Bad Tastes

[holiday_pirner]

When Holly entered Tracks, the record store was mostly empty, save for a few people milling over some new releases. A Cinderella track was playing over the sound system, and strains of glam metal accompanied the brunette as she wandered over to the cassettes.

As she rifled through the Q's, trying to find a Queen album a friend had recommended, a movement in her periphery caught her eye. A boy, maybe in his mid-teens, was grasping a few tapes in his hand and acting twitchy.

Holly tilted her head, watching him closely. He was too busy looking out for store employees to notice her, until she pointedly cleared her throat. "Are you sure those are the ones you really want? I mean, if you're going to opt for the five finger discount, make it worth your while."

The brunette approached him, ignoring his surprised glare. She grabbed one of the tapes and held it up. "This one isn't too bad, but...is that Quarterflash?" Holly shook her head disapprovingly. "I think someone should call your parents just to warn them of their son's budding horrible taste in music."

He pulled away from her, grabbing the cassettes back. "Do you work here?"

Comments

[brian_campo]

From his perch atop a ladder, where he sat idly scratching an insect bite on his elbow, Brian spotted the kid when he entered the store. The non-verbals screamed for an employee’s attention in all the wrong ways: hyper-vigilant of his surroundings, aimless meandering, shoulders a few inches too high. It also happened that the kid was blacklisted from shopping in Tracks thanks to a long history of petty theft. It was almost impossible to enforce with a rotating line-up of cashiers, but Brian remembered him. The brunette’s distraction gave him a unique opportunity. He hopped off the ladder and rounded the corner behind the kid.

“No, but I do.” Brian hooked his arm loosely around the boy’s head. He smiled and gave him a noogie. “This is my buddy Troy. We’ve met before. It was Night Ranger that time. What’s he got?”

[holiday_pirner]

Holly nodded to the illicit merchandise. "Quarterflash," she wrinkled her nose in kind, "and the far less offensive Van Halen." The brunette shrugged and smiled at the employee. "Not usually my genre, but 1984 is already a classic."

She watched the teenager go through a range of emotions: disgust, anger, fear, hope. All the stages of being caught in the act. She'd feel sorry for him if it weren't so amusing.

"Night Ranger, though." Holly gave Troy an appraising glance.

[brian_campo]

“Quarterflash? Jesus.” Brian frowned as he retrieved the tapes from the kid’s limp hand. He studied the cover art with a dubious look on his face. “Maybe he likes alto sax.” He checked out the other tape, too. “Van Halen II. This isn’t even a great album. I’m tempted to let him have it.” He shrugged and looked up. His arm was still draped across Troy’s shoulder.

He was grateful to the brunette. Nothing better than being humiliated in front of a girl to dissuade the kid from coming back.

[holiday_pirner]

"Are you going to call the police? Or do you have one of those security guards holed up in a room, breathing against some Plexiglas and just itching for his moment to shine?" Holly surveyed the store.

There was a hint of glee behind her expression. "I'd almost pay to see that." She eyed Troy. "Overly zealous, he tackles you and you land headfirst in the bargain bin."

The brunette tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, spotting the employee's name tag. "But Brian here doesn't look like a narc. Maybe if you promised to be a good boy -- and stop listening to shit music -- he'll let you go."

[brian_campo]

“I think that’s a tall order to fill for this guy.” He let go and went to a bin filled with discounted singles. He plucked out film-wrapped Dio tape and tossed it at Troy’s midsection. “At least have some self respect.” After a clap to the shoulder, Brian pointed at the cash register. He held the back of his own neck and watched the teenager make a beeline to pay. He remembered what it was like to be broke and crave new music. Luckily for his criminal record, it was harder to stash vinyl in pants pockets, thus deterring him from poor decision-making.

“You think he pissed himself?” he asked in nonchalance.

[holiday_pirner]

"Maybe a little."

She picked up a Styx vinyl from the bin, holding it up. "What do you think? New hairstyle idea?"

Holly put the record back. "I need some new music. I only brought like three tapes with me, and I'm sick of them. I almost threw one out the window while driving here."

The brunette reconsidered that. "Maybe I should give it to Troy. He could probably use some Depeche Mode."

[brian_campo]

“Maybe. New outfit?” he countered to her Styx suggestion, holding up a vinyl copy of Manowar’s ‘Into Glory Ride’, the cover of which featured fur boots, a codpiece, and at least two swords.

Brian set it aside and fiddled with the other contents of the shelf labeled ‘M’. He combed his hair back. “Ahhhh, what are you looking for, more synth or something with teeth? I’m not knocking Depeche Mode -- today -- just trying to figure out what to suggest.” He let his fingers walk through a row of options. He looked at the customer and tried to guess what she might listen to based on her clothes. Kind of goth, kind of Madonna. David Bowie was the obvious choice, but maybe she was sick of the guy toying with his fan’s emotions. That cover of Dancing in the Streets was enough to make anybody consider throwing her radio in the nearest river.

[holiday_pirner]

Holly snickered at the mental image. Okay, the guy was good.

"I like darkwave. Joy Division, the Cure...post-punk holds a special place in my heart, too." The brunette watched him flip through the offerings.

"I think of music as my own personal soundtrack. Right now I need something heavy, intense, but with enough movement to get me through traffic. You know what I mean?"

[brian_campo]

“See, you’re speaking my language,” he said. There was a noticeable bounce in his step now. He got pumped whenever a customer came in who knew their shit. It meant he could skip the music heard on the radio. He moved down a couple of letters and plucked an oft-ignored band from cassette tape obscurity. “Spear of Destiny. You have to hear this song called The Wheel.” He pitched it to the brunette. “Ignore the fact that they also have a saxophone. It’s cool, I promise.”

As he continued to look for bands she might like, he looked up in curiosity. “I haven’t seen you in here before.”

[holiday_pirner]

"Cool."

She took the tape, glancing at the track listing on the back. She was putting her trust in Brian's knowledge, and he seemed to know his way around.

"That's because I haven't been. I'm kind of fresh off the boat." Still, record stores were almost universal, and there was something exciting about peeling the wrapping off of a new album and pressing play for the first time.

"My name is Holly."

[brian_campo]

He smiled. “It’s nice to meet you. Damn it—” Brian noticed a Talking Heads tape in the wrong spot and went to fix it. It killed him when people shoved music wherever they were standing when they decided not to buy it. It wasn’t that he minded an employee having to do the work; he just imagined this scenario in which that tape was the only one in stock and somebody couldn’t buy it because they couldn’t find it.

“You said boat, not plane, so I take it you’re here for a while. You shouldn’t shop anywhere else. Unless you’re looking for pants, I can’t help you with that.” He took another look at her outfit. If she was new in town, he should give her a flyer for whatever gigs were coming up at the Dive. “Hey, Billie, toss me one of those,” he said, pointing to a white paper covered in black logos.

Annoyed at him, the manager picked up a single page and let it fly into the air with a flourish. It got all of two feet before sailing to the ground.

Brian lifted his chin. “Thanks,” he said.

“No problem,” she replied.

“Um.” He pointed at a new release by Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. “Grab that one. The one with the creepy guy on the cover art. You’ll like it if you’re into Joy Division.” He jogged over to the flyer to pick it up, his doc martens clunking on the thin carpet over wooden flooring.

[holiday_pirner]

Holly smiled, biting the inside of her lip as she watched the flyer flutter to the ground. She spotted the record in question. "Creepy guy. Right." She grabbed that, as well.

Silently flanking his side, she watched him pick up the paper. "Nice boots," the brunette remarked. She was wearing red Converse high tops with glittery black laces, grey knee socks over black fishnets.

"So, what's that?," Holly asked curiously, peering at the page in his hand.

[brian_campo]

He didn’t notice her alongside him until Holly spoke. “Oh, it’s um…” Brian held up the paper. It was upside down. He flipped it around. The advertisement had been drawn by hand in black ink and photocopied a hundred times. He knew that because he had done the copying for the kid in Billie’s office at the record shop, not that his boss realized it. “There’s this place called the Dive, lots of local bands. There’s something this weekend. You should go.” He shrugged and handed it to Holly. “Just don’t use the bathroom, if you can help it.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Billie said from her stool. She was reading a dog-eared copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The corners were mushy as if the paperback had been dropped in the bathtub. “Also I think the bouncer has rabies.”

“Ahh,” he sighed. Brian rubbed his forehead. “Nice contribution.”

[holiday_pirner]

"Don't use the loo, got it." She examined the flyer, her eyes lighting up. Holly had been somewhat of a fixture at the punk clubs in London, and it was nice to know there was a similar option in Vegas.

"She's blunt," the brunette remarked, in a voice low enough for only Brian to hear.

"Let me guess: she rides your ass, but at the end of the day, she's really the boss with a heart of gold? Only with a nice barbed wire exterior."

[brian_campo]

“Yeah, except for the heart of gold, you’re right on it.” Brian fiddled with his t-shirt sleeve.

He watched Billie pull on her stubby, pink ponytail as she tried to release tension from her temples. A year before, just after he took the job at Tracks, he had found himself at the same party as her. They were both messed up and he temporarily forgot that she was the definition of month-long PMS.

He mumbled to Holly, “One time I was stoned and I briefly entertained the notion of asking her out because she had this giant cherry on her t-shirt. I couldn’t stop staring at it. Luckily I passed out in a puddle of my own sick before that came to pass.”

[holiday_pirner]

Holly gave him a sympathetic look. "Now that is some obvious symbolism. That is some Clockwork Orange shit." She still couldn't get that big, phallic statue out of her head.

The brunette shifted her weight from foot to foot, fiddling with the tapes in her hands. "So, you get stoned?"

[brian_campo]

Brian chuckled. “That’s what you took from that?”

He looked at the other customers nearby and then inclined his head, indicating that they should walk away from the register. He stopped in front of a rack of band t-shirts that he could feasibly fold and manage to appear busy while they had a conversation.

“Yeah.”

He held up a finger.

“I’m not sure why I walked over here just to say that. Pretty innocuous.”

He grabbed a shirt that a customer had draped over the top of the stack. The Rolling Stones. He attempted to improve its condition and rapidly remembered why he wasn’t the employee who did this.

[holiday_pirner]

She took the shirt from him and expertly folded it. She handed it back with a satisfied smile. "I worked a shop, too. The clothing variety."

Holly casually leaned against one of the racks. "I've kind of taken a break from the harder stuff, but if you're into green, I always have a plentiful supply."

The brunette patted her olive green bag.

[brian_campo]

Brian took the shirt and set it on top of the larges. “Yeah?” His eyes strayed to her bag. “Cool.” It was good to know somebody he could buy from that wasn’t potentially a cop. The small, plastic-wrapped stash in his nightstand drawer was dwindling. “I’ve been taking a break, too. Kinda… trying to work some stuff out with a clear head.”

Too bad clarity wasn’t coming. It didn’t seem to matter if he was high or not; nothing changed.

“Trying to be responsible. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” His mind was on the confrontation with that vampire.

[holiday_pirner]

She understood that. Too well. "I used to deal with everything by softening the edges. Make things seem less real." Holly brought her shoulders up in a shrug.

"Now everything seems painfully unreal, so what do you do then?"

The brunette quickly realized she was rambling. Maybe it was time to just take a shot in the dark. If he thought she was insane, she could avoid the store. He'd never have to see her again.

"So, what is it then? Fangs? Or are you a wolf masquerading as a human?" She touched his arm. "You seem warm enough."

[brian_campo]

“What? No,” he whispered. Brian was taken aback, though not for the reasons one might suspect. He launched a paranoid search of their surroundings to make sure no customers were eavesdropping. How did this stuff keep coming up? He was putting the moves on a vampire slayer and he had seen two of those in the last week. Now there were werewolves?

“I…”

He wrapped his hands around the back of his neck. What should he do, pretend he didn’t know what Holly was talking about, or pretend that he did? Because neither seemed like an honest response. He let his arms flop to his sides. “I’m as human as it gets,” he said. Well. Technically. “C’mon, let’s talk outside.” He pointed at the door that led into the store room.

Unless she was a vampire.

He looked beyond her at the end of the aisle, where a spherical mirror hung on the ceiling. No, she had a reflection.

[holiday_pirner]

Holly followed him, strangely satisfied at his reaction. Okay, so she hadn't meant to scare him or anything. But it was good to know she wasn't the only one new to rubbing shoulders with the...what? Supernatural? Holly supposed it was as good a term as any.

"Me too," the brunette replied matter-of-factly. "We have so much in common."

[brian_campo]

“I’m taking a break,” he called to his boss, who acknowledged the statement with a bored thumbs up.

Brian led Holly through a stockroom. It was cramped with half-empty boxes of casettes, a small table and four chairs for meals, and an assortment of trash bags full of Styrofoam peanuts. The air in there was stuffy, so when he opened the back door, the fresh air was a relief. He let the door slam shut and reached up, where a ladder extended off the fire escape. It rattled to the ground.

“Nobody goes up here,” he said. These days, he didn’t want to hang out in the alley. It seemed excessively dangerous.

[holiday_pirner]

"Ooh, I like climbing these."

Holly waited for him to go first. It wasn't until a breeze tousled her hair that she realized she still had the tapes in hand.

"I'm going to pay for these, promise."

[brian_campo]

Brian had forgotten about the tapes. It looked like one way or the other, merchandise was getting stolen tonight. “Here, I’ll hold ‘em for you,” he said. He wasn’t sure her outfit had pockets. He stuffed them in his pants pocket and climbed the ladder ahead of her. The building was only four stories tall, so it didn’t take much effort to reach the top. He straddled the wall and slung his leg over it. One of his shoes kicked a beer can. He couldn’t remember if it was one of his, or if his assertion that nobody else used the roof was erroneous. In the middle of the roof, there were a couple of plastic crates and metal folding chairs, which seemed to be in the same spot as the last time.

“Got it?” he asked. He didn’t want to be a jerk and imply that Holly couldn’t climb a ladder, but he didn’t want to just walk off and leave her hanging off the side of a building, either.