by Luke Geddes
“Okay, I’ll go first.” Seymour licked his lips. “This isn’t in order.” He took a deep breath. “Pre-ranking, here are the five. Pet Sounds, obviously. You gotta have Pet Sounds Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las. Which one goes higher? Well, it’s an issue of content versus form. We’ll get to that later. Next up—in no particular order—Mondo Deco by the Quick. Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. And finally, well, we can’t forget Lou: 1969 Velvet Underground Live with Lou Reed.”
“That’s six, actually,” Lee said. “The 1969 Live with Lou Reed is a double LP.”
“All right, White Light/White Heat, if you’re going to be pedantic.”
“You don’t even have that on vinyl,” Lee said.
“Sure we do.”
“I do. I’ve owned that East Coast pressing since before I knew you.”
“Pardon me for assuming we shared a love and a life. I’m only with you for your record collection, you know.”
It was almost the truth, and in that moment they both knew it. Seymour changed the subject—or rather, changed interlocutors. “So, Ellie. Top five?”
“I don’t wanna,” she said. “It’s his turn.”
“Fine. Lee? Top five?”
“It’s a lame guys’ game,” Lee said.
“So you’re a lame guy.” Again, it was almost the truth. “I know you too well to be impressed, but you’ve got a prime opportunity to blow a young and impressionable mind here. Compared to you, my tastes are tragically conventional.”
Taste: Nothing mattered more to Seymour. Personality was a superfluous concept. Why get to know someone through conversation or confession or sex when you could just as easily scrutinize the spines on their shelves, the tags on their clothes, the pictures on their walls? If Seymour had a secret online dating profile, it wasn’t for flings; it was to indulge his favorite hobby: judgment. (This was normal, right? To feel this way about your partner of twenty-some years? To so casually think things that you know, spoken aloud, would eviscerate him?)
Seymour went on: “All this categorization—art rock, math rock, proto-psych-punk-rock—but how to sum up my beloved’s aesthetic, his most special of specialties? Is there even a word for it?”
“Headphones music,” Lee murmured.
“Whatever that means,” Ellie said.
Lee couldn’t stop himself from expounding, even if the sound of his own voice sickened him. “In the milieu of Dead C or Cecil Taylor or early Amon Düül, whatever.” For the past few years it had been what he focused his collection on: weird jazz, avant rock ’n’ roll, mental asylum music, obscure noise, static dirges, art brut, field recordings of crazed inbred Appalachian folk dances, dance-funk remixes of primal scream therapy, musique concrete, monk chants played backward and layered over swirling psychedelic instrumentals, music to take drugs by, music for theorists and professors and aging rock journalists, music to be impressed by more than enjoyed. It was the music Lee was known for—more than the Sodashoppe Teens, more than Tears in the Birthday Cake. That is, this was the music he was known for as a collector, the dealers at the swap meets and conventions always setting aside their “oddball” stuff for him. He bought it all, practically sight unseen, no matter the cost. In a way, he was trying to keep up with Mickey Gordy. As if there were some sort of competition going between the two; Lee’s entire career was Mickey’s footnote.
In truth, it was music he wasn’t sure he actually liked, but at least it demanded attention. The more abrasive, the better. The more obscure, the more worthwhile. Listening to it was edifying, productive. It increased his knowledge even when it didn’t speak to his soul. Enjoyment was frivolous. Lee had so many records that he could listen to ten a day and die without having heard them all. Once upon a time his true love had been the two-and-a-half-minute pop song: verse chorus verse bridge chorus chorus fade-out. He had an unparalleled collection of sixties and seventies pop LPs and singles with special attention paid to the lesser-known also-rans of the British Invasion as well as American regional garage rock. But he couldn’t bring himself to listen to it anymore. One night a couple years ago, alone in the basement record room of their house in Massachusetts, he got up to select an album and his heart began to pound, he felt like he couldn’t breathe, his head spun. He thought, with a little bit of relief, he was dying. But it was just that he couldn’t decide. There were too many options, he could only hear one thing at a time, how could he decide where to start? He ended up on the floor playing side A of The Ventures Play Tel-Star, the Lonely Bull over and over, trying not to have a panic attack. Since then, he’d taken up his regimen, plotting out in a leather-bound daily planner just what he would listen to each day. He had scheduled his listening sessions into the next year but always wrote in pencil so that he could make last-minute substitutions for intriguing recent acquisitions.
Seymour hooked his arm around him. “The first time I let him take me home, the sex was all right, but what I really wanted was to fiddle with his Sansui 9090.”
Lee wondered if there was a phrase in French to describe the way the cheap weed scent made him nostalgic for the time in his life he’d been the most severely depressed.
Ellie had worked her way through the exotica crate and was re-admiring the Denny album that had first captured her attention. “How much?” she asked.
Lee was about to say that a green sticker meant five dollars, but Seymour cut in: “If you’re going to stare at it like you’re in love with it, just take it.”
“Really?” Ellie tucked the record under her arm.
Seymour nodded.
“That was generous,” Lee said, pleased to finally muster up some sarcasm. Since returning to his hometown, midwestern pleasantness had slipped onto him like a straitjacket. “We can definitely afford to just give stuff away.”
“Who cares?” Seymour said. “It’ll play fine but it’s in crummy condition. Should’ve been in the dollar bin, anyway.”
“The dollar bin still costs a dollar,” Lee said in a melody of passive aggression he was mortified to recognize he’d inherited from his mother. An argument, a fight, or at least a bit of bickering was forthcoming, a welcome reprieve from the silent tension that had followed them from Boston to Wichita, though Lee wished he could reschedule it for a more private venue.
Ellie lingered, perhaps as drawn to histrionics as Seymour, perhaps simply too stoned to tell her feet to beat.
“Here, it’s on me.” Seymour produced a crumpled dollar bill and dropped it in Lee’s shirt pocket. “But we should make it two for a dollar.” He grabbed the Sodashoppe Teens album from out of the bin on the floor and presented it to Ellie. “Dealer recommends,” he said and hummed a bit of the melody to “Handclaps in My Heart.”
“Don’t,” Lee said.
Seymour pointed at the Teens’ feather-banged visages. “You know who that is, don’t you?”
Ellie narrowed her near-black eyes.
“Stop, Seymour. Not now.” The last time Lee punched Seymour was in the mosh pit of a Hüsker Dü show in 1985; his restraint since then was perhaps overzealous.
“Well, don’t you recognize him?”
Ellie shrugged.
“Kids these days”—Seymour gave Lee some side-eye—“need to familiarize themselves with the canon. See this guy right here? That’s—”
“Seymour.”
“This guy right here is actually—”
“Seymour!”
“Mickey Gordy,” Seymour said. “This is where he got his start.”
“Never heard of him,” Ellie said.
“From the Spastics? Cultkill? Babylon Dreamers?”
Lee grabbed a bunch from the dollar bin and shuffled through until he found a copy of Taboo, a classic of easy listening Orientalism, the phony Polynesian birdcalls performed as virtuosically as the vibraphone. “Here.” He put it in Ellie’s hand, trading it for the Sodashoppe Teens, which he deposited in a box of broken stuff headed for disposal. “Arthur Lyman. Right up your alley.”
&nbs
p; Ellie studied the volcanic image on the cover for a long moment. “Forget it.” She set both it and Quiet Village on top of a crate. “I only liked this for its look. The fact that you’re trying to get rid of it makes me not want it anymore,” she said.
It took Lee a moment to understand she was referring to the record, not Seymour.
8 KEITH
Meetings were held every first Thursday at six o’clock, closing hour, in the mall’s café, which was not really a café but just a few plastic picnic tables and chairs set before a row of vending machines. Because Ellie had never returned from break and he’d been forced to balance the register himself, Keith was late. He planned to make it a quick one, for a change, forgo the usual rigmarole, spread the word about CHAANT and send everyone on their way to help find that poor kid.
Coming upon the café, he was surprised to find most of the seats filled. (Attendance had been commensurate with the mall’s profit as of late.) Veronica, sitting by herself at a table in back, nodded at him appreciatively when he set down the box of updated information packets he’d paid the exorbitant extra fees to have FedEx Office collate and staple. Though it wasn’t saying much, she was happier to see him than his own wife, Stacey, was, presently holding court over the dealers on a high stool in front. “Just a reminder to you all that meetings begin at six o’clock.” Her voice was aimed at the assembled dealers, but her eyes were on Keith.
“It’s six-oh-three,” Keith said.
“Exactly,” Stacey said. “We can’t afford to lose a minute.”
Although she only cared because she wanted to get the meeting over with by the end of an online auction for one of her bowls or pots or pans or etc., she was right, Keith thought sadly. Time moved so fast. Ellie was an adult now, he and Stacey would hit retirement age—though not retirement—before they knew it. There were TV shows he’d missed that he’d never catch up on, DVD box sets sitting on top of the entertainment center unwatched and never-to-be-watched.
He put the box of doughnuts—there were only a few left—on the front table and sat on the stool next to Ellie, who’d been tasked by Stacey with taking minutes. “You were supposed to help close out, sweetheart,” he whispered to her. When she ignored him, he attempted a gesture of paternal affection, delicately touching her hair. She hadn’t washed it recently and it was tousled and somewhat oily, not unappealingly so, a punk ’do, was what she’d called it in high school. When Keith had tried to compliment her the other day by telling her she was looking very punk, she’d scoffed and he’d felt as if his heart had been punched. Now his hand fell on her shoulder. She whapped his knuckles with the wooden clipboard.
“Now that everyone’s accounted for, we can begin,” Stacey said. “First order of—”
Margaret Byrd shot out of her seat. “Excuse me, but there’s a matter of urgency and it behooves me to dispense with our usual process.” The dealers rolled eyes, exchanged looks, murmured among themselves. Margaret made a motion to dispense with the usual process at almost every meeting. “Stacey, I am certain your husband has apprised you of the Hall One problem. Dealer Association bylaws state—”
“Sorry, Margaret, but we’ll have to table it until the end of the meeting.”
“This is serious! The new dealer—the pair of them—in booth one-dash-one-four-six. Patricia Blatt’s booth, I might add.”
“Her old booth,” Keith said.
“They’ve been here barely a day and have already demonstrated flagrant disregard for mall policy.” She scanned the seats for the offenders, at once pleased and disappointed they were absent.
“Margaret, please,” Stacey said in the tone of disapprobation she usually reserved for Ellie. “There will be time for comments later.” Margaret crossed her arms and sat on the edge of her plastic chair, as if the seat were covered with rain or dirt. “Keith has details to share about Monday’s Mark and Grant taping. Keith?”
The dealers turned their attention to Keith. This was why they had bothered to show up, for once. They were as invested in appearing on the show as he was. “Yes, well. I’ve talked on the phone with the TV people, but that’s the least of our worries right now. I’m sure you’ve heard about the tragedy that has struck our fair city. Veronica would like to tell us about what we can do to help.”
Veronica shuffled her papers and stood, but no one could hear her over the sudden clamor:
“You talked to them on the phone?”
“Who?”
“Mark and Grant. You talked to Mark and Grant on the phone!”
“Keith, tell them to be quiet.”
“Not exactly. What I—”
“I can’t believe it! He was just talking to the Mark and Grant.”
“Okay, but, I have to tell you—”
“Keith was about to give me the floor, and I—”
“I heard they were scouting for cohosts for a spinoff.”
“I heard they’re going to do a whole episode on us.”
“Just tell them to make sure to stop by my booth. I got something that Grant’s been looking for his whole life.”
“Why should they film in your booth when my booth—”
Margaret let out an inhumanly loud whistle. The chatter abated. “If you won’t let me speak now, at least let Keith get on with it.” She held her palms out, as in, After you.
“Since you’re all so curious, let’s get this out of the way and then Veronica has something very important to discuss with us all. Now, about the Mark and Grant show.” Certainly he could not tell them the hapless truth. Although he was painfully aware this disposition was what had brought him to his current state, he’d avoided confrontation all his life and wasn’t about to change now. His throat thick with doughnut paste, Keith looked around for something to drink, but the coffee carafe was empty and the water cooler all the way across the room. He swallowed a droplet of saliva and inhaled through his nose. “Monday. Monday’s the day, folks. It’s going off without a hitch,” he lied. “Be here bright and early to make your TV debut.”
The dealers applauded.
Without taking her eyes off her watch, Stacey said, “We’re running behind schedule, so I suggest we proceed.” To her, the rising and setting of the sun, the rotation of the earth, the shifting of the tides, were all just ways of measuring the beginnings and ends of the online auctions on which she vaporized the last remaining dewdrops of financial liquidity they had left.
“The next order of business is this.” Veronica Samples rose from her seat. Her cat-eye glasses slid down her nose as she waved a bundle of flyers. “The College Hill AMBER Alert Neighborhood Taskforce will be meeting nightly until Lindy Bobo is found. I know many of you live in the area. If you’d like to get involved, see the back of these flyers. And Keith has generously made copies of our information packet and child abduction manual.” The dealers’ response to her appeal was less than enthusiastic. As she passed the flyers around, most handed the stack to the person next to them without even taking one for themselves.
Keith leapt off his stool. “Come on, people! The Heart of America, all of us here, we’re like a big family. And a family is like a community. For what is a community but a family of families? And what does a family do?” The inspiring words that fell out of his mouth were a surprise even to him. “They look out for the most vulnerable among us. So what do you say? I for one will be there every goddamn night until we find that little girl. Who will join me?” Unmoved, the dealers slumped in their chairs, their elbows on the table, twiddling thumbs or picking ears, eyes drooped as if meditating to the hum of the vending machines. “And I’ll be giving a thirty percent discount on booth rental to anyone who joins us.”
The offer was meant to rouse just a few more helping hands, but soon nearly everyone had taken a flyer and information packet. In his head Keith calculated the lost revenue, arriving at a figure that induced nausea.
“Very generous, Keith,” Stacey said. Her tone even, he could not tell if she was angry or indifferent. She got up
and left the café, headed toward the lobby where a computer and eBay awaited.
Veronica bowed her head in thanks. “That’s the spirit. I just know that with your help, we’ll find little Lindy. And if it matters, I’m told the family is offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to her location or safe return.”
Ten grand seemed a bit lowball, in Keith’s estimation. Surely a child’s life was worth at least twenty-five, fifty thousand. In the context of his own debt, a surplus ten thousand made as much difference as a lucky penny.
It was enough to motivate Ellie, however. She took an information packet and muttered, “Is it the same amount? Dead or alive?”
Veronica reddened. “As someone who has experienced firsthand—” She looked sadly down at Lindy Bobo’s neon smiling face and became quiet. “When I was a little girl just like Lindy, my mother’s boyfriend, he…” She buried her face in the flyers and wept quietly.
Nobody said anything as the sound of Veronica’s weeping filled the room. Someone coughed. Finally, Veronica wiped her eyes and sat down. Ronald Marsh leaned over from his seat and patted her back. She flinched. He smiled and withdrew his hand.
“This is touching, and we all feel badly for that girl, but I believe it’s my turn to speak.” Margaret rose and looked over her shoulder conspiratorially. “Regarding the two new gentlemen. Seymour something-or-other. And his companion. You all should see it. This doll they’re selling, this objectionable celebrity figure, and other things, too. There’s plenty of room in the other halls for their chicanery. Hall One is special. And seeing as they have not even bothered to show up to their first association meeting, I make a motion to—” Margaret froze.
Two latecomers had turned up and were searching the café for open chairs.
“It’s them!” Margaret said. “Showing up late. Not following the rules. This is exactly what I’m talking about.”
Lee looked like he had stumbled into the middle of a stranger’s party. “Sorry?”
“You will be,” Margaret said and turned to Keith. “These men, Lee and Seymour”—she pointed at them with a crooked finger but mixed them up—“they tampered with my merchandise.”