don't I put some music on?"

Mike nodded and watched Patricia leave him to go and curate their nocturnal soundtrack.

If Mike was Frank then Patricia was Ella. He liked her putting her records on these hot summer nights while they sat in the near darkness enjoying a beer and wine as the distant sound of sirens wailed like angry clarinets. It felt like he understood  something about her soul more intensely when she put her own music on.

I'll be tired of you when stars are tired of gleaming
When I am tired of dreaming, then I'll be tired of you.

As Ella's voice drifted through the apartment out onto their balcony, Mike felt as relaxed as any ex-con could feel on the outside, knowing how precarious the notion of freedom was.

"Feels good."

"What does?"

"Freedom."

Freedom was a word which had become a hollow slogan for a generation that had lost its innocence but for Mike he meant it more than ever and Patricia felt his conviction in saying it.  

Gazing into his wife's eyes, he couldn't resist now asking her the question which had been burning in his mind since he got out of jail.

"Now we're a sure thing, settled, maybe you can tell me what it was that made you come back to me?"

Patricia took a sip of wine and considered her answer for a brief moment.

"Guilt."

"Guilt?"

"Yeah. I felt guilty about what happened. Like maybe if I hadn't left the way I did your head wouldn't have been so messed up and Jack Reynolds would still be alive."

Mike had to consider for a moment what it was exactly she was saying to him right now.

"I don't want you coming back to me because of guilt, honey. I want it to be because you love me."

"Oh, it's that as well. I just had this feeling like I needed to come home."

Patricia knew this was the simple answer to a bigger realisation she'd had back that day at the beach with Bobby. The truth was she was caught in the cross winds of two generations, caught right in the middle. Not old enough to be entirely sympathetic to Mike's sensibility as a man ten years her senior, neither was she able to feel comfortable being involved with someone so much younger than Bobby was who she still thought about each time she was close to the sea.

"I needed to find my own version of freedom at the time before realising that it was an illusion."

"Are you going off on that hippy tangent again?" Mike said lighting up a cigarette in the neon infused semi-darkness.

But Patricia was deadly serious and continued elaborating on her philosophical musings.

"The only real freedom is being able to share your world with someone you trust."

And with that perfectly expressed sentiment, Mike felt no compulsion to retort with one of his typically wry quips.

"I don't know what I would have done without you. Being in prison made me realise all I could lose. Everything I previously took for granted. I just feel bad I had to learn at the cost of the guy's life. It shouldn't have to take a tragedy to wise up."

"It's the human condition, hon."

Mike couldn't argue with that. Why was it the universe seemed to make so much more sense when it was reduced to a concise soundbite from his wife's homespun wisdom? He sometimes forgot she was originally from Oregon.

After all the crazy quasi-spiritual talk that had sent the city and the country at large into a form of psychosis for what seemed like almost a decade now, he wondered if perhaps this new generation wasn't overthinking things to a point of insanity.

Holding Patricia's hand, as Ella Fitzgerald sung her heart out on their turntable, he felt like this might just be what those crazy kids were talking about when they talked about enlightenment.