by Gayle Forman
I hold my breath and burst into his room. The only turntable left is a shitty one with built-in speakers, too crappy to sell. I yank it out of the pile and carry it down the stairs, past the nosy Lumberjacks.
Hannah sits cross-legged on the cement floor, five albums fanned out in front of her. “My opening salvo.” She points to the covers one by one: Prince, Versus, the Rural Alberta Advantage, Scrawl, Lorde. “Five of my perfect songs. Let’s see if any of them stick.”
We plug in the turntable and she puts on the Prince first. “‘Starfish and Coffee,’ for all the weirdos in the house.” It’s a fine song. I appreciate it. I don’t hate it. But I don’t love it. And it doesn’t do to me what it does to Hannah.
Because each time the needle scratches onto the vinyl, Hannah closes her eyes, fingers playing invisible chords, mouthing the words. I can see she goes somewhere and I wish I could join her, but I can’t.
“So?” she asks after playing “Team” by Lorde, the fifth perfect-to-her song.
I shrug. “It was nice.”
“Nice?”
“I mean, maybe perfect. I can’t tell.”
“Trust me, if it was a perfect song, you’d know.”
“Can we keep trying?”
“I’d love to, but . . .” She checks the time on her phone. “I have to get to a meeting.” She stands up, holding the pile of records to her chest, and steps toward me. I stand up to face her. We are so close, I can smell her, a little bit minty, a little bit smoky. I wonder if this is what she would taste like if I kissed her.
She holds out the records. I take them but she doesn’t let go. “Oh for five,” she tsks, shaking her head. “I’m off my game.”
“I warned you I was a lost cause.”
“Those are my favorite kind.” She stands on her tippy-toes to kiss me, somewhere between the cheek and lip. “I’ll put you on the list for our show tonight,” she murmurs. “Come. And we’ll keep trying.”
Fight Club
As soon as Hannah leaves, I call Chad. “Guess what we’re doing tonight?”
“Homework,” he replies.
“Definitely not.”
“I got this project on—”
“Forget your project,” I interrupt. “We’re seeing Beethoven’s Anvil!”
Chad pauses. “Aren’t they opening for the Sheaths?”
“Are they? I have no idea.”
“They are. At a big theater, with expensive tickets. That sold out months ago.”
“What if you’re on the list?”
“Who’s on the list?”
“We are.”
“How are we on the list?”
“Hannah put us there.”
“When?”
“Today.” I pause. “She came by. We hung out.”
“You hung out with Hannah Crew?”
“Not just that. She kissed me.”
“No shit!”
“Well, it was sort of a kiss. Half on my mouth, half on my cheek.”
“So more of a friend thing?”
“I don’t think it was a friend thing.” Was it? I remember how it felt when we shook hands. My palm still tingles. No, not a friend thing. “Pick me up at six?” I say.
“You got it.”
It’s only after I hang up that I remember I asked Ira to dinner tonight, to force myself to tell him. But that misery can wait until tomorrow.
* * *
Chad pulls up at five, idling at the curb. I appreciate his eagerness, but Ira frowns on leaving early, and after I bailed on our dinner I don’t feel like I can push it. “I can’t leave till six,” I tell Chad.
“All gravy. I came for the boxes.”
“What boxes?”
“Those boxes.” He points to the steps, where Ike, Richie, and Garry are each carrying two boxes.
I run over to stop them. “Are those our books?”
“They ain’t mine,” Richie replies.
“What are you doing with them?”
“Giving them to Chad,” Ike says innocently. “For his whatchamacallit.”
“Database,” Richie says.
“For that,” Ike says.
“What database are they talking about?” I call to Chad.
“The one I’m building. For my class,” Chad says. When I don’t say anything, he adds, impatiently, “I told you I was taking a class on database systems. This is my project.”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“We talked about it. Last week.”
“No we didn’t,” I say.
“We did,” Chad replies mildly. “You said you couldn’t find anything in the store and I said you would if you had a database.”
“And then you told him to shut up,” Richie adds.
“There was that,” Chad admits. “But you’re always telling me to shut up, and anyway, the guys were boxing up the books, so Ike called me up and then I got my project approved. I even went to the library today. The librarian told me there’s special software that’s normally hella expensive but is free for students.” Chad grins at me. “You’re welcome!”
* * *
When Chad returns at six, my mood has soured.
“What’s eating you?”
I climb into the truck and look back toward the store. The shelves are now emptied. Chad’s building a database. The guys are “working for coffee.” Ira thinks the store is getting a second chance. All because I’m too chickenshit to tell the truth.
I take a deep breath. I turn to Chad. “I have to tell you something.”
He sighs dramatically. “You’re not still hung up on the books, are you?” he says as we pass the middle school. A group of kids on lowrider BMX bikes are tracing circles around the muddy grass.
“I’m not hung up, but you should’ve asked me first.”
“You want me to get down on one knee and ask to index your books? Sorry, dawg. No can do.” We drive by the high school, where a group of older kids are passing a bottle back and forth. “I’m doing you a favor. Building you something you can use in your store,” Chad continues, pushing through the light at the edge of town and gunning the truck toward the interstate. “It might even improve sales.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. In case you haven’t noticed, our business is not exactly thriving.”
“I’m paralyzed, not blind,” he replies. “But I took a business class last semester and the prof made us write a business plan. Your dad says you don’t have one. Which is nuts. You need a business plan to get things like loans from the Small Business Administration. Did you know you could get a loan?”
“We’re already deep in debt. More loans won’t solve that.”
“They might. If you negotiate the debt down, and then consolidate it in a low-interest SBA loan, you can save thousands of dollars. Then you use the savings to diversify your revenue stream.”
I look at him, agog. He’s channeling CPA Dexter Collings.
“Yeah, I’m smarter than you think! And no offense, but you and your dad don’t seem to know how to run a business.”
Mom used to handle the business side of things, but after the asteroid, not even she could right the ship. “None taken. But Chad, even the best business plan won’t save us.”
“How do you know?”
“Because . . .”
Because I sold the business to Penny Macklemore.
“Because we’re a used bookstore in a small town where the only people who read buy their new books online.” I pause. “I’m thinking of selling the place. Get out while we can. Like the Colemans did.”
I watch this trial balloon float up into the air and for a second I think Chad gets it because his jolly expression grows pensive.
“You know how long it takes to fall seventy-five feet?” he asks.
“No.”
“About three seconds. Now, you probably think three seconds is nothing, but trust me, when you’re plummeting off a cliff, it feels like a hella long time. Long enough for you to think, ‘Well, I’m a goner.’”
“I’m sorry, Chad. That must have been terrifying.”
“Once again, you’re missing my point, dawg. I was sure I was dead too.” He pulls onto the highway and zooms into the fast lane. “But look at me now, son. Just look at me now.”
* * *
Bogart’s Ballroom, the venue where Beethoven’s Anvil is playing tonight, is one of those big theaters in Tacoma. In the 1950s it was a fancy cinema, in the 1970s it became a derelict shell, and it was nearly torn down in the 1990s until it was resurrected as a music club, picking up the spillover from the Seattle scene.
Outside a crowd lingers, some people holding up signs begging for extra tickets. I look at them smugly. We don’t need a ticket. We are on the list. The Lumberjack-induced gloom begins to lift. Hannah put me on the list.
Chad parks while I fight my way through the throngs to the box office to collect our tickets, but the harried woman tells me to go around to the stage entrance for a wristband.
Stage entrance. Wristband. I feel, possibly for the first time in my life, cool.
The feeling lasts until Chad and I approach the refrigerator-sized human manning the stage door. “Hi,” I say, my voice squeaky and uncool. “We’re on the list for Beethoven’s Anvil.”
Without so much as glancing at his clipboard, the Refrigerator replies, “Nope.”
“We are. Aaron Stein and Chad Santos. Or maybe it’s Aaron Stein, plus one.”
“You’re not on the list.”
“Do you mind checking?” I ask. “We would’ve been added today.”
“Don’t need to check,” he replies. “Checked earlier.”
“Can you look?” I tap his clipboard and he snarls at me like I just trespassed onto private property. Then he glances, for maybe a half second, at it before giving off a satisfied “Nope.”
“You didn’t even look!”
The Refrigerator glares at us.
“Maybe you misunderstood,” Chad whispers to me.
“I definitely did not misunderstand.”
“Maybe she forgot?” Chad says.
“It was eight hours ago.”
“Well, maybe she changed her mind.”
Of all the scenarios, that one is the most likely. But it doesn’t seem like Hannah’s style to pull something like that. If Hannah changed her mind, she’d have the guts to break my heart in person.
“Can you call her?” Chad asks.
“I don’t have her number,” I mumble, not wanting the Refrigerator to hear this, but of course, he does.
“Groupies,” he scoffs as his walkie-talkie squawks.
“Can’t you just walkie-talkie down? Tell Hannah Crew that Aaron Stein is here.”
“Do I look like a secretary?”
“Just call down. Please.”
“Sorry. I don’t do groupies’ bidding.”
“Dude. Don’t call us that,” Chad says. “It’s disrespectful to the band, and to us. We are fans.”
“How’s that work with chicks?” the Refrigerator continues. “Do you gotta munch the carpet? Or do you rub their feet and paint their nails?”
“That’s really misogynist,” Chad tells him. “You should examine your toxic masculinity.”
“You got exactly thirty seconds before me and my toxic masculinity kick both your asses.” He glances at Chad. “Don’t think I won’t because you’re in that chair.”
“Good to know you have a moral code,” says Chad, totally unruffled. He starts to back up. “Come on, dawg. He’s not worth it.”
I’m shaking with adrenaline as we return to Chad’s truck. I pound the door.
“Whoa. Don’t take it out on the Dodge.”
“I just hate guys like that.”
“Who? Him? Forget him.”
I bang my fist against my head.
“Whoa. It’s okay, shorty. We can wait for the band. See Hannah when they load out.”
“Then I’ll really feel like a pathetic groupie.”
“Don’t let guys like that get into your head,” Chad says.
“All I have is guys like that in my head.” I open the door to the truck. “Let’s just go.”
“You sure you don’t wanna stay?”
This is the fourth Beethoven’s Anvil show I’ve been to, but so far I’ve only managed to see them once. If we’re looking at the numbers, that’s one for three. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.
“I’m sure.”
Chad lowers the chair lift. “You know, guys like that are just flexing.”
“Yeah, their muscles. Which are huge.”
“Naw, they’re flexing to hide how scared they are.”
“Him? Scared?” I bark out a laugh as I climb into the passenger seat. “Of what? Us?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would he be scared of us? No offense, Chad, but he could squash both of us with one hand.”
“He’s scared of becoming us.”
“Why would he be scared of that?”
“Okay. How to explain this?” Chad asks, checking his rearview mirror as if the answer is there. “Have you ever seen the movie Fight Club?”
“No, but I’ve read the book.”
“Seriously? It was also a book first?”
“Seriously.”
“Are all movies books first?”
“Just the best ones.”
“Then you know the story?”
“First rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”
Chad nods. “So I saw that movie a bunch of times in high school. Me and the guys used to get drunk and watch it. And the thing was, back then I thought—we all thought Tyler was fire. The badassest of the badasses. Everything we wanted to be. A hero who fucked and fought and took no shit from anyone.
“And maybe I would’ve kept on thinking that. But a few months after my accident, I’m watching the movie again, and it was like I’d been watching a different movie all along, because I suddenly saw Tyler wasn’t meant to be the hero. He was a hot mess. How could I not see that before?”
I shrug. “I think a lot of guys want to be like Tyler.”
“Not you though.”
“No, not me. But then again, I read the book.”
Chad chuckles. “I have a theory. That guys like the bouncer, guys like I was, they think they’re supposed to be Tyler, and they go around fronting. But in reality, none of us really are. We’re just stuck pretending. And when you pretend like that, you live in fear of being caught. So you double down on the act. That way no one can see past it.”
“That’s deep, Chad.”
“Deep as the Mariana Trench.” Chad winks. “I got hidden depths.”
“I’m starting to see that.”
“Look. I’m not saying I wanna be stuck in a chair, unsure if I’ll ever have normal sex or fall in love. But being permanently freed from having to pretend to be a Tyler, man, that was a relief. Because in the end, those guys are so much worse off than me.” He casts a sidelong smirk. “They’re even worse off than you.”
“Thank you?”
He claps a hand over mine. “You’re welcome, son.”
We fall into a friendly silence, the tire treads making a reassuring rhythm against the damp pavement. “Do you really believe all that?” I ask him after a while.
An oncoming truck passes us, high beams briefly illuminating the car. Maybe it’s the intimacy of the dark, or the concentration of driving, but Chad’s face has shed its usual clownish jauntiness and looks somehow achingly real. He cocks his head to the side, as if he means to lean on my shoulder. Then
he straightens back up, and, staring ahead into the inky night, admits, “I don’t know, dawg. But I’m trying to.”
The Little Book of Hygge
Sundays the store is closed, and like God himself, Ira takes a day of rest. He doesn’t usually get out of bed until noon. I wake up early no matter what, and back when I still could read about things other than extinct reptiles, I’d stay in bed, nose in book, until Ira and Mom roused me.
This Sunday morning I take advantage of the quiet to replay alternate scenarios of last night, imagining what would have happened if that asshole bouncer had let us in.
Before she kissed me, Hannah had said we’d keep trying. I beat off to the multiple ways we might’ve kept trying. As I wipe up the results with a towel, I suddenly think of Chad and get what he means about the connection between love and desire. And then I feel really weird thinking about Chad as I wipe up my jiz.
This is the rabbit hole I’m spiraling down when I hear keys in the shop door. Is Ira up? I check his bedroom; he’s still out cold.
“Hello?” Ike calls up the stairs. “Anyone here?”
All three of them are in the shop, in their overalls, staring at the empty Mr. Coffee.
“Where’s the coffee?” Richie whines.
“It’s Sunday,” I say.
“So? Jesus say something about not drinking coffee on Sunday?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I turn to Ike. “What are you doing here?”
But before he can answer, there’s a loud crash. I swivel around. Garry has busted a hole in the back wall.
“What are you doing?” I shout.
“Opening the wall.” Garry demonstrates by taking another swing.
“Stop it!” I lunge for the sledgehammer but it’s too late. There’s a gaping hole in the Sheetrock. “What the fuck!”
Garry kneels down, touching the exposed pipes. “This is some really good work.”