The Summer of Kicks Page 17

  Perfect.

  In between talking Zeppelin and Cold Chisel to an ex-radio DJ and selling twelve LPs to an old guy who for some reason had settled on the idea that a silver ponytail was his best look, I’ve swept the floor, taken the empty boxes out to the cardboard compactor at the back of the centre and done a take-your-time juice run for Scene. The coffee customers have been steady today, so Ellie’s been busy too. Too busy to look my way.

  ‘All right,’ Scene says as traffic flow in the store finally eases. ‘Now that they’ve all buggered off out of here we can get back to work.’ Customer service, it seems, isn’t his first passion. ‘C’mere, I wanna show you something.’ He lifts the red crate to the counter and he takes the records out, one by one, turning them over as carefully as if he was valuing a diamond.

  ‘Man, this is the real deal,’ he says. ‘Every now and then, some old dude croaks and leaves his records to charity or whatever. Looks like we hit pay dirt on this pile.’

  He holds one up for me. I’ve seen it before.

  ‘Diamond Dogs, right?’ It’s Bowie, ’74. ‘But check this out, newbie,’ Scene says, flipping the record over. ‘It’s Bowie with his tackle out,’ he laughs. ‘Only a handful of these made it out before they canned the gonads and re-did the artwork. This album alone’s gotta be worth three or four grand!’

  And the super-valuable hits keep coming.

  ‘Cure single with “Foxy Lady” on the B-side – that’s another grand or two,’ whispers Scene. ‘And sweet baby Jesus – Zeppelin with different freaking cover art!’ It looks pretty much the same to me, but Scene is quick to point out the turquoise lettering at the top. Five thousand dollars’ worth of turquoise lettering.

  They’re not all super rarities. There are some standards in the pile, too. Records that he’ll actually let me touch while he gloves his hands and locks the others away in the glass display case. There are at least six or seven Beatles and John Lennon. Some Creedence, Alice Cooper. A stack of Queen. Early Stones. No re-masters, all original pressings. I see John, Paul, George and Ringo captured mid-stride on the crossing outside their recording studio, one of the most iconic album covers of all time, and I flip it over. Abbey Road is such a classic, but looking at the track list, I realise that I’ve never heard the whole thing start to finish and songs like ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ and ‘Polythene Pam’ are so unfamiliar it’s ridiculous.

  This album is in almost mint condition, except for the plastic sleeve that protects the record itself. Top-left corner. Inked in capitals I see a name with a six-digit phone number underneath.

  I slide out L.A. Woman and the name and number – they’re there again. High Voltage. Diver Down. Rumours. Shabooh Shoobah. All with the same number. All the same name.

  DK Jones.

  My father’s name.

  Chapter 27

  Regrets? I’ve had a few ...

  It’s almost three o’clock, just a couple of rotations of the minute hand until the end of my shift. For the last four or so hours, Ellie’s been no more than maybe fifteen metres away, but it’s killing me because she’s so close, so physically close to me. She’s the girl I invited to drink coffee with me, who allowed me to hold her hand, to look into her eyes, and who wanted me. She wanted me and even though she’s just a few steps away, it feels like there’s so much distance between us I don’t know how I can ever find a way back to her. I feel so helpless. So useless. But it’s not all I’m feeling. The big one is regret. Just to be able to go back and undo my stupidity. Good God, what the hell was I thinking? Candace was never an option for me. It was never going to happen and if I’d been honest with myself, really honest, I would have faced up to it and told her to piss off. I’m pretty sure that Candace isn’t harbouring any feelings of remorse about what happened. And I know I’ll accept my part in it; I was totally to blame for being with Candace and doing everything I did, but it was Candace who was driving the bus. Touching my leg, flirting with me, inviting me upstairs. There’s no way I would have had the notion to instigate a romantic interlude that night. I’d like to think that it would be possible, that I could be the type of guy to put the moves on a girl and wage a persuasive enough argument that she couldn’t help but tear off her clothes and jump my bones. But it’s just not me. I’m not a player, not by any stretch of the imagination, and maybe, somehow, I can communicate that to Ellie.

  No pressure.

  I pass the album bays near the coffee area and I see her. I see her like nobody else here sees her. The people, they sit and they give her their coffee orders, one after the other, and I just can’t comprehend how they don’t notice her, how they don’t realise that they’re being served by one of the most amazing girls on the planet. Surely they’d stop to stare at her face, at her eyes, but they go on ordering and drinking their coffees, sometimes not even looking up to see her at all. I can’t understand and I feel like going up to that woman with the white jacket who’s hoeing into an all-day big breakfast and a large cappuccino, and taking her face in my hands and angling it up so that she’s looking right at Ellie to show her that today she’s not being served by some throwaway waitress. I want to scream right into her wrinkled, froth-lipped face and say, ‘Don’t you realise who this is?’

  I wait until Ellie’s back at the counter and I walk over. She’s buzzing. Stacking cups. Wiping things and I don’t quite know what to expect. Maybe she missed Mum’s show. She could have been talking on the phone or been in the shower or fallen asleep. There are a hundred things that could have intersected her on her way to the radio. Caught up in a Facebook vortex, someone calling out from the living room, ‘Hey, we’re just putting a movie on. You wanna watch?’ Hell, the chances are pretty slim that she heard Mum’s show at all.

  ‘Pretty busy today, hey,’ I say. Ellie doesn’t look up. Her hand is repeating anti-clockwise spirals on the counter with a damp cloth. I try again. ‘Lot of caffeine desperados.’ She gives me no response and I don’t need to be a genius to work out that she’s pissed off. Time to adjust my sail. ‘Look, I’m guessing you heard Mum’s show last night.’ Still nothing. ‘OK, she said some pretty … dumb things and you probably figured out she was talking about me – what with the whole uterus line and everything. But what she said, about, you know, the two girls. I mean, it’s not really, well, it’s not completely true.’ Come on, dumb ass, what is completely true? ‘I mean, she kind of had that wrong.’

  Ellie turns away from me and she’s binning an empty bag of coffee beans and then reaching up to the high shelf above the grinder for a fresh one. A new one to take its place.

  ‘What she said about me liking someone for ages, that’s not really … that’s not anything,’ I say. ‘I don’t even … God, I just wish she hadn’t said anything.’

  ‘You think I’m mad about what your mother said on her stupid show?’ Now she’s looking at me. ‘Jesus, Starrphyre, you’re such an asshole.’ Ellie pushes past me and she’s walking table to table, fiercely arranging napkins and straightening things up. I follow her and to me it’s the single most important thing I can do right now, but to her it seems I’m little more than an annoying puppy. Minus any cute factor or shred of likeability. An annoying puppy that you just want to kick in the nuts.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘did you have a good time last night?’ and she’s stopped wiping. She’s staring right at me, hard, and I can see tears forming in her eyes.

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘Last night,’ Ellie says loudly. ‘Why don’t you tell me about last night?’ A tear escapes, slipping down her cheek. She ignores it. Sets the wipe-cloth down on the table.

  ‘Last night, well, we …’ And heads are turning. People are staring. ‘After you went off with that Dylan guy, then you came back and we kissed, and … and it was … awesome,’ I lie. But it doesn’t fly.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then …’ The party. With Candace on the couch and
the touching of legs and my hand on her face and the kissing. ‘Then Reece’s mum picked me up and we just … we went to that party and it was kind of … I don’t know … lame, I guess, and so we were there for a while, just sitting around and stuff … and then after that we just went home.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ Ellie says. ‘That’s all you’re going to tell me?’

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘I thought you’d at least have the decency to be honest with me.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘I know, Starrphyre,’ she says. ‘I know you were with that girl.’

  Shit.

  ‘That blonde girl.’

  And it feels like there’s water all around me, growing deeper, dragging at me. Pulling me under.

  ‘Just because I wasn’t there, doesn’t mean that I don’t know people who were there,’ Ellie says. ‘Everybody knows what happened.’

  ‘Ellie,’ I begin. ‘I—’

  ‘You?’ she says. ‘You think this is about you?’ I can feel my eyes tingling their way to tears and I don’t know whether to fight them or give in to them.

  ‘Can’t we just … I don’t know … not here. After work,’ I say. ‘We can get a coffee, and …’

  ‘I work two jobs. Remember?’ And she turns away from me to the coffee machine. She twists back the group handle, dumps a filter basket of spent coffee grinds into the bin by her feet, and I feel the parallel.

  ‘Ellie,’ I say, and I so want to be honest with her. ‘Nothing …’

  ‘What?’ she says. ‘You’re going to tell me that nothing happened? Don’t bullshit me, Starrphyre. I know all about it.’

  ‘How … it wasn’t like that,’ I say. In this ocean of deceit I’m now without a paddle or a life-preserver and the sharks are circling.

  ‘Hannah and Jade were sitting on the floor right behind the couch you were on and they heard everything. They heard that girl giggling and flirting with you. And they heard her when she asked if you were seeing anyone.’

  Crap.

  ‘And what was your response?’

  ‘I …’ I’m scrambling now, desperate for something to cling to. If there was time I’d turn to David Lee Roth, the original frontman for Van Halen. He knows his way around girls – ‘Beautiful Girls’, ‘California Girls’. He’d tell me what to do and then I’d know just how to handle this. Then again, if I was standing on a bridge he’d also tell me that I might as well jump.

  ‘She asked if you were seeing anyone and you said – if I can quote you here – “No. Not really.” Is that what I am to you? I’m nobody?’ And she’s crying more. Making a scene. And in this scene I’m the bad guy. ‘Maybe I should write that on my name tag. Nobody works here.’ And she unpins the name tag from above her breast, the name tag that just a few days ago we had joked about, and throws it hard at me and I can’t imagine a time when we’ll ever joke about it again.

  ‘Excuse me, honey, I don’t mean to pry, but are you all right?’ It’s frothy-lip woman. ‘Want me to get hold of the manager or someone for you?’

  Ellie shakes her head. The old woman leans around, pats her on the hand, then goes back to her food haul, but not before she shoots me an all-men-are-bastards look.

  ‘You went upstairs with her and I know what happened. Everyone knows what happened.’

  ‘Ellie …’ I say, but the muffled ringtone from my pocket is getting louder – why the hell didn’t I switch my phone to silent? – and I’m trying to shut it off while it’s still in there but I can’t. As I pull the phone out, the screen is displaying the word HOME and I just automatically think, Warren, you tool, this is not the time. I shut it down.

  ‘So was that her?’

  ‘What? Candace? No, it was—’

  ‘So that’s her name?’

  ‘Sure, but … that was just my sister’s boyfriend. He calls me all the time just to be a tool. Look, Ellie, I wouldn’t do anything purposely to hurt you. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘But you did. You already did. I thought we were on the same page, that we had something that was starting to be something,’ she says, wiping a tear from each eye with the back of her hand. ‘Why would you do that?’

  And I can’t say, ‘Because we just had that awkward kiss and I kind of went cold on you, and when Candace McAllister threw herself at me it was pretty hard to say no,’ but beyond that, I don’t really know why. They’re the only two reasons I have and neither of them will fix this.

  ‘Was she the one, the one your mother was talking about?’ Ellie cries.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The girl you’ve had a crush on forever. Was she?’ And for the second time in days, I’m watching drops of water slip down her face, but while the others held promise, these ones just sting at the memory of that night, reminding me what a total ass I’ve been. I need to tell her everything, to explain it all to her properly and if I could choose, this wouldn’t be my ideal setting but beyond right now, I don’t have anything – this is the only moment that matters.

  ‘Ellie, listen, please – for just a second. Let me explain.’

  ‘I have customers,’ she says.

  ‘After work, then. We’ll get a coffee, we can talk.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ she says through her tears. ‘And I’m working tonight, anyway. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Ellie?’ I reach out, grab at her arm, but she’s pulling away and the coffee cup she’d been holding hits the polished concrete floor. I watch the pieces scatter.

  ‘What the hell, Ernie?’ It’s Scene, coming my way with a look that tells me he’s not about to start up a light chat about band practice. ‘Enough with the staff harassment, man. You need to take that shit outta here.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Now!’ he says. ‘I mean it, dude, piss off.’ He’s pointing to the front of the store and there’s nothing I can do but leave. My legs are moving, but it’s like they’re someone else’s – unsupportive and hesitant under my weight, like they don’t quite know what to do – and soon I’m out in the public space with black and white tiles beneath my feet. Black and white, side by side. There’s no grey, just black and white, the lines between the two never blurring. I turn to look back and Ellie’s crying. Sobbing at the coffee counter. Scene’s arm is around her and he’s just her boss, nothing else. Just a shoulder to lean on. He’s everything she needs right now, but he could just as easily be anyone. Anyone, as long as it’s not me.

  Chapter 28

  Assistance from the Vatican

  They’re all staring at me now. No longer the nine agreeable faces that I’m used to seeing. They’re not wearing the smiles that the network count on for ratings. These faces all bear accusing, uncompromising looks. Contempt and blame and disapproval are coming my way in spades. Even the Pope is up there, sending me daggers. But right now I figure he’s my best shot.

  ‘Hello, um … Pope?’ and straightaway I know that’s not right and I try to correct myself. ‘Um … shit … sorry,’ and now I’ve just sworn at the Pope. Good one.

  ‘You can address him as Your Holiness,’ suggests his now-frowning translator.

  ‘OK, thanks.’ I take a deep breath and start over. ‘Your Holiness,’ I begin. ‘I know I’ve stuffed up here. I know it, I really do. But I’m looking for an answer if that’s possible.’ The translator whispers to the pontiff, who motions with his right hand that I should continue speaking.

  ‘I guess what I’m wondering is that, well, I know that you deal with forgiveness in your line of work and I’m kind of hoping to find out how to ask for forgiveness? I mean, what can I say that will make Ellie forgive me?’

  ‘You’ve been unfaithful, my child, yes?’ says the translator, who looks unsettlingly like Walter White from Breaking Bad.

  ‘Well, technically …’ I begin, but he cuts me short.

  ‘Technically you’ve sinned,’ he says, and he lea
ns in to hear the Pope’s next instruction. ‘You’ve partaken in sins of the flesh. There’s been adulterous behaviour,’ he tells me. ‘You’ve been deceitful. You’ve told untruths. Need I go on?’

  And the two of us know that he need not. All I was looking for was a little guidance here because I’m just running around blindfolded. In the past few days I’ve managed to completely piss off Ellie, Scene, Rue, my mother and now the freaking Pope as well.

  I hold my pass up for scanning and slot myself into the first seat that doesn’t already have a single in it. I don’t want to put myself in the position where I might have to chit-chat with some random bus stranger.

  I’m leaning against the window, left temple to the glass, and the bus rattles and vibrates right through me once more. But it’s not enough to shake the image from my head. It’s her face. Her face is all I can see. The hurt in her eyes and the tears – tears that I caused. And she’s mad as hell, and today’s loop is her voice, ‘Why would you do that?’ over and over again.

  Some people with a scope of the bigger picture would abolish world hunger or refreeze the polar ice caps, but if I had the chance to change history, to alter the course of the universe, I’d use every scrap of power to undo the events that have happened recently.

  We round the corner to Travers Street and the burning in my gut, in my chest and throat has been building for some time. I weigh up whether to get off at my stop or just keep riding this sucker till it reaches its destination. I have no idea where it goes after this. Loops back into town? Starts all over again? Maybe that’s the ride I need to take. I should have bought that ticket this morning. But do-overs have to be earned and I sure as hell haven’t earned one this weekend.