If it had been anyone else driving, and anyone else in the passenger seat, the drive would have taken much longer than it did. Classic had slunk into the driver's seat when she handed him the keys, and they started off. Sleek, soft fingers in his hair now and then would momentarily tear his attention from the long road ahead of them when removing one hand from the wheel, to play fingers along the back of Autumn's neck, down her arm, and resting on the top of her hand.
That they smoked the whole way was no surprise. It was, for the most part, unspoken, but there was an underlying emptiness to their blissful excursion. They were missing him. They knew that they could not possibly be the same, that an adventure to a show could not possibly be the same, without him. But their smiles, laughter and love covered and filled this fleeting emptiness, and each moment was golden.
The music that wrapped around both Classic and Autumn on their trip through the speakers of her beloved van was like smoke itself, as if the heat generated by the two combined with the heat summer and smoke had somehow caused the sounds to melt into every cell of their being.
Their stops were varied and purposeful. At one point, they had stopped over in a small, nearly decrepit part of a town, and on their way out Classic had screeched by gloriously painted graffiti on the side of what appeared to once have been an abandoned pawn shop. Classic photographed it with his phone and sent it to Marijuana. Can't let something like that go unshared.
When they reached their destination, and Love's fingers were in his dark hair again, her voice a soft, whispered nostalgic song in Classic's ears, he smiled lazily and turned off the ignition, leaning over to gaze out the passenger seat window that faced the entrance of the show. In this, he'd slipped an arm casually around Autumn's shoulders for a moment, kissed her temple, and looked out the window once more. I Want You (She's So Heavy) happened to whisper through speakers at that moment.
"Yes," he nodded toward the gathering mass of people, of all ages, of all creeds. He saw some young girls who couldn't be more than fifteen clutching their bags with creatively crafted patches of Cream and even saw an older woman with a shirt with an at-home-screen-print of a white room with black curtains. There were men and women slinging guitars that they'd acquired in the 1960's and had brought with them to 2009, every year infiltrating concerts of various artists with their devotion, making the pilgrimage to the shrines of rock'n'roll. Classic couldn't complain. He even recognized some of their faces. "Yeah, Songbird, it does. Can feel it, their fanatic love for him. For us. Can feel their nostalgia as intensely as I feel yours, ours, his."
He turned to her, took the joint that rested languidly between her fingers, and took a drag. Smiling thinly through a veil of smoke a moment later, exhaling it out into the air beyond the window. "Should we go in?" He gestured to the throng of people slowly moving like cattle inward. Happy cattle, though. High and delighted cattle.