Andrew Ervin - Burning Down George Orwell's House

RAY SPENT THE REMAINDER of the day trying to straighten up again. Even though nothing was going to happen between them, the idea of Flora coming over carried with it the fear of transgressing some boundary. He needed to stay on his best behavior. Pentode had likely already told Helen about the scene in the coffee shop and Ray’s apparently sexual relationship with a woman over a decade his junior. Thanks to that asshole’s flapping gums, she would assume that he was sleeping with Flora.

So that was it.

If Helen was so sure he was screwing Flora, the worst thing Ray could do was to confirm her suspicions. Not fucking Flora was the same thing as fucking Flora as long as his wife believed that he was fucking Flora.

Of course, there was no reason to consider the possibility that Flora was interested in that kind of relationship, and in the morning Ray would get the opportunity to set the record straight with Helen even if it meant lying to her.

Music — Flora would want to listen to music. Ray hadn’t purchased a CD in five years and didn’t like the idea of downloading songs because he found it difficult to spend money on immaterial products. Helen had maintained possession of all their jazz and soul albums. Another example of poor planning on his part. What little music he owned consisted of rap from his adolescence and college days. Time had relegated it to oldies stations and infomercials. Companies like Logos were now using the edgiest and most radical music from his youth in ads for luxury cars.

The sign above the windowless store said P.M., which served as both the name of the place and its daily hours of operation. Ray had walked past it a hundred times and never seen anyone come or go. Were it not for a tip from one of the interns he would have thought it was an exclusive nightclub or an illegal, happy-ending massage parlor. It looked like no music store he had ever been in. The shelves were arranged to form a maze and their immense height made it impossible to see other parts of the shop.

A series of round blinking lights built into the clear plastic floor tracked his movement. He followed them toward the checkout counter in the center of the shop, zigzagging past every manner of analog and digital recorded media, from vintage video-game cartridges to 8 mm movie reels to computer floppy disks in unrecognizable sizes. A tribal-tattooed fourteen-year-old sat at the counter attaching sticky notes to his knuckles with a stapler. “Yeah?” he asked.

“I need some music,” Ray said.

The kid blinked at him. “Good thing you’re in a music store. Ow!” On his nametag, beneath HELLO MY NAME IS he had written in “Hello My Name Is.” He fingered the buttons of an unseen keyboard built into the glass counter. “Follow the red light. The upload stations have everything you need,” he said and dismissed Ray with a wave of his bleeding hand.

The white light at his feet turned red and then the subsequent ones did too, one after the other, directing him deeper into the maze.

“But I don’t have anything to upload to.”

“Try your phone. Ow!”

“Why would I want to listen to music on my phone?”

The kid put the stapler down and twisted the buds of his nascent dreadlocks. “I’m guessing you’re too old to spin vinyl.”

“Too old? What? I was spinning vinyl before you were ev—”

“Do you have a CD — excuse me, a compact disc — player at home?”

“Yeah, where do you keep the—?”

“The old-school hip-hop is in zone six. Follow the red light,” he said and returned to his stapler.

The bulb at Ray’s feet blinked impatiently. He went the opposite direction and browsed the shelves. P.M. was equal parts record shop, museum, and graveyard haunted by the ghosts of technologies past. Not including the clerk, he heard at least three other people brush through other parts of the store, but he didn’t see any customers. The sound of the stapler and the yelped obscenities helped him maintain his bearing. The whole place smelled like fruity air freshener. He went back to the checkout counter. A sticky note reading “Ow!” was stuck to the back of the clerk’s hand. “How about some new music? What’s current?”

“Kimagure.”

“Never heard of them.”

“I’m Kimagure,” said a scrawny bleach-blond Asian kid behind the cash register who Ray hadn’t noticed. His skin was so pale that he looked translucent even in his ugly patterned T-shirt. He might have been standing there the entire time. “You need a turntable,” he said. “Follow me.”

The clerk glided through the shop without the slightest hint of bodily motion. The lights in the floor followed behind him like a trained pet. He stopped at a glass display case containing twenty-four record players of monstrous complexity. “This one,” he said, pointing. “Wait here.” He left Ray to admire the machines. The model he had pointed to had a $1,200 price tag. It was the cheapest of the bunch.

Kimagure reappeared from the opposite direction and handed over a box with a label printed in a language Ray didn’t recognize. “Follow me,” he said.

He led Ray through the store, plucking a dozen plastic-wrapped record albums from the sleek shelving units. Ray lost his breath and any sense of direction. His footsteps sounded labored, which made him realize that the place was silent: a music store that didn’t play music. Kimagure twisted past miles of reel-to-reel spools and MP3 players and even a small section of player-piano rolls, and then stopped back at the cash register, where Ray charged $1,900 to a credit card he still shared with Helen.

“These will get you started,” Kimagure said. “It’s all underground shit. Limited pressings. Very collectable.”

“Thank you,” Ray said.

“I accept tips,” Kimagure said.

“Tips?”

“A hundred is standard. From you twenty looks correct.”

Ray removed twenty dollars from his wallet and handed it over. “Any advice how to hook this up?” he asked, but Kimagure had already faded soundlessly into the mood-lit gloam of the shop. He followed the blinking white dot back through the maze and, two grand poorer, got birthed onto the crowded sidewalk.

He stepped out of the elevator and turned the corner to find Flora sprawled out on the floor in front of his door. When she removed her headphones, the violins were broadcast all the way down the hall.

“How did you get in the building?”

“Nice to see you too, Ray.”

He put the record player down and unlocked the door.

“New turntable?” she asked.

“I went to buy some new music, but I don’t know what you like so I got some help.”

“I hope you went to see Kim.”

“He shook me down for twenty bucks.”

She poked him in the chest. “You got off easy. He supplies every decent deejay in the state. He must have liked you. Nice place — what do you have to drink?” Her tongue stud clacked against her teeth.

“Let’s see. Tap water, spring water, mineral water, vitamin-enhanced water, diet cola, milk, beer, and whisky.”

“Glass of milk please. Is your apartment always this clean? I had you pegged as a slob.”

“I only clean up when guests are coming over.”

“Do you entertain often? I bet you’re a regular pussy magnet.”

“You’re the first in a long time. Guest, I mean.”

“What is this?”

“It’s milk.”

“I was joking, dumbass. Get me a whisky. What kind of single malt do you have?”

“What do you know about single malts?”

“Enough.”

“Will a twenty-one-year-old suffice?”

She sat down. “That’s a loaded question. I’m twenty-one.”

“That didn’t come out right. It’s from the Isle of Jura.”

“Isn’t that where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four ?”