Melt With You

by Alison Tyler

  A slim leather journal fell from under the slats, landing on the floor.

  Dameron walked in to collect the board, and Dori shoved the diary back into its hiding place under the bed, not wanting to look in that at all.

  Chapter Nine

  There were so many songs about being lonely. But had they all been written in the 80s? ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ by Yes. Billy Vera and the Beaters’ ‘At This Moment.’ The Police’s ‘So Lonely,’ which always made her want to cry. Or actually made her cry, whether she wanted to or not.

  She was lonely right now, and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt even lonelier once Dameron and Chelsea had left, although she was also extremely relieved that the breaking-and-entering duo had departed. She couldn’t tell how well she had pulled off the farce of not being herself, although they’d been so concerned that she not know their actual reason for being there, perhaps they hadn’t thought her behavior was that weird at all. And what was the chance that they’d guess the truth, that she had slipped through time somehow to appear in the 80s as a grown-up? That wouldn’t be the first explanation that sprung to most people’s minds.

  What she really wanted to do was call Violet. Her best friend would make everything better. But although Violet lived only a few blocks away – down the alley and around the corner – the Violet she wanted to talk to was twenty years in the future. No matter how miserable she felt, she couldn’t call the friends from the 80s, for fear that they would think she was insane and put her in an institution.

  So instead, Dori puttered through the house, playing record after record. The music was soothing, but even more so was watching the records rotate on the turntable. Why were CDs supposed to be so superior to records? Well, of course, she understood the stated reasons: quality. Durability. But had people forgotten what it felt like to hold a record, to watch it go round?

  And now, even CDs were becoming passé, with music being downloaded not only to computers, but to telephones. Just before the reunion, she had seen a commercial advertising a new device that would capture a song, identify it, and download the tune instantly. Pretty soon, people would be able to think about a song before simply downloading the music into their heads.

  But records were different. She hadn’t realized how comforting it felt to sit next to a stack of 45s and put one after the other on the stereo. Her situation didn’t seem quite so dire as she watched the vinyl rotate. Playing the music brought back so many memories. Memories of her father pounding on the door to her bedroom and demanding that she stop listening to the same goddamn song over and over. That was one of the best things about 45s. She could put the stereo on repeat, and listen to a single song until the rhythm of the music was embedded in her brain.

  Crimson and Clover. Over and over.

  Now, with the house to herself, she could play any song she wanted, as many times as she wanted. Except, some of the songs she most desired to hear hadn’t been invented yet. The songwriters didn’t even know they were going to write these songs. That the songs were going to be hits. Some of the singers weren’t even sperm yet – the young ones whose music she purchased from iTunes so as not to have to face a checkout clerk, who might judge her for purchasing pop stars like Maroon 5 or The Killers.

  She looked at the 45s, spread out before her on the burgundy rug of her bedroom, and she thought about all of the different career paths these singers and bands would take. By 2008, so many of the songs Dori loved would be played only on the Classic Rock stations. She had Prince. She had The Scorpions. Duran Duran. Men at Work. Madness. Guns N’ Roses.

  What she wanted was Pink Floyd, but she wasn’t into Pink Floyd in high school.

  In 2008, she would have simply been able to hook up a computer and click onto the iTunes music store. The only computer in the house right now was a huge Macintosh in her brother’s room, with a tiny screen and no way to connect to the internet.

  What would someone in 1988 do if they wanted to hear a song?

  That was easy enough to answer: go buy the fucking album. Inspired, she went to the kitchen and took the car keys off the hook. Then she opened the cabinet where her mother kept her tea collection. There were the tins of Earl Grey all jumbled together. Dori peeked into the first tin, finding only tea leaves inside. The second had more heft, but when she shook the tin and heard the coins clink, she wasn’t surprised to find only pennies inside. The third was more promising. A quick shake gave the sound of paper rustling, but when she pried off the lid, thinking she’d find cash, she was shocked by what she found instead.

  Who knew her mother smoked pot?

  Exhaling in frustration, Dori reached for another container, plucking off the lid to finally find what she was looking for – a wad of bills. She’d remembered correctly. The tea tins were where her mom often stashed extra cash. She grabbed two twenties and slipped them into her purse. The only issue was her driver’s license. She couldn’t imagine showing a cop her ID, dated with a renewal to 2010. The high-tech license with the hologram: it looked like the worst fake ID ever.

  She’d just have to not get caught.

  Although she hadn’t traveled this route in years, she fell into the drive automatically. A left onto Middlefield. A right onto Escondido. She and her friends had hung out at Revolution Records so often in their youth, the owner had made them up honorary name badges. She remembered a perfect day in high school, buying U2’s War, along with the soundtrack to Rocky Horror and Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics. A day she and Violet had gone out to lunch together, and the waiter had mistaken her age by five years, asking her out, thinking she was nineteen when she was fourteen.

  She’d saved the Saltines from that date. She remembered that now. Saved them and taped them to her wall. ‘Something to remember me by,’ the waiter had teased her, and she had considered the crackers a souvenir. That was the sort of thing she and Violet lived for.

  The car was a stick shift, but after a bumpy start, she handled the gears easily, even though she didn’t drive in New York, even though she hadn’t been in the driver’s seat of a car that wasn’t an automatic in the last fifteen years. It felt natural to be driving this car, natural to be heading toward Revolution Records.

  After parking the old Renault, she hesitated for a moment outside of the store. In the windows dangled different-colored records: scarlet, emerald, sapphire, lemony yellow. There were T-shirts displayed along one wall: The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Violent Femmes. She felt a thrill as she pushed open the door, and heard the bell registering her presence, the way it had hundreds of times before.

  The clerk looked up as she stepped inside. He’d been reading a magazine – Rolling Stone, she’d bet, or Spin – and she felt him do a double-take. Her own eyes scanned the room. All of the other customers were teenage boys. She definitely stood out. She returned the clerk’s smile, recalling on sight that he had been one of the perks to shopping in a brick-and-mortars store, a check-mark in the ‘Pro’ column that shopping online could never offer.

  Feeling his eyes remain on her, she perused the aisles, feeling the first positive wave of excitement at being back in time. The prices. Look at the prices! She wanted to grab hold of someone and tell them how much albums cost in the future, except that there were no albums in the future. But something – she wanted to talk to someone. Wanted to share the experience with a human.

  Instead, she continued to drink in her surroundings, excited by the fact that nearly the whole store was devoted to albums, with only a sliver of space given over to cassettes, and a special room at the back for the very expensive CDs, almost all of them classical or opera. Dori remembered that. The first CDs she’d ever seen had been at Janie’s house. Janie’s father was a huge opera buff, and had been willing to shell out the thirty dollars or more each opera had cost, claiming the quality was so much better than the sound on an album.

  Once focused on the music, she only peripherally noticed the rest of the customers. There were only a few, mostly boys
fondling a Beastie Boys album, or the latest release from Aerosmith. She passed them on the way to the end of the row, still feeling eyes on her as she walked. The good-looking clerk was clocking her every move, and she felt herself bat her eyelashes, automatically flirting.

  For the first time all day, she felt as if she were caught in a really good dream rather than a nightmare. The kind of dream where she found glittering coins scattered on the scarred concrete sidewalk, and she just scooped the money up into her hands, following a trail that never ended. Being in this record store – one of her all-time favorite places on earth – and having enough cash in her purse to buy a handful of albums was almost too good to be true.

  If she really were dead, then she’d made it to heaven.

  Dori felt the clerk’s eyes on her again, and when she blushed, he winked at her. What was she thinking? He had to be college age, someone who had been too old for her when she’d been in school. But was he too young now? Dori had never dated a younger man. Playing the role of teacher had never appealed to her.

  She stacked up the albums and brought them to the counter, grinning at the surprise in the clerk’s eyes. Maybe she didn’t look as if she’d buy these sorts of songs or would be into these types of bands. But she wanted Led Zeppelin, she wanted Dire Straits, and she wanted Pink Floyd.

  She thought of that scene in High Fidelity, the record store clerk refusing to sell ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ to a customer because he thought the song was pathetic. And then she realized that book hadn’t been written yet and her head started to hurt once more.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She was startled by his words, and looked harder at the cute boy behind the counter. She was staring too long, wasn’t she? Because he seemed concerned by her behavior. When he handed her back her change, he held onto her hand a beat too long.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he asked next.

  This was the same question Gael had asked. She looked familiar to these people because they saw her often. She spent all of her spare money at this record store, after all. Yet the people seemed unfamiliar to her because it had been twenty years since she’d last caught a glimpse.

  But did she know this boy better than she was remembering? Should she recall him more than as a hazy cute face from her past?

  He had long dark hair streaked an electric green, and eyes the color of the ocean off Santa Cruz. Not like Violet’s dark purple-blue eyes, but a gray-blue, like a stormy sky. He was built tall and lean, and he had on a black concert T-shirt that showed off his hard, flat chest. She noted the badge pinned over his heart read OZZY, and she smiled at the joke.

  She thought of Ozzy Osbourne of the 1980s, thought of the way the man had seemed invincible, the stories about how he’d snorted everything, including a line of ants, to show how tough he was. And then she thought of Ozzy Osbourne in modern times, with his own MTV show and his wife with her talk show. Thought of all the former celebrities who now were cashing in with reality TV shows, a concept that didn’t even exist in the 80s. There was Gene Simmons from Kiss. And Hulk Hogan. And Bret Michaels from Poison. And the kid from the Brady Bunch, and the two Coreys. Oh, and Chachi. God. Chachi, who was now 45 and had his own reality show simply to capitalize on the fact that he’d lived this long.

  ‘I do know you, don’t I?’ he repeated, tightening his grip on her. She looked down, saw that he was wearing a sterling silver skull ring on the middle finger of his right hand, and wondered why that ring seemed so familiar.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Dori said, but she didn’t pull her hand away. Two other customers had now fallen behind her in line, but the boy slipped a yellow plastic ‘closed’ sign onto the top of his register. ‘Sorry,’ he told the impatient customers, ‘I’m on break. You’ll need to go to the station in CDs.’ Dori turned her head to look. The CD section was a wasteland, totally empty.

  ‘You like Pink Floyd?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Do you know how long that album was in the charts?’

  She did know, pleasing herself as she said, ‘Thirteen years, right?’ And the boy gave her a wide grin and said, ‘Give her a cigar, she’s going to go far.’

  The record store felt so real. Could this possibly be a hallucination? She’d never had one before. Hadn’t had a blackout, hadn’t done LSD. But could she have stored this boy’s image in her mind for twenty years? Because she was having intense déjà vu in his presence.

  ‘I’m off,’ he said, ‘for a dinner break.’

  ‘Dinner?’ She glanced at the silver watch on her wrist. It was after ten.

  ‘We’re open to midnight, you know,’ he said, and she nodded. She remembered that. Revolution Records had been one of the few places in town she and her friends hung out when all the other stores had shut for the night. ‘My dinner break comes late. But I don’t mind. Then I only have an hour after, until we close.’

  He eyed her, and she felt herself flush once more. She was still wearing the same outfit she’d had on all day. The white minidress, part 1960s, part 2000s, definitely noticeable in a town this size. The dress was sexy, no doubt about it. But she’d never felt so on display before while wearing the Juicy Couture number in Manhattan. She’d simply felt attractive in the tiny dress, which was why she’d bought the baby doll in the first place, knowing she had the legs to pull off the look, knowing she could pass for 28 rather than 38, so that ‘No miniskirts after 35’ rule didn’t apply to her.

  ‘You’re really pretty, you know?’ he said softly, and she felt a warmth creep along her jaw line. Whatever this was – dream, hallucination, coma – was there any real reason why she had to behave like a good girl? Couldn’t she act on her impulses? Couldn’t she have a little fun the way she had with Luke?

  Maybe that night had been a turning point for her. Maybe rather than worry that she was now back at Ground Zero in the dating game, she should forget about ever finding a permanent partner and simply look for the perpetual party. Or was that something that Violet would have said?

  ‘So, you’re hungry?’ It was a silly thing to say, but she couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Not with him staring at her like that, making her feel exactly how skimpy her panties were under her dress, and how wet they were getting in the center.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘That’s it. I’m hungry.’ He emphasized the last word, and she felt her heart beat faster.

  ‘So am I,’ she heard herself saying, unable to believe she was actually voicing the words. ‘Famished, now that you mention it.’

  The boy walked around the counter and then reached for her bag for her. She followed, feeling as if she were walking through water, feeling as if she were watching herself rather than following along behind him, admiring his fine ass in his black jeans.

  She’d already witnessed her former boss doing coke and fucking Gael behind the Creamery. And she’d interrupted Chelsea and Dameron from engaging in what was most definitely going to be an indecent tryst in her own bed. There was no reason why she shouldn’t have a little fun herself.

  The boy had a glossy black van parked out behind the store, and he led her there, still not talking, not releasing her hand, as if afraid she might disappear if he let her go. The van was covered all over with bumper stickers and decals, and seeing it gave her that familiar feeling again. She knew this van, and she knew this boy.

  Didn’t she?

  She wondered if he got lots of girls by working at the record store, if women went willingly to his van all the time. Women he’d just met. Women he’d flirted with over talk of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

  ‘How long do you have off?’ she asked, giving him one last way to back out. He could say there was no time. He could call a rain check.

  ‘Just enough,’ he told her, nodding his head, his long hair falling forward. God, he was hot-looking. In school, she had always liked the boys with long hair, and the eye make-up, and the lipstick, although he only had the liner around his amazing eyes, dark kohl pencil th
at made his eyes look even larger. With his dyed-black hair, he was definitely a Goth head, she could tell, one of those who treated The Cure like gods, and he proved her correct as soon as he slipped inside the front seat and turned on the radio, and pressed in the waiting tape.

  The Cure followed her wherever she went. Lyrics for every occasion. Her heart lifted as one of her favorites poured from the speakers, ‘The Perfect Girl.’

  The boy reached for her, as Robert Smith sang: ‘You’re such a strange girl, I think you come from another world …’ and she found herself unable to think for a moment, lost in the way the boy’s hands felt on her. They were tentative at first, then more powerful as she responded with such ease to his touch. This was intense, the way he held her, the way he kissed her, starting with her fingertips, then flipping her palm face up and kissing slowly to her wrist. She trembled. She’d always had extremely sensitive wrists. How had the boy known that?

  Was she really going to do this? Act on a fantasy? Well, why not?

  In her entire life, she’d never had a dream in which she’d actually been allowed to sleep with the man. She’d always woken up at the last minute, or watched as a friend walked off with the man of her fantasies. This would definitely be one way to prove whether she was sleeping or not. If she didn’t wake up at the crucial moment, or if Violet didn’t suddenly appear to abscond with the handsome lad, then she could be sure she wasn’t asleep.

  Leaning back against the window, she looked at him, seeing his serpentine-green-streaked hair, certain still that she were dreaming. Then he said, ‘I have to tell you something,’ and she thought: here it comes. He’s going to confess that he would rather fuck Violet. Or my mom. And then Chelsea will pop out of the back of the van wearing Mickey Mouse ears, and I’ll wake up naked and late for my Spanish final.

  But he said, ‘When you walked through that door, I got hard immediately.’