Sunrise in New York. Helen Cox
subject quick.
‘You got a record player?’ I asked, tilting my head to one side. He paused, frowning at the question.
‘Yeah I got a record player, I’m not a caveman.’ He reached a hand down to Louie who’d been whining off and on and gave the short fur on his head a ruffle.
‘Mind if I play a record or two?’
Jimmy squinted his eyes just enough at the corners to let me know he was well aware I was trying to throw him off the scent. Then he looked at his watch, which I guess never left his wrist since he’d just jumped out of bed. ‘It’s three in the morning.’
‘Music always makes me feel better,’ I said, with a small pout to my lips. Something about the way I did it must’ve amused Jimmy because a smug-looking smile came over his lips.
‘Alright,’ he replied.
Pushing aside the sheets, I stood in my purple plaid nightshirt and walked barefoot over to the corner with the lamp where I’d left my suitcase about three hours ago. Louie scampered over to join me and I gave him a quick pat whilst kneeling to open the clasp on my luggage. Lifting the lid, I pushed aside the sweater dresses and T-shirts I’d thrown in before bolting for Atlantic City bus station. Underneath my toothbrush and my notebook, where I wrote down all the song lyrics I never shared with anyone, was a small pile of 45s. A modest selection of the best records from the last three decades.
I felt the heat of Jimmy’s breath on my neck as he squatted down near me. He was looking over my right shoulder and goosebumps pushed up through my skin at the thought of him being that close. It’d been too long since I’d had a guy that close to me. For the last few years my major concern had been making enough money to pay rent. But showing my parents I could make it on my own had been harder than I’d thought it would be and, as a result my love life, had been sort of on the back-burner.
‘That’s what you choose to pack in an emergency? Records?’ said Jimmy, waving a hand at my suitcase.
‘Yeah, just the essentials,’ I said, turning in his direction and trying again to look at his face rather than his chest.
‘Any good ones?’
‘Only the best ones.’ I made a show of looking insulted.
‘Alright, let’s hear one.’
‘Hmm. This one.’ I passed him a record in an orange sleeve. He took it and held it close to his face to read in the dim light.
‘“Concrete & Clay” by Unit 4 + 2.’ He shook his head at me. ‘Never heard of it.’
‘Then you’ve never heard really great music.’ I smiled. ‘Play it.’
With a shrug, Jimmy walked over to a small nook near the TV I hadn’t spotted before. It was stacked up high with old, folded newspapers but once they were lifted away a small music centre appeared underneath, complete with a record deck on top. Jimmy blew the dust off it and set the record in place. I walked over to the window and drew back the orange curtains, gazing down to the empty Brooklyn street four storeys below. Tinged yellow by the streetlamps, from this angle the world outside was a jigsaw of fire escape ladders, blacked out windows and water hydrants.
There was nobody out there. Not that I could see, anyway.
The scratch of the record sounded out, followed by the metallic chime of a cymbal right before the sprightly rhythm kicked in. I turned back to face the room and leaned with my back against the wall, running my fingertips over the cheap woodchip. Closing my eyes, I let the music surround me and at the sound of Tommy Moeller’s rich, smooth voice, my shoulders loosened, the tension bleeding out of me.
As the first chorus played out, Jimmy said, ‘That is a good record.’
I opened my eyes. Jimmy stood a few paces away at the record player. Still shirtless, and apparently confident enough about his body not to think about it. Still, he looked, to me, somehow vulnerable in his part-unclothed state. So much softer than I’d first thought him in the diner, when he was making suggestive comments and ogling everything south of my chin.
‘Actually, Esther is the one who got me onto these guys. They’re a British band from the sixties. I was feelin’ kinda low about singing in the Sexties one day. It’s not exactly a dream job, musically speaking, and she said I should hunt out this record. Said it was one her dad used to play before he died, and it was impossible to listen to it without smiling.’
‘I didn’t know, about her dad. But, I guess I’ve gotta give her credit for her taste in music, even if I don’t rate her taste in men,’ he said, while fussing Louie who was play-tearing at Jimmy’s trouser leg with his teeth.
What was this guy’s deal? Why did he have so much to say about who Esther was seeing, and how the hell had he got on the wrong side of her? She was nothing short of reasonable with me, even after the way I treated her. He must’ve really struck a nerve for relations to still be awkward between them.
And yet, this guy, the same guy that had somehow mortally offended Esther, had taken me in without any real reason to trust me, and definitely without any benefit to himself. My own parents would’ve kicked up more of a fuss about inviting me in out of the cold than he had. Something about him just didn’t add up. I guess we had that in common.
What was it he’d said back at the subway station? Something about him knowing what it was like, not having anywhere to go. It seemed out of line to ask what that experience was, especially since I’d told him nothing about my own predicament, but I couldn’t help but wonder. What’d happened to this man to cause him to take in a stray like me so easy? Someone who was so difficult to love.
Oh God damn it. No, please no. Don’t think about that again.
Too late.
Two nights ago on Christmas Eve, I’d found refuge in a church in Philadelphia for the night and sat through their All Souls service. Philadelphia was where the first bus out of Atlantic City was headed, and I hadn’t yet figured out that Esther was my best bet of staying safe for a while. I just needed to get out of town. In that church, I’d somehow managed to sing my way through ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ without breaking down into a blubbering wreck. I’d even pitched out that unsettling question in the last verse with a clear voice: ‘What can I give Him, poor as I am?’ a fact I’d chalked up as a win, and then the priest went and said it.
‘Let us pray for all those we love, and for all those we find it difficult to love.’
It was then I’d felt the lump in my throat, my face growing red with the strain of holding back the tears, because I knew that was me.
He was talking about me: the girl who was difficult to love.
The lump I’d swallowed down two nights previously regurgitated from the pit of my stomach and lodged itself at the back of my throat again. There, it bloated out, feeding off the shame I dared not speak about. Jimmy looked back at me, and I at him. The record came to an end and the needle scratched over and over. I hopped across to the record player, hooked the needle back on its stand and in doing so moved nearer to Jimmy. He was standing just to my left. I looked at him.
‘Probably should let you get back to sleep,’ I said, half smiling.
‘Uh, yeah. I guess. I gotta go into work tomorrow,’ he said, rubbing his eyes.
‘Mmm. Maybe I’ll play this record one more time before I turn out the light.’ I said, placing the needle on vinyl once more.
‘Alright, knock yourself out. Goodnight, Blue.’ He turned to walk away and as he did so, revealed a tattoo on his right shoulder blade. It was a compass, like any other, apart from one odd detail. It had the initials for all the directions etched around it, except north. There was no N for north. Just an empty patch of skin, which had a natural tan to it.
It was weird, but something about the look of it made my stomach turn over. His back was more muscular than I would’ve expected and even though I’d been brought up to believe