"During that week, we got to know each other real well," Johnny said. "That friendship that we once had was all of a sudden there again, and it grew. I would like to think that it solidified and was even more important to both of us than what it was when we were young, back in 1960.
It was sunshine and blue skies every day that week in Colorado. Mona made pecan pie. Dean and Johnny chewed the fat. It was as if Dean had come in from the cold; he had come home. During the week in Loveland, Dean rode a neighbor-boy's motorcycle, threw a football - he forgot how hard it was to throw a spiral and how much fun - ate Mona's pecan pie, gave her little love pecks on her neck, left his room a mess, and spoke German with Pamela, the Rosenburgs' daughter, who was studying the language.
Dean sang for the local kids and juggled and walked on his hands for fifteen minutes at a go. He admired the way Mona and Johnny kidded each other - they had lost a child once and joking kept them going through the hard times.
Dean and Johnny drove over to Collins to buy cowboy stuff that was on sale and Dean thought the "fifty percent off' sign was a capitalist trick. He bought a belt buckle, but he didn't have Dean Reed put on it because it was considered improper to make a big thing of personalities over there in the East. Instead he got LOVE put on it.
Dean gave interviews to the local press. He took Mona and Johnny to a party given by Denver Magazine, which pleased them since they didn't ordinarily brush shoulders with the type of people who went to those parties such as the DJ Gary Tessler.
Mona saw how Dean held all those people spellbound with his baby blues.
At night, after supper, Johnny and Dean sat up late and talked. They talked religion and Johnny thought Dean was more an agnostic than an atheist, although he did some research and found out Marxism was a religion and Marxism was atheism. Dean told Johnny that Mikhail Gorbachev was going to make big changes; Johnny had the idea Dean had had a talk with Big Mike. Dean always called him Michael. John and Dean batted ideas around.
"Over here we have a tough freedom. A lot of people might run back to Russia, " Johnny would say. "Anyhow, how come you only talk politics. You're an actor, aren't you?"
"Why can't I be both? It worked for Reagan," Dean said.
Dean laughed and so did Johnny, but Johnny had the feeling Dean meant it.
Sometimes, Dean would be laughing, kidding, and feeling he could be the first one hundred percent genuine international superstar, then his mood would drop way down. Johnny found Dean one night, reading an article that was pretty tough on him. Dean's mood turned really bad.
"It's just one article, Dean," Johnny said.
"You just don't understand, Johnny," said Dean.
But the next morning, Dean straddled his chair backwards like always and ate his Wheaties.
"Breakfast of Champions," he said and hugged Mona.
Dean was a big hugger and it made Johnny uneasy, but Mona loved it. So did Pamela and her brother, Eric, who went by the nickname of Bull.
Now Mona offered me a piece of her peach pie and we all moved into the kitchen and sat at the table. She reminisced about Dean's visit while she served up the delectable pie.
"Dean couldn't believe the way John and I dealt with each other. I'd say, 'Oh, quit' or something. And he'd say, 'You know I can't do that with Renate. I can't say, I love you, to Alexander, because there's a different set of love for the German people,'," Mona said. "I said to Dean,'You're kidding. Well, I love you, Dean. Would that just blow Renate out of her mind?' And he says, 'Yeah, it would.'"
That same day, Johnny said to Dean, "Let's just shut down the telephone, Dean, and go up in the mountains." Most mornings that phone just rang off the hook at the Rosenburgs with people wanting to talk to Dean.
"Johnny, I'm not vacationing here. I got to lay the groundwork for when I come back," Dean said and Johnny realized coming back to America was already in Dean's mind.
When Dean took Renate's call early one morning at Johnny's house, she was scared. The Boyle radio show bust-up made the news in East Berlin and it was reported that Dean's life was threatened. Dean reassured her over the phone.
Then Dean said to Johnny, 'You know, I had a devil of a time with her. When I got ready to come over here she thought that I would never go back. What I had to do was get some friends together to bring down this great, big, huge bolder, and say to her, 'Renate, I will be back and you and I will both be buried under that bolder.' 'But Johnny, I am not going to be buried under that bolder.'"
"Well," Johnny said now, "as things worked out that's where he wound up."
That was also the night that Dean confided in Johnny he was not proud of having been married three times and that he loved Renate a whole lot. He was very firm in that, although she was awfully jealous, he said.
Renate would have been even more jealous, according to Johnny, if she had known about Dixie Schnebly, the woman who came into Dean's life in Colorado that week.
Mona put the dishes in the sink and said, thoughtfully, "Dixie knew the ropes. She was a business woman and very intelligent. She was a go-getter." Mona added, "Dixie, in my opinion, was a woman that was fascinated by Dean Reed. There wasn't anything she wouldn't do to help him, and she was maybe even in love with him. But I think her number one goal was to have him."
"Dixie Lloyd Schnebly. Yeah," Johnny said with a snort. "I don't know how many other names. She came into the picture on the Friday night at the end of the week when Dean was here."
The Rosenburgs were planning a concert in the basement of their house, and Dean asked if he could have a friend come up from Denver.
"Would you like to come up here?" he asked Dixie over the phone. "We're having a bye-bye Dean party."
* * *
For the party in Loveland, Dixie wore slacks, high-heeled boots, and a white silk blouse. She told everyone that meeting them - Johnny and Mona and their friends - made her feel so special, that she was thrilled Dean let her be one of their group.
In the Rosenburgs' yard, Dixie danced with Dean to a Phil Collins tune on a boom box. Johnny's brother shot some video. Then Dean did the Twist and everyone laughed at him because he was so old-fashioned. Dixie showed him how to dance 1985 style. "Pornographic dancing," Dean called it.
At one point Dean quit dancing, and walked on his hands for a while, then he grabbed Johnny and arm-wrestled him.
"That's the first thing I always had to do with my dad every time I came to see him. We could never really talk, so we did this stuff," Dean said to Johnny.
Afterwards, in Johnny's basement with the gold-flocked wallpaper, the oil painring on the wall, and the upright piano, Dean gave a concert. He had on his white turtleneck and a pendant around his neck, and he looked his most handsome. As it turned out, it was his only concert in America. He was wonderful. He sang practically his entire repertoire. He told jokes. He did political shtick. He kidded the little kids.
Kids, old people, toddlers, all Johnny and Mona's neighbors and friends sat on chairs or on the floor. A little apart, crouched against the wall, was Dixie Schnebly.
At the end of the concert, Dean scanned the room.
"Now I want to thank someone here. I want to say thanks to Johnny. I helped Johnny Rose back in Estes Park, then he came to Hollywood and I left."
"Couldn't stand the competition," Johnny called out from the back of the room, ducking his head with delight.
"Right. Anyway, Johnny got in touch after almost twenty-five years. He wrote this song for me," Dean said. "John, do you want to sing this with me? Come on up here."
With a diffident shrug that did not conceal the thrill he felt, Johnny ambled up to the front of the room. Together, he and Dean sang "Nobody Knows Me Back in My Hometown."
Everyone clapped and cheered and Mona took snapshots of the two men together.
It was the last time that Johnny ever performed in public. After Dean died, he gave away his guitar and said it was time to grow up.
After the concert, there was ice cream and cake, and because they knew Dean was leaving the next day, people were reluctant to go. Johnny's neighbors were taken with how nice he was, and a woman called Fran who was a devout Christian, later told Johnny that Dean was the most Christ-like man she had ever encountered. As the party broke up, Dixie remained behind; she was the last to go.
All that night, Johnny was aware of Dixie, the woman Dean had met down in Denver. She was some kind of rival for Dean, although Johnny did not put it that way. She told him, "I want to let you know that I've told Dean, when he comes back, I've got a place for him to stay."
"That's real nice, Dixie. That's really nice," Johnny said, although Dean always had a place with him and Mona. Johnny would always be there for him.
After Dixie left, Dean plunked himself down on the Rosenburgs' sofa and said, "She is in love with me. There is nothing that she wouldn't do for me."
Looking at Dean, Johnny thought: If Renate was here and she looked into Dixie's eyes, and she is as jealous as you said, you'd be in a whole heap of trouble, boy.
The next morning, Dean left Colorado. Mona couldn't bring herself to go to the airport. It was a sad day for all of them. Johnny and Dean had been apart so long and no one knew when Dean would come back.