Wicked Records

“Replenish the discount crates up front. They took a hit after The Wonder Years album release on Thursday.” The Manager said.

    Local bands releasing new albums was about the only time this old shop had more than a handful of customers in an entire shift. The manager had bought out all of the records from two pawn shops a few towns over and used that to start his inventory. Trouble was the care of these records was less than stellar. Dust resided on and in every crate while the entire left side of the store smelled like of must and mold.

Me and Connie used to joke the management only kept this place afloat as a laundering operation. Just the other day, the manager’s brother-in-law came in whacked out on something. It was 2022, but if you saw him, you would have sworn he had been getting busy with a line and lady in the back of a beat-up American muscle car in 1972, with eyes a glassy blue and a brown fringe jacket that had more locks on it than his head. The manager was furious his brother-in-law would come into his establishment in this shape and was quick to usher him out the front door. Connie and I watched the two in a heated argument from the jazz section by the bay window and narrated our version of the conversation they may have been having.

    “You come in MY shop lit up like this? In front of my customers and staff?” The manager was sweating, beat red and as swollen as ever. I had never seen someone with such a slender frame be so soft and bloated at the same time. I guess it helped that he was six foot eight. 

    “Come on, man. One more time is all I’m asking. I’m in hot water here, man. Come on, man. One more time!” Connie narrates the managers brother-in-law who was jittery and scattered, pointing up to the manager from a whole head below. 

    The two went back and forth, but nothing ever got overtly physical. They even managed to maintain a kind of whisper and hush style of yell, because lord knows with as old as this shop’s windows were, we’d have heard every word if they spoke any louder than they had. The two wrapped up, oddly civil with an awkward hug and the manager patting his brother-in-law on the chest before grabbing both shoulders and making long, intense eye contact. Then, a kiss on the cheek. Every time, a kiss on the cheek. They weren’t even Italian. This is where Connie got her laundering and mob fixation in our little store floor narrating party’s we’d have on shifts together. 

    “I’m sorry you two had to see that. He’s uhm, well he won’t be back in here again. I’ll tell you what, you can each take one record out of the discount bin for yourselves if you promise to never mention you saw him in here today. Deal?” The manager said.

    Connie and I had looked at each other and smiled. We were never even offered employee discounts, let alone a FREE record! “Deal. We never saw him, sir!” I, said.

    The manager had gone back to the storage room where he liked to smoke. There was a small window there and we used to catch him blowing smoke out of it until he put a lock on the new door. He never wanted anyone to know he didn’t quit like he said he did. Something tells me it may not be cigarettes this time. Cue the waft of excessive Febreze scent coursing through the store floor out from base of the storage room door.

    “They’re totally dealing drugs. Or Guns. Or girls! Oh my god, do you think they’re trafficking?” Connie and her ever adventurous imagination had taken off. All of our stories made up on the floor were flooding to her quicker than I could process.

    “Chill, Connie! Dang! He’s gonna hear you spiraling about his weird brother-in-law. I don’t want him to take away our free record! I snuck in an old Doors album to the discount bin out of alphabetical order that I had my eyes on, and I don’t wanna lose it!”

    Connie had reset herself and come to from her imaginary haze. I loved this about Connie. She was a quirky girl who I couldn’t believe was working in a record shop of all places. We were work friends and I was very aware of that. She was pretty and popular, and I was someone who looked out of place. I had a beeper. She had an iPhone. I drove a wood paneled station wagon. She drove a Jetta. I wore jeff caps and peacoats, she wore leggings and uggs. Outside of Wicked Records, the world looked far more like her than it did me. But inside, I felt at home. Even whilst racking the newer artists vinyl’s that were destined to be sold to hipsters, never to be played and only used for an Instagram post with some loser caption designed to make them look interesting, I still felt connected to store. The outside world didn’t understand me, or I, it.

    “So, would you ever want to get a coffee sometime? We could talk a little more freely about the criminal enterprise that is Wicked Records?”

    Oh no. I saw it on her face immediately. Connie, ever the sweet and non-confrontational person was desperately searching her soul for a way to remind me that outside the shop, we didn’t really…fit.

    “It’s okay. It was probably a bad idea anyway. No worries.” The audible sigh from Connie could have been heard and felt a whole block away. I was embarrassed. I was scared that I drove away the one person who knew my every secret.  I turned from her and began replenishing the discount bin and prayed that we could forget that ever happened. 

    “Hey. I’m sorry. It’s just, you know. I…” Connie started.

    I couldn’t face her. “It’s totally fine. We don’t want to be seen somewhere outside the shop, the manager might think we’re on to him and get suspicious. We don’t wanna get whacked after all.”

    Connie didn’t say anything in return. Just a nervous single solitary laugh, one of pity and awkwardness and gave me a gentle pat on my shoulder. The platonic gesture of all platonic gestures.

*****

    Two days later I was scheduled to open the shop alone. Sunday was always a slow day at Wicked Records and to stay in accordance with town laws, we had to close by 3:00 PM. The manager was never here on Sundays, but Joel comes in a couple hours after me to close the place up. Joel is the best and I consider him a friend, even though he is in his 60’s, we speak the same language, and we love the same music. 

    I was getting the sales counter stocked with trinkets, stickers and membership punch cards when I saw the managers brother-in-law pull up out front. My stomach started to swirl, and it was one of the few times I was bothered that I was at the shop alone. He looked put together today. Normal even. As normal as I could expect someone like him to look, anyway. 

    He tapped on the storefront glass and gave me a wave to come up front. Even from the storefront counter I could see his right hand full of large rings and for some reason or another that made me more nervous. I placed the pile of stickers on the counter and walked to the door. My eyes never left his, neither of us blinked. 

    “I’m sorry, but we don’t open for another 35 minutes, sir. You’ll have to come back then.” I tried to play off like I didn’t recognize him, a move that was not much believed. 

    “It’s me, pal. I was here just the other day. The manager told me to swing by this morning and pick up a box he left in the storage room.”

    The storage room? No one but the manager had a key for that room. Not the assistant manager, not Joel, not Connie or me. “I’ll see if he left anything. Give me a minute.”

    I started walking away and I heard him knocking on the door. These knocks weren’t so friendly, and they weren’t so much as an inquiry of entrance, but an insistence of one. He yelled through the glass front door to let him in, and we could call the manager together. I kept walking to the back, blinking hard with each vicious knock of the door that followed.

    The store phone was cordless but hung on the wall in clear view from the front door. If I picked that up, he’d surely see. A pager. Really, asshole. You just had to insist on a pager. As if you weren’t different enough. Nevertheless, I crossed through to the back, crouched down in a utility closet and put in Connie’s number to my pager. I knew it by heart. I don’t know what I expected out of this effort. She just knew me, and I needed to know I was okay.

*****

    Joel came in through the stores backdoor as he always did with a long trail of cigar smoke behind him. His gargled cough always made it seems like he could die at any moment, but he didn’t seem bothered. He found me sitting in the small breakroom clutching a tiny broom in one hand and my pager in the other. I had no way of knowing how long I had been there, if Joel was early, on time or late. I was just coming to. 

    “What the hell is with you, boy? And what are you doing with half a broom?” Joel, asked.

    I couldn’t articulate a genuine sentence to him, and he didn’t appear too invested. He tossed his jacket onto a chair and continued talking to me while he exited the room to start his shift.

    “Sitting in there avoiding work. Just like today’s youth. And I thought you were one of the good ones, kid. I really did. Any customers yet today? Why aren’t these stickers separated and faced?? Lazy. All you kids are just so darn lazy these days!” Joel continued on.

    Joel had been muttering on to himself as he straightened up the sales counter before he realized I was standing in the doorway staring at him, still clutching the broom and my pager. 

    “What’s going on with you, kid? You look like you saw a darn ghost.” He, said. 

    Before I could respond there was more knocking at the front door. “Don’t answer that!” I, yelled.

    I hadn’t even looked to know that was just some kids wanting to come into the shop.

    “What in the…Did you not unlock the doors today?? Son, it’s 12:05!” Joel was fuming and stumbled through the crates left scattered about on the sales floor to get to the front door to unlock for the handful of customers that had been waiting. Anxiously, I scanned the front from behind the sales counter to see if the manager’s brother-in-law was there.

    “Kid. You on drugs? I know you’re a bit eccentric and all, but I didn’t peg you for a drughead!” Joel, said. 

    “I’m not on drugs. I’m sorry I didn’t open the shop on time. There was this guy and the other day he and the manager got into a fight…”

    “A fight?” Joel, interjected.

    “Not a fight fight, but an altercation. Connie and I saw the whole thing and the manager told us if we didn’t…” I just broke the rule. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone I ever saw him at the shop. The manager asked me to not tell a soul and the first chance I got I spilled.

    “What, kid? What did you see?”

    Joel was shaking me the way the manager shook his brother-in-law that day. Grabbing my shoulders and staring daggers into me. Just then, the front door flung open, and Connie came running in hollering my name over and over.

    “Brian, Brian, Brian! Did you see?? Oh my god, did you see??” She, asked.

    “Now what in the hell is with you, little girl?” Joel, said.

    “I’m not a little girl, you condescending ass. And Brian, the guy from the other day? The one Arnold threw out of the store?? He’s DEAD!” Connie, said. 

    Connie was out of breath and enamored with excitement. Her imagination could take her places and she would let it. This time, the wish became the father of the thought. I, on the other hand was terrified and could not dare allow my imaginative thoughts escape to the world around me.

    “It’s all over twitter! And the news just reported it! Apparently, he was found outside the coffee shop in his car that was stopped in the middle of the road. And guess what?? He had a stab wound in his chest!”

    Connie’s excitement faded and her eyes shifted to my hands as her voice trailed off. Joel began to back away from us both and pulled a rosary from his pocket and began repeated Hail Mary to himself over and over.

    “Brian…what did you do…?” Connie, asked.

    The customers in the store began to knock records over as they made their way to the front door to leave. Once they reached the handle, they sprinted out and away from the store. Connie was inching ever so closer to me as my stomach began to flutter, while Joel shook and held his rosary tight to his lips and continued to pray. 

    In my hand was a broom stick broken in half, with the tip drenched in dried black and red blood. My chest tightened and I dropped what remained of the broom stick.

    “It happened again. Didn’t it?” Connie, asked.