The Vinyl Princess (11 page)

By the time Kit’s name is called, half the mortar attack victims have disappeared and I’ve resorted to reading shortcake recipes. Kit makes it clear that she wants to go in alone and I don’t argue, but I’m actually dying to meet the guy who’s paying for this view by playing Dr. Frankenstein. I get to thinking about Joel again and the way he looked at that curvy woman in the café. Would I be willing to change my body for someone like Joel? I rarely get around to even putting on a skirt. Not that putting on a skirt makes a whole lot of difference. I’m far from curvy. From the back, I could even be mistaken for a boy. Maybe I need to start putting more effort into the way I look. I grab a fashion magazine and flip through it quickly. I stare at a photo of a slender model featuring curves that don’t look like her own. Maybe I just need some good lingerie: a little lift here, a little redistribution there. If I’m going to compete with all the curvy women in the world for someone like Joel, I’m going to have to make some serious changes.

Kit is gone for over half an hour and I somehow imagine her emerging looking completely different, like Jessica Rabbit or something, but she strolls out looking like she always has.

“Ready?” she asks.

“No, I need to finish this article on organizing your spice rack.”

“Hah. Let’s go.”

I drop the magazine and we pull open the heavy exotic-wood doors that were probably harvested from the disappearing rain forest and escape into the hallway leading to the sleek elevators. I press the down button.

“So?”

Kit looks up at the descending numbers. “So, you were right.”

“Right about what?”

“This was a really stupid idea.”

“I never said that.”

The elevator arrives and we get in. The door closes quietly and we stand next to each other, waiting to feel the high-speed drop in our stomachs.

“Yeah, you pretty much did, but it’s okay; you were right.”

“What happened in there?”

“Well. He took a picture of me and then he showed me a computer-generated picture of what I would look like ‘enhanced.’”

“And?”

“And I looked like someone trying to be someone else. I didn’t look like me anymore. And then I thought, ‘Well, maybe I do want to be someone else, but not this person in the photo.’ The ‘me’ in the photo looked so desperate. Then Dr. Mayer started telling me about things like the incision, the anesthesia, the recovery time and the side effects, oh, and pain management . . .
pain
management! Then he showed me some implants. They’re these little sacs filled with saline solution, and he put one in my hand and it felt so creepy that I pulled my hand back and it dropped on the floor, and when I looked down at it, it looked exactly like one of those purplish jellyfish that wash up onshore at the beach sometimes. They just lie there, waiting to die. Dr. Mayer leaned over and picked it up and there was lint all over it and I thought, ‘How can I let someone who doesn’t even stay on top of the vacuuming around here cut my breasts open?’ So I said I would think about it and I left.”

The elevator swishes open and we enter the massive echoing marble lobby.

“I’m really glad you’re going to think about this.”

Kit’s face changes. “You know what? I think I’m done thinking about it. I was already having my doubts in the waiting room. All those people, trying to be someone else. Is it really going to make them happy? I don’t think I’m one of those people. They depressed me.”

We walk out into the sunshine, happy to be outside. While we were up there the gray blanket of fog pulled back, revealing a rare, gorgeous day in the city. We hop on a Muni bus and watch the neighborhoods roll by the window. We get off on Haight Street and let ourselves be swept along up the street by the hard-core punks and weirdos. Haight Street is a bit like an edgier Telegraph. Street kids and runaways from across the country end up here, looking for money or drugs or friends or all three. They camp out on the sidewalk like orphans, dressed like extras in a
Mad Max
movie, begging for spare change. The street is lined with funky boutiques and cheap food and bars and bike shops.

Kit seems relieved to be away from Dr. Mayer’s office. We walk up the street together, ducking into the weird shops and vintage-clothing stores. Kit finds a black newsboy’s cap and a pair of vintage sunglasses and I get an Andy Warhol T-shirt and a new set of wheels for my skateboard.

Late in the day, the fog unfurls itself back over the bay for the night. We take BART across the bay, get off at Rockridge, and walk over to Piedmont Avenue, where Joey Spinelli’s dad’s pizza place is. It turns out to be so tiny that we almost walk right past it. It has six tables and no table service. You just tell them what you want at the counter and they call you when it’s ready. I order a mushroom-and-olive with extra sauce from a young girl at the counter. Next to her, a barrel-chested guy with a heavy unibrow and oily black hair is throwing pizza dough into the air. There’s no sign of Joey anywhere. I sit down at a tiny table with Kit. We look around at the place. Not much in the way of atmosphere. There’s a TV mounted in the corner over a bar, and a soccer game is being played by Europeans with floppy hair and great legs. The sound is off. One of the walls is faux brick and the others are covered with off-white high-gloss paint. The tables are draped in red-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloths.

The guy behind the counter calls out that our pizza’s ready. I go up to get it. I watch him expertly roll a pizza cutter back and forth. His knuckles are superhairy.

“Hey, is Joey around?” I ask.

“You want Joey? He’s deliverin’.” He glances up at a clock. “Should be back soon.”

“Are you his dad?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says gruffly. I see the resemblance now, the deep-set eyes, the full lips.

“So, who’s Rusty?” I point to the retro logo on the menu that’s taped to the counter.

“That was Joey’s dog, an Irish setter, dumb as a post. He’s dead now.” He slides the pizza toward me.

“Oh. Thanks.” I take my pizza and walk back to the table.

“Who’s that?” asks Kit.

“That’s Joey in thirty years,” I say, putting the pizza down.

Kit looks at the guy for a few seconds. Then she takes a container of hot peppers and starts shaking it vigorously onto the pizza. Her eyes well up with tears.

“What? What is it?” I ask.

She looks up at me. “It’s just so sad.”

“What is?”

“It’s just so sad what we’re willing to do for the Joey Spinellis of the world, you know? The mutilating, the tweezing, the enhancing, the plumping, the pinching, the waxing, the starving, the sweating, the bleaching. And for what? So you can wake up next to
that
in thirty years? What are we thinking?”

A tear rolls down each of Kit’s cheeks. She blows her nose into a napkin.

“Was I really stupid enough to think that I could get Niles back if I only had the right-size boobs? Was I really willing to do that to myself?” She dabs at her tears.

“Maybe we should get this to go.” Kit nods and blows her nose into a napkin. I take the pizza back to the counter, where the young girl has reappeared, and ask her to box it.

We gather up our things and the pizza and walk out the door.

A half a block down the street, with the pizza box under my arm, I look back over my shoulder. Joey is parking a beat-up motorcycle in front of the pizza place. He’s wearing low-slung jeans and a white T-shirt pulled tight across his broad chest. He pulls off a helmet and his black curls tumble out. He looks like an underwear model.

K
it and I lie side by side in my mom’s big bed. An armless sock monkey, the only thing Kit has left of Niles, lies between us. I can smell my mom’s shampoo on the pillow. The house is quiet except for the odd creaks and unexplainable sighs emanating from the old walls. There’s a breeze from the open window billowing the filmy white curtains and in the dark it looks like a ghost climbing in through the window and then immediately climbing out again.

We’re drowsy and close to sleep. The conversation drifts from what we’re making for breakfast in the morning—I try to remember if we have eggs—to Niles (what he used to like to eat for breakfast), to clothes, to Steve Buscemi. Now we’re discussing indie movies. We take turns adding to the list of our favorites:
Blood Simple
,
Ghost World
,
Mystery Train
,
Donnie Darko
,
Pieces of April
,
This Is England
,
Welcome to the Dollhouse
,
Night on Earth
. . . .

“Hey, I forgot to tell you. I saw M today.” Kit yawns.

“Joel,” I correct her. I’m wide-awake now.

“Joel, whatever.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I am telling you.”

“Where?”

“Barney’s Burgers on College. He was eating there with some guy.”

“What guy?”

“I dunno, just a guy. He was wearing those seventies aviator sunglasses and he looked kind of big. Not tall, just wide-ish.”

“What was Joel wearing?”

“I don’t know.”

“What were they talking about?”

“I don’t know, Al, I didn’t think to stop and interview them.”

“What were they eating?”

“Burgers? Jesus, Allie, this M guy is making you all weird.”

“Joel,” I correct her.

“I’m going to sleep now. G’night.” She rolls over onto her side, facing the wall, and I hear her breathing deepen. I stare at the ceiling, thinking about Joel, wondering what he’s doing right now. The fact that he hasn’t called has me counting days and trying to figure out what to reasonably expect from him. Is there any chance that he’s doing what I’m doing, or is it just crazy to think that I might figure in his thoughts at all?

I hear a door open and then I see Pierre emerge from the shadows, skulking past the open bedroom door. He stops and looks in at us a moment and then he carries on. I can hear him padding lightly down the stairs and then he’s crunching his food in the darkened kitchen.

On Saturday morning, after we clean up from our breakfast of leftover pizza, scrambled eggs and maple-glazed doughnuts, Kit and I walk to our separate jobs together like an old married couple, parting at the corner of Telegraph and Haste. In the world of retail, Saturdays come at you hard and fast and you’d better be ready. I yank open the metal security gate in front of the doors and knock on the glass till Bob appears to let me in. My keys are at the bottom of my messenger bag and digging them out would take forever.

Bob’s wearing sunglasses and a navy wool beret. The beret is to cover an emerging bald spot and the glasses are to discourage any sort of chatting. Bob doesn’t do morning chat. He won’t even be speaking in complete sentences until noon. Saturday is the only day Bob opens the store. I’m grateful that he already has the change in the cash drawers done so I can restock the bins and the waterfall racks, which requires little in the way of brain function. Bob has an Ahmad Jamal album playing—swingy jazz, uncharacteristically optimistic of him. I get to work on the bins till I hear Laz knocking at the glass door. I let him in. Jennifer should also technically be here by now but she’s been on time only once since she became an employee at the store and that was the day after she was hired. Aidan’s not in till noon. He has totally cushy hours.

Through the side window I can see the street preacher setting up on the next corner. I stand there watching for a minute. An unsuspecting regular-looking guy walks by, pushing a stroller with a toddler in it who’s disassembling a sandwich. The street preacher rushes over to the guy with his shtick. He’s right up in his face, pointing to the sky a couple of times for emphasis, like it’s the head office of his company. He hands the guy a pamphlet to go along with the shtick. The guy backs away, shaking his head slightly, and keeps walking. The baby leans out of the stroller and waves good-bye to the preacher, dropping a piece of luncheon meat at his feet. The guy tosses the pamphlet into the garbage can on the corner.

I get back to work. Laz leaves again for his coffee fix and his last smoke for a while. I lock the door behind him. A couple of people are milling around outside the front doors, waiting for us to open like we’re a free soup kitchen. Bob’s is a place that makes it onto a lot of people’s list of things to do on the weekends—
Take all those crappy LPs from the basement down to Bob & Bob’s and convert them into cash so we can buy that flat-screen TV or Ferrari we’ve been wanting
. People are frequently insulted that the records they bought in college and played a million times till the grooves all but disappeared could be worth so little in today’s marketplace. Somehow they thought they were sitting on a gold mine. They’re astonished that we might not need another copy of the Doobie Brothers’
Minute by Minute
, or Fleetwood Mac’s
Rumors
or the Eagles’
Hotel California
.

At ten thirty, I slide the security gate aside and swing open the glass doors. Laz follows the small group in, holding a gallon-size cup of coffee. Before I go back inside, I look up Telegraph at the umbrellas that line the avenue on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to the street merchants. It’s hard to imagine trying to sell the same tableful of stuff every weekend. At least I have a storeful of music to groove on; at least I’m not standing outside hawking bumper stickers or tie-dye or scented candles.

Kit calls at eleven to ask if we have microwave popcorn in the house.

“No. We don’t even have a microwave. Andrew Weil says they give you cancer.”

“Who’s Andrew Weil?”

“The doctor with the big gray beard. My mom has all his books.”

“He says microwaves give you cancer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They also give you microwave popcorn. Did he tell you that?”

“We don’t really talk, Dr. Weil and I. We can make it on the stove in a pot, like in the olden days.”

“Okay. Is it dead over there? It’s dead over here.”

I survey the store. We have a minor crowd, all locals. The B and Ts don’t arrive for another half hour or so. I was hoping to work on the blog but it will have to wait.

“It’s early,” I say.

“Oh, wow, it
is
early. I’ve already had too much coffee. I just told a girl that the skirt she was trying on made her look fat. If Deb heard I would be
so
fired.”

“I gotta go. A pack of B and Ts just arrived.”

“Later.” She hangs up.

A group of suburban indie-rock poseurs hover around the new-release rack, picking up CDs and putting them back. I hear them exclaim at the price of a White Stripes CD.

“This is hella cheaper at Wal-Mart, dude,” says one poseur to the other.

How ironic that they’re trying to look indie when they’ve already sold their souls to Wal-Mart. They shuffle zombielike out of the store. I’m glad Bob didn’t hear them. His mood would have been altered dramatically. We barely make any money at all on new merchandise. We just can’t compete with the prices at the big-box, Satan-owned, corporate stores.

The store eventually fills up with customers and the day starts to look like a regular Saturday. Jennifer comes in late, excuse at the ready (the hot water ran out in her shower just as she was putting conditioner in her hair). I leave her to work the cash register and head out onto the floor to do some upstocking and file in some used LPs. Dao arrives with her mom in tow, a smiling, smaller version of Dao. They disappear into the office. Bob emerges minutes later, sunglasses off, ready for dialogue.

“Hey, Al, do you mind closing tonight with Jennifer? I forgot that I’m taking Dao and her mom to dinner in the city. I’ll pay you overtime if you end up staying late, okay?”

“Sure, Bob.” I don’t mind, actually. I can close the store twice as fast when Bob’s not here. He likes to play “blah, blah, blah, fill in band” till all hours. Jennifer will definitely slow me down but I’ll give her the easy stuff.

“Cool. Just leave out enough for the cash drawer and throw everything else in the drop safe. I’ll organize it tomorrow.”

“No problem.”

At roughly one p.m. I walk down to Fabulous Falafels, one block toward Kit’s store and around the corner, to pick up two falafel pitas that I ordered by phone. There’s a girl with a shaved head sitting on the pavement in front of the herb store, smoking a cigarette; a cardboard box full of pit bull puppies sits next to her. The word
free
is scrawled across the front of the box. Ironic.

Fabulous Falafels is humming. Sanje, the owner, makes small talk with me, which somehow always arrives at how the government is screwing him. Even if we start with the weather, we always end up in the same place. Sanje came here from Iran twenty years ago and worked his butt off, and now he owns a chain of little falafel places around Berkeley. He’s been audited three times and he’s convinced that the government is monitoring him because of racial profiling. I’ve heard his conspiracy theory hundreds of times, but he makes the best falafel I’ve ever tasted. They’re perfectly crunchy on the outside and creamy on the inside. Fortunately, he’s really busy, so I can dart out between customers with a wave over my shoulder. Just as I’m heading back up the sidewalk with my bag of lunch, I spy Joel disappearing around the corner onto Telegraph. I pick up the pace and turn the corner seconds later. I stand there for a minute, watching. He’s walking up the street next to a muscular bulldog of a guy with very close-cropped hair who’s wearing aviator sunglasses and smoking a cigarette. The guy must be the buddy Joel was talking about. They’re having spirited conversation. They might even be arguing. They don’t even slow down when they come to Bob & Bob’s. Joel doesn’t even look into the store to see if I’m working. They continue across the street against the light and up the avenue. The bulldog tosses his lit cigarette onto the sidewalk as they pass in front of the empty lot; a tiny shower of orange sparks jumps off the pavement.

“Did you bring extra hot sauce?” asks Kit, digging through the bag.

I’ve delivered her lunch because she has no one to cover for her today. Her coworker called in sick (read: hungover).

“Yeah, it’s in there.”

She dumps the bag upside down and the plastic containers fall onto the counter. She pulls the tinfoil back on her pita and dumps hot sauce on it.

“So you saw them?” I ask, unwrapping my pita.

“Yeah. M—I mean Joel—and that guy; that’s the same one I saw him with yesterday. They walked right past the front window two minutes ago.” She sips her iced tea through a straw.

We sit together on stools behind the counter and eat our pitas. The place starts to smell like a Middle Eastern restaurant. Customers come and go. The shop is basically a jumble of vintage used clothes that resembles a drag queen’s closet. They ran out of room a long time ago so only the very devoted will take the time to pick through the jam-packed racks and piles of stuff, looking for treasures. Kit rings a guy up for a silk tie and a girl for a pale blue angora scarf and an ivory beaded sweater. She gets to play her own music and right now we’re listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’
The Firstborn Is Dead
.

“Hey, so why didn’t you call out to him when you saw him? I mean, you have had sort of a date with the guy.” Kit squashes her tinfoil into a ball and lobs it into the overflowing trash can.

“I dunno, he seemed preoccupied.” I don’t feel like mentioning again that he hasn’t called either.

“Who cares? He should be preoccupied with thoughts of you, right?”

“I guess.” I wish I had her unshakable confidence.

I finish my lunch and head back to Bob’s. The store is busy now and the afternoon flies by. Jennifer and I work the cash together, one ringing and one bagging, and that buzzy feeling you get when you do the same thing over and over sets in. Before I know it, Bob and Dao and Dao’s mom are heading out the door.

“You’ve got my cell number, right?” says Bob, patting his pockets till he locates his cell phone.

“Yup. Have fun.” I wave to Dao and her mom and they produce matching toothpaste-commercial smiles.

The store starts to slow down as the avenue clears out. The B and Ts get in their SUVs and head back out to the suburbs. The street merchants pack up their tables and the locals get on with their Saturday nights in a more desirable location. We’re back to the bare bones of the neighborhood: the weirdos, the street people and the homeless, all of whom have no specific plans for Saturday night.

For the last hour or so before we close I work my way through the back half of the store and clean up the bins to get them ready for tomorrow because I won’t be here. An old buddy of Bob’s named Roger opens up on Sundays but he rarely touches a bin. He works two days a week, and that’s mostly as a favor to Bob and to keep his record collection fresh and interesting. The rest of the time he plays steel guitar in a country band.

Every Picture Tells a Story
, by Rod Stewart, my absolute favorite Rod Stewart album, is playing on the stereo and I’m loving it and silently thanking Bob as “Maggie May” starts to play . . . what a song.

At five minutes till closing, I check the store for stray customers, a major part of the closing procedure. We once found a drugged-out kid curled up on the floor in the country section, and another time we found an employee (ex-employee now) napping in the storeroom behind some boxes. I check the bathroom and make my way up through the office to lock the front door. I hear voices coming from the front of the store and I crack the office door an inch and peer out. Two men in ski masks are standing in front of the cash register pointing a gun at Jennifer. I lunge backward in shock and then catch the door just as it’s about to slam. I hold it open an inch. I can’t see Jennifer’s face without opening the door some more but I can see that the glass front doors are closed and the lock is engaged. I’m afraid to call for help because the phone is right next to Jennifer and they’ll see the red light for the line go on. The robbers don’t seem to know that anyone is back here. They must have been staking out the place. They would have seen Bob leave and they might have thought they saw me leave too. A little while ago, I went to take some mail that was delivered to us by accident to Mario’s Mexican Restaurant around the corner. I came in the back way because it’s faster, but no one would know we have a back door. You have to punch a code to bypass the alarm and then it resets itself. They probably thought I was gone if they didn’t see me again. I suddenly think about what happened to the kid at the gas station. My heart is beating so fast that I worry they might hear it. I stand there, holding my breath. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I pray that Jennifer keeps her mouth shut for once. One of the men is telling Jennifer to fill up a Bob & Bob’s bag with all the cash from the register. I know from the report I ran recently that there’s only about two thousand dollars in the register; the rest is credit card slips, worth nothing to them. Jennifer miraculously does as she’s told and hands over the bag.