The Big Rewind

by Libby Cudmore

  “I can’t even remember,” I said, handing her the cassette. That was a lie. I remembered the moment perfectly, the same way I remembered every moment with Catch. He had come to pick me up for a movie, and while I fretted with my earrings, he’d reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and produced She Doesn’t Think My Tractor’s Sexy Anymore: Live’s “All Over You”; Garbage’s “The World Is Not Enough”; Bryan Adams and Sting and Rod Stewart, “All for Love,” because at his core, Catch was an utter cornball. I’d kissed him quick and played that CD until it skipped on Nightwish’s “She Is My Sin.”

  “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss those days,” Josie said. “Finding that tape in your locker, playing it over and over, trying to figure out what he was trying to say. Tapping a playlist off some guy’s iPhone just isn’t the same, you know? How the hell else are we supposed to know what love is, from a Facebook update? Give me a Sony any day. Where did you even find this?”

  I hoped the mozzarella in my mouth would disguise my lie. “I found it while, uh, Dumpster diving. I thought I’d give it a listen.” I may have told Sid my intentions, but that didn’t mean everyone else had to know.

  She examined the tape with a jeweler’s eye. “Cure Kit—sounds romantic.” She turned it over and cracked the case. “No track listing, no artwork, what is this, amateur hour? Who is this GPL? Someone needs to have a word with him about proper mix tape etiquette.”

  She took it over to the elaborate stereo setup and popped it in. The tape opened with Squeeze’s “Tempted,” and already, I felt a silent tension hook reverberating in my chest. Track two—the Smiths’ “I Want the One I Can’t Have”—didn’t do anything to make me feel better.

  “Aww, this guy is pining,” Josie cooed. “But seriously, the Smiths? The eighties are over; find a new band. Or at least a new Morrissey song. Heaven knows he’s written plenty.”

  I wished I could listen with the same sarcastic nostalgia as Josie. I want the one I can’t have and it’s driving me mad, Morrissey wailed. But GPL already had KitKat. Clearly Bronco wasn’t standing in the way; the three track lists already in KitKat’s binder implied that the two of them were in agreement about their love. So far, this was more suitable as a confession of wine-drenched abandon, and all I could think of was the first time Catch had said he loved me, parked in his ’89 Camry while we waited for Reese to get out of work so we could all go to the drive-in. We were eating Red Vines and drinking Dr. Pepper, and he’d just blurted it out like it had been swelling inside him for days. I was so surprised that all I could do was cram another Red Vine into my face because love was too fucking common for people who felt things as deeply as we felt things. I couldn’t let myself believe him because if I had, that might have meant I was penetrable, defenseless, vulnerable. And that night, after he dropped me off at my shitty little grad apartment without even trying to steal a kiss, I went inside and played his CDs over and over, trying to decipher if maybe he really did love me through U2’s “All I Want Is You” and the Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” and Feeder’s “Just the Way I’m Feeling.” Could you ever really know what a man was thinking in someone else’s words?

  “I don’t know this next one,” said Josie as the song changed over to a pretty piano and a delicate woman’s voice. She tapped her iPad and pulled up the lyrics to the Innocence Mission, “My Waltzing Days Are Over.” She took another sip of wine and sat back on the couch. “This is so beautiful,” she said. “I’m downloading it right now.”

  At my age, I’m content to watch . . . so go on, go on . . .

  “Shit,” I breathed. “He was breaking up with her.”

  “No way,” Josie said. She cocked her head and listened a bit. “No. Nobody makes a breakup mix. She must have already dumped him, but he’s still in love with her. He’s trying to win her back.”

  “Hey Nineteen” by Steely Dan was next, followed by Billy Bragg’s “A Lover Sings.” The mix was coming together almost too perfectly, a soundtrack for mutually broken hearts.

  “He’s saying he’s too old for her,” I said. “That they don’t have anything in common.” I was starting to get a picture of an aging punk, hair weak from years of dye and Elmer’s glue, selling his band shirts at a garage sale, dumping his black jeans off at the Salvation Army. In a way, I was glad KitKat had never received it and instead died believing that GPL still loved her.

  “Dumped via Billy Bragg? That’s rough,” Josie said, draining her glass. “But that doesn’t explain the first two songs. If he’s so tempted, if she’s the one he can’t have, then why is he going to such lengths to break up with her?”

  The Magnetic Fields’ delicate, sorrowful “Smoke and Mirrors” ended side one, and she got up to flip the tape. I helped myself to a few more chicken satay skewers.

  “Is this some kind of ‘You can’t friend-zone me, I’m dumping you’ bullshit?” She poured a little more wine into our glasses and I didn’t protest. “If so, fuck this guy.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” I said. “I think he’s trying to say that although he wants her, he knows they can’t be together. It’s complicated.”

  “I guess,” Josie said as she tapped her iPad over the unmistakably nineties sound of a chick rocker. “Syd Straw, ‘CBGB’s,’” she said, ID’ing the song. “But if he puts ‘Hands to Heaven’ on here, I’m going to smash my stereo and make you buy me a new one.”

  “Fair enough,” I admitted. It was even more haunting, now that CBGB was as gone as their love affair. And I don’t know why we never met again . . . but I still think about you sometimes, every now and then. When was the last time they saw each other—weeks, months, years? Was this tape unexpected, one last gem forged in the middle of the night when longing fought off sleep, or the last spoken line in a long good-bye? And why the hell did love always have to be so fucking coded? I vowed the next time I fell in love I was just going to come out and say it instead of relying on Joe Jackson to do it for me.

  The next song was not “Hands to Heaven.” It was Concrete Blonde’s “Someday.” “He’s pretty heavy on the chick rockers,” Josie said. “Maybe he was gay and that’s why they couldn’t be together—she wouldn’t drive him to Lilith Fair or help him pick up guys at the Inconvenience Lounge.”

  The wine soured in my mouth. This tape was so much deeper than that, and she was brushing the whole thing off like it was a joke. Some people just don’t understand real love, the kind that hurts somewhere deep inside, in a place you didn’t even know you had. GPL understood that. I could only wonder if KitKat had or if he’d been just another fanciful curiosity, a cupcake, a Paperboy cartridge, a party guest who existed solely to be quirky and cute and adore her. I wondered if any of us had been anything more than that—KitKat and I had never had a deep conversation or a cry together, even if I had considered her a pal. But she had a lot of friends, and maybe I was just one more retro toy on an already-overstuffed shelf.

  There were a few more songs on the B-side—Smashing Pumpkins’ “Perfect,” the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday,” and the Sundays’ “Here’s Where the Story Ends”—but neither of us recognized the last song. I wither without you, a woman cooed, her voice distant behind a scratchy, faded recording. I crumble before you. Josie typed the lyrics into her search, but nothing came up. She tried the second verse, Stars fall flash and slash my heart. Still nothing. She held up the phone to the speaker, but Shazam came back empty.

  “Rewind it,” I demanded.

  “I can’t,” she said. “The rewind doesn’t work—we’d have to listen to the whole thing again.”

  I grabbed my phone and scrambled to make note of the lyrics as they slipped into the nothingness. It struck something inside me, twisted my guts into sick knots of love and longing. I couldn’t remember the last time a song had made me ache so beautifully, and I never wanted it to end.

  But it did end, and there was nothing left to do but finish the wine and say good night. I hummed it all the way home, not caring if I go
t dirty stares on the subway, knowing that the only important thing was to preserve this lost song like a piece of evidence, a fossil, a fly caught in amber. And when I couldn’t sleep, I stayed up typing the lyrics out on my grandmother’s old typewriter. At the very least, it kept Catch’s ghost at bay.

  Chapter 15

  RUNNING ON ICE

  Mac worked at Ol’ Vinylsides, the kind of record store where guys in horn-rimmed glasses and ringer tees hung around waiting for someone to buy a Huey Lewis album so they could mock them with quotes from American Psycho. But Mac was a walking zine, a Rolling Stone commemorative coffee table book of B-sides and bass players. If anyone would be able to hunt down this unnamed song off KitKat’s tape, it would be him.

  One of his fellow record nerds had cut out an elaborate construction-paper banner spelling out WILLIAM JOEL APPRECIATION DAY behind the counter and “She’s Always a Woman” was playing loud enough to rattle my guts.

  “Have you come to peruse our fine selection of William Joel records?” Mac asked, gesturing to the three stolen white Crowley milk crates packed with tattered vinyl. “We have many, many, many copies, and they’re all on sale—or free, if you spend twenty-five dollars on music that doesn’t totally suck.”

  “I think I’ll pass on that generous offer, thank you,” I said. “But I’m hoping you can provide me with your expertise in music outside of Planet Joel.” I slid my typewritten lyrics sheet across the counter.

  “What, is this some new single you’re trying to get recorded?” He unfolded it and read through. “It’s pretty good. I mean, it’s not ‘Movin’ Out’ good, but we can’t all possess the songwriting genius of Mr. William Joel.”

  Brad, his coworker, who hadn’t gotten the hairstyle memo that the nineties were over, snatched the lyrics out of his hands. “Do you need any session musicians? My brother Steve is a great keyboard player, and I could play drums . . .”

  “It’s already been recorded, but I want to know by who,” I said. “I heard it someplace, but can’t find any information on it. I titled it ‘Wither without You,’ but that might not be the real title. Google and Shazam both failed me at every try.”

  “Shit, that’s the worst,” Mac said, taking the paper back. “I’ll see what I can find, but on one condition.”

  I had to have that song and I would do anything to get it. I couldn’t remember the last tune that had struck me as hard in the heart as this unknown track. It sounded like love. It sounded like loss. It sounded like something I’d forgotten how to feel, and all I wanted to do was feel it forever. I would give Brad’s next album a hundred stars on Amazon. I would sing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” at karaoke.

  “Name it,” I said.

  He reached under the counter and handed me a copy of The Bridge. “You have to buy this.”

  I WAS OUT five bucks for the record, but I trusted that Mac could find the history of my mysterious song. And if he didn’t, I was going to make a bowl out of the record, fill it with candy, and give it to him to enjoy before he discovered that Billy Joel had invaded his home like bedbugs.

  Back at the apartment, I took a quick inventory of the case. I had a tape I couldn’t play again and a track list full of anguish. I had a set of initials and what looked like a motive. But I still didn’t have the connection between KitKat, Bronco, and GPL.

  I did, however, have another postcard, this one from Spain. My grandmother hoped I was enjoying spring in Brooklyn. I wished I had a way to write to her, to ask her advice, to hear her wisdom in her airy trill. Dear, you’re a smart girl. You’ll figure this out, she’d say, pouring me another cup of tea. Just those words, said over the phone before a big test or over lunch on my first day here, would be enough to propel me through, if only I could hear her say them.

  I put on Sid’s copy of Cocteau Twins’ dream-laden Heaven or Las Vegas and left Baldrick watching the record spin with eager eyes while I washed Philip’s laundry in the bathtub. He wasn’t kidding. His laundry soap smelled amazing.

  I heard Hartford’s ringtone and answered, expecting Susan.

  “It’s Philip,” he said. “I’ll be in your neighborhood this evening; if everything’s done, I can pick it up.”

  “I could have it done, yeah,” I answered. Maybe Philip would be willing to give me a little advice on how to go about solving a case. I had the track list—most of it—and was on my way to solving that final mystery. But all I had was a theory I couldn’t prove and a name I had no idea where to find. I was at a dead end, and it couldn’t hurt to ask someone who knew better than me. Especially while holding a packet of his freshly washed secret underpants.

  I WASN’T USED to seeing Philip in jeans and a sweater, but even so he had a coolness about him that completely betrayed the fact he was wearing ladies’ underwear underneath it all. I found myself wondering what color he was wearing today and if he liked the ones I had picked out.

  “You’re too kind,” he said, accepting a cup of coffee and taking a sip. “Good coffee. If my own secretary ever leaves, I’ll hire you on in a heartbeat.”

  “I use a French press,” I said. “Mind if I ask you something?”

  “That explains it—the office just uses a drip machine. They tried to get a Keurig, but I told Lauren I’d fire her if one of those coffee robots showed up in my office. Sure, ask away. I can’t stay too long, but now that I have a cup of coffee, I might as well sit.”

  I took a seat at the table and he took the chair across from mine. “How do you solve a case?” I ventured to ask. “I mean, how do you go about getting all the information? What kind of questions do you ask?”

  “It’s easier than you think,” he said. “You just keep asking what you want to know until you start hearing the same thing over and over again.”

  I had already been doing that. I had asked Marty to find me a tape player, Josie to help me decode, Mac to find the song. But I was still at a dead end unless GPL appeared in a wisp of vapor. “How do you know who to ask?”

  “You ask everybody,” he answered. “Landlords, neighbors, coworkers, grocery store clerks. No one keeps a secret to themselves for long, and someone always knows something.”

  I stared at the gold ring on his finger, wondering who else knew his secrets.

  “Why do you ask?” he said. “Are you writing a screenplay?”

  “No,” I said. “A friend of mine got accused of a crime, and I want to help prove that he’s innocent.”

  He had the coffee cup halfway to his mouth, but he set it down and got very serious. “Jett,” he said. “This is not Nancy Drew. Detective work is not something you can just play around with. There are laws in place, there are protocols. You could get yourself—and your friend—in real trouble.”

  “But what about him?” I asked. “What if they don’t believe he’s innocent?”

  Philip sighed. “I wish I could give you more hope that the justice system would work,” he said, “but you and I both know that’s not always the case. If you want, I can recommend a good lawyer, but, Jett, I want you to listen to me when I say you need to stay out of it.” He took a last sip of his coffee and stood up, collecting his package under his arm. “If you really are interested in becoming a PI, I can set you up to take a certification course online. And if you want to come work for Hartford, they’ll pay for it. But I’m warning you: it’s not all bourbon in your desk drawer and leggy dames and fedoras.”

  “So why did you become a detective?” I asked.

  “I like puzzles,” he said. “I like fitting everything together. But I didn’t have the stomach to deal with the kind of crimes cops deal with—murders and rapes and kidnappings—so the private sector was more for me. Sometimes I wish it was a little more exciting, like on TV, but the upside is that I’ve never had to look at a dead body that wasn’t already laid out in an expensive casket.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Thanks for the chat.”

  “Thanks for the laundry,” he said. “I’ll schedule yo
u for Friday evening, if that’s convenient.”

  “I’ll put it on my calendar,” I said.

  “Make it seven o’clock,” he said. “And I’ll see you then.”

  I thought about what he said after he left. Up until now, I hadn’t asked anyone about GPL because I hadn’t wanted to tip my hand, reveal to anyone that I was doing anything behind the scenes in case I failed. But I also knew I wasn’t going to walk away from finding out who really killed KitKat, even if Bronco was the guilty one. And now I knew I had to ask someone, and better still, someone who would know better than anyone.

  Chapter 16

  YOUR PHONE’S OFF THE HOOK, BUT YOU’RE NOT

  After Philip left, I put in a call to Hillary. If anyone might know the identity of the mysterious GPL, it would be KitKat’s sister. I dialed her number and rinsed out the French press while I waited.

  There was loud music when she picked up. “Hey, Jett,” she said. “You’re going to have to speak up; I’m helping Vern do a sound test before his show tonight. What’s up? You in town?”

  “I wish,” I said. Baldrick hopped up on the counter and batted at the faucet. “I’ve been going over those tapes you gave me and I wanted to know if you were in touch with any of the creators—thought maybe they might want them back as a memento.”

  “Not really,” she said. “I mean, we saw her first boyfriend, Luke, at the gas station when we were home for Christmas, but her Facebook page would be the place to ask around—it’s kind of become a makeshift memorial.”

  I was going to have to be a little more direct. “There’s one here that’s just initials, GPL—does that sound like anyone she talked about?”

  “Could be Greg Larkin, he was her friend Jennifer’s brother,” she said. “But I don’t think he ever made her a tape. They were just friends.”

  I got out the binder and flipped through the track lists. There were two mixes from Jennifer but none from Greg. “I don’t think so—can you think of anyone else?”