The Vinyl Princess (15 page)

K
it and I are reluctantly making our way to the police station for the second time in two days to serve hard time. We’re not so keen on the whole idea anymore. At first it felt like the right thing to do; it felt like we were helping fight crime and maybe even saving a life, but the place fills us with dread now. It’s one big, bad vibe and it’s exhausting to think about going through those books again, looking at those faces, dealing with Officer Davis, even sitting on the bench in the waiting room with a whole new set of tragic characters.

When we’re a block away from Telegraph, a cop car whizzes past us, lights on, siren whining, then another cop car, then an ambulance, then a fire truck. They all turn left onto Telegraph, going the wrong way on a one-way street. Kit and I look at each other and turn around and follow them. It doesn’t take long for us to catch up with the cops. They’re only a block and a half away. They’re all parked out in front of Fabulous Falafels with their lights still flashing. The EMTs are unloading two stretchers from the ambulance and rushing them into the restaurant. The cops already have everything blocked off and a couple of them are keeping people out of the area. Kit and I stand on the periphery and strain to see what’s going on. Kit sees a friend of hers in the crowd, a guy who used to work with her. He works at Mario’s now.

“Darnell!” She waves at him.

“Hey!” He walks over to us like he just spotted us at a social event. He’s sipping on a Frappuccino.

“Did you see what happened?”

“Man, you didn’t hear the gunshots? The Telegraph Avenue robbers, man, that’s who it was. Tried to rob Sanje but he was havin’ none of that. He came out of the back with a shotgun and
Blam! Blam! Blam!
He blew those two away. Man, it’s a bloodbath in there. One man down, one injured.” He sips his drink, his eyes wide.

My heart starts to pound.

Through the window of the restaurant I can sort of make out Sanje. He’s sitting in a chair while a cop interviews him. He’s making a lot of hand gestures. Another cop emerges from the restaurant carrying a large assault rifle. It looks almost cartoonish, like something Elmer Fudd might carry during rabbit season. Does Sanje have some sort of weapons arsenal back there, hidden amid the tahini and the pita bread? Or did he figure that sooner or later these guys were going to get around to him and he’d better find something to protect himself with? I peruse the small crowd. Behind us, Bob is standing next to Jimmy the Rasta dude. I catch his eye and he waves at me. Shorty and Jam are here too. They’re working the crowd, trying to drum up a little dinner (Colt 45) money, but no one pays much attention to them even though Jam is wearing a hot-pink boa around his neck and Shorty’s wearing a pillbox hat and carrying a matching handbag.

The first stretcher emerges, wheeled out by an EMT on either side. I know it’s Joel immediately. He has a big piece of gauze strapped to his right thigh but the blood is soaking through it quickly. He’s pale as a corpse but conscious. His jeans are cut open and there’s blood all over them. His hands are streaked with drying blood too. He’s grimacing in pain but underneath that he has the same look on his face as all the men in the mug shot book: regret. Kit grabs my clammy hand and we watch as he passes within a few feet of us. The medallion around his neck that I couldn’t read before is dangling off to the side. It’s a Saint Christopher medallion. The EMTs collapse the stretcher’s wheeled legs and slide it into the ambulance. They jump in after him and slam the doors behind them. The ambulance takes off seconds later, howling up the street. Another ambulance pulls in right behind it. Two more EMTs roll the other stretcher out of the restaurant. The urgency is missing from their steps. The stretcher rolls past us with a blue sheet over it, covering the face. A snakeskin cowboy boot pokes out from under the sheet. They load this stretcher slowly and drive away without turning on the siren. Kit and I exchange a grim look. Another cop car comes sailing around the corner and parks next to the others. Officer Davis eases himself out from behind the wheel and lumbers into the restaurant. He probably resents having to put down his sandwich for this.

The crowd that’s gathered starts to disperse but Kit and I stand there for a while, dumbstruck at what we’ve just seen. Eventually, the cops escort Sanje out of the restaurant and into the back of a police cruiser. He looks directly at the crowd. His face registers no fear at all. In fact, he looks almost smug, like he just provided the neighborhood with a much-needed service. A few people in the crowd start to applaud when they see him but most of us just gape at him, not sure what to think. Even in this neighborhood, we don’t see vigilantism of this magnitude very often. A couple of months ago, there was this punk-ass graffiti artist tagging all the businesses up and down the avenue in broad daylight. One afternoon he tags a panel van that belongs to Gus, a Greek guy who owns the produce stand that the van was parked in front of. Gus chases the kid and tackles him. He throws the kid down on the sidewalk and sits on him, grabs his spray paint can and sprays his face with it. Needless to say, the kid stopped tagging the avenue. That’s about the height of it around here. You really don’t hear about business owners blowing thieves away with assault rifles.

My head is pounding. Lately I’ve been dealing with too many things that are way outside my comfort level: robberies, dead bodies, police stations and mug shots. I’m ready to hide under my bed again but when I get home my mom takes one look at my face and tells me we’re going for sushi. I’m up for it. I could use a break from my life in the form of a California roll. From the look on my pale face, she’s probably also getting a sense that I’m running a bit wild and it’s time for a parental update. We walk up the street together, passing Florence, who’s watering her new flower beds. We say hello and compliment her flowers.

“Did you start a fire in your house?” she asks, looking accusingly at me.

I’d forgotten all about it. “Yeah. Just a small one.”

“I smelled it, the smoke . . . very bad. You should be more careful. Silly girl. You’ll burn down the neighborhood.”

She doesn’t know the half of it. “Sure, Florence, I will.”

Over miso soup and sashimi, I tell my mom about the whole M/Joel business. She watches me tell the story like I’m unraveling the plot of a James Bond film. When I finish, she stares at me in disbelief. Then she looks like she wants to kill me; then she hugs me like she’s glad I’m alive.

“Allie, what in the hell were you thinking? He could have killed you!”

The sushi chef puts an order of yellowtail down in front of us and glances at my mom.

“I know that but I didn’t want to be a snitch, and anyway, it didn’t matter; we never did find him in the mug-shot books, so it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if we’d gone down to the station a couple of days earlier.”

“Sure it would have. They send those sketches across the country. If someone had recognized him, the cops might have found out who they are.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that they’d find them, just because they might know their names.”

She waves my comments aside with her hand. “Okay. Look. You have to tell me this stuff. No more secrets. Why would you keep something like that to yourself?”

“I did tell you about the robbery part but you were camping with Jack when it happened.”

She winces at the memory. “God, I’m a horrible mother.”

“What are you talking about? You’re a mediocre mother. Horrible is much too strong a word.”

She pinches my arm. “Promise, promise, promise me you’ll talk to me if anything like this ever happens again. You’re a sixteen-year-old girl; you’re not an FBI operative. You’re supposed to be having fun, not chasing criminals around town.”

“Who’s chasing? I wasn’t chasing.”

“Promise,” she says sternly.

“Okay, I promise.”

“Good. And I want you to quit that job.”

“Mom, they caught them. One of them is dead. One of them can’t walk. I don’t think I’m in danger anymore.”

“For now you’re not but what about the next time? Yesterday I saw a help-wanted sign in the window of that muffin place on Euclid. Why don’t you apply there?”

“Muffins? Mom, you want me on antidepressants? You want me to weigh three hundred pounds?”

“Okay, you’re right; forget the muffins, but I want you to look for a different job. I mean it this time.”

“Sure, Mom. I will,” I lie. Personally, I think the danger has passed. My mother might believe that there’s danger lurking around every corner waiting to point a gun in my face, but before Joel and his buddy arrived on the scene, nothing much happened on Telegraph that represented real crime.

My mom sips her tea, looking thoughtful. “Hey, can I ask you something? You helped me put my personal ad online. Is there anything in there that would suggest to anyone that I’m outdoorsy?”

“No. We specifically tried to make you sound indoorsy.”

A Japanese waitress refills our green tea.

“Okay, so, since Jack contacted
me
and asked
me
out, shouldn’t it be
his
problem if I’m not quite ready to dangle off the side of Mount Everest? I mean, why would he contact me at all when I’m clearly not his type?”

“You’ve been thinking about this all day, haven’t you?”

“A little.”

“Well, maybe he was attracted to your photo and he thought he could make you drink the Kool-Aid, or I mean the Gatorade, and convert you into one of them, you know?”

“‘Them’?”

“Yeah, people who own gear and consider polar fleece the height of fashion and live on PowerBars and have bike racks on their cars.”

“Oh. Them.” She rolls her eyes. “Allie, I can’t go back in there.”

“In where?”

“That world: the picking, the waiting to be picked, the daring to be hopeful only to be disappointed. I’d rather be alone and sad and celibate for the rest of my life. At least I’ll finish my dissertation.”

I chew my sushi thoughtfully. “We should kill Jack. I know a guy.” I think about Sanje’s big gun.

She laughs. “You wanna hear the crazy part? I wasn’t really that into him. I think I talked myself into it because he’s the exact opposite of your dad.”

“Oh, by the way, he called yesterday. Kee Kee’s been told by her ob/gyn that she can’t ride horses for the rest of her pregnancy. And that’s not even the best part. She’s banned his drums from the house; she’s afraid they’ll upset the fetus. He had to move his kit out to the stables with the horses. Apparently, he gets his own stall but he has to share the hay with the other horses. He’s only allowed to drum during the day while the horses are out in the paddock. Kee Kee also brought a trainer over from Germany to work the horses till the baby comes. I think he said her name was Ingrid, or was it Ingaborg? Anyway, when she’s not on horseback, swearing at the horses in German, she walks around the property slapping a riding crop against her leather boots.”

My mom smirks. “Thanks, Al. I feel a lot better.”

“Don’t mention it.” I sip my tea and pat her hand. “You see, in the end we’re all miserable. It’s the human condition.”

I’m so exhausted that night that I can barely climb the stairs to bed. I feel like I could sleep for a year. I fall into bed and pass out. In the middle of the night I wake with a start. I lie there in the dark and think about Joel. He’s probably in a hospital bed right now with a cop sitting in a chair outside the door. I wonder if he’s on painkillers or if he’s awake and alone and afraid of what’s going to happen to him. Is he thinking about his dead friend? Were they even friends? I wonder if he has a good lawyer or if he’ll have to use a public defender. I wonder where his real parents live and if they’ve been notified. Will they be surprised to hear he’s in trouble? Will they even care? Does he have any brothers or sisters? Is anyone sitting on a plane or a bus right now, traveling through the dead of night to be at his side? Are they looking out the window into the dark, trying to figure out what went wrong?

I click on the lamp and get out of bed to look for my backpack. I slide the rolled-up drawing of Joel out and unroll it. After what’s happened, I look at him differently, almost with pity. I flatten it out and slide it between two records in the blues section of my shelf.

I
wake up early on Thursday morning determined to work on my deeply neglected blog. Today’s blog (and yesterday’s and tomorrow’s) is about sound tracks on LP. Yesterday I explored
The Mission
sound track by Ennio Morricone. I think this is my favorite instrumental sound track. Turns out it’s a lot of people’s. Comments were through the roof. I had to mention
Ragtime
by Randy Newman too, because it’s impossible to leave out if you’re discussing sound tracks. Today I’m discussing
Reservoir Dogs
: best sound track featuring previously recorded songs, and a kick-ass movie too. What the hell happened to Quentin Tarantino, anyway?
Kill Bill?
Puleeeeese. I tell readers to stay tuned ’cause we’re doing sound tracks all week.

Elliot has sent me a mockup of the blog, not live yet. I love it. I love Elliot. He’s some sort of blog-designing genius. I have to think of a cool way to repay him. The logo looks fantastic and everything is all organized into its own little box. There’re little LP bullets to click on different sections, and the daily blogs have album cover art to go with them. He also included simple directions for me to do my daily updates myself. I feel like I’m elevated in the blogosphere hierarchy now, if there is one. Elliot asked me if I wanted to post a picture of myself and I said no. I want my readers to imagine me. I also suspect that they would totally freak out if they found out that I’m sixteen.

My mom’s still in bed when I head downstairs. I open the front door to see Joel’s face staring at me from the front page of the newspaper on my doormat. His real name is William “Billy” Hennessy. He’s wanted in three states—New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania—for armed robbery. His partner in crime, also known as “the dead guy,” is next to him on the page. His name was Richard Sacci. He’s wanted in the same three states plus Maine for assault, armed robbery, identity theft and auto theft—charming. Both of them are from Baltimore originally, but something tells me that they haven’t been home in a while. It’s anybody’s guess as to how they ended up all the way out here on the West Coast.

My mom joins me at the table and I read the news story out loud to her as she drinks tea curled up in a chair in her silk robe:

“‘It appears that a crime spree involving the armed robbery of several Telegraph Avenue businesses has finally come to an end, leaving one suspect dead and another seriously wounded. Early yesterday evening, William Hennessy, twenty, and Richard Sacci, twenty-five, attempted to rob Fabulous Falafels on Dwight and Telegraph in Berkeley, when the proprietor, Arash Azari, formerly of Iran, gave fire, mortally wounding Sacci and seriously wounding Hennessy.’

“Wait a second. Sanje’s name is Arash Azari?”

My mom shrugs. “He probably changed it. Sanje is an Indian name. Maybe he didn’t want people to know he was Iranian. That’s funny, though; Arash is a hero in Persian folklore.”

I continue:

“‘Azari has been charged with possession of an illegal firearm but he was released late last evening after extensive questioning. Hennessy is listed in stable condition and will be taken into custody following his release from the hospital. Many of the merchants on Telegraph expressed relief at the grisly end to this spree. Most of the merchants were grateful to Azari, whom they know as Sanje, and describe as an honest, law-abiding business owner. Bob Petrovich, owner of Bob and Bob Records, said that although he doesn’t condone gun ownership of any kind, he was happy that the whole thing was finally over and that residents and business owners could start to feel safe on Telegraph again.’”

“That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? Safe on Telegraph Avenue?” She takes the paper from me and looks at the photos.

“No. It
was
safe before all this.”

My mom looks at me, starts to say something, and then looks back at the newspaper.

“This William Hennessy guy has an interesting face; I see what you mean about him, very unusual eyes.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll write to him in prison.”

My mom shoots me a look.

“Kidding.”

“I’m sending you to a convent. I should have done it ages ago.” She sips her tea.

I purposely go a block out of my way to get to Bob’s so I can pass by the falafel place. There’s yellow crime-scene tape over the glass door and the place is locked up tight. I press my face against it and peer inside. Tables and chairs are scattered about and overturned. It looks as though someone has halfheartedly tried to mop up the blood but there’re still smears of it on the walls and on the floor. One of the glass windows is shattered into a snowflake and a wooden board has been hammered in place in front of it. On the board, someone has spray-painted
Al-Qaeda
in big black letters. Someone else has crossed it out and written
Hero
underneath it in red spray paint.

Things at Bob’s are almost back to normal. Jennifer is late but she’s announced her plans to return to work today, an auspicious occasion for all of us. Bob arrives wearing sunglasses with pale blue lenses. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

“So, did you like it?”

I look up from my
Mojo
magazine. Somehow I know I’m in trouble.

“Like what?”

“The CD I made you?” says Zach. He’s wearing a navy-blue gas station employee’s jacket with frank embroidered in red on the right side of his chest.

My face registers guilt. I frantically try to remember where I put that thing.

“Awwww, come on!” He throws his hands up in the air and looks up at the ceiling. “You didn’t even listen to it?”

“I’ve been a bit busy. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” He waves away my excuse. He looks wounded.

“I said I was sorry.”

He shifts gears. “Hey, I guess you heard about the robbery last night, huh?” He scratches his cheek.

“Yeah, I was there.”

“What? Like, you saw it happen?” He scratches the top of his head now. It occurs to me that he has the body language of a chimp.

“No, just the aftermath.”

“Gruesome, huh?”

“Quite.”

“That falafel guy’s pretty ominous and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that his falafel is outstanding. Where do you suppose he learned to shoot like that?”

“He was in the army. He told me that once. I think it was the Iranian army.” I imagine the Iranian army to be fierce and war-ready, although I really have no idea about these things.

He nods. “The Artesh.”

“How’d you know that?”

He shrugs. “They asked me to join once but I told them I was busy.”

I smile. “Are you a student here?”

“I am now. I’m starting in the fall. I’m a freshman. How about you?”

“Nah, I’ve got another year of high school and then I don’t know.”

“So that would make you . . .”

“Ambitionless?”

“No, I meant your age.”

“I’ll be seventeen in a couple of months.” Why couldn’t I just say sixteen? What’s wrong with sixteen? I’m not applying to be his girlfriend.

“I’m eighteen.”

I nod. Not that I care. “Why are you here already? Most of the students don’t get here till a week before school starts.”

A bright orange Mohawk zips past the front door and we’re both distracted for a second. Zach runs a hand through his hair several times until it stands at attention.

“Uh, why am I here already? Because my parents threw me out.”

“Really?”

“Sort of. My mom’s a doctor and she’s going to Africa to work for two years. She sublet our apartment in Manhattan and I think she’d have a hard time explaining the shadowy guy who lives in the back bedroom to the new tenants.”

“What about your dad?”

“Well, naturally my parents are divorced. My dad’s a writer and he lives in Amagansett.”

“Where’s that?”

“Exactly. It’s in the Hamptons. It used to be what people called quaint but now it’s summer camp for rich people from Manhattan. My dad writes all day and goes to the bar at night, gets drunk and hits on all the young local women, sort of like Ernest Hemingway but about half as charming and half as talented. He’s impossible to live with and his house is tiny and he hates to be disturbed when he’s writing, so I would have to stay outside most of the time and, well, you get the picture.”

“So you came here alone for the whole summer?”

“Yes. Trust me: It was the right thing to do. Even though I live in what appears to be a former janitor’s closet.”

“Aren’t you lonely?”

“Nah, I make friends fast.”

“You have friends already?”

He looks a little hurt and I realize that he may have been referring to me as a friend. He rebounds quickly. “Not really, although I am pretty friendly with the guy who roots through my trash can every morning; I’m actually working up to asking him to lunch. And the UPS guy and I are on a first-name basis.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ned.”

Zach must live close to Bob’s, because Ned is our UPS guy too.

Jennifer finally arrives in a gust of perfume and attitude. She looks disappointed at the lack of fanfare marking her return, although Laz shaved for the first time in several days. Once she’s on the register, I’m free to roam. I walk out from behind the counter. It’s awkward without the counter between us. Zach seems surprised at my legs. Perhaps he was more comfortable thinking of me as a Muppet.

“So, are you looking for anything special today?”

“You say that like you’re oblivious to the rituals and habits of the average obsessive, half-crazy record collector, like it’s even possible that I could be looking for one specific thing.”

“Just doing my job. Don’t worry; I know your kind.” I
am
his kind, but I’m not copping to it.

Zach pulls a small leather-bound notebook from the front pocket of his plaid golf pants.

“I’m looking for these.” He hands me the book. I flip through it. Every line of every page is filled with his small, precise handwriting in bold black ink. Some of the lines are carefully crossed out in the same black ink using a ruler. There must be hundreds of items listed in here, maybe thousands. He hovers close. I can tell he’s nervous about me holding the notebook. It’s all he can do not to snatch it away from me. It’s his lifeline. I look up at him. He looks embarrassed, like I’ve just seen him naked.

I hand the notebook back to him. “Well, we’ve been expecting you.”

He stuffs the book back into his pocket. “Actually, not that I want to get too specific or anything, but I was wondering if you had
Christmas and the Beads of Sweat
by Laura Nyro on vinyl.”

“Actually, I think we do. I saw one come in the other day. Check the section.” I point him in the right direction but there’s no need; he’s memorized the layout of the store.

Jennifer hails me from the counter; she needs a bathroom break. She’s been working for fifteen minutes.

Half an hour later I’m still covering the register when Zach checks out. He’s got three LPs. I know that I’ll probably see at least one of them back here in the next few days.

“Oh, good, you found the Laura Nyro.”

“Yeah. It’s in decent shape too.”

He also has Nick Drake’s
Bryter Layter
and Bob Dylan’s
Planet Waves
. I happen to own both those LPs. Who’s the crazy record collector now? I put his LPs in a bag and hand them over. Zach looks as though he’s going to implode. He’s twitching and scratching and I know he wants to ask me something. I wait for it.

“Hey, uh, I was just wondering. Maybe you want to hang out sometime? You know, away from here.”

“Oh, um . . . hmmm, it’s been kind of a weird week, you know, and . . .”

“That’s okay, never mind. Stupid question. Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s not that, it’s just—”

“Hey, forget it, okay?”

“Okay.”

He takes his bag and he’s out the front door. Through the side window, I watch him walk quickly away from the store, muttering to himself and shaking his head. Joke Man, a street person who sells jokes for a dollar, gets in his face but Zach pushes past him like a bulldozer and disappears up the street.

I don’t have time to think about what just happened. It seems that all the excitement in the neighborhood has triggered a minirevival. Some customers I haven’t seen in forever have been coming in over the last few days. This morning I rang up a deejay called DJ QT. I haven’t seen him in months. He spent four hundred dollars on club music.

Right after Zach leaves, the girls from Leather Tongue Video come in and buy a bunch of used movies for their ultracool movie-rental store in the Mission. I haven’t seen them in ages. It feels like the old days at Bob & Bob’s.

I rush over to meet Kit for lunch at Swarma and I unload on her about Zach.

“I feel bad. I do. I made him feel like crap.”

“You can’t date someone just because you don’t want to hurt their feelings. That’s absurd. I’m having the chickpeas; what are you getting?”

“Spinach paneer.”

Kit rolls her eyes. “You always get the paneer.”

“That’s because I like it.”

The waitress takes our order and returns with two mango lassis in tall glasses. We sip the sweet, creamy drink through straws. Ever since Kit and I were six years old, every drink that gets put in front of us signals an unofficial race to be the first one to finish it.

“So, tell me what you were going to tell me when you couldn’t talk before.”

“Yeah. Niles.” She noisily drains her lassi. I’m right behind her but she’s the clear winner. “As you know, I met him for coffee at Café Dirt and, well, let me just preface this by saying that I looked fabulous. Remember that hot little Pucci dress?”

I nod.

“Well, I wore that with my skinny boots and I got this new bra that lifts and adds an entire cup size.” She demonstrates with a hand hovering over each of her breasts as though I couldn’t possibly imagine a cup size. “So, he’s already there when I get there and he tells me I look great, which I do, and he’s completely remorseful and all, ‘Baby, I can’t live without you,’ and, ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,’ and we’re getting cozy and he’s kissing me and I’m kissing him back and it all feels pretty good and we’re talking about doing that road trip together after all, and then his cell phone rings and, because he’s a freaking idiot, he pulls it out of his jeans and looks at it and I say, ‘Who is it?’ And he says it’s a guy who wants to buy his old amp. But he doesn’t know that I’ve got Chelsea’s number memorized and I catch a glimpse of the number and it’s hers. So then he puts his phone on vibrate and the thing is vibrating all over the damn place. It’s like it’s doing a tap dance across the table. I finally grab the phone and look at the missed calls and it’s her, her, her.”