Home from the Vinyl Cafe (18 page)

He set his four bottles of wine on the counter and got out his wallet and put down his credit card beside them. Sometimes when you aren’t in a hurry, waiting can be a pleasant experience. An opportunity to prove how mellow you can be. Dave wasn’t in a hurry. He thought of the different kinds of people who came into his record store. He was pleased
that he hadn’t begun tapping his credit card on the counter, or clearing his throat, or shuffling his feet, or any of the other irritating strategies customers resort to when they are trying to attract attention. By standing quietly at the counter, Dave was displaying his solidarity with his fellow retail workers. After a moment, his patience was rewarded. Dave saw one of the three clerks stand up. Then he watched the clerk languidly drift to the cash register farthest from where he was standing.

Dave didn’t move.

The clerk looked over at him and, in a tone Dave would later describe as a combination of disinterest and aggression, said, “Over here.”

Dave said, “I have four bottles of wine and my credit card. Could you come over to this one?”

The clerk shook his head. He said, “This is the one that’s open.”

Dave felt all the goodness that had accrued to him during the morning evaporate. He felt his mellowness fade away. Felt himself slip into an elbows-up mood. Indignant that he, of all people, should be treated like this. Dave felt himself switching from compatriot to customer. He heard himself say, “Well, I’ll come back when
this
one is open.” He walked out of the store and into the sunshine. He squinted at the men and women walking to and fro on both sides of the street, wishing they knew what he knew—what he had just done for them. He was feeling pretty darn good about himself. Pleased because the line had come out so fast, and pleased because he had not been rude, and pleased, most of all, because he had struck a blow for all customers looking for good service and courtesy. He didn’t have the wine he had come for, but he had something else—a good feeling—and it stayed with him until he got a block and a half away from his record store.

It stayed until the little voice inside his head that had been so busy congratulating him suddenly said, I don’t think you have your credit card, Dave.

Dave froze in midstride. He knew right away that he hadn’t put the card back in his wallet. He thought perhaps he had slipped it into one of his pockets, and hope flared. He stood on the street patting himself. He checked all of his pockets twice, even the pocket in his shirt where he never put anything. Knowing he should turn around and go back to the liquor store, he walked, with a sinking heart, in the other direction. He knew he should retrieve his card. But how could he face the clerk?

A few moments ago Dave had felt so sure that the clerk had been rude to him. So sure that
he
had been courteous. Now he wasn’t so certain. Had he really been courteous?

Instead of going back and claiming his card, he walked to the Vinyl Cafe. When he got there, he took off his jacket and sat down behind the counter. He had to think about this. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he was far more tense about what awaited him at the liquor store than he was about losing his credit card. He could imagine himself standing in front of the liquor-store clerk with his baseball cap in hand. He got up and walked slowly toward the front of his store, trailing his hand along the piles of records. He gazed at the little mound of handwritten notes Scotch-taped to the back of the front door. He pulled off one that read,
Back in thirty minutes
. He winced. He was too proud to do it. So he did the only sensible thing he could think of doing. He picked up the telephone and called the bank.

“I would like to report a stolen credit card,” he said.

He should have said “lost,” a lost credit card, but theft seemed to have more dignity, and Dave was feeling woefully low on dignity.

If he had remembered at that moment that Saturday was Sam’s birthday, and the reason he had wanted the wine in the first place was so when everyone was in bed, he and Morley could quietly toast the anniversary of the birth of their second child—if he had remembered these things, Dave might have acted differently.

But he had forgotten the birthday. He had forgotten that ten of Sam’s friends had been invited for supper and a sleep-over that very night. Forgotten that he had agreed to run the party, to order the pizza, to buy a cake, and to get a video. Forgotten that Morley was going shopping for presents that morning.

In fact, at the very moment Dave was reporting his stolen card, Morley was wheeling a shopping cart containing the Bat Cave Deluxe toward the cash registers at a suburban toy store. Five dollars’ worth of extruded plastic that was about to cost her forty.

Birthdays have always been a problem for Morley. She finds it stressful to have her house full of children expecting to be entertained. She has tried, over the years, to cope with her anxiety by careful planning. When Sam and Stephanie were little, Morley spent days preparing prizes for games and wandering around stores, loading up on cheap but interesting things to put in loot bags.

But no matter how hard she tried, there was always a kid who did not want to play the games she had planned, a kid who thought the prizes were stupid, a kid who hated the food. And for all her efforts, at some point the strain of the party inevitably rendered her children, the same children she was doing this for, tearful.

Morley was a scarred birthday mom. So when Sam said that for his ninth birthday party he wanted “a major sleep-over,
with all my friends, with pizza and a movie,” Morley blanched. She knew there was no reason not to have ten boys ransack her house for twelve hours, but she didn’t know if she was up to it.

Dave had agreed to run the party. Morley would organize things, but when it was time to man the battle stations, she was, for the first time in sixteen years, stepping aside. She was going to a movie with Gerta Lowbeer while the kids had supper—this was Dave’s idea—and he was in charge.

If Dave had remembered any of this, he might have, probably would have,
certainly
would have, swallowed his pride and returned to the liquor store and retrieved his credit card. But he didn’t. So he reported the card stolen, and the woman on the phone typed his report into the bank’s computer.

It is amazing how fast computers work these days. Morley, who was feeling both pleased and slightly resentful about the Bat Cave, had just begun to unload her shopping cart when Dave hung up the phone.

Morley didn’t notice that the clerk was having difficulty with her purchase. Didn’t notice anything was amiss until a man materialized and invited her to accompany him to the security office.

It took twenty minutes and two phone calls before Morley convinced the manager that she had not stolen the credit card. After twenty minutes he apologized to her. But he didn’t give back the card. Morley had to watch him take a pair of scissors from his desk and cut up her credit card in front of her.

“Policy,” he said.

When Morley got home, there was a message from Dave. It said, “Phone me before you use the credit card.”

Because she loved her husband, Morley decided to wait until after lunch to call him.

In fact, she didn’t call until late in the afternoon.

Dave said, “Of course I remembered the birthday party. Why do you think I was at the liquor store?”

Then Dave said, “Of course not for the kids. I was getting the wine for us.”

And then he said, “Of course I’ll get the pizza … Yes, and the movie … Yes, and the Bat Cave.”

Then the line went dead, and he looked around and said, “Of course, I have no money.”

Which wasn’t completely true. Dave had nearly twelve dollars in his wallet. And forty-seven dollars in the store’s till.

Dave looked at his watch. It was four-fifteen. His bank was closed. He realized that without his credit card, he had no little plastic key to any more money. He had to move fast. He went outside and unlocked the six-foot wooden kangaroo that stood on the sidewalk in front of his store. HOP ON IN, it said on the pouch. Dave wrestled the kangaroo in and then carried out a chair and unscrewed the two speakers that hung over the front door. He was moving so fast that he hadn’t turned off the record player. Frank Sinatra began to sing “I Get a Kick Out of You” as Dave lifted the first speaker out of its brackets. It was an odd sensation to cradle the speaker in his arms as Sinatra sang. The speaker, thought Dave, was probably about the size of Sinatra’s head.

He had both speakers stashed behind the counter and was standing in the store with his hand on the light switch when a big guy in a wool toque stuck his head in the front door. “Are you open?” he asked.

“Just closing,” said Dave.

The man was wearing gray sweatpants and a Road Runner T-shirt. He had about ten albums under his arm.

“I was wondering if you wanted to buy these?” he said, holding up the records.

Dave had already flicked off the lights in the back of the store and was about to say “I’ve already closed the till” when he spotted the album on the top of the pile. It was the original RCA Victor Living Stereo copy of the sound track from
Casino Royale
.

His hand stopped in midair on its way to the last light switch. He invited the guy into the store with a wave of his hand, locked the door behind him, and said, “What else have you got there?”

What the guy had was the motherlode:
Harry Belafonte Live in Concert at the Carnegie Hall
. A sealed copy of Simon and Garfunkel’s
Wednesday Morning, 3
A.M.
, and best of all, the
Bonanza
sound track with Lorne Greene singing the theme.

Dave whistled. “Where’d you get this stuff?” he asked.

The guy pulled a crushed package of Camels out of his pants pocket and looked at Dave questioningly. Dave nodded. “Go ahead,” he said.

The guy said, “My brother used to collect them. But he’s been in Australia for eighteen years, and I’m getting tired of having his stuff filling up my apartment. He said I should just sell them.”

Dave had been looking for the Simon and Garfunkel album for a year. He had never even dreamed of seeing a
sealed
copy.

“How many?” Dave said. “How many records in all?”

“There are hundreds,” said the guy.

Dave said, “I can give you two dollars for each album and four for Simon and Garfunkel. That’s what? Ten albums? Twenty-two dollars. I’ll make it twenty-five.”

The guy looked disappointed.

Dave said, “Look. I’ll sell these for about six dollars each. I’ll come over to your place tomorrow and look at the rest. If there are five hundred albums, that’s good money.”

He glanced at his watch as the guy thought it over.

Dave had thirty-four dollars left in his wallet when he finally locked the store.

As he walked by Emil, he considered asking for a loan. Instead, he found a toy store downtown that took a check for the Bat Cave.

He stopped at a phone booth and called his friend Kenny Wong. He said, “Tonight is Sam’s birthday party. There are kids coming over, I need food.”

Kenny said, “You got it.”

Dave got home at five-fifteen. Stephanie was in the living room watching
The Simpsons
. Dave said, “Please turn that down.”

“There’s a note on the refrigerator,” said Stephanie.

The note said,
Birthday party instructions
. Dave glanced at it.

He said, “Stephanie, I want you to go and get a movie.”

Stephanie said, “When this is over.”

Dave said, “Now.”

Sam emerged from under a piece of furniture and said, “I want to go and get the movie.”

Dave said, “No way.”

Sam started to argue. Stephanie was still glued to the television.

Dave said, “Stephanie. Go and get a movie for the party.”

His daughter stood up slowly and held out her hand. Dave said, “I don’t have any money. Do you have money? I’ll pay you back. Tomorrow.” Stephanie rolled her eyes. Before she left, she made Dave sign an IOU. On her way out the door, she looked at Sam and said, “I’m going to get
The Little Mermaid
.”