Middle C (12 page)

In the academic world where snobbery was native, it earned you enemies and promotions in equal measure. Being an Austrian émigré didn’t hurt at all either. Joey wondered whether if his name were Amilcare like Ponchielli’s, he would fare better and have more friends. But were friends worth the risk?

You really like that stuff? Caz’s crooked smile pretended to honest interest without success. In
this
role—Joey would reply, negligently waving the cardboard sleeve of the store’s only
Tosca
arias—well, in
this
role I prefer Giuseppe Di Stefano. In Joey’s case, ignorance encouraged certainty. According to Caz, if Joey liked opera, Joey was a fairy, and that would account for his curious lack of interest in girls, although no one could have had less success in this area of life than Caz himself. He responded to Joey’s withering scorn with sullen malice.

Joey took to addressing him, when he had to, as Mr. Castle Cairfill—Mr. Castle Cairfill, could you come over here a moment please and assist this young man who wants something in grunge—concluding his request with a smirk that Joey, on his way to becoming Joseph, would later edit out. Caz, during maliciously spent after hours, would put Benjamin Britten in the Brahms box and distribute Debussy randomly among the Strausses, or he would hide the store’s single Massenet altogether. Not that anyone ever asked for Massenet.

Joey’s fondness for Giuseppe Di Stefano would later fade, indeed disappear, when he learned that there was an Argentine soccer player of that name. For “Moonlight in Vermont,” which he couldn’t remember, he substituted the signature bars of “ ‘A’ Train.”

These were small skirmishes both parties tried to keep from Mr. Kazan, who brought his beard around every morning at ten when the store opened, if he remembered the key; otherwise Joey would have to go to the drugstore next door and phone Mr. Kazan’s wife to ask her to fetch it, please, as Mr. Kazan had forgotten again. Caz and Joey would wait with Mr. Kazan in front of the door as if they were customers eager
to get in, though Mr. Kazan never held a sale or marked anything down, not even demos (though he insisted they be clearly labeled as such), so there was no point in looking eager. A reasonable price is a reasonable price, and if the price is right there is no reason to change it. Otherwise, he’d say, anything that’s fair is fair forever. As a consequence there were a great many old records in brand-new condition that remained at the price of their issue years ago; and in the back of the shop there were bins of 78s and 45s no one wanted or could play—speeds limited to the poor and lonely, Joey guessed, thinking of Mr. Hirk’s even more antiquated equipment.

In his knotty dark beard, Mr. Kazan’s wet red lips lay most invitingly. Joey, almost from primeval instinct, was partial to them. Mr. Kazan spoke in a gentle voice and often smiled without cause, lengthening his lips and softening their glint. However, he appeared to be a very nervous man, lingering near the office at the back of the store but only after peering up and down the street through the window in front. He only approached customers after he had watched them browse in the bins for a bit. By noon, though, he’d be gone for the day, unless some special business, such as inventory, required his presence. He sometimes seemed happy the goods he had once ordered were still there in case and box, on shelf and counter. Mr. Emil’s absence in the afternoon meant that either Caz or Joey would turn the worn-out lock and set the antique alarm before they left at five, except on Saturday when Mrs. Kazan, pleasantly dowdy and mildly overweight, would appear to pace the floor till nine.

The Kazans were a pair of decently agreeable shopkeepers who had apparently more interest in keeping a shop than in the items it sold. Nor did it seem to concern them that Joey often stayed for hours after five to practice on the piano from scores in their stock, or to play the few operatic records the store had—of course only albums that wore a demo sticker—unfortunately
La Gioconda
and
Parsifal
were among them. To Joey’s private “Why these?” there was no answer. A great deal depended on what the salesmen were flogging, of course, and the samples they were prepared to offer, as well as the specials in catalogs and other mailings. The Kazans clearly couldn’t keep up with pop culture and depended on promos to stay abreast, or on the advice of their principal clerk, Mr. Castle Cairfill, whom Joey felt they trusted only because
of his name—Careful—which was a switch, his name normally giving Castle nothing but trouble.

Mr. Emil was unaccountably close with money, and Joey supposed that was the reason, though there was an old phone fastened to the wall, they had no operative service. Imagine trying to run a business, that far back in the habits of the old days, in these lazy technological times. Like driving a car without a horn. But Mr. Emil said only bad news came through the receiver; that’s why it was black, why it gave off an odor of death, and why only gossip got spoken through the cone. But suppose, Joey said, you had a fire—only for instance, mind—or one of us fell ill, and you wanted to call for assistance? Mr. Emil’s beard would wag. Nit, he would say, nit. You see them sometimes? eh? they all wear boots, those Cossacks. Caz reminded Mr. Emil that Mr. Emil had a phone at home, which was a good thing because they needed it to call about the key when the key was forgotten—as it, a lot, was. On account dear Missus Kazan wants one, Mr. Emil said, wiping his mouth. So we have one. Consequences come like bad news through those threatening wires. We know you can call—understand?—consequent we are careless about the key. He shook his head more emphatically. If you have to walk eight streets, you make yourself careful and keep to your character and don’t forget the key. Without a phone at home I’d be a better man.

Joey would often stay till the light failed. While he played he’d whisper “We were sailing along on Moonlight Bay” or “Moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair.” Oldies weren’t pop anymore. They were just easier to play. Into the slender stock of scores had somehow slipped a copy of an instructional book called
Theory and Technic for the Young Beginner
. It taught you to play by numbering the keys, and Joey found this little book so wonderfully helpful he took it home but quickly brought it back so the book could be propped where the music stood. He sat and dreamed. Streetlights would come on, and Joey would go faintly gooey, feel slightly soft inside. Sometimes he’d slip on the “Moonlight Sonata” in a performance by Claudio Arrau, which was the only one they had, although the album notes had warned him that Beethoven hated the popular sentimental description of the
adagio sostenuto—
the latter word one Joey had adored long before he knew what it meant or how something
sostenuto
sounded: in this case, a dreamy drifting calm before the storm. Despite Beethoven’s disapproval, the streetlamps made
moonlight when they came on. The stand-up cutout of a strumming Johnny Cash would become a silhouette against the shop’s front window, and then Joey would slip out the back and walk home, haunted by grave meditations on beauty, futility, and change; though with winter coming, since he didn’t want to turn on the store lights, his practice time would shrink—it might entirely disappear.

As it threatened to anyway, because Castle Cairfill, catching the drift of things, had also begun to stay after hours, in his case on the pretext of dusting records, ordering racks, or redisplaying the Beatles, happy in the knowledge that his presence would make Joey too uncomfortable to play. Is this on your own time, Joey would ask. And Cairfill would reply, The same time as yours, running a rag over Dolly Parton and looking an album of Dusty Springfield right in the eye. He had heard Joey humming—it was an unconscious habit—so he hummed rather loudly though awkwardly in order to get on Joey’s nerves, which now felt as if jangled by the interminable ringing of the phone they didn’t have. Because it was not simply his humming but Castle’s habit of hanging around to overhear what was being said when Joey was helping a customer that annoyed; as well as his tendency to lurk near the door to intercept patrons the moment they came in and thus carry them off; or his loud forceful suggestions of this or that recording or label or artist—his choices seemed random—a tactic at which he aggressively persisted although the customer had already presented him with the phrase “just looking” like a card on a tray, or the curt word “no” had been testily uttered—by itself, never enough—or even after a definitive request for “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” had been made by someone flustered and in a hurry.

It became a contest to outwait each other by finding some excuse to stay late, each on the side of the shop he had chosen as his territory and each lingering into the edge of the evening, eyeing his enemy uneasily across the display tables, until, as was increasingly the case, Joey, his plans undone by darkness, would abruptly disappear through the rear door, suffering Castle’s triumphant snort like an arrow in his back.

8

One morning, when Joey and Castle entered the shop with Mr. Emil, they found it slightly ransacked, some money and a few records taken. Perhaps they are satisfied, perhaps they will not be back, Mr. Emil said. Should we take an inventory to find out what was stolen, Joey asked. No, it is of no matter, never mind about it, hooligans in uniforms no doubt, a notice, a warning, Mr. Emil said, we’re lightly off if this is what it comes to. But now he visited the rear window as often as he did the front one and seemed to lurk in corners or behind displays as if the marauders were going to return even during broad day. His lips looked chapped, no longer wet and rosy, his eyes wandered, and he had a habit of thrusting the splayed fingers of his left hand out of sight into his beard, which looked bigger than before because it was so unkempt. Joey began to realize that most of the things that were missing, except for a guitar that could not be found, came from the classical boxes, the “Moonlight Sonata” for one. There were no signs of forced entry, the policeman reported, but the back door was unlocked. The authorities seemed at a loss. There was very little crime of any kind in the town. Mr. Emil did not seem able to digest this information. He heard it as if he hadn’t heard, his wife said.

Another morning Millicent accompanied him to the shop and, carrying the key ready in her hand instead of having to have it sent for, opened the door. She stayed with Mr. Kazan till they left together at noon, sometimes tenderly holding the hand that was not playing bird in the bush with his beard, the pair of them getting in the way because they tended to block aisles, wander aimlessly, and otherwise seem unresponsive. Castle, on his best behavior since the robbery, no longer stayed, as it were, after school or played pranks. He did look flushed now, as if he had just finished running hard a great way, and his splotches were bright with—maybe—bad blood beating beneath them. Perhaps, Joey thought, he has tuberculosis and he is a Violetta or a Mimi man after all.

It had to happen that one morning Castle was not in position at the door when Mr. and Mrs. Kazan arrived to open it. Poor Cassie is ill, Millicent said. He phoned to say. She drew back the door, and her husband
plunged into the store as if eager for a swim. With a gesture that lightly touched him, Millicent held Joey back a moment. We aren’t angry that you left the shop unlocked, she told him with a warm small smile. Everyone forgets, Mr. Emil most. Nothing matters that is missing. Do not put it deep into your heart. She followed her husband, disappearing into the store whose lights had not yet been switched on. It was the turn of Joey’s cheeks to burn. He stood stock-still and stiff in the morning chill—dumbfounded, ashamed, helpless, enraged.

It was the same morning, serving a customer who needed a new needle, that Joey discovered a box holding half-a-dozen diamond points was missing. He felt as guilty as if he had just then slipped them in his pocket. After the sale, there was only one remaining in the entire shop. Should he tell Mr. Emil that he needed to reorder right away; should he tell Mr. Emil that some of the points had been stolen; should he assure Mr. Emil that it wasn’t he who had left the shop unlocked; should he head off any suggestion that it might have been Joey who had actually swiped the stuff that had been swiped; should he?

He would tell Mr. Emil he needed to reorder right away. Yes. That’s what he would do. He would tell Mr. Emil he needed to reorder right away. Mr. Kazan, sir, Joey said, suspiciously respectful, when I sold a needle just now I noticed that we need to order more, for we are nearly out of stock. Mr. Emil stared at Joey in astonishment. How can you say, he said. How is it that you can? You
oyss-voorf
! This word, which to Joey was just a noise, was nevertheless received by him as a terrible indictment. He had been denounced.

Millicent hurried to his wounded side. Please, Joey—Mr. Kazan, you must understand, is not himself since the roundup—since the invasion of the store. He is variously a nervous man. She took Joey’s silence to signify skepticism. Oh, you couldn’t know, for years, at night, at home, you see, we stay we eat we sleep with all the lights on, all the lights, all the time. Poor man! He stands sometimes wrapped in the window curtains. Poor man! He believes darkness can come in the middle of daytime like a moving van. So. Do not be dismayed. Please. At last Joey responded with a nod and hurried to a fictional task, in imitation of his tormentor. To dust a cardboard Dolly Parton.

Massenet hadn’t been misfiled. Massenet was missing.

Several Chopins. Of course. The Dinu Lipatti waltzes. Such wonders.
The disk had been an economy repressing, but Joey could not yet afford it, cheap as it was.

By closing time Joey could no longer remember the sounds that had signaled his condemnation. The shame had left his face, his chest, and settled in his stomach. To be falsely accused was bad enough, but to know he had no recourse and would forever bear the stigma of such a petty pointless cruel crime, that was unendurable; and Joey sank into a tippy ladder-backed chair Mr. Kazan kept at the rear of the main room so he could sit and survey the shop against what he called lifters—a shop now so dark only shadows could be seen in the light from the street—and there in his boss’s chair, his head at his knees, Joey wondered whether, addressing Mr. Emil, he had said, “When I stole a needle just now,” which might account for the ensuing conniption. In any case, Joey had begun a life of dodging disaster.