Vinyl Cafe Unplugged (15 page)

She gave up before she got halfway and retreated below, this time finding the phone and a bottle of cognac.

An hour later she was back on deck—sitting at the tiller in her lifejackets—waving the bottle of cognac gaily at any cars that passed them on the highway. She was still sitting there when Pierre Boisclair pulled over on a deserted stretch of highway to have a leak.

“Bonjour,”
she said when their eyes met.

About the same time, Dave gathered everyone up and said they were going home.

“She’s probably dead anyway,” said Sam. “They probably had an accident and she’s probably dead.”

Everyone was pretty glum as they pulled out of the motel for the long drive home. Each time they passed someone pulling a boat, Stephanie strained to look inside, even though Dorothy had headed north and they were driving south.

“Maybe,” said Sam, “he was some kind of weirdo. Maybe he’s holding her somewhere. Like in a cabin in the woods or something.”

There were three messages on the answering machine when they got home.

The reception on the first was terrible.

“For GOD’S sake,” it said, “I am in a BOAT on the HIGHWAY. And I don’t have any clothes. HELP ME. Where are—”

And then the line went dead.

“There must have been a cellphone on the boat,” said Morley.

The second message was clearer. “This isn’t amusing, Ray,” she said, and hung up.

The third had come just before they arrived home.

“All’s well that ends well. I’ll be back in a few days.”

Dave slapped his head.

Stephanie smiled. “Cool,” she said.

And then nothing.

Not another call.

Not another word.

Nothing.

For three days.

Dave got Pierre Boisclair’s number in Saint-Michel-des-Saints from information, but when he dialed it there was no answer. He considered phoning the police but what would he tell them? Dorothy had sounded cheerful enough in her last message.

“Leave her alone,” said Stephanie. “She’s an adult. I wish I could live like that. Do what you want to do whenever you want to do it.”

Dorothy returned the night before she was scheduled to fly home. She was sunburnt and happy.

“What are you all STARING at?” she bellowed after she walked through the door.

She didn’t say much about her three days away. No one was game to ask for details. She had been fishing—that much was clear.

“Fresh pickerel,” she said, “in butter over an open fire is something hard to imagine.”

After dinner she said she had to make a phone call and she went upstairs where they wouldn’t overhear her. Dave caught a few words in French. He heard her say, “In your dreams, Pierre.”

The last Dave saw of Dorothy was at the airport. She was at the customs table on the far side of the security desk. It was just a glimpse as the frosted security doors were sliding closed. She was standing at a table talking to a cop,
RCMP
, thought Dave. Her suitcase was open and the policeman was holding up a red serge Mountie jacket that she had bought at the convention.

The way the Mountie was holding the red jacket between them brought to mind a matador at a bullfight.

“I wouldn’t,” he said quietly to himself, “wave that too quickly.”

Who’s Sorry Now?

The Last Kind Word Blues

You can count on weekday afternoons to be peaceful at the Vinyl Cafe. Those languid hours after lunch until, say, four o’clock when the high-school kids begin drifting in are a reli- ably low-key time at the world’s smallest record store. Kenny Wong says being in Dave’s store after lunch is like being in the hole at the centre of a doughnut, which suits Dave fine.

Dave waits for the quiet of the early afternoon to eat his lunch, a lunch that never varies. Three sandwiches on sliced brown bread: one cheese, one peanut butter and one honey. The same three sandwiches he has eaten every day for the twelve years he has owned the Vinyl Cafe—the sandwiches cut on the diagonal, then stacked carefully in the same sequence and wrapped in wax paper. Every day Dave places his stack of sandwiches on the counter and works his way down one side and then the other—cheese, peanut butter, honey; cheese, peanut butter, honey.

“Cheese slices!” said his friend Alison the first time she saw this—so long ago the lunch was novel enough to warrant attention. “Cheese slices,” said Alison, “aren’t cheese.”

Dave, who had just picked up a cheese sandwich when she said this, thrust it in the air between them and said, “I actually prefer the cheese slices with the plastic wrap left on.” Then he bit into it with relish.

Whatever comfort Dave takes from his lunch is no longer a conscious comfort. It is a ritual that has become a part of him: an involuntary impulse that comes as easily as breath. He makes the sandwiches before he goes to bed and stores them in the fridge. The first time he forgot his lunch bag, Dave locked his record store and walked home in a fog to retrieve it. He found himself standing in the kitchen twenty minutes later, looking around, confused, not sure what he was doing there.

After he finishes his lunch Dave often reads for a while. Most weekday afternoons allow him this quiet, this peace, but if you wanted to choose one day out of the whole year and count on finding him with his nose in a book, you could do worse than bet on a rainy Tuesday in April.

It was on such an afternoon that Dave was sitting behind the counter with half of a cheese sandwich beside him and Nick Hornby’s
High Fidelity
propped open on the cash register. He had Blossom Dearie on the turntable, and a cup of tea at hand. If anyone had walked into the store at that precise moment and asked how business was, Dave would have looked up in surprise. He would have set his book upside down on the counter, surveyed the empty aisles and said, Business is fine, thank you. Although he would have been thinking,
It was better before you came in
.

Dave shares a trait with many people who run second-hand stores, which is not widely seen elsewhere in retail. It is a characteristic that sometimes surfaces in librarians. Dave resents his customers. It’s not that he doesn’t like them. He likes the people who come into his store. What irks him is when the people insist on buying stuff, insist on leaving his store with records that Dave views as part of a private collection—his. If people came into his store looking for conversation rather than records, Dave would be a lot happier.

And so it was on that rainy Tuesday afternoon when Dave was lost in the Nick Hornby book that he didn’t hear the front door open, or see the young man in the trench coat step in. Didn’t notice him, that is, until he was standing in front of the counter, awkwardly clearing his throat.

Dave looked up.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Under his coat the young man was wearing a blue suit, a white shirt and a bright yellow tie. If Dave could have seen the young man’s feet he would have seen brown leather brogues, carefully polished. Not the typical customer who comes into the Vinyl Cafe, especially on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. He looked more like a corporate lawyer than a record collector, which, in fact, he was. The kind of man who might drive a small red car and own CDs, not vinyl, which was, in fact, the truth.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” said the young man.

Dave closed his book reluctantly, stood up and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

The young man, who Dave thought looked maybe thirty-five years old, leaned on the counter.

“Geechie Wiley,” he said. “‘The Last Kind Word Blues.’”

Dave stared at the young face blankly. He squinted and cocked his head to the side. He said, “My God.”

The young man grinned self-consciously and looked down at his feet. “I guess I’ve changed a bit since I saw you last.”

Dave nodded.

“Kevin Burnett,” said the young man holding out his hand.

“I remember,” said Dave.

The two men stared at each other silently, both thinking about the last time Kevin had stood where he was standing. It was also on a spring afternoon, a spring five, maybe six, years ago, thought Dave.

“Seven,” said the young man. “I had just graduated. Lisa and I were engaged. I was on my way to Kingston . . . to article.”

It was no wonder Dave hadn’t recognized Kevin. He was still a boy seven years ago. In those days his soft brown hair brushed his shoulders. He wore an earring in one ear and three silver rings on various fingers of both hands. He favored plaid shirts, blue jeans and work boots.

During the five years he lived in Toronto getting his law degree, Kevin Burnett had worked at a variety of jobs and spent a healthy proportion of his disposable income on music. He lacked the imagination of Dave’s favorite customers: young men who pursued whimsical record collections—a football player who specialized in girl groups from the 1960s, an accountancy student who obsessed on Hawaiian surf guitar, a sociology drop-out who worked in a bookstore and was trying to assemble the complete K-Tel library from 1972 to 1976 and his very favorite, a history major named Derek who would only buy compilation records by “not the original artist.”

Kevin just bought music he liked: folk, pop, a lot of rock and roll. But his enthusiasm for the music overcame his ordinary taste. He became a regular at the store, if not a respected member of the inner circle.

Until, that is, the April afternoon seven years ago, when Kevin walked in the front door of the Vinyl Cafe, carrying his entire record collection in four cardboard boxes. He lugged the boxes in, one by one, and lined them up by the cash register.

“Lisa and I are moving in together,” he said. “We’re getting married next spring.” He motioned at the boxes of records on the floor and said, “I want to sell them.”

Dave remembered this clearly. Remembered Kevin waving at his record collection dismissively. Remembered him saying, “It’s time to move on. Time to grow up.”

It wasn’t enough that Kevin expected Dave to buy back every record he had sold him over the past few years, he was standing there implying—wait a minute, he wasn’t implying anything—he had stated it. He thought there was something juvenile, something inherently immature about collecting records. As if he was the adult, and Dave was someone who had never . . . well, in his words, got going, moved on. As if you couldn’t own vinyl records and at the same time be . . . grown up.

“Lisa has a CD player,” said Kevin. “Soon there are going to be CDs in cars.”

Dave smirked.

“I’m serious,” said Kevin.

Dave was thinking,
What about me? Am I not serious? Am I not an adult? Have I not moved on?
Then he settled on the most dangerous thought of all:
Is this what they all think of me?

Kevin lifted the first of the cardboard boxes onto the counter. Dave reached for his calculator and began to flip through the records. He had done this so often that he could price them as rapidly as he could flip, which is what he was doing until he was halfway through the third box, and his hand suddenly hesitated. He looked up abruptly. Kevin was behind the counter pouring himself a cup of coffee. He hadn’t noticed the hesitation, or the look on Dave’s face.