“Ask him,” Charles said, nudging me with his shoulder. “Stretch is the expert.”
“Oh,” the woman replied, nodding, poorly attempting to feign interest.
“Hey, you know, I think I have a copy of my book,” Charles said.
“You wrote a book?”
“Two actually, this is my second,” Charles beamed, digging through his briefcase while trying to find another copy.
“She can have mine,” I said, reaching next to me where I’d discarded the book.
“Thanks, man, I’ll get you another one.”
“Don’t put yourself out on my account,” I mumbled.
“You wrote Trident’s Hammer! I’ve heard of that!”
“Go ahead and keep the copy, my e-mail’s on the back cover. Let me know what you think.”
“Thank you,” the woman purred, starting to get up. “I’ve got to powder my nose, please excuse me.”
Charles smiled and nudged me in the shoulder again. As the woman walked down the aisle, she looked back and grinned devilishly. She then tripped over a passenger’s feet and stumbled forward.
Charles chuckled and looked over at me.
“Proud of yourself?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Charles replied. “You could have easily picked her up if you’d just asserted yourself, which you never do.”
“Not my style.”
“Ah … Thanks for letting her have the copy, I’ll get you another one in Oklahoma. Barnes and Noble carries them nationwide, you know?”
“Spectacular,” I replied, opening up my laptop to stare at the cursor. “So, you gonna let her know about the wife?”
“I’m not going to sleep with her, Will!” Charles groaned. “I’m just making the time pass. Would you rather talk about Jim?”
“Not really,” I yawned. “But, if you tell me who told you I was going to Norman, I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Jim.”
“Can’t do it.”
“Well, I’ll just get back to my story then.”
“Fair enough,” Charles mumbled, then smiled as the woman returned after applying another layer of makeup, Trident’s Hammer still latched in her thin fingers.
******
Neither of the coeds seemed to dig Shropshire Plaid’s new album, which played repeatedly in my car stereo. Jacobs didn’t seem to care. He was too distracted by the countryside. So as long as the album played in a continual loop, he was satisfied.
We’d gone back to the same area where he’d wrecked his Lexus, and he was looking for something. Jacobs had spent most of the trip turning a razor blade over and over in his fingers. He rubbed it like a rabbit’s foot and even as we talked about the tour and other local bands, his fingers remained preoccupied with the razor blade.
Sue, my sorta girlfriend, sat in the backseat, flanked on either side by the jabbering coeds. Sue was a big-boned brunette with a pretty face. Whenever I looked in the rearview mirror, I caught her annoyed glare that, despite its venom, was still a little precious. Sue and I slept together when we got lonely, but it was usually dispassionate unless we’d just finished arguing about something.
Jacobs announced our arrival by slapping me on the shoulder and pointing me toward a grassy field. We parked and left the car behind. The only light this far out was from the moon. There was no sign of civilization save my own tire tracks cut into the field. Jacobs opened the gym bag and pulled out a two liter bottle with a “Dr Pepper” label, but filled with an emerald green liquid.
“Absinthe?” I asked.
“No, better, got a guy who makes this up for me. Heh, made in Oklahoma!”
Jacobs passed me the bottle, and against my better sense, I took a drink. It was sweet, like mint liqueur, but burned like whiskey. There was a chemical aftertaste that troubled me most of all.
It went warm in my belly and then the moonlight started shimmering. It acted fast, so fast that I barely noticed that everyone was lying down in the woods, peeling off their clothes and laughing as I just gaped at the moonlight.
I smiled, sat down and watched Jacobs kiss my sorta girlfriend. My head felt like it was a cannonball and my neck was spaghetti. The sound of their lips was loud, beyond loud, deafening. I thought the whole world could hear. I watched, embarrassed, angry, jealous. Jacobs glanced at me as Sue’s tongue slid along his neck. He grinned and motioned to the girls. They slithered over to me, pressed their skin against mine. I let them, but I kept watching Jacobs and my sorta girlfriend. I kept listening to the lips, to the groans and to the awful sound of skin slapping against skin.
“Willy Wonka, as I live and breathe!” Stacia, a tall woman with a masculine walk said in a tomboy’s voice. Stacia is a little butch, but still someone I’d always wanted to sleep with. This week, her short, choppy hair was Kool-Aid red.
Her ratty mechanic’s overalls were covered in paint as she strode through her studio. Surrealist paintings of misshapen women were hanging everywhere and stacked along the wall. Steel, clay and brass sculptures littered the tables and a little girl pedaled her big wheel around the studio, nearly tripping Stacia.
I waved weakly, not expecting the aggressive bear hug I received.
“What is he doing here?” Stacia whispered in my ear.
I peeled away and glanced back at Charles.
“So, are you slumming this week, Mr. Spin?” Stacia asked, wiping her hand off on her overalls, and then reaching to shake Charles’s hand.
“Apparently,” Charles replied with a chuckle. “It’s been a while since I’ve been back to Paseo and I figured I’d tag along with Will.”
“I see,” Stacia frowned.
For the non-locals, Paseo is a historic area of Oklahoma City where artists converged. A century later, it’s continued to be one of the major art centers of the metro. Many of the residents of the apartments, lofts and the aging houses are artists or hipsters, so there is a lot of drugs and a lot of crime. Gentrification nudged the poverty out toward surrounding neighborhoods, but the area still couldn’t cleanse itself of the crime.
Stacia’s studio sat just outside the center of Paseo. The other gallery owners smiled and complimented Stacia when she came up in conversation. You could tell that they were vaguely annoyed by her and her ilk, as Stacia was annoyed by them and their ilk. Stacia celebrated the quirky DIY spirit of Oklahoma’s underground art scene; the very thing that the other institutions thought was holding Oklahoma City back.
They preferred tired and clichéd Santa Fe or abstract art. Yuck.
Jim crashed here for months at a time when he wanted to escape Norman, that is when he wasn’t sleeping in a recording studio or living in a park or on the streets. The studio is so central to Jim’s movement that no tour of the cult would be complete without a trip to Stacia’s mini artist commune.
“So, what are you working on these days?” Charles asked, pacing through the studio. He squatted down as the little girl pedaled toward him.
“Are you Sally?” Charles asked, to which the girl nodded her head. “I remember when you couldn’t even walk.”
Stacia frowned and then shot a sharp glare at me. All I could do was shrug and smile sheepishly.
“Can you help me with something upstairs, Will?” Stacia asked, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward a cast iron circular staircase tucked in the back corner of the studio.
“Here, I’ll come with you,” Charles said, standing up.
“Can you keep an eye on Sally?” Stacia asked. “The two of you have a lot of catching up to do.”
Charles was suddenly distant and uncomfortable. He turned slowly and looked back down at the girl. I was going to have to ask him about that later.
The staircase shook as we climbed up and the bolts holding up the staircase rattled and jerked. The second floor was even more cluttered with artwork. Stacia was like a packrat for art, always collecting from other artists who showed at her gallery. Sometimes it paid off as the young artists became successful. Sometimes their pieces jus
t collected dust upstairs.
Stacia barely let me step off the staircase when she turned around and slugged me in the shoulder.
“Ow,” I flinched. She really did hit hard.
“What is he doing here?” she hissed.
“He found out that I was coming back to see Jim somehow and followed me,” I replied.
“Why didn’t you ditch him?”
I simply didn’t have an answer for her. I should have by the time I got to her studio and I knew that I would have to before seeing Jim. I guess I just wanted to get the full dose of Charles’s charm before I peeled away.
“Jim is close by,” Stacia whispered. “He wants to see you soon. He’s pissed at you, too.”
“I figured he would be,” I replied. “I got Timbre to agree to a story though. I get to tell the story like Jim wanted me to, but I have to get an interview with him to go along with it.”
Stacia rolled her eyes and turned away from me. She picked up a stack of small portraits off a chair and sat down. Downstairs, the little girl laughed and squealed as Charles made goofy sounds that only parents of little kids would ever make in public. Stacia sighed and glared up at me.
“Have you heard about any sacrifices in the woods?” I asked.
“With the cult?” Stacia shrugged. “I heard something about it, but people think it’s fake. They’re just trying to get attention.”
“Are you going to the concert?”
“No,” Stacia replied. “I’m helping Jim right now, but I’m done with that whole thing. I’ve got a kid now, I can’t get involved in all that crap. Are you going?”
“Not sure yet.”
Stacia leaned forward and motioned for me to come close.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Something bad is going to happen. Jim is convinced that he’s saving the world. I don’t think they’re that dangerous now, but at the concert ...”
I stared at Stacia’s face. The journalist in me was dancing a jig, the rest of me was terrified.
“Whatever you do though,” Stacia said, “you have to lose the dickhead.”
“Hmm …” I nodded and hummed. “Do you remember Misty, that country girl, the one that used to stalk Jim back in the day?”
“Yeah,” Stacia sneered. “That girl was nuts.”
I chuckled.
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Why?” Stacia asked.
“Heard she was tied up with the cult.”
Stacia narrowed her eyes, but glanced away as her kid’s giggles wafted up the staircase.
“If Jim doesn’t know,” she said, “check the Dogbowl. They’ve got a deli there.”
“The cult?”
Stacia nodded with a grin.
“Thanks,” I said, getting up. “Can I leave out the back door?”
I prepared to defend myself. I’m not afraid to say that Stacia always intimidated me. Kinda turned me on, too.
“Are you taking the jackass with you?”
“I’d rather not,” I replied, carefully.
Stacia slumped back on the chair and hid her face in her hands. She growled and then waved me away. I turned and approached another set of stairs dropping down into the back of the studio. I began to descend, but paused.
“Where is Jim?” I whispered.
Stacia stood up, put the paintings back in the chair and shoved me aside as she walked down the stairs. I followed. She quietly unlatched the dead bolt on the back door.
“There is an apartment complex on the western side of Paseo, really ghetto,” she said.
“Where Bill from Disco-nect used to live?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Jim is stalking around there; you’ll have to find him.”
I nodded and stepped out onto the back porch. I glanced back at her.
“What’s with you and Charles … ?” I began.
“Fuck off, Will,” she snapped, beginning to close the door. She stopped and looked back out at me. “You need to prepare yourself, Will. Jim doesn’t look very good. I don’t know where he’s been and what he’s done, but it’s been bad.”
MARCUS
Marcus flipped through an issue of Timbre, breathing out shallow sighs when he disagreed and grinning and humming when they weren’t completely wrong. There was nothing new though. He knows about bands months before anyone else, and took pride that his musical knowledge couldn’t be matched by lowly music critics.
Through the window, Marcus noticed two thin and pale teenagers jogging across the street. Their pants were sickeningly tight and both wore baggy jackets, despite being a temperate 78 degrees outside. Marcus’s mouth twisted and he slid a small wire stand of new releases away from the edge of the counter. He then pushed a stack of free samplers in the rack’s place. The door pinged as it opened.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Marcus grumbled, glancing up just enough to make eye contact from under the brim of his ballcap. He wore hats all the time, partially to promote the store logo on the cap, but mostly because he only had one look that he felt comfortable with. It was comprised of:
I. T-shirt
II. Jeans
III. Ballcap
IV. Thin glasses
V. Well-kept beard.
He might throw on an overshirt when it was cold. His wife thought he looked clever and handsome and his hair was cutely tussled when it wasn’t hidden. Marcus didn’t feel handsome and resisted almost all her attempts to dress him up for special occasions. She even thought his mane of chest hair was charming, but they both agreed it was best if he didn’t take his shirt off when at the pool.
“Hey,” the taller of the two kids called as he swiped his overgrown black bangs from his eyebrow.
Marcus scratched his neatly trimmed beard as he anticipated a confrontation. In his mind, he drew up their likely path:
I. Wandering and skimming the vinyl, pretending to have heard albums from artists they only knew about because someone else had mentioned them in conversation.
II. Curve around to the used CDs, glance up every now and then to see if Marcus was watching. Steal the first album or two here.
III. Approach the new releases and decide if Marcus was too distracted to notice any more shoplifting.
Marcus picked up the magazine and leaned back in his chair so he could get a better view of the store. He’d once given kids the benefit of the doubt, but no more. He’d been burned too many times.
Marcus was immensely proud of his record store. It had become a landmark of Norman music, outlasting everyone’s expectations. Now in its eighth year, he’d entertained the idea of opening another in the city. That would mean he would have to scale back on his oversight of the Norman store to get the other started. The thought made him nauseous.
The store, like Marcus, was a carefully structured being with mountains of consideration and research invested into every decision. Albums had to be deemed worthy before they were brought into the store, in either CD or vinyl form. The used CD bin was more of a crapshoot since he couldn’t be in the store all the time to monitor his employees’ decisions on which albums to buy or trade from customers.
An ideal album for the store consisted of these factors:
I. Relevant to modern music.
II. Contained some degree of obscurity.
III. Was interesting to him, and if he was being honest with himself, not that interesting to anyone else.
There was also a formula that determined the percentage of obscure albums to albums likely to sell, which was based off of the store’s expenses. Albums from local musicians were welcome even if they didn’t pass all of the above criteria or were likely to sell. Touring bands from acceptable music venues also had a pass. Marcus could’ve cared less who was playing in Bricktown, but there were a few venues near and dear enough to his heart that he’d do whatever he could to support their shows.
There was an element of German efficiency to both his store and his own appearance. He had a business partner who long ago gave up trying to ar
gue with Marcus over the details of the store. Marcus hated clutter; he hated record stores with boxes of vinyl stacked everywhere so no one could find anything. He needed order and logic, and the same was true for his clothes. His T-shirt collection was as meticulously kept as his record collection. T-shirts must be:
I. Relevant to modern music or pop culture.
II. Eye-catching and not clash with his body type or facial features.
III. Promoting a label or band that would release an album the week that he wore the shirt.
IV. Unavailable in the store, but others by that band or label were. He strove to never wear a shirt someone else he knew might have.
Though he often went out of his way to promote local music, he refused to put up the posters for the Shropshire Plaid reunion. People were promising the return of the band’s lead singer, Jim Jacobs, though most people believed he was dead. The cult members would put posters up on the store windows after he closed, and he would just take them right back down in the morning. He’d considered going to the concert, just to see the spectacle, but he really didn’t like associating with those people anymore. They were odd and intimidating, but they also never went to other people’s concerts or bought other people’s albums. He couldn’t stand anyone who said they were a music fan, but then didn’t support local music.
The teenagers began to approach the door, and Marcus saw a sharp bulge in the jacket pocket of the tall and slender boy.
“Can’t let you take that,” Marcus said without lowering his magazine.
The kids stopped. Marcus was glad because he wasn’t going to chase them.
“What?” the tall kid asked weakly.
“Just put it on the counter, please,” Marcus replied.
The kid took out the CD and slid it to Marcus while keeping his eyes diverted to the ground. Marcus craned his head to look at it as the kids shuffled toward the door. It was a Vib Gyor import.
“Wait!” Marcus snapped. The kids stopped. “Do you even know who this is?”