The Vinyl Princess (13 page)

“Okay.” My voice trembles a bit but I get it under control. “Don’t hitchhike, though. Remember what you told me you would do to me if you ever caught me hitchhiking. Oh, and Estelle was just here; she says you’re compromising yourself.”

“Great. I have to go.” My mom hangs up abruptly. I picture a bear sitting on its haunches, rocking the phone booth back and forth in its giant paws while my mother screams from inside.

Left alone with no distractions, I’m inclined to crawl back into bed and sob for the unforeseeable future. The humiliation and shame and sleep deprivation of the last few days come rushing back to me and I sink into a dark pit of despair. I’m achy and my throat hurts from the smoke. I fight the impulse to hide, and work halfheartedly on my blog for a while. I missed yesterday’s entry completely. There are a couple of comments from my regulars asking if I’m okay. One of them is from my Berkeley “Fan.” I guess I can eliminate Joel as a possibility. There’s also a comment from someone named Elliot in New York. He’s a website designer/vinyl junkie and he says he loves what I’m doing and he’d be happy to design my blog site for free if I’m up for it. I write him back immediately:

I write a blog piece on
The Last Waltz,
one of the coolest live records ever recorded and a rad movie directed by Martin Scorsese. It’s a farewell concert for the Band recorded in 1976 with an all-star guest list featuring Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Eric Clapton and Muddy Waters. I pull out the album and put it on while I write about it. The version of “Helpless” with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young makes me feel momentarily euphoric, the way an impossibly sad song can because you feel like you’re in good company. I post the blog and scroll down to check how many hits I’ve had. It says 1,437?! Can that be right? The last time I checked it was forty-one!

In a momentary flash of spontaneity, I throw on some clothes and head out for a walk to clear my head. College Avenue is humming with people brunching and strolling. The morning fog has rolled back right on schedule and revealed a gorgeous midsummer Sunday. I walk up the avenue with my hands in my pockets. The bizarre events of last night keep coming back to me like clips from a cop show on TV. The image of the gun is something I won’t be able to forget for a long time. It may as well have been pointed at me. And then hearing Joel say, “Have a nice evening,” so pleasant-sounding, just like the day he talked to me for the first time. It chills me.

I walk all the way down to the Rockridge district in Oakland, oblivious to how far I’ve come until I’m walking underneath the BART station. I pass Olivia’s Café, a popular breakfast spot with a patio out front. Something familiar draws my eye, a person sitting alone at a table. It takes me a few seconds to realize that it’s Joel. He’s reading the same paper I just read. He’s reading about the robbery. There’s a coffee cup in front of him and the remains of his breakfast. It all looks very civilized, like he’s just a guy who lives in the neighborhood, not a ruthless criminal. He senses someone watching him and he looks up and our eyes meet. He darkens and something about the way he looks at me makes me understand that he knows that I know. He’s not afraid of me. I’m nothing to him. Anyone who’s confident enough to rob two places in ten minutes isn’t going to fear someone like me. I’m like a housefly he could smash with his newspaper or some lint he could pick off his sweater and flick away. As he watches me with his calm blue-green eyes, his mouth slowly turns up into a smile and he brings his index finger to his lips. He’s only ten feet away from me. He puckers his lips.

“Shhhhhh,” he whispers.

A chill runs down my spine. I pick up my pace and duck into a bookstore in the middle of the next block. I head for the magazine racks next to the window and pretend to browse till my heart stops racing. I watch out the window anxiously but I know he wouldn’t follow me. He doesn’t have to. He was just sending me a message. I heard him loud and clear.

T
hat night I can’t sleep at all. When I finally drift off I dream about Joel.

In the dream, he’s the M I invented, the nice guy. He and I are walking along a narrow ribbon of a trail cut into the side of a rocky cliff. Above us is a wall of sheer rock, and below us crashing surf. We seem oblivious to the obvious danger and we walk along the trail talking about music, M in front, me following behind. Suddenly, the trail becomes narrower and narrower under our feet and it starts to fall away. Rocks and pebbles clatter hundreds of feet into the surf below us. I grab for M’s hand. His face changes into Joel’s at the café today. He looks below him at the crashing surf and then he turns to me with a sinister grin and brings his finger to his lips. “Shhhhh,” he whispers. I lose my grip on his hand and his fingers slide through my tightly clenched fist, one at a time, till my fist is empty. He falls backward through the air, his arms windmilling, and crashes into the pounding surf below us. I jerk awake. The house is quiet.

In the morning, I leave for work feeling wrung out. My mom is still sleeping. Last night she said something about sleeping for a week. She and Jack arrived home in the late afternoon. My mom was limping and her left eye was almost closed. So much for trying new things. Jack didn’t stay long. He looked like an exhausted mother dropping off someone’s kid after a really bad playdate.

My mom took a hot bath, praising indoor plumbing. She poured herself a glass of wine and we sat on the sofa while I told her all about the robbery. I left out the part about knowing who did it. I was afraid that she’d react badly and organize a manhunt or something. As it was, she made it pretty clear that she wants me to quit Bob’s. She says that no one should have to work in a retail environment where a bulletproof vest is required.

When I arrive at Bob’s, I unlock the store and pull the security gate behind me. I feel nervous and jumpy and I look over both shoulders. I slip my hand into the back pocket of my jeans and feel the corners of Officer Davis’s card. I stand just inside the door and look around the dusty store. Somehow it looks shell-shocked. Can a store look like a victim of a crime?

For the first time since the new in-store-music rule, Bob has forgotten to load the carousel. I can tell because it’s still full of Roger’s quirky brand of country music from yesterday. (Roger has a special deal with Bob. He gets to play his own music on Sundays.) I empty the carousel and fill it with my own picks: the first Crosby, Stills & Nash album, Teddy Thompson’s
Upfront & Down Low
, Ryan Adams’s
Heartbreaker
, Steve Earle’s
Jerusalem
, Neil Young’s
After the Gold Rush
, Patty Griffin’s
1,000 Kisses
. I guess I’m in a rootsy mood.

Laz arrives. He’s already been briefed about the robbery by Jennifer (I’m pretty sure that, in her version, she escaped death by using her wits and her catlike reflexes). I’m relieved that I don’t have to revisit the whole thing. Laz seems to have lost his enthusiasm for it too. He hunches over his newspaper, sipping coffee.

Minutes after I swing open the doors at ten thirty, Zach from New York walks in carrying a well-used Bob & Bob bag.

“Allie.” He smiles. He looks relieved to see me. “I heard there was a little trouble over the weekend.” He sets the bag carefully on the counter in front of me, after brushing it off with his hand and then wiping his hand on his pants. His hair is especially animated today, jumping off his forehead abruptly in a tidal wave, as though he slept on his face.

“Yeah. You need some credit?”

“Oh, yeah.” He pulls two LPs out of the bag. “These two were a little disappointing.”

“Okay.” I grab the credit slips pad and start to write out a credit for him.

“So, were you here when it happened?”

“Yes, actually, I was.” I keep my head down.

“Man, I thought stuff like that only happened in New York. Do they have any suspects?”

I look up at him and it suddenly occurs to me that he was standing right next to Joel in this very spot, days before it happened.

“No,” I reply. I look at him evenly.

“Well, don’t worry; they’ll catch them. These guys always mess up sooner or later.”

I look back down at the credit slip.

“Hey, you know, I’ve been meaning to tell you. That day at the flea market, when you told me to buy that Flaming Lips LP, you were right on about it. That record is flat-out cool.”

I manage a smile.

“Are you okay?”

I shrug and bite my lip. Why am I always a mess around this guy?

Then he does something really strange. He leans over the counter and squeezes my shoulder. I really wasn’t expecting that, especially not from him. Somehow it brings my emotions even closer to the surface. I blink back tears.

“Hey, don’t worry. It’s really okay to be freaked out for a while. My friend in New York? His apartment got robbed and you couldn’t even look at him for a whole week without him bursting into tears. It was mostly because they took his comic book collection, but still, it’s not easy. You feel violated.”

I nod. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

I hand him his credit slip and he takes it, carefully folds it, origami style, and slides it into his thin wallet. He starts to leave.

“Hey, aren’t you going to shop?”

“Can’t right now. I’ll be back later. See ya.”

Did I just ask this extremely annoying person to stay? Has it really come to that?

I check my email. Elliot from New York has already gotten back to me. He wants me to send him my logo and he’ll take care of the rest. He’s going to set it up so that you can access my old blogs by date or alphabetically by band or artist’s name. He says that all I have to do is mention that he designed it with a link. Cool.

Bob arrives around noon, wearing his darkest sunglasses, which indicate his worst possible mood. He wears sunglasses like mood rings. Dao trails behind him and stops to tell me in her broken TV English that the store has insurance but there’s a one-thousand-dollar deductible, which hardly makes it worthwhile, since there was only nineteen hundred dollars in cash in the register that night, and if they make a claim the insurance will go up. I suppose that now is a bad time to tell Bob that Jennifer called and she’s decided to take a few days off due to a bad case of posttraumatic stress disorder. Laz told me he saw her table-dancing at a bar on San Pablo late Saturday night. I’m sure it’s part of the healing process.

The afternoon drags. The atmosphere in the store fluctuates between gloomy and despondent. I work on my five LPs of the week: the Cowboy Junkies’
The Trinity Session
(four out of five LPs);
The Doors
(five out of five LPs); Morrissey’s
Viva Hate
(five out of five LPs); Little Feat,
Time Loves a Hero
(four out of five LPs); and Tom Waits,
Frank’s Wild Years
(five out of five LPs).

Late in the day, Zach reappears with a CD case in hand. He places it on the counter in front of me. Could it be a mix CD, the mating call of the romantically challenged?
Please. Let it not be that.

“What’s this?” I ask, picking it up. There’s a giant moth on the cover. It looks like he cut it out of a
National Geographic
magazine.

“A mix CD. I made it for you.” He beams.

“Hey, thanks. I’ll listen to it tonight.”

“Cool.” He stands there a moment. Awkwardness sets in. “Okay, so I’ll see ya.”

“Yeah. See ya.”

He starts to leave. “Oh, by the way, there’re two guys in wedding dresses out front.” He walks out the door.

Almost immediately, through the window, Shorty and Jam appear in wedding wear. Jam is wearing a flowing white satin dress with a modest train and embroidered roses on the bodice. A veil is bobby-pinned to his greasy, stringy hair. The fact that he’s missing a front tooth isn’t helping. The hem of the dress is already black with dirt. Shorty is wearing an off-the-shoulder bridesmaid’s dress with a full skirt in coral. His bony shoulders jut out like coat hangers, and his dirty jeans and oversize boots emerge from underneath the cocktail hem. The dresses look all too familiar to me. It takes me a moment to realize that they belong to my mom.

I pick up the phone and dial my home number.

My mom picks up on the first ring. “Hello.”

“Hey, whatcha doin’?” I ask.

“Cleaning out my closet.”

“Getting rid of some stuff?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you put some things in the free box?”

“Yeah, two whole garbage bags.”

“Well, I guess that would explain the two drug addicts out in front of the store, parading around in your wedding dress and that hideous bridesmaid’s dress you wore at Aunt Shirley’s wedding.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Does the one wearing the bridesmaid’s dress at least look better in it than I did?”

“Only slightly. God, Mom, your wedding dress in the free box?”

“Oh, who cares? I just need to move on with my life. Besides, I’ve always hated that thing.”

“Okay, well, I’ll see you later. In the meantime, I’ll be down here, not moving on. I’ll be watching a low-rent, creepy, drag-queen version of your wedding.”

“Sorry, honey.”

I hang up the phone and watch Shorty and Jam pass a bottle of something back and forth.

My parents didn’t get married until I was five. I was the flower girl. I cried during the ceremony because I saw my aunt Shirley crying and I thought we were supposed to. The minister had a long beard and dark glasses. He was a yoga instructor. He scared the crap out of me. It wasn’t until the reception that I realized that it was supposed to be a celebration. I threw up wedding cake on my white patent-leather shoes.

I know what it means when closets get cleaned out and old, once meaningful bits of our lives get discarded. The last time it happened was right after my dad moved out. My mom purged herself of anything even remotely reminiscent of my dad. She put everything into garbage bags (I went through them later and rescued some cassettes and a Black Sabbath T-shirt) and then she sat next to the phone, waiting for him to call and tell her he’d made a horrible mistake. He never did.

I’m guessing, in this case, she’s waiting for a call from Jack. The answering of the phone on the first ring was a dead giveaway. It’s funny that my mom got rid of every connection to my dad after he left but she hung on to the wedding dress for a while. Isn’t it a custom that moms sometimes hang on to the dress because they think their daughter might wear it at her wedding? Has my mom already given up on my love life? Is she assuming I’ll never marry?

Jam takes a drunken swing at Shorty. I exhale slowly.

When I get home from work, I have to step over several garbage bags of discarded clothes lined up in the front hallway. My mom and Ravi are working at the dining table. Ravi has taken his transformation one step further. All his facial hair has disappeared, revealing a strong, smooth jawline, and he’s wearing another new shirt in crisp striped cotton. He looks fresh and youthful. The lack of facial hair makes his eyes look enormous. My mom’s eye, on the other hand, is still swollen halfway shut and she looks like she could use a shower. She’s wearing sweats and a torn gray T-shirt. Her wedding dress goes in the free box but this outfit she hangs on to? The scene looks like a reverse
Beauty and the Beast
.

“Hi, Ravi.”

“Hello, Miss Allie,” he says.

“You look good, Ravi. Sort of like your own younger brother.”

He blushes. “Thank you.”

I look at my mom. “Your wedding dress is filthy. I hope you’re happy.”

She glares at me out of her one good eye. I stomp up the stairs to my room to call Kit.

“So. Did you call the cops yet?” asks Kit for the fourteenth time today.

“No. I can’t. I mean, I will . . . I think . . . Damn!” I try to speak quietly into the phone.

“Even after yesterday? C’mon, Al, the guy’s a hardened criminal.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Uh-huh, I do. And I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to say this out loud, but he’s dangerous and he knows you know. You have thought of that, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have.” Nonstop, actually. I’ve also thought about the way he took such an interest in me that day at the café, the way he told me all those stories and listened to me talk about my life, such as it is, pretending to care, the way he moved my hair out of my face. It’s unbearable for me to come to grips with the fact that he was just setting me up. He didn’t seem at all dangerous that day. He seemed like a lot of fun. I keep hoping that there’s a chance that I’m wrong about him and that maybe it wasn’t him that night. I keep hoping that maybe none of this actually happened. But, unless I can sell myself on an evil-twin theory, I don’t have much.

“Look, let’s do this together, okay? We’ll go down to the police station tomorrow morning and tell them what we know.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know . . . Okay, yes, let’s do it.” I squeeze my eyes shut, hiding from the decision I just made.

“Good. Look, you’ll feel better when it’s done. You know it’s the right thing.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s stop talking about it or I’ll talk myself out of it again.”

“Sure. By the way, Niles called me today and I actually picked up. He wants to talk to me.”

“What did you say?”

“I said he
was
talking to me and he said, ‘No. In person.’

“I said I didn’t think it was a good idea and then he begged me. I think he may even have cried. Apparently, and it took him a while to figure this out, probably because he couldn’t get past her breasts, but he recently came to the conclusion that Chelsea is an idiot. Imagine my surprise. From where I was sitting she radiated intelligence. Anyway, he says she’s moved on already. She told him she was happy to keep seeing him but it wouldn’t be exclusive because she’s sort of into drummers now.”

“Wow.” I don’t really see how this story redeems Niles in any way but I decide to keep that to myself.

“Yeah, all boobs, no brains.”

“So, will you see him?”

“Yes. I told him to meet me at Café Dirt tomorrow night.”

Café Dirt is what we call the coffee place on the corner of College and Ashby because you can smell the bathrooms while you stand in the coffee line. Gross.