Peter stretched his mouth wider as chrome microphones swallowed his words then broadcasted his nightmares to the mobs.  Snake wires coiled at his feet while cigarette smoke gathered about him. He winked at the lithe form of a girl, swung his free arm into the air and bowed. Then, his face half-raised, his green eyes flashing, he cried, "Let's go higher!" He leapt, feet kicking the air, shoulder?length blond hair jetting from his face, the Sun God worshiped by his drunken patrons.

   The crowded bar exploded. He caught the bass player's leering grin, deftly checked the tuning on his own guitar, then signaled the drummer. He closed his eyes. His body split open like the bronze doors of Notre Dame. A brilliant white light encircled him. He evaporated and was fondling a rainbow, kneading its sharp pigments into polished hues. The fleeting image of the mother of his child appeared, "So much easier/to love a girl/than a woman," he sang. 

   He opened his eyes and ceased strumming his acoustic guitar. Market Street in San Francisco was not Trois Riveres in Quebec, nor was it Chicago nor the small towns and college campuses that haunted him. The January air hurt.  He almost longed to sing in a bar, then shook his head and smiled into the darkening purple?blue sky. 

   He steadied himself against the Crocker Bank, one foot on the brick wall. He opened a pack of "NOW" sample cigarettes, distributed free on street corners just as he gave his music.  He liked America because all the women liked his French accent.  Women had always liked him, as far back as he wanted to remember. Chicago had been one of his victories, but harder to conquer than his hometown of Trois Riveres, and later Montreal and Toronto. His manager had told him American audiences expected and demanded more. They had seen and heard so many others so that even 'though he had the right looks, the right blend of ballad and rock, and the magnetic charm, America wasn't Canada.  The manager's secretary, like other women, later reassured him.  She said America was like him:  bigger and better.

   "Look at the hippie!" a piping fresh voice shouted.  Peter smiled at the small boy happily enshrined by his parents, each holding a gloved hand of their son. "Play something, please?" the boy asked. 

   His parents hushed him, told him the guitar player was resting, but Peter placed his cigarette between the strings on the top of the guitar's neck. He bent to his knees and looked into the little boy's eyes, his long, slender fingers picking the strings with an odd-fairy-like melody while he sang the familiar, "Frere Jacques, dormez vous,"  in his heavy French accent. 

    The parents smiled, tossed a dollar into Peter's cap. He overheard them as they left, "I wonder where his home is, if he has any family...."

    He finished his cigarette and lit another.  His French aunt had given him his first guitar, a broken one with only three strings. His family?  Parents and younger brothers and sisters. No uncles, grandparents, cousins, just the one aunt.  His Polish mother, French father, aunt, and himself as an infant had been such a small island on that crowded boat, turned away from one country then another. It was as if Auschwitz re?created itself in the world and his parents' hearts.  Everyone wanted to deny and bury everything ? even the survivors.  They loomed before civilization like ancient carved stones on Easter Island. Their existence spoke of another time, another place, a dark  power, a race that had almost been extinguished. 

   He bent his six-foot frame to scoop up his blue and white striped painter's cap, half?filled with loose change and dollar bills. He pocketed the money and placed the cap on his head.  He needed a cup of coffee. He had done well during the five o'clock rush hour. He would move from downtown Market Street up to palm?treed Union Square to work the tourist trade.  He might let some girl, or even an older woman, take him home.  He wanted to sink into a woman's arms, wrap his legs about her and feel God?almighty powerful as he made her laugh and sigh.

   It didn't matter which woman, which girl, the quality of the laugh or the nose or even if the woman were plumb. He did have a fondness for large breasts.  His psychiatrist counseled it was because he hadn't resolved his Oedipus complex. Peter thought the psychiatrist had played out the Electra complex and knew nothing about Oedipus. Freud was a liar and even rapturously endorsed cocaine.  Peter still preferred large breasts. He often forgave his lovers for other faults when they offered him their large breasts.

     The psychiatrist had been right about a few things. Peter now agreed he had been foolish to continue that cross?country tour after what happened in Chicago. In both Topeka and Denver, the band tried to make him return to Trois Riveres and see that doctor again. They even supplied him with a one?way plane ticket.

     Trois Riveres was over. Chicago was over.  So were the nightmares from Topeka and Denver, and every place inbetween. He didn't want to love another woman ever again. 

     He had escaped from women: his mother and sisters, his aunt,  from the one who thought to trap him with a baby,  the hundreds of fans -  but everything went wrong that last night in Chicago. Now he only played ballads to soothe the demons his Chicago love had resurrected. 

     An older man with wavy brown hair falling over his shoulders slowed his pace long enough to exchange a meaningful glance with Peter.  Peter's body responded instinctively, a familiar chord having been stroked. He looked away.  The attractive older man kept walking, looking back to see if Peter had changed his mind.

     Peter ripped off his hat, readjusted his guitar and tuned it, then launched into a riot of discordant chords that magically became melodious. The infrequent passerbyers stopped to listen. He wasn't going down that road again. A few times had shown him enough. Maybe San Francisco wasn't the right town for him, but he had to stop somewhere.

     A ten-dollar bill landed in his cap.  He didn't look to see the person's face. He used to charm crowds with his flashing green eyes, his rich, curved lips and seductive smile while his long, naturally wavy blond hair flew freely about his face. San Francisco changed that. He had stopped looking when a Union Square tourist crowd gathered about him. He caught the eye of a  pickpocket, who grinned. Peter had then lowered his eyes:  he had to pay his hotel bill.  People he never saw passed him by, tossed in coins or dollars, or gave him marihuana wrapped in pieces of paper with phone numbers scribbled on them. He wanted to keep to himself, but how he needed a woman!

     The woman who threw in the ten dollar bill stood before him. She wore her spiked heels as if they were a second skin. She walked away.  Peter raised his eyes. He recognized another street professional when he saw one. One such woman had told him San Francisco was finally becoming good for business again after the hippies had ruined it. 

     He thought he had seen that one working Union Square. He was tempted to follow her but the authoritative manner in which she strolled and her Christian Dior suit warned him it was best to stay away from complicated women like his Chicago love.

    Peter remembered her long black hair brushing against his naked chest. Her hair rippled over his nipples as she raised herself from him. Her lips were parted, her horrible hunger satiated, her cool, detached voice softened. 

     She had been brittle, her bones too sharp, her eyes too calculating. Now he wished to remember her as she had transformed beneath his fingers. She had been inaccessible after days and hours of lovemaking.  Only after they had shared their child­hood horrors, did she relax. She then made him feel that he was a virgin to lovemaking. He continually made the short drive from the city to her in the northwest suburbs during those weeks in Chicago.

     He had first thought she was just a young girl, but she had revealed herself to be much more and had cost him his sanity. No, he was not about to even attempt a seemingly innocent tango with a complicated woman.

     He felt a pressure on his forearm. Large, warm brown eyes alight with joy, stared at him from a face smooth and trouble-free. Blank face, he realized as he accepted a hit from the jay she offered. 

     He pushed his guitar onto his back and adjusted the hand-tooled Indian leather strap across his chest.  He didn't usually smoke nowadays.  The young  girl's eyes sparkled when he spoke with his French accent.  He knew he had a place to stay for the night.  Maybe a few nights.

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