I'm
feeling cheeky, so I'm going to give you the first half of the sixth
chapter.
CHAPTER
6—TWO TO TANGO
Butter High spread out on a hill
overlooking the town of Butter. It was, in fact, at the peak of the legendary
Butter family hill. On the crisp, clear, chilly nights of fall it shone like a
beacon, the football field lit up like Christmas, the cheers of the large
crowds and the ring of the announcer’s voice wafting down to the streets of
Butter. On holidays, the kids of Butter filled the streets with parade floats,
the clang of cymbals, the march of feet, the painted faces and fancy dresses of
pageant. At 7:30 on weekday mornings and at 2:15 on weekday afternoons, traffic
clogged the veins of Butter hill, creeping up and down, honey on a tablespoon.
The buildings of the High were clean and
extensive, the grounds green and manicured, the computer labs impressive. The
morning and afternoon announcements were made enthusiastically, the principal
attended events with a smirk of pride. There were students on grounds from 5:00
AM to 10:00 PM for every type of white-collar sport and club you could imagine.
School pennants, award trophies, painted banners, club fliers, lined all the
neatly swept and amply sunlit hallways.
It was a suburb of Detroit, out on the
fringes of urbanity where other suburbs touched the borders over lakes and
around rivers, each cracking jokes about the other’s inhabitants driving
tractors to school and cow tipping (which no one really did). For those
families to whom Butter Country Club wasn’t enough of a social life, they could
wander across these borders for various doses of reality in other more urbane
suburbs and towns. If they were especially brave, they could even step into
Detroit itself, into Greektown, into Motown, slip into the slums, the grit, the
under-belly of American society along the alleys (with their doors locked and
windows up, instructed not to look anyone in the eye), in the theaters and
stadiums with the scalpers and hookers outside, their panties considered
outer-wear below their skirts.
Like movie characters who spend their
youth maturely longing to get out of it, to escape their suffocating or
dysfunctional family, or their backwater town, the misfits of Butter High
hunched their shoulders against each other in the school hall corners, lined
the chain-link fences around the perimeter in a cloud of smoke. They bummed
fags, wore black, bought skateboards to grind the stoops of local shops. This
was their rebellion; their waiting for adulthood like waiting for a jail break.
But as anything glamorized, in reality they appeared as anything but movie characters.
They were an anomaly to soccer moms, who spent lifetimes clawing for and
hanging to their gold necklaces with one charm for each baby, their knockoff
purses, their cruises to Mexico.
These kids rebelled for rebellions sake,
jumped on various bandwagons to swim out of the main stream. Most of their
causes grew out of their own selfishness, their own desire for uniqueness, and
ultimately: fame. But these were the darkest corners of their motives. Many of
them were also altruistic, lonely, sea-legged for the wide-open, foreign
shores, different views of the same moon, and curious. Anything but mediocrity.
Let’s allow our hero and heroine (and other characters like them) all of the
above in varying degrees.
Mikhail, his nature being as it was,
quickly fell into line with Gabbie’s cause: the homeless. He accompanied Gabbie
to her outings, assisted her with her projects, without conflict of heart. He
made friends with those around her: the ladies at the community center, the
classmates she gravitated to and orbited around, the yearbook and newspaper
professors, Melodie, Belle, Stellar, Adam.
They exchanged phone calls, walked in
each other’s front doors with only a brief knock and a “Hello!?”, rode with
each other every day to and from school. Gabbie helped write Mikhail’s papers,
he tirelessly explained her math lessons to her. Gabbie left Coke bottles of
wildflowers for Mikhail by his mailbox, he fried her eggs when she got in late
from the soup kitchen. They became a way of life for each other, a habit, a
special friend. They slowly unfurled their secrets, went beyond awkward
silences, their roots mingling deep within the earth.
Mikhail became surer and surer of the
lack of erotic interest from Gabbie. But he secretly loved her, more and more
with each day, as is the habit of heroes of the ilk of Mikhail: sensitive,
deep, surrounded by powerful women, and melted by his lack of self-confidence.
Mikhail wandered into Purple Monkey’s, an
independently owned record store on the main stretch of Butter. Purple Monkey’s
housed a wide (and tightly packed) selection of new, underground material and
dusty, old faves. It was equipped with three racks of great t-shirts (Johnny
Cash and Bob Marley) and a display case of un-sellables: original Beatles, Jimi
Hendrix, The Ramones. Over these Mikhail had drooled (on multiple occasions,
with and without accomplices) from behind the counter.
Mikhail buried his hands in the front
pockets of his jean jacket, adjusted his eyes to the dark, den-ness of the
store. The light that escaped in through the glass doors accented a wall of
flying dust with gold sunlight and then spilled on the first display.
Everything else was dim, smelled of attics and old trunks and abused carpet. In
a weak attempt to unify the smell, a stick of incense trailed its tendril of
smoke, suffocating the store in sandalwood. A man stood behind the glass
counter (covered with stickers and taped-on fliers and paper fragments: “My
Other Ride is Your Mom” and “Goonies Never Say Die!”), arms shooting down straight
in front of him and his palms pressed against the streaked top. He turned
toward Mikhail as the door bell dinged and clattered against the glass. Then
looked uninterested; adjusted his focus outside.
Mikhail dodged into the back of the shop,
started leafing through thousands of filed vinyl albums, then slunk his way to
the CD section. There was a proto-punk band, one of the forefathers of all
later punk bands. Mikhail wanted their debut album, and he wanted it bad. He
had mentioned it in passing to both his mother and Gabbie when his birthday
approached, but they both later complained that the album was nowhere to be
found. He figured that they hadn’t wandered in here.
After a thorough search in even the
sections that were very unlikely, even outrageous, for the album to be filed
in, he resolved himself to the CD. Still nothing. So Mikhail wandered back out
of the shop, grabbed a couple fliers from the table by the door, squinted in
the sun. There in his hands: ads for the upcoming rock shows, punk shows, ska
shows, and a flier for Purple Monkey’s. Near the bottom of the Purple Monkey’s
flier: “We will order any album or CD for you, if we can find it, no matter how
obscure.”
That was it then. All Mikhail had to do
was turn around, walk right up to the counter through the wall of golden dust
particles and sandalwood smoke, and ask George or Joe or Mike or whomever to
look for that album. He knew that they would probably be able to find it for
him. But here’s the thing: Mikhail stood there, stared down at the ad, shrugged
his shoulders, and stuffed the fliers in his satchel. Then he walked down the
road, mounted his bike, pedaled away toward Gabbie’s.
A ritual had begun. Mikhail repeated it
maybe once a week, often more. He wandered into Purple Monkey’s, leafed through
the obvious sections, then the un-obvious ones, in search of the holy grail of
Mikhail’s current album collection. He eventually gave up and pedaled home
smelling of patchouli, mildew, lavender char.
After a few weeks, George or Joe or Mike
or whomever—whose name actually was
George—started keeping his eyes on Mikhail, afraid he was one of the kids
lifting records from the store. George would hover near Mikhail during
Mikhail’s ritual, pretending to dust the shelves (an obvious cover and a laughing
matter), to re-organize the alphabetical order, to check inventory of necessary
albums. When George was convinced Mikhail was a harmless kid, George still
continued his farce, peeking over Mikhail’s shoulder to see where he was
looking, what he was picking up. It became a game for George, and he would say
to his friends later, “I think it’s the Pink Floyd The Wall,” and the next day, “No, no, no. I was way off. It’s the
early The Clash single. I just know
it.” And if George didn’t have what he guessed Mikhail was looking for, George
ordered it and stocked it; watched to see if the fish bit. George would even
play the album in question afternoon after afternoon until Mikhail wandered in,
watching the expression on Mikhail’s face as he entered.
This became such a sport for George that
it didn’t really matter if he made a sale, as long as he guessed it right. Mikhail noticed George hanging around, figured he
was creepy or lonely, and resented his shoulder being looked over. The one
thing Mikhail never did: say a word in Purple Monkey’s.
Eight months into the silent dance of
Mikhail and George, Gabbie, Mikhail and Melodie were walking downtown Butter,
looking for a place to eat, a used book for Gabbie, and a place to loiter.
Melodie turned as they passed Purple Monkey’s, pressed her nose to the window.
“Hey, Let’s go in here!”
“No…” Mikhail stuttered.
“Yeah. It looks cool. C’mon.” She opened
the door with a loud tinkling and clanging of bell on glass. “Gabbie?”
“Sure. C’mon Mikhail.”
The store transformed. Smoke was waved
away by long, thin arms, the dimness was scattered by lighted eyes and flashes
of skin, the still of Purple Monkey’s went hiding: Gabbie and Melodie chatted,
cursed, yelled, laughed as they made their way from the front of the store slowly
to the back.
Mikhail scooted away, made his way back
to his usual section, dodging George’s look of lust and disbelief. (George
stayed firmly planted behind the counter this crazy afternoon.) Mikhail began
leafing through the records, looking for the usual.
“What’re you looking for?” Gabbie’s head
appeared over his shoulder, her chin resting on his collar bone.
“A record. It’s called The Stooges, by The Stooges. But they
don’t have it. I already looked.”
“Oh.” She reached out her arm around
Mikhail to flip through herself, then stepped beside him.
“What’re you looking for?” he asked.
“Nothing particular. You know, just
lookin’. This place is pretty cool, huh?” She pulled a few records at random to
examine. “Anything you recommend?”
“Ummm. Give me a minute.” Mikhail bit his
lip and scooted to the back of the shop, his eyes narrowed over the stacks.
Gabbie wandered the shop, making offhanded remarks to Melodie over The Beastie
Boys.
Melodie purchased a t-shirt while Gabbie
fidgeted by the counter, leafing through the fliers scattered about. Then
Melodie exited to the ice cream shop, yelled that she would meet Gabbie and
Mikhail there when they were done.
“Find anything for me yet?” Gabbie popped
into Mikhail’s personal space again, barely touching his left thigh with her
right hip.
“Yeah, I think I did.” Mikhail weighed a
record each in his two hands, then slid one back where it went in the stacks.
“Here!” He turned and handed her a record.
“The Beatles. Abbey Road. You think I’ll
like it?” She took it in her hands, held it against her waist.
“Yup. But that’s only the beginning.”
“Okay, deal. But I have something for you
too.” She handed him a flier and pointed to the bottom. “Here. It says that you
can order any album that our man George can find.”
“Who’s George?” Mikhail furrowed his brow
down at the paper.
“Guy behind the counter. Just talked to
him. Let’s go order your CD or whatever.”
And they did, just like that: approached
the counter, made their request to George, filled out a form, and got a “great
album!” from George. Mikhail stopped in daily, afterwards, to see if it had
been found, then if it had been shipped, then if it had been received. When it
was in his hands, he thanked George and disappeared from Purple Monkey’s for
two weeks before returning to browse the shop with Gabbie. George’s game was
over.
