by Yvonne Prinz
When a fourteen-year-old girl who’s trying way too hard to look eighteen leans over the counter snapping her gum and says, “Hey,” I ask her how I can help. I can’t take my eyes off the raw pink of her freshly pierced nostril. My own personal piercing experience followed by the cardigan fiasco is still pretty fresh in my mind.
“I’m looking for a CD?” She states it in the form of a question.
“Can you be more specific?” I ask, also in the form of a question.
“Yeah. It’s by this girl. I heard it on the radio, like, a thousand times. I can sing it. Should I sing it?” She snaps her gum. Her breath smells like fake watermelon.
“No.” We discourage American Idol auditions. “Did you happen to see the music video?”
“Um, yeah, sure.”
“Okay, turn around and look at that rack behind you. Does anyone pop out at you?”
“Omigod! There she is!” She grabs a Lily Allen CD and clutches it to her heart: another satisfied customer.
The phone rings and I grab it. “Bob and Bob’s.” I cradle it under my chin as I ring up the girl’s CD; she vibrates like Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua in anticipation.
“Allie, it’s me,” says my mom. She sounds groggy.
“Did you just get up?” I ask, sounding like her parole officer. I take the girl’s crumpled bills and hand her the change. I slip the CD into a psychedelic Bob & Bob’s bag and hand it to her.
“Sort of. Sorry I was so late getting in. I hope you didn’t worry.”
“No,” I lie. “I went through all your jewelry and decided what to sell if you were dead.”
“Yeah? What did you come up with?”
“Nothing. You have crap jewelry. So, how did it go?”
“He’s nice. His name’s Jack.”
I don’t acknowledge the name. “Nice?”
“Well, he’s nice and smart and interesting, and kind of funny.”
“Funny?” I wasn’t prepared for funny. I wasn’t even prepared for nice.
“Yes. Funny, like he made me laugh.”
“Like out loud or just a chuckle here and there?”
“Out loud.”
Bob walks by me and mimes going for coffee or beer; it’s the same gesture. I wave at him.
“So, he makes you laugh out loud?” I ask again, doubtfully.
“Yes. Out loud.” She starts to lose patience. “Would you prefer he were a serial killer? Could you at least try to be a little more positive?”
I would point out that, this early in the game, it would be foolish to assume he’s not a serial killer, but I feel she might not appreciate that. “Sorry. Are you going to see him again?”
“Yes. Thursday. He’s coming over for dinner.”
“You mean to our house?”
“Yes.”
A line is forming at my cash register.
“But we don’t do dinner.”
“We’ll think of something. Let’s talk when you get home, okay?”
“Okay.” I click the phone off. I start ringing people up, avoiding eye contact so I can analyze my shocking behavior regarding “Jack.” Do I not want my mother to be happy? Is that it? What’s this nagging discomfort I’m feeling? Am I afraid she’ll fall in love and get married and move to the Midwest and have children with “Jack,” leaving me alone in that rambling old house with only Suki the ghost and an insolent cat for company? It seems rather unlikely. My mom doesn’t even acknowledge the Midwest as a real place and she had her tubes tied ages ago, after I was born. Maybe they’ll adopt chubby, happy little Chinese babies, hundreds of them. Love does strange things to people. Look at my dad; he’s overlooking an IQ in the negatives to be with a woman he says he loves. I try to put the whole “Jack” thing out of my mind but it hovers in the back of it like a needy first grader with his hand up in the air, trying to get my attention.
To make matters worse, as my “up before dawn” fatigue starts catching up with me, Joey Spinelli, hands-down the coolest guy at my high school, gets in line. He possesses a certain swagger specific to Italians and an old-fashioned brand of handsome that I adore in spite of myself. My only interaction with him was that our lockers were next to each other for a whole school year in tenth grade so I was privy to the comings and goings of his various girlfriends, many of whom were in eleventh grade, all of whom looked like beauty pageant contestants (not only was I not a contestant, I was not even qualified to spray glue on their butts for the swimsuit competition). As Joey moves closer to the front of the line I pretend not to notice him even though he’s blinking like neon. Then he’s standing right in front of me, Springsteen CD in hand. He looks at me the way he looks at all members of the opposite sex, starting with my slept-on attempt at a retro Joan Jett hairstyle; my unwashed face with traces of yesterday’s eyeliner and mascara, the only makeup I ever wear, still lingering somewhere near my eyes, I hope; and down to the Stray Cats, stopping for as long as it takes to appraise my breasts (God, why didn’t I keep looking for that bra?); and then down to the counter I’m standing behind, where he’s forced to use his imagination regarding my butt. I see a light of recognition go on. Not a bright light, more of a flashlight.
“Heyyyyyyy. . .” He struggles for my name, comes up empty.
“Allie,” I offer.
“Right. Allie.” He points at me. He looks around. “You work here?”
“Sure hope so, I’ve been coming here for two years.”
He chuckles and leans in a bit. “You look good,” he says, giving me the once-over again. He has a way of saying it that makes you understand that he knows his approval means a lot to people.
You look good, I think to myself and, in spite of my inner feminist, I’m thrilled to hear that Joey Spinelli thinks I look good. For an entire school year, I stood six inches away from him several times a day, waiting for him to even notice that I existed, let alone comment on how I looked. “Thanks,” I say. I busy myself with ringing up his CD. My cheeks feel hot.
“So, whaddya doing for the summer?”
“You’re lookin’ at it.”
“Yeah, me too. I’m making pizza at my dad’s place in Piedmont. You should stop by sometime: Rusty’s Pizza on Piedmont Avenue.” He digs around in his wallet and comes up with a business card with frayed edges. “Here.” He slides it over to me. I pick it up. It’s an illustration of a fat little man in a chef’s hat tossing a pizza in the air. It says, RUSTY’S’BEST PIZZA THIS SIDE OF ITALY. I flip the card over. It says, Pamela, with a phone number.
“You need this?” I show him the back of the card. He thinks for a few seconds.
“Nah, ancient history.”
Suddenly, he seems more human to me. Like me, he’s working for the summer. He’s not at some resort for the insanely handsome. “Okay, maybe I’ll see you there.” I slide the bag with his CD across the counter.
“Hope so.” He takes his bag and saunters out like James Dean. Then he executes the classic film-star turn back. “I mean it,” he says over his shoulder. Did he wink at me? I thought I saw him wink.
Well, it took two years and change, but Joey Spinelli finally noticed me. I can’t wait to tell Kit.
And while I’m still reeling from my Joey moment, about fifteen minutes before we close the store, he walks in the front door. He’s wearing dark glasses, though, and he’s skulking like he doesn’t want to be noticed, but I notice him, all right; I notice the way he walks, the way he holds his mouth, the line of his jaw, the shape of his face. I’m intimate with it all. He walks over to the blues LPs and starts flipping through them, looking at the back of one by Elmore James and then another by Howlin’ Wolf. I start my closing duties, keeping one eye on him at all times. I’m disappointed in the sunglasses. I like the idea of our eyes meeting. I like to pretend that we share a secret. Bob is up at the front, running the day’s totals, something he likes to do on Saturdays, the only day the store makes any money. I can tell by the look on his face that it wasn’t the day he was hoping for.
“I should sell the damn place and move to Florida,” he grumbles under his breath like we haven’t heard it a thousand times.
I watch my friend in blues meander over to jazz for a while. Then he heads over to world and stops short right in front of Africa. He quickly flips through country after country in a very distracted fashion, sort of the same way I flip through Sports Illustrated at the dentist’s office because it’s all Dr. Gould has in his waiting room. Maybe he’s looking for something new to listen to tonight. That happens to me all the time. I get the urge to listen to something that I’ve never heard before, something that will surprise me, something out of my comfort zone.
Abruptly, he turns on his heel and makes his way to the front door, glancing at me quickly as he passes the counter. He seems to suddenly recognize me and he slides his sunglasses onto the top of his head, exposing his amazing eyes, which look a bit faraway at the moment. He gives me that same half smile again; then he looks as though he’s remembered that he left something on the stove at home and stalks out.
I shrug and empty the register of money and Visa slips and trade vouchers to bring to the back for the closeout.
Later, I tell Kit about Joey. She also has a massive crush on him that started in seventh grade, and she can’t believe he invited us to his pizza place. Yes, it’s “us” now.
Kit pretends to clean her aunt’s house while we talk, something she does to earn extra cash for her road trip.
“Well, first of all, it wasn’t a formal invitation; it was like a ‘maybe I’ll see you there’ type of thing, and it’s not his pizza place; it’s his dad’s.”
“Still. We’re going, right?”
“Yuh-huh.” I definitely want to see the animal that is Joey Spinelli in his natural environment.
Watching Kit allegedly clean, I can’t imagine that Kit’s aunt has ever seen Kit’s room, because if she had there’d be no way she’d believe that Kit could clean anything, let alone an entire house. I sit in an overstuffed chair with my feet on the coffee table and flip through a National Geographic magazine I found next to a stack of coasters with different wine labels on them. A PBS program on gray whales is on TV. I tell Kit about the mystery guy. It’s been a big day, boy-wise.
“Do you think he might just be shy?” asks Kit, as she feather-dusts the coffee table around my bare feet and then sits in a chair across from me and kicks off her sandals. She rests her feet on the coffee table sole-to-sole with mine. She feather-dusts her feet.
“I don’t know. It was more like moody than shy.”
“Uh-huh. I have days like that, fat days. I didn’t think guys did, though.”
“Unless they’re hiding something,” I suggest.
“Like what?” Kit’s distracted by a whale breaching and slapping its tail on the water, causing a mini tidal wave.
I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t really know anything about this guy. He could be hiding a lot of things, I suppose, or maybe his eyes were tired from partying, or maybe he had a migraine; maybe it’s as simple as that. As a rule, though, people who skulk around indoors wearing sunglasses are generally the same kind of people who will carry on an inane cell phone conversation while you’re ringing them up; they’re generally assholes. But he’s not an asshole. He couldn’t be. Could he?
“You wanna Popsicle?” asks Kit, leaping out of the big chair and heading for the kitchen.
“What flavor?” I ask.
Kit pulls open the freezer compartment of her aunt’s massive refrigerator. “Grape, orange, lemon.”
“Grape, please.”
She returns with two grape Popsicles and hands me one, plopping back into her chair. We watch the whales frolic carefree in the ocean while we lick our Popsicles. The narrator, who sounds suspiciously like Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprise, soberly tells us how grim the future looks for these animals because global warming is killing off the food that they live on. I’m glad the whales can’t hear him. They should enjoy life while they can.
“We should save the whales,” I muse.
“Uh-huh. We should.” Kit has licked her Popsicle down to a nub. She puts it in her mouth and the stick emerges empty except for a purple stain. She swallows and shows me her purple tongue. I show her mine.
“Joey Spinelli,” says Kit. “Man, that guy rocks my world.”
“Yeah, mine too.”
“He only likes dumb chicks with big boobs.”
“Yup.”
“Idiot.”
“Hey, what do you wanna do tonight?” I ask, changing the subject. It’s an unspoken agreement between us that we spend every Saturday night together, because Niles’s band is always playing somewhere and the glamour of being the bass player’s girlfriend wore off a long time ago. Besides, Kit’s sixteen, and most places check ID even if you’re with the band. They never seem to check the band’s ID, though. Niles is eighteen and he’s been playing crappy, hole-in-the-wall clubs since he was sixteen.
“I dunno. There’s that party at Brie’s but it sounds like a total drag. She said something about board games. What are we, senior citizens?” Kit looks at the clock. “I’d better get the vacuum.”
I ease out of my chair. “Call me when you’re done.”
I walk out the front door and drop my skateboard on the sidewalk in the direction of home. I’ve put off going home long enough, I suppose. I really need to work on my fanzine for a while. I know that this “Jack” guy hasn’t even set foot in my house, but somehow I’m already considering his presence in my mom’s life a full-on home invasion, as though I might wake up tomorrow morning and find him making pancakes in our kitchen and cheerfully asking me if I’d like a cup of “joe.” I don’t want that pancake-making home invader anywhere near me on a Sunday morning, or ever, for that matter. He probably even leaves the toilet seat up and beard crumbs in the sink and pubic hair in the shower . . . man dirt. I want him out. God, I need a therapist.
My mom is upstairs working when I arrive home. I can tell because Leonard Cohen’s Death of a Ladies’ Man is playing on the stereo and it’s turned way up. She hasn’t listened to this CD since long before my dad left. Should I read this as some sort of a cryptic red flag? Pierre is lounging on the dining table. I bet he’s had a grueling day. He lifts his head slightly as I pass. The cat version of “Oh, it’s just you.” I walk to the kitchen, open the fridge, not expecting much, close it again and walk up the stairs. My mom’s staring at her computer, singing along with Leonard. This would be the perfect opportunity to scare the crap out of her but I decide against it.
“Mom!” I yell above the music.
She turns around and smiles at me. Is she glowing? Is it possible that she’s glowing?
“Hi, honey. Can you turn down the music for me?”
I run down the stairs and turn Leonard way down. I run back up again. I need to get a better look at her. I’m still panting from the stairs when she says:
“He called.”
“Who?”
“Jack.”
“Nicholson?”
“Allie, please.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he had a wonderful time last night and he wanted to hear my voice before he boarded his plane.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Um, I don’t know, the Midwest somewhere—one of those M states. Or was it W?” She shrugs and smiles.
And, by the way, she is glowing.
I shut the door of my bedroom and start in on today’s blog entry:
Janis Joplin—Cheap Thrills: This LP should be a seminal part of every vinyl collection. Cover art by Robert Crumb: That’s enough reason right there to own this LP, but put it on the turntable and your life will never be the same. Let’s start with the best cut: “Summertime.” No one pulls it off like Janis (but the Porgy and Bess sound track is a close second). She comes from somewhere so deep that you think she might not make it to the end of the song. Mix up a frosty pitcher of lemonade and vodka (in her
honor) and let her take you somewhere. “Piece of My Heart,” what can I say? She’d have pulled her own heart out of her chest and showed it to you if she could. “Ball and Chain.” Nine minutes of two parts bliss and one part agony. Go, Janis.
There were two comments posted yesterday below my blog about glam rock. One was from Jan in Iceland. He tersely told me that I forgot to mention Elton John, who is often overlooked for his important contribution to the glam movement. I comment on his comment: Thanks, Jan. You’re absolutely right. Elton deserves his own issue, though. I’ll be sure to devote an entire blog to him in the near future. The other comment is from Jim in Seattle, who wrote: Vinyl is dead; downloading is where it’s at. Face it, Princess.
Chapter 4
I’m sitting cross-legged on the wooden bench at Krishna Copy, listening to the zip-whirr-sigh of the massive copying machine as it prints my Vinyl Princess fanzine. To print, collate and staple five hundred copies, it’s going to cost me sixty-nine dollars and seventy-two cents, a lot of money for me, but not bad when you consider that I’m looking to start a movement. I wonder what the Black Panthers spent on flyers in the sixties when they got going.
Matt, the clerk who’s helping me at Krishna Copy, is throwing in colored paper for free. He seems to recognize what I’m trying to do here and he’s solemnly sworn not to spill my identity even if he’s tortured or held at gunpoint. It took a long time to settle on a color. I almost went with purple but decided it was too dark. In the end I settled on turquoise, or “pool,” as it’s called on the paper sample.
Across from me, pinned to the wall, is a huge map of the U.S. I stare at it for a moment, musing about M. (That’s right, I’m calling him M now; no more “mystery guy,” just M.) One thing I know for sure about M is that he’s not from around here. My eyes drift to the South on the map and stop on Greenville, South Carolina. Maybe M is from the South. Maybe he has one of those charming southern accents. It occurs to me that I have yet to hear him speak. Maybe, unlike me, he grew up in a rambling house full of love and good smells and lots of brothers and sisters. The kind of family I always secretly envied, where the dinner table is raucous and big plates of food get passed around and everyone talks over one another and dogs sleep under the table. Once I get to know M he’ll fill in all the blanks for me. Then I’ll bring him home and show him my record collection and he’ll be blown away.