Page 38 of Code Word
Fuck.
Maybe being in public wasn’t such a great idea.
I found a vintage record store and went inside, flipping through old vinyls before the sales guy spoke to me.
“Hey,” he said generically. Then he gave me a second look. “Oh, hey. Atrous, right?”
Other people in the store turned to face me and I gave them a bit of a smile.
The jolt of excitement, familiar but somehow new, was nice. It was nice to be recognized, to be liked, even.
And that struck me, right there in the middle of the damn store, just how miserably sad that was.
I was losing my damned mind.
“Anything I can help you with?” the sales guy said, standing next to me now. “Looking for anything in particular?”
And I had two choices. I could mumble something and get the hell out of there, or I could try to be fucking normal.
It was harder than I thought it’d be.
“Uh, yeah. Do you have any record players? Doesn’t need to be anything new. Actually, the older the better. Vintage.”
He brightened. “Sure, man. This way. Blake, isn’t it?”
I managed a nod, and I did feel a sense of normalcy while he showed me the three players they had. Pretty sure my grandparents had one in particular, so I pretended to be interested in it, lifting the arm and switching between 45 and 33.
It felt nice to be doing something normal.
Mundane.
To have this guy’s undivided attention, to have him excited to be around me.
How fucked up was that?
“I’ll take it,” I said. “What kind of seventies stuff have you got?”
His eyes lit up, his smile widened, and he went to one corner of his store in particular and began pulling out sleeves. “What vibe you after? We have some Kiss, Deep Purple, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd...”
“Perfect. I’ll take them. And whatever else you think is good.”
By this time, a few more people had entered the store, and I knew some of them were trying to film me discreetly. Two girls asked if they could have a photo with me, then a couple of guys, and I figured, why not?
It felt good to be wanted.
Even if I felt the complete opposite.
The guy rang up my sale and I couldn’t even remember how much he’d said the total came to. It didn’t matter.
“So, can I ask,” he said as he handed me the receipt. “Working on anything new?”
“No comment,” I replied with a smirk, and everyone there seemed to take that for a yes. There were some excited faces and a “Yessss” and a quiet squeal from the girls I’d taken the photo with.
The sales guy stacked up my vinyls on top of the record player, and I hadn’t really considered how I was gonna get it back to my Range Rover.
“We’ll help you carry it,” the girls said, and as they tookhalf the vinyls each, I could hear our old manager Amber’s voice in the back of my head.
Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea.
