by Gayle Forman
“We’ll get you there.”
I unlock the bins. “Remember, don’t come up. Just text me when you’re done.”
“Got it, boss.”
Ike is waiting for me at the top of the basement stairs, arms folded across his broad chest. “What’s going on down there?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“I know nothing when I see it and this ain’t nothing.” He pushes past me down the stairs and sees the Lous.
“Aha!” Ike exclaims. “I knew that fellow wasn’t from Cascadia. No uniform.”
“I’m selling records,” I admit.
Ike sighs noisily. “Now we gotta change the blueprint.”
“What blueprint?”
“Of the store.”
“Why?”
“To sell the records.”
“I’m not selling the records.”
“You just said you were.”
“Not on the store floor.”
“Why not?”
When I don’t answer, Ike asks, “What do you know about Viagra?”
What I know about Viagra is that I don’t want to hear Ike say the word Viagra.
“It was originally developed for blood pressure,” Ike says. “And when they discovered the side effect, they switched it up. And now it’s like the bestselling drug of all time. Maybe records are gonna be your Viagra.” He turns to Lou. “Hey, Mr. Not Cascadia. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Lou says.
“If you were gonna install record bins in a bookstore, where would you want ’em?”
“We aren’t installing bins,” I say right as my phone buzzes with a text. It’s from Hannah.
Ruh-roh.
Quickly I text back: No ruh-roh here. Just wanna see you. I add a heart emoji.
“But just say we were gonna put in bins,” Ike continues. “Would you want ’em up front by the register? Or in the back by the café?”
“Up front is good for impulse buys,” Porkpie Lou says.
“No. Back of the store would be better,” Sleeve Tat Lou says.
“Why’s that?” Ike asks.
I’m only half listening, distracted by the three dots on my phone. Hannah’s typing. But then it stops and there’s no reply. Fuck. Did I just mess this up too?
Sleeve Tat Lou is telling Ike why she thinks the back of the store is best. “You know how when you go to a department store to buy a hat, but while you’re riding the escalators up, you have to walk all the way across the floor to get to the next escalator and so by the time you get to the hat section, you’ve also bought boots and a sweater?”
Ike nods, as if he frequently impulse-buys while browsing at department stores.
“Same idea. Record collectors will drive hours for vinyl like this. You might as well make them wade through the books. They might buy them too.”
I’ll come by tomorrow, Hannah finally texts. But no emoji.
“And what about cappuccinos?” Ike is asking the Lous. “Would record buyers also like cappuccinos?”
“Are the Flamin’ Groovies overrated?” Porkpie Lou asks.
“I don’t know, are they?” Ike says.
“Decidedly,” Sleeve Tat Lou says. “Coffee would be dope. Maybe beer too.”
“Beer, Books, Coffee, and Records,” Lou says. “That’s a store I could live in.”
“Diversify your ass!” calls Chad from the top of the stairs, where he’s been eavesdropping. “Told you so!”
“We can’t sell the records in the store!” I shout.
“Why not?” Ike asks.
“Because Ira can’t know I’m selling them.”
“Why not?” Ike asks.
Because when Sandy built the bins and handed me the key, he made me promise not to sell them. By then, our relationship was on life support, so I couldn’t understand why he was trusting me with his records. Still, I promised. And now I’m breaking the promise.
“Ira just can’t know,” I tell Ike.
“Don’t you think he’ll find out?” Ike asks me in a quiet voice.
About the records? Maybe. But what I did to Sandy?
No, that my father can never know.
Moby-Dick
The three Lous have spent close to a thousand dollars. Not bad for a week’s worth of sales, and if I had thirteen more weeks, maybe it would work. But I don’t have thirteen weeks; I don’t even have two.
I’ve asked Lou for his boss’s number but he has suddenly stopped returning my texts.
Meanwhile, in the store, Ike continues to battle Gaga. He has taken her apart and put her back together twice, and still she explodes every time he tries to pull an espresso. All other work on the shop has slowed because Ike is too distracted by Gaga to boss Garry and Richie around.
I pace the store, running the numbers in my head. If I can’t sell the records to Lou and his friends fast enough, maybe I can borrow the remaining money from Chad. Pay him back once I sell more records, before he has to pay his second Stim installment.
“Son of a monkey!” Ike yells at Gaga. “I give up!”
“He’s never gonna give up,” Garry whispers. “Gaga’s his Great White Whale.”
I do a double take, which Garry clocks with a wry smile. “What, you think I’ve never read Moby-Dick?”
“I barely got through it myself.”
“I read it junior year with Mr. Smithers. You have him, or had he kicked it by the time you were in school?”
“I think he died.”
“Well, he was a gnarly old coot. Before he became a teacher, he worked on fishing boats in Alaska, so he was always telling us gruesome tales of people losing hands and shit. He mixed his stories in with Moby-Dick, so it made the book kinda relatable, I guess. Anyhow, I remember everything from that book. Like Ahab had a monomania.”
“What’s a monomania?” Richie asks.
“That is,” Garry says, pointing to Ike as Gaga explodes once more, sending a metal bit flying through the air where it nearly hits the door. “Fiddlesticks!” he shouts.
“Somebody lose this?” Hannah asks, picking up the metal bit as she walks through the door.
“Take it,” Ike says. “I give up!”
“Sure you do, Ahab,” Garry mutters.
“What is it you give up on?” Hannah asks.
“This hunk of junk,” Ike says. He pulls out his bandana and lovingly polishes the hunk of junk.
Hannah steps closer, skirting a quick glance at me before focusing on Gaga. “Is that vintage?”
“Vintage eye-talian,” Ike says.
“Mind if I take a look?” Hannah asks.
“Have at it, but you need an engineering degree to work this thing.”
“Let me see what I can do.” She inspects the machine with a practiced eye, making humming sounds. “See this projectile here.” She holds up the metal bit. “That’s your portafilter. Your espresso goes in it.” Hannah demonstrates, tamping the powder gently. “You have to be careful not to press it too tight or the water can’t get through.”
“Told you that you pressed it too tight,” Garry says.
“Shut up,” Ike says. To Hannah: “Go on.”
“The portafilter goes in the grouphead.” Hannah twists it into the spouty thing.
“Grouphead,” Garry repeats. “Ike, maybe we should be writing this down.”
“Richie, write this down,” Ike orders.
Richie grabs a pen and paper as Hannah fits the portafilter into the grouphead. “I think you pull down on the lever here.” She pulls down one of Gaga’s robot arms. The seal sounds like a kiss.
“Is there water in the canister?” She peeks inside. “Yep, and it’s heated up. Now, where’s the brew button?”
“Right there,” Ike says, tapping it gingerly like it might launch
a missile. “If you want my advice, you better take cover. She has a tendency to blow.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Hannah says with a bemused smile. She places a cup under the drip tray and hits the button. Instead of making that terrible knocking sound, the machine gives out a long hiss and then a low hum, releasing a shot full of rich brown espresso.
“Look at the foam on it,” Richie says. “It looks like a teeny-tiny coffee beer.”
“It’s called crema,” Ike says admiringly. “You made crema on your first try.”
“Hardly my first try,” Hannah replies. “I spent six months working as a barista.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“Yep. After I dropped out of college and moved up here from Arizona.”
“I didn’t know that either.”
“So many mysteries yet to be revealed . . .” she says as we lock eyes. And I feel it. The tingling. The knowing. The inevitable. It’s still there. Even if she’s an addict.
“Now let’s make some foam,” Hannah continues. “You want cold milk, right out of the fridge. It froths better and you get more aeration.” She flips the wand, and suddenly it sounds like an actual coffee bar in here. “You don’t want to overdo it, or you’ll scald the milk and alter the flavor. You should be able to drink it without waiting for it to cool.” She taps a metal canister lightly against the counter. “Now you let the foam settle.” She pours the milk over the espresso, topping it with a dollop of foam. “Voilà.” She holds the drink out for Ike.
He stares at the cup. I wonder if his pride is wounded. After all, he’s been wrestling this machine for days and Hannah figured it out in two minutes. But then he whips out his bandana and cleans a spot of milk off Gaga before accepting the cup from Hannah. He takes a sip, closes his eyes, and sighs. Then he opens his eyes again and looks at Hannah. “You think you can show me how to do it?”
* * *
Hannah spends the next hour teaching Ike how to make various espresso drinks. Each time I think she’s done, Ike has a new request. I watch, tapping my foot, clearing my throat. It’s not that I’m excited to have this conversation with Hannah but recent experience has shown the more I put something off, the more impossible it becomes.
“You think I can figure out how to make those designs? Hearts and trees and the like?” Ike asks after he’s mastered macchiatos.
“Maybe a bluebird,” Richie suggests.
“Bird’s gonna be hard,” Garry says. “Maybe a feather. Or a book. Book’s just a rectangle. That could be the signature foam swirl.”
“Great, can we master foam designs later?” I ask, gesturing toward Hannah.
“Aaron wants to be alone with his girlfriend,” Richie clarifies.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I say. Hannah frowns. “I mean, she’s not not . . . It’s just . . . We just . . .”
“We can do swirls next time,” Ike interrupts, saving me.
Thank you, I mouth to Ike, and then Hannah and I retreat to the relative privacy of the porch, where she pulls out a small pouch and starts rolling a cigarette. “Don’t judge,” she says as she lights it, the flame illuminating her freckles. “It’s cliché, I know. But I usually only smoke one a day. Unless I’m at a meeting. You know how that goes.”
“I do?”
“Don’t you?” She looks confused, which makes me confused, but before I can process any of it, I spot a janky wood-paneled station wagon crawling down Main Street as if the driver’s lost. A car like that, it’s gotta be a collector.
“Hang on,” I tell Hannah, leaping off the porch stairs and waving down the car. “You a friend of Lou’s?”
“Yep. I’m Bart. Here to see the vinyl.”
“Park out front. I’ll show you in.”
I turn back to Hannah. “I gotta deal with this. Give me five.”
“Yeah, no problem,” she says.
I take Bart to the store, stopping to look over my shoulder back at Hannah. “You won’t leave?”
“I won’t leave.”
I lead him to the basement, ignoring Ike’s look. When I open the bins, his breath catches, his jaw drops. “Whoa,” he says. “This is like the Shangri-la of records.”
“Your own personal Lost Horizon.”
“Huh?” he says, not getting the book reference.
“Never mind. I’m gonna give you my number. When you’re ready, text me. We’ll settle up down here.”
“Lou already told me the deal,” Bart says absently, pulling out AC/DC’s Back in Black from the first bin.
When I get back to Hannah, she’s stubbing out her cigarette. “So,” she says. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“What? No! I mean the girlfriend thing, I just didn’t wanna . . .”
She gives me a look. “I’m kidding, Aaron.”
“You are?”
“Hard to break up if we’re not together yet.”
Yet. I cling at that yet like a drowning man clings to a life preserver.
“So, I don’t know how to broach this . . . the . . .” I point to the cigarette stub. “Whole meeting thing?”
She exhales, visibly relieved. “I’m so glad you brought it up.”
“You are?”
She nods. “It’s not like it’s a secret. But I haven’t really dated since I got sober, and a year out of the game, I’m rusty. I kept waiting for it to come up naturally, as it usually does with people in the program. Or I thought maybe we’d bump into each other at a meeting . . .”
My mind digests this in chunks:
Hannah has been sober for a year.
Hannah thinks we are dating.
Bump into me at a meeting? Why would she bump into me at a meeting unless . . . ?
Oh, fuck.
“Hullo! You must be Hannah,” Ira calls, clomping up the stairs with Bev. “So nice to meet you. I’m Ira. This is Bev. And, Aaron, look who we found!” Ira smiles broadly as he gestures to Penny Macklemore. “I wanted to show off what we’re doing with the store.”
My brain tries to process all of this: Hannah thinks I’m an addict. And Penny’s at our store. But my brain cannot process it. My brain has short-circuited.
“Can you give me like five more minutes?” I ask Hannah.
She cocks her head to the side, a little less chill this time. “Okaaay?”
I race into the store after Penny. Is she going to tell? No. She can’t tell. That was one of my conditions. But I didn’t have a lawyer or anything, as she reminded me. I didn’t put it in writing.
I try to read Penny. But she’s a closed book.
“Guess what?” Ike bellows at Ira. “Gaga’s working.”
“Mazel tov!” Ira calls.
“Who’s Gaga?” Penny asks.
“The espresso machine,” Bev replies.
“Would you like one?” Ira asks Penny. “On the house.”
“That’s very kind, but I don’t go in for those fancy coffee drinks.”
Ike offers espressos to Bev and Ira too, who both decline. “I wanna keep practicing,” Ike says.
“What about that guy in the basement?” Richie suggests.
“What guy in the basement?” Ira asks.
“Uhhh . . .” My mind is reeling to what of Mom’s stuff we might be selling. “Some guy wanting to buy the porch swing.”
“We’re selling the porch swing?” Ira asks.
“Yeah. I mean, the ramp is where the swing hung.” I glance at Penny to see if she has any opinions on the ramp, and then at Hannah to make sure she’s still on the porch. None evident, and yes. “There’s not really room for it anymore.”
“Oh, okay,” Ira says. “It’s just that Annie used to sit in that all day long.”
Bev pats Ira on the shoulder. “It’ll be good for someone to get use out of it,”
she says. “A second life.”
Ira nods.
“I’ll go see if the porch-swing guy wants an espresso,” I say. I run to the basement, where Bart is in the zone. “Can you do me a huge favor?” I ask him. “Can you take that when you leave?” I point to the swing.
“What is it?”
“A porch swing. You can have it for free.”
Bart’s brow furrows. “But I don’t have a porch.”
“Can you take it anyway?” Bart stares blankly. “You have room in your car. You can sell it. Or dump it as soon as you get out of town. I don’t care.”
Bart shakes his head. “Seems like a hassle.”
I look around. “I’ll throw in a couple extra records for free.”
Bart licks his lips. “A couple?”
“Three.”
“Guess I got me a porch swing.”
* * *
Back upstairs, the shitstorm has turned into a shit tsunami. Because Angela Silvestri, she of the crumb cake with Life cereal topping, has arrived with a Tupperware full of samples.
“We were thinking of having baked goods in the café,” Ira is telling Penny. “And Angela volunteered to make a few test batches.”
“It’s not written in stone,” I interject. “I mean, none of it is. We might not even do a café.”
“Of course we’re gonna do a café,” Ike says. “By the way, did the porch-swing guy want an espresso?”
“Uhh, maybe later.”
“Doesn’t anyone want one?” Ike asks.
“I wouldn’t say no to a latte, one shot,” Angela says. “The cake pairs very nicely with coffee.”
“I didn’t know you baked professionally,” Penny tells Angela.
“Oh, it’s always been a hobby,” Angela replies. “But I recently retired and I’m so bored I could cry. And then Ike called and asked me about supplying the café’s baked goods and at first I said I couldn’t do it, but then I thought about you, Penny.”
“About me?”
“Yes, if you could go into business at your age, why couldn’t I? Maybe this is the beginning and one day I’ll have a chain of bakeries.” She beams at Penny, who grimaces back. “Now, who wants a slice?”