Only for Now

Contents

Timestorm

Only For Now

Segue

September 1975

Lesson Number Two

Room 407

First Week

Steve Meets Yang

Soul Searching

Tests On The Weekend

Monday At Seven

The Will To Fight

November 1975

Pre-tournament

Tournament

Post-Tournament

December 1975

Hope

December 1975

The Eve Of 23 December 1975

Con Moto, Segue

Training To Destroy

Before The Storm

The Man In The Mask

May 1976

Mask Of The Night

The Destruction

Only For Now

Movement III

This work is humbly dedicated to

Father Peter M. Rinaldi

and to all those who refuse to stop being kind…

1. Steve & Me, Lenny Greenman in Training at the Field House, photo by

Doc © Greenman 1976.

2. Mark, one of Steve’s Students © Greenman 1976.

3. Steve & Masked Friend at Disneyworld. Courtesy Rinaldi. Photo taken by Cindy in 1975, just months before this story, Only for Now begins.

4. Flying High. Courtesy Rinaldi. Photo taken by Cindy in 1975.

5. Through Concrete at private demo © Greenman 1975.

6. Strange Exercise #1 © Greenman 1975.

7. Assisting Descoulias © Greenman 1976.

8. From friends on 16th birthday © Rinaldi 1974.

9. On the Beach 1975. Courtesy Rinaldi. Photo taken by Cindy in 1975, just months before this story, Only for Now begins.

10. No More the Mask… © Greenman 1976

11. Before the Fall. Courtesy Rinaldi © Greenman 1976

12. Room 407 © Greenman 1976

13. Room 407 © Greenman 1976

14. Rinaldi Stretch © Greenman 1976

15. The Way & Its Power, Steve’s Personal Journal © Greenman 1975

16. Courtesy Rinaldi Music Notes © Rinaldi 1975

17. Mrs. Rinaldi. Courtesy Steve © Rinaldi 1975

18. The Piano © Greenman 1976

19. Steve’s Primary Sketches. Courtesy Rinaldi © Greenman 1975

20. Steve & Descoulias © Greenman 1976

Timestorm

Subito e furioso

One of the many graduation parties… sometime in August 1975.

Slamming himself into a tree or success in the objective were both acceptable outcomes as he raced down dark-winding roads well in excess of any speed limit. With legs trained to hoist a six-foot grand piano off the rehearsal room floor, he nevertheless could not push the gas pedal through the iron floor. He tried.

His breathing seemed no longer his own. His pulse was a machine gun. His thoughts brought anger… and tears. Muscles trembled. Tiny droplets of sweat rolled from his forehead and mingled with the tears. His nose dripped. I can’t stand feeling myself breathe this hard damn it! No. Control! Stop thinking about those people. But, God, not her. She loves you. I love you, Cindy.

Scenes from the final graduation party of the summer flooded his thoughts. No off-switch allowed him relief. The images came. He stood outside, alone. One by one, nine of his friends came to him and told him how ridiculous he was. No girl should come between you guys, they said, as if reading the same script.

The stars flickered, distant in the night sky and the feint shadow of pine needles swayed on Stephen Rinaldi’s stunned face. Stephen went inside to look for her. Cindy. Cindy who he loved. Cindy who loved him. What is going on? None of these people know me. I thought they were my friends. Three years! Who did they think I was all this time? Oh God… what about Cindy? Where is she? How could they

say these things to me? Did I do something wrong? I have to get out of here.

At 2 AM, the bed was not inviting. He placed himself into it anyway, expecting some magical force to bring the thoughtlessness of sleep. In addition to his normal insomnia, something ripped his soul.

No! he cried into himself. I’m not lying around like I always do. I’m through taking everyone’s crap. I need to face them. I want to see them. Where is my Cindy? What the hell is going on? God where are You? Where is Cindy?

He erupted from the bed in a fit of raging muscular contraction, and redressed while running out to the car. His mother never heard a thing.

Driving laser-like and fast to 44 Lampcoach Lane, his mind raced faster than the car. How could she do this? There must be something wrong. Maybe Kurt drugged her, or maybe… oh, I don’t know. I’m sick of being the understanding one, always listening to other people’s problems. I’m going to park myself by her house until she gets there. I’m going to face her, talk to her, and ask her what is happening. I love her and she loves me. She loves me. How could this whole year have gone by? I can’t believe I’ve let my senior year, and this last… oh, my God, this whole last summer go by without seeing her. What have I done? I’ll wait for her. I hate waiting.

When Stephen arrived at the cul de sac, his headlights off, Kurt’s car was already there. Kurt had once sworn his undying friendship to Stephen. They had spliced their fingers and shared their blood in the old traditions of boys and men from years long gone.

Stephen parked the car quietly, as if it were an extension of his own catlike motion. Cindy and Kurt never sensed him. For three hours, Stephen sat with clenching fists and watering eyes. He knew. He felt. He wished he could be less aware. They’re making out. They’re kissing each other. I wonder if she’s kissing him the way she kissed me. NO! That’s not possible. She loves me. He clutched the crucifix hanging on the dash. Its corners broke the flesh of his hand. He prayed into his own blood. Could she possibly have used the word love with him?

His heated breath fogged the windows of his car, a place where he and Cindy had made promises and love to each other. Lowering the window, he could see the same vision-stopping mist on Kurt’s windows.

He could feel his heart now, beating wildly in his neck. His fists clenched. His jaw began to crush his own teeth. No, don’t cry! Hang on. Talk to her. She’s all you have.

Kurt walked her to the door and kissed her good night. A dry lump came to Stephen’s throat, and his eyes swelled with watery loneliness. Kurt drove away, and never knew. Cindy was gone, locked into her home.

Timeless hours passed. The sun began to light the new day and the sounds of birds filtered into his semiconscious hearing. At the point of light’s beginning, he ignited the car and drove it away unseen and unheard.

There were so many songs I wanted to share with her. What will happen now? College is only days away… Oh my God! What’s going on? What do I do?

Suddenly, there were no answers. For anyone else, Stephen would have offered words of advice. He was the listener in the group, patient without bound, and always there for a friend. Now he was alone. Squealing tires and blasting AM music offered him nothing. There was nothing he could tell himself. No words, not even the silent ones of the mind.

The world he had once known so well was instantly stripped of recognition. Gravity was gone. The laws of physics undone. and it all happened in the flash of a single night. I never really had any friends. Why did they talk like that? What were they really saying? Why were they glad to see me squirming in pain? Why? And what about Cindy? Oh God, what about Cindy?

Only For Now

♦

A Place To Start Prelude

It was a time of turbulence. There was an explosion of sound. To his right, the 140-plus drum and bugle corps, last to perform on that misty wet night, erupted with their fullest thrust of the brasses. The swirl of stadium lights reflected from the silver horns caused tiny rainbows in the droplets of moisture afloat in the noisy world. A sudden roar of cheering came from the now standing crowd to his left. On the track, in the hollow between the storms of Technicolor confusion, Cindy Gooding, dressed in silver sequins and tight black pants, moved away from him. He had never felt her. moving away.

Cindy honey, where are you going?

Not turning, she quickened her pace. Stephen Rinaldi, unaffected by the onslaught of stimulus, felt the distance between them change. Something in the pit of his stomach cried. Hollow nausea. He walked faster.

Cindy! he yelled in a desperate whisper. His hand moved to her, lured like a pathetic trout to the glistening of her streaming blonde hair. When she spun, they both stopped eye to eye, frozen in the chaos.

Leave me alone, Stephen.

But Cindy, what’s wrong? His hands curled as they beckoned. I haven’t seen you all summer!

She offered no response, made no gesture. Nothing.

Cindy, I’ve waited the whole year for you. I read your letters all year long, and then in June… nothing. What in God’s name happened?

His arms engulfed her. What was once the only constant source of all his warmth and life now seemed cold and lifeless. A horrible feeling swelled from within him. She was no longer his.

Suddenly, he became aware of her gaudy new clothes, the new layers of makeup, the smell of beer on her breath. What happened to her? His thoughts ran rampant with an internal music much different from the sounds assaulting his ears.

Cindy. I love you, he said softly in the blare of brass.

Walking once again and still moving away, she turned. It doesn’t matter any more, Stephen. Leave me alone!

His heart told him that she needed him to reach for her… and so he did. He touched her shoulder. Cindy, please talk to me. My God, it’s me! Stephen.

She turned to him, her head wobbling and her eyelids droopy. It was Cindy and not Cindy all at once and in one loud moment of unbearable silence.

Stephen, I’m not good enough for you. JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!

A scream of thunder introduced the beginnings of rain. He grabbed her and held her in a grip that would not loosen.

I’m sorry for whatever I did, he said in soft and sincere desperation.

Her hands clenched into fists as she tried to push Stephen away from her. His heart pounded beyond the bass drums banging out the finale. Tears swelled.

Stephen, let me go!

He tried looking into her eyes, but their wetness came from a different source than his. Suddenly the heroic girl who had once worked with the homeless and the handicapped was a drunk. She had lost herself. She looked like a cheap hooker who had lost all hope!

Let me go. let me go! She screamed and spit into his face.

In a disbelief far beyond the simplicity his touch could comprehend, he reached for his forehead, perhaps to find comfort within his own hand. His grip on Cindy loosened, his guard relaxed, Cindy slapped him hard across the face.

The blood rushed to the unimaginable sting. He envisioned minute bits of his flesh clinging to the undersides of her fingernails. She ran from him, dissolving into the crowd that now huddled and swarmed to escape the rain. The drum and bugle corps had stopped its bombardment. He stood alone in the growing puddle, motionless, listening to the distant drone of music that came from far away. inside of him.

He found a single blade of grass and there fixed his mind, his view, his unyielding, beating heart and breath. His body filled with a moist heat, a wet flame of anger and sadness. and confusion. He could find no thought to think, no feeling to feel. There was only emptiness and bottomless question.

He stood at that same spot, wondering what had happened to the world. Hours passed. Everyone was gone. Tears and rain become one.

A policeman pushed him roughly, urging him back to a semi-aware state. He looked into the policeman’s impassionate eyes, then he walked slowly away, his thoughts still filled with the blade of grass.

Segue

The Loft… of Rage in the Cage

Sweat and blood merged in an unholy fugue, mellifluously swirling in a stale stench. Splintering floors, stripped from the youth of wax, absorbed the countless drippings of perspiration, the watery past of hundreds who honed themselves there. The sweat was theirs. The blood was his.

A dulled-red bag, not unlike the color of his drying blood, hung like a speechless friend, gone enemy. It swung, half choking from a rusted chain, in the loft’s very center. It moaned with a muted thud each time his arm whipped.

The cinder-block wall to his left, crackled with the wisdom of age, sucked the sounds of his screaming fists into oblivion.

In front of him, another wall composed of dented lockers, accepted the percussive noises, amplified them in the hollows of their metallic bodies, and thrust them back without compassion.

A clock, not synchronized with the outside world, told him that six hours had past in the tiny, caged universe.

Six staggering steps brought him from the bag to the third wall in the square shaped tomb. College students and locals called the loft area the ‘cage.’ It was a room on the 3rd floor of the field house, a small converted boxing area imprisoned by an aging fence of crisscrossing iron.

From below, he looked like a heaving, panting cat in an ever-engulfing prison. He gazed down onto the large gym floor below. It was flooded with the sounds of squeaking rubber and the echoing cries and chants of play.

The rusty teeth of the cage sliced his clawing fingers as he spun his body back to the awaiting bag. He was alone. again.

His breathing diminished, fading under the bass drum of his heart. The pounding went through every part of him, out his throbbing fingertips, into the room itself. There, every particle of matter, every mote of dust, each capsule of space, took up the bass of his symphony in progress, the