Off the Rails
Page 11
It’s Thursday night and I’m hanging out at a record store. It’s the kind of place you’d only find in Detroit. Three months ago The Twelve Inch Groove didn’t exist. It was storage area in the back of the bowling alley. I don’t mean just any bowling alley. I mean the Midtown bowling alley that also has an upscale restaurant on one side, a bar filled with regulars up front and a club upstairs where anybody from Whitey Morgan to DJ Assault will be on stage. Two weeks of cleaning and moving crap around, and bammo, it’s a store.
Sure, you have to weave through the bowlers to get here but as long as you keep off the lanes and don’t mess with the barrel-chested guys hurrying to get their next pitcher of Coors before their turn rolls around, traipsing through is no big deal.
“You like this track?”
On my left is what looks to be a walking ad for Goodwill. Baggy pants, huge Red Wings shirt, but short, clean-cut bleached hair. Two-tone Sperrys. It’s like he can’t make up his mind. Can’t commit.
On second thought, maybe I have something in common with the guy. Commitment and I aren’t on speaking terms, apparently. I pay attention to the music blaring from the speakers. “I think it’s from Criminal Minded.”
“BDP. Ooooold Skooooool.” He smiles, obviously happy with the way he can stretch out words.
Nice teeth though.
I flip through the Retro Classics, wondering if it’s possible to develop any sort of relationship based on a good set of teeth. Seems doubtful but who knows? Maybe. Anything is possible in Motown. Especially in the spring when everyone is emerging from the winter darkness like—well in this guy’s case—trolls from under a mud-coated, concrete overpass.
He starts talking again, this time about the horrors of new rappers and how they’re all sellouts. Lil Wayne for example. “Take that Lollipop song. Stupidest damn song on the whole fuckin’ radio. He should’ve been long gone after that shit. But he’s not. He’s still here. Gettin’ paid.”
I do not need to degrade myself with this sort of stupidity, talking about rappers as though them getting paid has anything to do with me. Inside my head I hear myself whining. Not about the guy’s behavior—predictable. But about my own—pointless. My subconscious is complaining about the sad state of my affairs and the way I spend too much time hanging out in the sort of places that seem like going there is a good idea but once there, after looking around, it’s obvious being there isn’t so hot after all. Do I leave these places? No. I draw on my inner self, that practical rural Midwestern part of me that I’m always trying to hide, and I make do.
Hayley, I say to myself, there has to be more to life than this. Deep inside I accept that there has to be a way for me to get my shit together. No, I’ve never had my shit together before but it could happen. Right? Grasping for a sense of purpose, I push away from the classics and say “See ya” to the guy.
“Sweetness,” the guy pulls out a Gap Band promo twelve-inch doesn’t notice that I’m leaving. How flattering.
I head to the vending machine for a little something but spot a mob milling around it so I detour to the ladies’ room that the bowling alley and record store share with the bar. There are a couple of couches in there, separate from the stalls so it’s pretty common to find people randomly hanging. I go to the mirror. The girl staring back at me looks pretty much like she did an hour ago. I coat my lips with more gloss anyway.
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Of course you can wear plaids that don’t match.”
That from Scotty, the notorious hairdresser to the stars—stars being the local news anchors and those girls at the auto show who strut around Cobo Hall and stretch across the new model cars. He pats the redhead next to him and adds, “It’s just a matter of attitude. It’s all in how you do it.”
The bowling alley regulars are getting used to finding Scotty perched on the counter in front of the mirror. Actually, I think they’re a bit excited about the whole thing and are starting to appreciate the alternative flair that having a guy hanging out in the ladies’ room gives The Woodward Lanes. The girl next to him is an exception—she isn’t sold yet. But she will be. What she doesn’t know is that in the end, Scotty somehow always manages to be right.
“I have four guys signed up already, Hayley. Are you sure you don’t want to get in on this with me?” My friend Josie has appeared and is sitting on the sink, chomping on a Twizzlers. She’s one of those beautiful, sexy girls that pretty much always look awesome.
I slip my lip gloss into my purse. “I’m positive,” I say.
Josie recently cooked up what she calls a perfect business opportunity. Perfectly ridiculous, I said a couple of nights ago when she’d cornered me.
“Let me explain it to you first, before you say no,” she insisted.
I reluctantly agreed to listen to her plan when she unscrewed the cap of a pleasantly large bottle of our fine friend Carlo Rossi. From what I remember, it’s this deal where she videos guys talking about themselves and saying what kind of girl they want to go out with. Then she offers the recordings to girls. The point—to hook them up with guys without the total overexposure of the Internet sites.
All this for a price, of course.
The details are kind of fuzzy because it took the whole bottle of wine for her to explain everything. The more she talked, the more sure I became. I was not cut out for the digital dating business world. All this explains why I shake my head when she asks, again, if I am totally sure I do not want in. Even if it means missing out on all the money.
“I don’t care about making money.” That is a bit of a lie but it sounds good.
Josie grabs my arm and pulls me over to the lumpy couch vacated by two giggling girls who’d obviously been helping their parents with those pitchers of Coors. After we watch them totter out, she turns back to me. “True or false—it is impossible to find a decent guy to date.”
I look around the bathroom. Unrelenting, Scotty is still trying to get the resistant girl to come over to the risky side of dressing without boundaries. I hear the drone of that Goodwill dude. The answer pops out, “True.”
Josie swallows the last of her Twizzlers then pushes her blonde curls out of her face. “True or false—guys love to talk about themselves.”
I don’t even have to think that one over. “True.”
Her face is triumphant as she springs the last one on me. “True or false—girls are willing to try almost anything to meet the elusive Mr. Right.”
Like hang out in a record store that’s so bootleg it’s in the back of a bowling alley?
Like sit in the same crappy donut shop every morning for a month, waiting and wishing, that just once her life could be like a movie—or at least a commercial?
I fight against these truths but can’t come up with anything. So I offer an opinion. “Not everyone is looking for a boyfriend.”
“Of course not, some girls already have one.” Josie frowns and looks at me, as though seeing the truth for the first time. The truth that I don’t have a boyfriend.
There are other truths she doesn’t see but those are definitely staying hidden from her and everyone else in the city of Detroit.
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About the Author
Thrill-seeking risk takers, heroes with a dark past, sexy locales, untamed women! Isabelle Drake writes stories featuring men and women who aren’t afraid to go after what they want. An avid traveller, she’ll go just about anywhere—at least once—to meet people and get story ideas.
Email: isabelle@isabelledrake.com
Isabelle loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.
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