Morning greeted Aster with open arms, spilling its amber welcome across a room sweetened with birdsong. Peppermint Plains, even on the cusp of dawn and with few to witness it, presented only an idyllic face to all of its residents. A mantra intermingled with the singing, whispered and yet frantic. “I don't want to work, I don't want to work, I don't want to work—”
Aster stared blankly up at the ceiling, gripping her bed sheets as though she would fly out of bed the second she let go. The echo of a cane sounding against wood was audible down below and she knew that it and its owner would come for her before long. She counted her final seconds of peace like a prospector of atoms of gold.
Her head spun. Not just out of fear for the guillotine of employment which waited on the horizon but also the incredible concept that she had slept a simulated sleep. She had even had a dream in which she picked our a record for her father from this very record shop. How was that possible?
She pinched herself and drew blood. The room did not disappear. Tears welled up in her eyes from the pain but the rafters and their tufts of cobweb remained. She lifted her head slightly and peered around. The attic revealed itself with daybreak to be two rooms separated by a doorless partition through which she could spy mountains of boxes falling in on themselves. She sat fully upright, drawn by curiosity towards the vinyl inside them. With the utmost caution she stepped down from her bed, navigating the loose and tattling floorboards like a minefield as Floyd continued to be heard downstairs.
She crossed the partition, finding a disused kitchen immediately to her left. To her right was a small bathroom which peered at her through a door ajar. The towers of boxes filled the whole of this tiny apparent apartment and, upon investigation, were all filled with the same record.
“What the fuck is this?” she asked herself, grimacing as she brought one of them up into the morning light. She brushed aside a layer of dust, revealing what looked to be a picture of a much younger, but still camp, Mr. Floyd, absent his Washington worship. Her confusion deepened. “Row Your Boat? Easy Jazz Comedy?” she read off in a tone of derision, while her eyes scanned the title: Mr. Childress’ Variety Hour.
The smiling face on the record seemed to awaken as its owner's voice sounded from up the stairs, setting Aster's blood on ice.
“Oh, Miss Aster!” he warbled, causing her to drop the record. She attempted to turn around but found she could barely move, let alone bring herself to respond. She looked at the window and halfway considered escaping out of it, only to stop the thought prematurely, chastising herself. Then how will you eat, idiot?! Where will you live?!
Her blood went colder still. Floyd had only lent her this room for the night, she now remembered. He had only given her this shift. When 6 o'clock came she was homeless— lost in a world she knew nothing about. The urge to vomit was rising like Floyd's voice and footsteps up the staircase. Was this it? she thought on the verge of full-on sobbing. Was this the price she paid for using such an illegal device? Had she found punishment in place of paradise?
—
She found herself at the top of the stairs like a mouse out for scraps after dark. Floyd was crouched behind a shelf, busy at work sorting records. Though she did not make a sound, even in breathing, he nonetheless noticed her presence, turning his good-natured eyes up at the foal-like girl.
“Good morning, Miss Aster!” he greeted in a warm tone, smiling. “I trust the accommodations were to your liking?”
Aster jolted, hugging the banister. Her eyes remained fixed to the ground and she nodded; there was little review to give beyond 'it worked for passing out in tears.'
Floyd was nevertheless enthused, exclaiming “fantastic!” as he rose from beside the records. “Now,” he began, drawing toward her. “Even though you're only here for the afternoon, I figure I should give you a tour of the shop.”
Aster's eyes rose. A tour of a record shop? All the terror in the world could not stifle the little murmur of excitement which crept up in her heart at the thought.
“This—” he began, extending his arm out towards an arrangement of furniture which was closest to them. “—Is my most prized area in the shop: the listening corner! Or Floyd's Corner, as I like to call it. It's a place for customers and employees, to relax and trial their purchases. You see, I pride myself on making this a lighthearted, inclusive place for music lovers—”
Floyd's words drifted into the ether as Aster's eyes tunneled-visioned on the sea of music before her. She had, having been in her deep panic the day before, not properly registered what it was she had happened upon, like a knight fatally wounded by a dragon dying amongst its horde of gold. This was a record store— mecca of the recorded note.
Goosebumps lit up the surface of her skin. Before her was row after row of vinyl, laid at angles in their shelves like saluting soldiers of wax eternally at the ready for whomever may find interest in them. It was like nothing she had ever seen, because she had never seen physical music before. It was something that had always lived in the air, swam through the ether like Floyd's disengaged ramblings; to witness its plastic flesh felt akin to the uncovering of millennia dead emperors.
Her mind began at once to consider the possibilities. Did it sound better? Did the experience feel better? She eyed the disks, black as midnight and large as dinner plates, on display, unable to imagine that a machine could successfully pull sound from them.
“Does that model have your eye?” Floyd asked, noticing her intense focus on one of the record players. Aster blushed, but nodded, encouraging him to bring one down from its display. “We carry only top of the line models here at Childress Records!” he declared, giving Aster the opportunity to, with all the subtlety of a brick through a window, coax him to demonstrate how they worked under the guise of 'wanting to see the features of each model'.
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He was more than happy to oblige, adamant that there had never been a record shop in the whole of human history like his.
“And you just drop this needle on the record...?” she asked as she tried it out for herself, lighting up with a feverish excitement as she watched the needle bounce across the spinning plastic grooves, ushering forth from its deep and hissing rumble the sweet, unmistakable cadence of a melody. Aster's orange eyes twinkled, moistened by the eruption of a sound the fidelity and warmth of which she had never known, rough and archaic but with an affection for her soul the music she had known had never knew. In fact, there was within this primitivity such an unarguably pure sensation that Aster barely knew how to handle its discovery. Her breast was seized by a sudden burning, a tacit confirmation of all the dislike and ill-will she felt for what she considered the sterilization of art rampant in 2066. Her brow fell in the fury that this feeling had been denied her in the sake of 'progress'.
“A little more lively today, aren't we?” Floyd teased as Aster took to flipping through through records, playing with the needle and marveling at its dance within the grooves as she figured out how to master the device.
He turned his attention to a grandfather clock near the store's entrance.
“While I would love to introduce you to all of our merchandise— and believe me I would— I'm afraid we must continue,” he said, dousing her inflamed curiosity with a polite smile that bade her to follow. And with great effort she did, breaking away from the machine with all the pain of one parting from their own limb.
He continued on to the center of the shop, taking care to point out along the way the various sections for: instruments (sparser than he wished, but assured her they were investing in them), lesson books and tablature (beside the listening corner), and even a small setup near the back, which they were approaching, of home recording equipment— 2-tracks tape machines, microphones, analog cables— which Floyd explained he had amassed over the years through various musical enterprises. And at the very back of the shop was a door, unassuming yet belonging to a large wall suspicious in its nakedness compared to the rest of the shop. Floyd opened it, welcoming Aster into a large, brightly lit room half the size of the shop floor, forested with boxes of all shapes, sizes, and colors. There were coiled posters, instruments, record players, musical paraphernalia of all types sleeping within the inventory, and Aster's curiosity revived like a phoenix as she brushed close to the boxes, storing the scent of plastic, physical existence within her lungs like a lost lover's photograph within the mind.
“This room is where we keep our inventory,” Floyd began, moving ahead of her. “The nerve center of our business. It is a very important room!” he trilled, throwing an arm up in exclamation, before lowering it with a darkening expression. “But please, take care to not leave Sylvia alone in here. She gets trapped under boxes.”
Aster could not tell if he was joking.
“Speaking of Miss Sylvia,” he continued, circling back to the front of the storeroom. “She will be joining us at opening to tune a new shipment of guitars we're receiving, which leaves you to front the register. That's not a problem, right?”
One would have assumed Aster to have opened an artery at the speed with which she went a ghostly white.
“I can tune—”
“Excellent! Follow me to the register and we'll get you set up!” he sang, holding the door open for her.
The vivacious, rhythmic chords of a rock 'n' roll tune playing over the shop speakers could have been interchangeable for a funeral march, for Aster saw nothing before her now but a horizon, dark and precipitous, which swallowed up any hope of the future. It was closing like the seam on a body bag; an implicit moment to signify she and her chances of happiness were now as good as dead and gone.
The gleaming metal relic they called a register, promise of fatal embarrassment, came into sight. They stopped before it and Aster winced, comparing the faded-blue metal and its delirious number of buttons and symbols to some sort of ghastly, medieval torture device.
“What is this?” she blurted out in alarm.
Floyd looked at her. “Whatever do you mean? This is a register, Aster. You know, a machine you use to ring customers up?”
Aster threw her gaze to the ground, flushing a red that could've been mistaken for sunburn. “I-I know that. I meant, what model of register is it?” she stammered.
What the fuck is 'ringing up'?
Floyd observed the register. “I could not tell you dear," he said quizzically, before turning to her. "But no matter, it's a simple affair! Today is Tuesday: we don't have much business on Tuesdays,” he assured her with a smile. “Just give the customer your best and after 6 you are free to take your leave!”
Her stomach bottomed out. The terrors which seized her in that moment were two-fold and titanic, and like an expert pincer movement in war they closed in on her from all sides, compressing her nervous system with the threat of abandonment and utter social humiliation to the very point of collapse. Her heart was palpitating as a bridge of refuge suddenly, seemingly appeared in the depths of hell.
“Do you have any questions for me?”
Aster, whose brain was roiling over like a Fourth of July night sky, stared blankly at Floyd. Possible questions crowded in on each other, each attempting to clamor over the other while the
Can I have a job? Can I live here? Can I not work the register? How do you use the shower without burning yourself?
She had to do it— this was the point of action that would change her life. But how was she to will the throat, dry and constricted, which could barely swallow desperate breaths? She strained herself, and tried. A small squeak of the voice was drowned out by the jostling of the shop's bell.
“Well would you look at that,” he hummed, turning away from Aster and towards the grand clock. “Right on time!”
The body bag was closed. The dirt was being shoveled over top her head as Floyd warbled on and approached the door, through which the face of Sylvia could be seen in a diffused blur through the pulled-down screen. Numerous heads were abounding around her and she looked over through the window. That effervescent face, whose radiance had helped Aster into this world like a searchlight in the dark, had been replaced by a look of total apology. The heads swayed around her like a sea of brunette, blonde, black, and red while the faces and hands of the foremost row pushed against the windows like a horde on the heels of plunder.
Aster heart froze in place. Their gazed hungrily scanned the inside, crawling over Aster like a thousand spiders.
“I don't think we should open the doors,” she whispered in a voice that never had a single hope of being heard over Floyd's whistling. With the twist of a key the door flew open, he was violently heaved aside, and Sylvia rode in with the stampede looking every bit a peppermint warlord.
“Prepare for battle!”