Girl Defective (17 page)

When Dad spoke, it was about something else. “I need you to mind the shop with Luke. I've got to go see a man about some records. I'll take Gully.”

“What about my sign?” Gully shouted. He'd been listening all along.

“Sky will put it up for you. Won't you?”

I raised my eyebrows.

Dad gave my arm a squeeze. The brief moment of contact put me off-balance. It was like he was squeezing my heart. He said, “If anyone's selling, tell them to come back.”

“What's the point?” I muttered under my breath. It was galling, how Dad could act like everything was normal. I understood why he didn't want to tell Gully about the shop being sold—Gully had a shit fit if we so much as drove a different way home—but he could have told me. Now my head was pounding. My mouth felt dry. I felt shaky, seedy, and that floating feeling had disappeared, replaced with bitterness.

Alone with Luke, on a Saturday. I tried to remember Vesna's advice—the firm hand, the element of surprise—but then Nancy's voice kept crashing the party:
You don't have to do anything to make a guy think about sex because he's already thinking it.

Luke was waiting out front. He didn't look like he was thinking about sex. He looked worried. I gave him a terse nod and turned the key in the lock. Once inside, I turned off the alarm and flicked the lights—we had two and a half fluorescent bars working; the other half stuttered and threshed like a dying moth. I went through to the back room and opened that door to let some air in. I counted out the float. Without music the
shop was too quiet. I flicked through my holds stash for something to play and decided on Bert Jansch—his voice was sullen and spare. It always made me feel sad, but I didn't mind feeling sad that morning. As I performed my menial tasks, Luke stood with his back to me, gazing up at the Wall of Woe. I slammed the till tray shut to get his attention.

“It's just you and me today. Dad has to see a man about some records.”

Luke came around the counter. I went on speaking without looking at him.

“That doesn't actually mean he's going to see a man about some records. It just means he's not coming in.” I paused. “At least he took snout-boy. I'm supposed to put
this
up.” I indicated Gully's sign, and then I caught Luke's eye and kept it. “Have
you
seen a white Jeep, Luke?”

He shook his head. He was looking at me so seriously. His eyes were hazy blue behind his glasses. It was unnerving, the way he looked at me. I felt darkness inside, the drama rising in me.

“Crazy people,” I said. “My dad and Gully, they're cracked.” I glared at Luke. “Why don't you talk?”

Luke mumbled, “What do you want me to say?”

“Something. Anything. I don't even know why you're here.”

“Well, I'm working.”

“Right,” I said. I stared down at the counter, at the
wood grain, the million pencil marks. There was a long arc of silence, and then Luke cleared his throat. “My sister was crazy.”

He wasn't smiling. He gave a slight shrug and rubbed his hands across his knees. He spoke slowly, like he was rolling the words around his mouth before sending them out to that place where once said, they couldn't be taken back.

“Mia was hard work. When we were kids, I never knew if she wanted to hug me or fight me. I don't think she knew either. She broke my arm when I was eight. But she also put a hex on every bully who ever tried anything. That was during her high-priestess phase. She had a poet phase too, and she dabbled in pharmaceuticals. I don't know where she got her ideas from or why certain things held and certain things didn't. When I strike a match, I think about her. The flare and the hiss and the way the flame dies down quick, but your fingers still sting afterward.” He ducked his head. “I don't have very good memories of her. I think she had, like, a self-destruct button. She'd been running away since she was twelve. And everything else. In the end it was like we just let her go. Mum used to put money in her account, but it was never enough. I know this sounds bad, but I wasn't surprised when I heard she was dead. I was only surprised it hadn't happened sooner.”

Maybe if we'd been facing each other, Luke wouldn't
have spoken, but parallel as we were, talking seemed easier. I could imagine we were strangers on a train, turning our stories along with the wheels.

He outlined incidents, his voice thick, almost hypnotic: Fights. Boys. Drugs. Homes. Hope. Heartbreak. His words made me feel like I didn't know anything. And after this outpouring Luke sat staring straight ahead, his hands curled into fists. The muscle on his cheek pulsed.

“Our surname, Casey, it's supposed to mean watchful and vigilant, but I wasn't much good at either. The way you are with Gully—it's really special. It makes me wish I could go back and change everything.” His eyes traveled down; at the same time we both realized I was wearing his wristband.

“I found it, when I was cleaning up.”

“It's okay,” Luke said. “You can have it.”

Silence again. He took a deep breath through his nostrils and released it. “Anyway. I didn't answer your question. I'm here because . . . well . . . my parents didn't want an inquiry. They just wanted to bring Mia home, but I felt like . . . I feel like . . .”

Luke never finished what he was going to say because just then the door opened and two people walked in. It was Otis Sharp followed by Rocky. My hackles went up. Otis didn't know me; he didn't know that I knew anything about him and Nancy and the penthouse and the lovebites. He didn't know I'd seen
him crying after the attack of the Paradise protestors. He was shorter than I remembered, but still with that wayward kind of glamour. His hair was terrifically shaggy, and his black jeans were dead tight. He wore white leather shoes and a cowhide vest, and the whole look was expensive but careless.

Rocky lumped a box on the counter.

“I'm selling.”

Luke leaned forward to match Rocky's aggro.

“The buyer's not here.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I can do it.”

Rocky watched me as I went through the buy. His presence made me rush, and I could only remember two of Dad's rules: Move fast. Keep a poker face.

The records were good. If they'd been terrible, the buy would have been easier. For some I had to check the pricing guide. For everything else I erred on the side of generosity.

I was halfway through when Otis erupted into a giggle fit. Rocky didn't look at him, but I could see muscles tense on his hands. Otis stopped giggling, sighed, and started giggling again. He was stoned. I had a moment of not-quite fear. Once a guy had pulled a syringe on Dad, but he'd been so wobbly he couldn't aim straight, and Dad had shamed him out of the shop.

Rocky leaned farther over the counter.

“That's not going to make her any quicker,” Luke said.

“Who asked you?” Rocky snapped.

I glanced up at him and then to where Otis was standing in a shaft of light, staring dazedly down, rubbing his chest, making the cowhide crackle. And then I readied the stack. “Seventy-five cash or ninety tr—”

“CASH.” Rocky spoke over me.

“Someone's in a hurry,” I muttered to Luke as he handed over the Buys Book. I asked for ID and Rocky gave me his license. I smirked at the photo, the way Dad always did, and jotted down his details. Then I counted out the money.

Rocky passed the wad to Otis, who put it in a money clip that was already pretty hefty. Otis snapped his fingers. “Let's go, Rocky Raccoon.”

They left, slamming the door behind them so hard that the Barry Manilow cover with the speech bubble that said
NO ID NO BUY
plummeted to the floor.

Luke looked at me. “Nice guys.”

“Good records.” I shrugged. Patti Smith's
Easter
stared at me from the top of the pile. I put it on. It was all pent-up-ness and yearning.

Luke picked up the box. “Should I put them out back?”

“Yes.” I said, then: “No!”

Luke waited with the box in his arms.

Suddenly I felt nervous. Dad was going to be shitty. Why had I thought I could buy? But there was no going back now. I'd even written it in the book. In my hungover daze and panic I made a decision. While Luke
was out back, I ripped the page with Rocky's deets out of the Buys Book and stuffed it in my pocket. For the next half hour I sat there scheming about how I could make the box disappear before Dad returned. In the end I simply reclaimed the box and lugged it up to my room. I put it next to the bin-bags of Mum's stuff. Then I went to the bathroom and took a Tylenol. I washed my face and brushed my teeth. The last thing I saw before I walked out was my paper effigies of Nancy, Otis, and me and Luke, me, and Mia. Crazy Mia.
Well,
her eyes seemed to say,
you wanted to know, and now you do.

T
HE DAY ROLLED SLOW.
Luke didn't talk anymore. He sat sketching while I wandered the shop floor, straightening the racks. I liked the records to all be leaning back, facing me, full of promise. As I looked at their shiny faces, I felt a mixture of awe and sadness. Music was everything: the whole stinging, ringing pulse of being human was in here. Even the g-sale stock, even Barry Gibb and Barbra Streisand.

How could we give it up? Music was memory, too. I could hear Jan and Dean doing “Pocketful of Rainbows” and be rocketed back to Mum pacing the flat with Gully in a sling. I could play “Incense and Peppermints” and revisit Nancy hippie-dancing in a Glomesh headband. If I really wanted to feel wistful, I could play Johnny Rivers's “Secret Agent Man,” which was Gully's theme song back when the spy stuff was cute and not evidence of dodgy neural wiring.

Luke took his turn on the stereo. We were back to Simon & Garfunkel. This time I knew better than to comment. I even turned the volume up so that I could drown out my thoughts. “The Boxer” came on and it was
plaintive and forlorn and like the soundtrack for the few customers trundling around the shop. One hanging around World Music started singing along atonally. I smiled. I could feel Luke smiling too. I watched him sketch from the corner of my eye and I wondered if he was sketching me. After a minute he nudged the sketchbook across two inches so that it was right in front of me. I looked down and saw the customers. Luke's rendering was realistic, tragi-comic. It was all there: arse cracks and adenoids, thinning pates and perfect recall of
Countdown
episodes; fifty-year-old men eating TV dinners with their mothers.

“You're good,” I told him.

Luke shrugged, but I detected a glow. I tried to drag it out. “So, is this what you see yourself doing?”

“Sketching sad little men?”

“No . . .” I blushed. “Art, I don't know.” Weren't you supposed to ask guys about their interests? Wasn't that the way in? “I'm just trying to get to know you,” I muttered.

Luke glanced up. Maybe he could see he'd hurt my feelings. “You're sweet.”

“No. I'm not.”

“Yeah. You are.”

He stood up and shook his long legs out and did a circuit of the shop, coming to rest at Cardboard Elvis.

I pitched my voice above the music. “Gully says if
you look into his eyes, you can see the future.”

But Luke wasn't looking at Elvis's eyes; he was staring at the Wishing Well cassettes. He picked one up. “Do a lot of people buy these?”

“If by a lot you mean half a dozen, then yes.”

He reached into his back pocket and brought out a cassette tape. It had our logo on it and a symbol: three lines meeting, like a primitive rake.

“This was in my sister's stuff.”

“What's on it?”

“Weird shit. Old songs. I don't know anything about music, remember?”

“I saw you listening to it.”

“When?”

I answered without thinking. “CCTV.”

Luke looked at me, looked away, then looked at me again.

“I was looking for the white Jeep!” I protested. But we both knew I was lying. And suddenly it struck me: how much I'd seen. How much I'd already speculated upon. I thought about the photograph of Mia on Otisworld. I didn't know what Luke knew, but I wasn't about to introduce the subject now.

“Can I hear it?” I asked.

Luke looked around, unsure. Then he handed me the tape. I put it in the player. The Buzzcocks came on like a preteen with a power drill. Luke was picking up the Wishing Well tapes and putting them down again.
Somehow he managed to dislodge the tray. Cardboard Elvis toppled and the tapes scattered over the counter and floor. I crouched to pick them up, and then we were both down there. That moment, under the counter, was like being under the sea, and realizing you can breathe underwater. Our hands brushed as we reached for the same tape at the same time. Our eyes met and I clumsily leaned over and kissed him. Luke's lips felt cool. He didn't do anything for a second, and then he kissed me back. Smoke and Polo mints, stuff unsaid. It was more than nice. It made me feel weightless, adrift, but then Gully's voice booming, high above sea level, reeled me back in.