Extreme Vinyl Café (20 page)

Anyway, it was the afternoon—that part is for sure. Dave
was by the counter reading out loud from the back of a James Last album.

“Listen to this,” he said to Brian, who has worked at the record store for years. “
This is a High Fidelity recording
.” Brian is Dave’s oldest employee by far. Dave was reading this to Brian and to one of Brian’s friends, who doesn’t work at the store, but easily spends as much time there as Brian.

“
It is designed
,” Dave read, “
to play on the phonograph of your choice. If you are the owner of a new stereophonic system, this record will play on it. You can purchase this record with no fear of it becoming obsolete
.”

“What do you think?” said Dave. “Right or wrong?”

“Depends,” said Brian.

“On what?” said Dave.

“On whether they’re talking about the record as a concept or the concept of James Last.”

“What ever happened to James Last?” said Dave.

“Exactly,” said Brian.

Brian wandered behind the counter and dropped into the chair in front the computer.

He typed
James Last
into Google. Fifteen minutes passed before Brian was heard from again.

“Oh, oh, oh,” said Brian. “Have you seen this?”

Brian had given up on James Last and had flipped on YouTube.

“You have to see this,” said Brian.

Dave wandered over and peered at the screen. Brian pressed play.

This is what Dave saw: a grainy and very shaky close-up of an impossibly old man struggling over a fence. Then there
was a cut and a jerky shot of the back of a house. The camera pulled back, and Dave saw there were kids dancing on the back roof of this house. Then the shot zoomed in, and Dave saw something that looked like a bobsled run coming out the upstairs window.

There was something familiar about it all. “I think I have seen this before,” said Dave. “This is like déjà vu.”

Then the camera zoomed in on one of the kids dancing on the roof. The boy had one of those tiny Italian cigars in his mouth.

“I know this place,” said Dave. “Is this a frat house? It looks like a frat house.”

Dave leaned forward, squinting at the screen. The picture was so fuzzy it was hard to be sure. The camera zeroed in on the window. A small face and two hands appeared. Whoever it was, was holding a bottle in each hand and dumping the contents of the bottle down the slide.

“I think that’s detergent,” said Brian.

“Shampoo,” said Brian’s friend. “That’s jojoba shampoo.”

They all looked at him.

“I recognize the bottle,” said Brian’s friend.

“Ohmigod,” said Dave.

“You ain’t seen anything,” said Brian. “It gets wicked better.”

There was another edit and the camera focused on the old guy again. It was hard to make him out because the kids were gathered around him slapping him on the back. The old guy was doing something to his mouth.

“Ohmigod,” said Dave again.

It was Eugene, of course, and Eugene was doing what he always does before he does anything that requires exertion.
He was reaching into his mouth and removing his false teeth.

As Dave watched, the old man handed his teeth to a little girl who was standing on a chair holding a garden hose. The girl held the teeth high in the air. All the kids applauded. Now she was stuffing them into her pocket. She turned her hose onto the slide.

The camera left her to follow the old man inside the house. Up the stairs, into the bathroom.

Dave said, “Is this live?”

There was another edit. The old man was putting on a pair of nose plugs. There was a close-up of the shower. Two young boys were helping the toothless old man up onto the toilet and out the bathroom window. Then the point of view changed and the camera was outside again. It was on the ground, and there was the back of the house and then the camera zoomed in on the bathroom window. Everything was still for a few seconds, until—POW—the impossibly old man came flying out the window. He was sitting down and waving at the camera—until he hit the frothy spot where the boy had poured the jojoba shampoo. When he hit that spot, he flipped onto his back, gaining speed, his feet wiggling in the air. And that’s when everything came into focus for poor Dave. The old man, it was, ohmigod, it looked exactly like Eugene from next door.

“I have to go,” said Dave.

“It gets better,” said Brian. “The whole point is the end. When he hits the garden fence.”

But Dave was already out of the store.

S
o Dave missed the moment when Eugene flew out the bottom of the slide like he’d been shot out of a cannon. And he missed the part where Eugene smacked into the garden fence—the part where the old man struggled to his feet and stood there, toothless, covered with bubbles, his nose plug on, grinning madly, laughing, until he spotted his wife, Maria, on the other side of the fence. When he saw Maria glaring at him, his smile vanished, and his shoulders sagged.

“Busted,” said Eugene, sadly, to the camera.

Dave, who was already through the front door, missed that part. He was gone like a shot, turning right, past Dorothy’s bookstore, past Kenny Wong’s café, thinking
don’t stop … there’s no time to stop
. He had to get home, he had to…. He got four blocks, four long blocks, but no more, before his poor pounding adrenaline-shot heart felt as if it were going to explode. He pulled up short, gasping for breath. This was ridiculous; he couldn’t run all the way home. He needed to get a taxi. He got a taxi.

“Hurry,” said Dave. “Hurry.” Waving a twenty-dollar bill at the taxi driver.

I
t was 4:30. The hottest part of the day was done. Sam and Murphy were on the back porch, sitting on the double hammock. Well, they were more slouched than sitting. Or sprawled. Inching back and forth, but barely. The perfect picture of summer indolence. As still as a hot wind on a summer lake.

Dave burst onto this scene like a dog with a fetched ball. Dave was all sweaty and panting and out of breath. Doglike Dave.

Murphy and Sam looked up at him from the hammock with sleepy boredom.

“Hey Dad,” said Sam.

“Boys,” said Dave.

“Hey,” said Sam.

This was not what he had expected at all. This was the last thing he had expected.

He looked over the fence. Eugene was sitting where he always sat—under the grape arbour, tilting back on his kitchen chair, his arm in a sling.

Dave looked at Eugene and then at the boys. He walked over to the fence and nodded. Eugene nodded back and spat on the ground.

O
nce when he was a boy, Dave’s parents gave him a dart set. He had begged them for the dart set. He couldn’t remember why. But he wanted it, and they gave it to him for his birthday.

Now in those days, Dave’s favourite show on television was
Circus Boy
, a show that chronicled the weekly adventures of a young boy called Corky, whose parents, the Flying Falcons, were killed in a high-wire accident. Corky was adopted by a clown named Joey and rode Bimbo the elephant in the show. He was played by, of all people, Micky Dolenz, later of Monkees fame. (Years later Dave and Dolenz and Mitch Ryder had a wolf of a night in London reminiscing about the TV show.)

The episode that had the biggest impact on Dave was about a knife-thrower and his wife. Dolenz didn’t remember it. But Dave did. Dave remembered it vividly. The wife was tied to a
board. The assistant put the blindfold on the knife-thrower and spun him in a circle. Dave remembered everything about the show—the way the blindfolded man threw the knives at his wife, the way the knives stuck in the board all around her.

Dave was maybe eight when that show was on the air. He took his little sister, Annie, into the basement, and he stood her against the basement wall, and he threw his new darts at her. The first one stuck in her knee. The second in her shoulder. After the second one, she said, “This is a stupid game,” and ran upstairs.

Their mother fainted when she saw the darts sticking out of her daughter. When Dave explained why he had done this thing with the darts, his father seemed to understand, though he did confiscate the dart set. Dave always thought well of his father that he didn’t get mad. Or lecture him. It was an accident, and Dave wouldn’t have done it again. His father knew that.

D
ave smiled at Eugene over the fence.

Dave said, “You okay?”

“Ahh,” said Eugene, motioning toward the vegetable patch with his head. “Gardening accident.”

Dave said, “Sorry to hear that.”

Maria, who was sitting beside her husband, snorted.

Dave nodded and walked back to the boys in the hammock. “What have you boys been up to?”

“We watered the garden,” said Sam.

“Front and back?” said Dave. He was looking around. The grass was wet; the bathroom window was closed. There were no children dancing on the roof.

“Just the back,” said Sam.

“Looks like you did a good job,” said Dave.

Except for a few telltale soap bubbles clinging to the pear tree, everything was in order.

Dave said, “You’ve probably done enough watering for the next little while.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Probably.”

Dave looked at his son hard. Sam looked back, nodding his head.

Sam said, “We are pretty much through with the watering.”

Okay
, thought Dave,
my move
. He knew it. They knew it. The boys were getting up.

“We are going to the park,” said Sam.

Line of least resistance
, thought Dave.
Lead me on
.

“That’s a good idea,” said Dave. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a bill. “Why don’t you stop by Lawlor’s and get yourself an ice cream.”

Sam glanced at Murphy.

Murphy patted his bulging pockets.

“That’s okay,” said Sam. “We’ve got money.”

Dear Mr. McLean,

My fiancé and I are planning our wedding, and while you don’t know us, we are convinced you’d do a great job of MCing the evening. I’ve included a list of notes about Aaron and myself, but you also should be aware of the following:

Our colour palette is fuchsia and Palermo blue. I trust that you could wear a suit that incorporates the colour scheme.

Please don’t mention Aunt Kate’s drinking.

The Radcliffes and the Kluskys are not on speaking terms.

Cousin Harold has anger issues.

Please be prepared to cut short Uncle Neal’s “toast to the bride” if he begins to ramble.

Thanks so much for considering this. I’m so excited.
Aren’t weddings fun?

Emma

Dear Emma,

I’m terribly sorry to say that I seem to have a conflict with that date. I am really disappointed not to be part of this celebration. Really.

O
n the last Saturday in March, a grey and woolly day if ever there was one, Sandy Rutledge, of Rutledge’s Hardware Store, on River Street, in Big Narrows, Cape Breton, stayed after everyone else had left for the day so he could organize the hardware store’s first-ever window display. Sandy graduated from business school, the first in his family to go to university. Ever since graduation, he had been bugging his father to let him make some changes.

Willard Rutledge finally relented. Sandy stayed late, and by Monday, at lunch, pretty much everyone in town had heard about Rutledge’s new front window. People were making special trips just to check it out.

What Sandy did was clean out the mess of doorbells, the bags of birdseed and the towers of toasters and kettles that had accumulated in the front window over the last seventy-four years. He replaced the entire jumble with a solitary mannequin. It, or more to the point, she, was wearing a bridal gown. Sandy picked up the mannequin, and the gown, second-hand from a shop in Sydney. The idea, it being just a few weeks until spring, was to encourage the brides of Big Narrows to register at the hardware store.

By the end of the week, much to Sandy’s delight, they had two brides. And a third, Becky Michel, of Fletcher’s Harbour, was wavering under pressure from her fiancé, Cliff, who had wanted a nail gun since he was seven.

D
ave’s mother, Margaret, was one of the last people in town to see the window. Smith Gardner picks Margaret up every Thursday afternoon, and they go to the Elks’ meat raffle. After that, they go to the Maple Leaf Restaurant for the all-you-caneat buffet.

On Thursday, as they pulled in to Kerrigan’s parking lot Smith said, “Do you want to see the window?”

Margaret said, “Sure.”

As Margaret peered at the wedding dress, Smith said, “I wouldn’t want to go through
that
again.” Margaret nodded. Then they stood there awkwardly.
That
was the first time Smith and Margaret talked about marriage.

When she got home, Margaret stared in her bathroom mirror.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

I
t was the middle of April by the time Smith decided to propose. He drove to Sydney to get a ring.

His late wife, Jean, had hated her wedding ring. She said it irritated her finger. Eventually she took it off and wore the ring on a chain around her neck.

Smith didn’t want Margaret to hate
her
ring. So all he bought was a diamond. The jeweller said they could come back together and choose a setting. It was a modest stone.

“But it has good colour,” said the jeweller, holding it up to the light.

Smith dropped the bag with the diamond in it on the passenger seat of his pickup. He pulled off the road as soon as he’d crossed the Seal Island Bridge. He shook the diamond into his rough hand, took a deep breath and held it in the sun. It didn’t look like it had any colour to him. It looked as clear as glass.

On his way through town, Smith stopped at Kerrigan’s and bought a tub of ice cream—Margaret’s favourite flavour, maple walnut. He took the ice cream to Margaret’s house for Sunday lunch.

After the sandwich plates had been cleared from the table, Smith got the ice cream from the freezer. He put a generous scoop into Margaret’s bowl, set the diamond on top of the ice cream and set the bowl in front of her. He sat waiting, his heart pounding as she picked up her spoon.