The Groove Project: Two Unlikely Friends, an Unlucky Car, and a Lifetime They Never Imagined - Softcover

Heagen, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1450243738 ISBN 13: 9781450243735

Verlag: iUniverse, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Paul, a shy Midwestern teenager moves to California at the height of the muscle car era and is taken under wing by class clown Mark, who concocts a scheme to have the two of them overhaul a broken-down '57 Chevy into a hot rod. Except Mark never bothers to disclose he knows nothing about rebuilding cars. The two hapless mechanics triumph in their quest, but a tragedy pulls them apart and they go their separate ways. Everything changes, though, when a flood of eerie e-mails one night from Mark 30 years later convinces Paul that Mark has also failed to disclose something else -- and it is a matter of life and death. The Groove Project pulses with the sights and sounds of an unprecedented period in American history. It tells a timeless story about the struggle to find your own path in life and the stubborn faith that marks who your friends really are.

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THE GROOVE PROJECT

Two Unlikely Friends, an Unlucky Car, and a Lifetime They Never Imagined By PAUL HEAGEN

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Paul Heagen
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-4373-5

Contents

PREFACE...............................IXCHAPTER ONE...........................1CHAPTER TWO...........................14CHAPTER THREE.........................27CHAPTER FOUR..........................39CHAPTER FIVE..........................53CHAPTER SIX...........................68CHAPTER SEVEN.........................81CHAPTER EIGHT.........................91CHAPTER NINE..........................107CHAPTER TEN...........................118CHAPTER ELEVEN........................128CHAPTER TWELVE........................141CHAPTER THIRTEEN......................151CHAPTER FOURTEEN......................172CHAPTER FIFTEEN.......................182CHAPTER SIXTEEN.......................188CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.....................195CHAPTER EIGHTEEN......................198EPILOGUE..............................201

Chapter One

Whump whump

I can't believe I'm working this late. Midnight flew past a while ago. At this rate I'll start wondering why I'm working this early.

Whump whump

Still, when you have your own home office, it's nice that if you have to work, at least you can do it in solitude; no phones ringing, no office gossiper trolling around your door shoveling the latest scoop, no noise to speak of except that lopsided whump whump of the ceiling fan overhead. One of these days I have to get out the stepladder and tape a quarter to one of the blades. I know I never will.

Whump whump

(blip)

The electronic tone startles me at first, until I glance down at the bottom of the computer monitor to see the bobbing icon.

(blip)

It's the alert telling me I just received an e-mail; an e-mail at 1:30 in the morning. Like it matters.

(blip)

(blip)

I stare at it as if somehow my stare alone will make it go away. The icon is that overanxious kid in grade school jumping up and down in the gymnasium class when captains are picking sides in dodge ball-"Hey, pick me! Pick me!" They never shut up or go away until you go ahead and pick them.

So I click on it.

To: paul From: mark Subject: '57 chevy hey buddy ... remember stoned valley ... yeah ... you drank the muscle car juice my man ...

Mark. Now that's interesting. I've never received an e-mail from him. Funny; what's he up to at this hour? I flip a quick reply, like a ping of friendly sonar, but no sooner do I respond than the icon bobs its head and there is a volley of even more e-mails.

To: paul From: mark Subject: '57 chevy it was awesome paul. no wonder people were so anxious to hear and see your 57. it was a huge story. To: paul From: mark Subject: '57 chevy

paul, i don't think you ever understood what you meant to the school. that car had everyone anxiously wanting to see, and it took on mythical status. sometimes two weeks went by with no news and anxiety would grow over the whole school.

Every time I click on one of the notes, another one pops up, as if this is some kind of Internet Whack-A-Mole. I push my work out of my mind and concentrate on trying to slip in responses amid the repeated blips of his notes, but I am outrun.

To: paul From: mark Subject: '57 chevy We had a good time, my friend ... the best time

Thirty-five years is a long time ago, but I am startled with how quickly the notes come to life, how text morphs into images and sounds. I close my eyes and, almost on reflex, inhale deeply. It's all still there, soaked into my senses as much as my memory-the aroma of fresh oil, the heat of the exhaust, the musty garage, the AM radio blasting. As I drift into the images in my mind, the whump of the ceiling fan falls away and is replaced by a throbbing bass guitar and drum kick, mingled with the jangle of box-end wrenches dropped on a cold, concrete garage floor ("You're the only girl I know-CLANG-really love you so-CLANG-in the midnight hour, oh yeah ...").

It has been a long time. A very long time. But as I lean back in my chair in the quiet and the darkness, the sights, the sounds, and the smells surround me again and I am lost in them.

(blip-blip ... click)

For every reply I try to squeeze in, I am peppered with more notes-but he is not answering; he is just spilling it all out. The notes are hurried, frenetic, even desperate. Some I can barely read for all the misspellings and typos. In my office at this hour, time no longer matters to me, yet the e-mails coming at me seem to be racing against a clock I cannot see. After a while, I stop trying to make it a conversation and just let the notes come. For the next half hour, the monologue rattles on. Now, though sitting in the same solitude of my office, I am no longer alone. It is me and the icon as it taps out its rhythm.

Then, as suddenly as the barrage began, it stops. I probe the silence with a "Hey, buddy, you still there?" note, but there is no reply; the icon resting compliantly. I wait a few minutes more-it is not like I am going to shut down on the first e-mails I ever got from him without some pause-but the hours are weighing in on me now. It's time to call it a night.

* * *

"What time was it when you finally came to bed?" My wife Carol slips up behind me as I brace my elbows on the kitchen counter, watching the coffee drip into the carafe. She cuffs my neck, partly in affection, partly in annoyance. "You know you're always tired the next day when you stay up so late working."

"I wasn't working," I reply, handing her the first cup of coffee. "I was reading e-mails-a bunch of them. From Mark."

"You mean as in `Mark' Mark?" Carol is puzzled. Mark is one to call at all hours with something on his mind-Carol fields as many of the calls as I do. But this was different. He never sends e-mails. Never.

Then he sends thirty in one night.

"Can I read them?" Carol's question is more than curiosity. She knows enough about Mark to spot his antics and his impulses, especially now that he is a virtual fixture in our lives, but now she senses something odd. You can hear it in her voice.

"Thirty is a lot. I need to read them."

We take our coffee back to my office and Carol sits in my chair as I stand behind her and point out the string of e-mails on the computer screen. I narrate the first few-see, it's all about the Chevy, the Ducks, here he talks about the cheerleaders, the funk band-but then my chatter is muted by Carol's waving hand as she scrolls through the notes. She reads each one, clicking through the list that trails out of sight at the bottom of the screen.

"After all these years, he dumps all this in one night." I rest back against the office wall and slurp some coffee. "What a character, huh?"

Carol leans in more, studying the notes.

"So what do you think?" I ask. "Pretty cool, huh?"

Carol is silent, scrolling back up through the notes, her eyes retracing the lines of text. I see her shoulders tighten as she speaks for the first time.

"No," she says quietly, never looking away from the screen. "Something's wrong. Something's really wrong."

...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: iUniverse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1450243738
• ISBN 13: 9781450243735
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 212
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland