Scratched Vinyl

Her text had come in a doldrums of an afternoon, when a storm had passed and the hours were as still as a church on Monday and the humidity cloaked the town like gray moth wings.

       What are you doing?  Are you busy?

He was surprised at first, this outreach.  Her clues and reveals had been painfully slow, bandage-like, as if she was really showing him a wound versus just sharing with him.  She did that, as part of her being...like waves breaking in slow remnants on a shore.  She would reveal, then pull back...draining the sand with her, and tugging at him in an undertow.  He never knew what she was thinking.

     I'm driving he wrote.

There was a pause, like in all their interactions...that time-slide.  It was a chess move.

     Can you come see me?  Like in a bit?

He hadn't been asked before, so the request was a little intriguing.  He really wasn't going anywhere.  At least no place where she didn't melt upon his mind like the final waxes of a candle.  So he might as well go see the flesh and blood of her.

     Where are you?
       At my parents...I will send you the address.

He got the address and turned his car around.





They say that memory is not a video, but rather a set of photographs...Polaroids, snapshots of time and space.  As he drove amongst the trees and the bits of gray light filtering in, he remembered the bits and pieces of the kaleidoscope of her.

Her eyes, that looked the color of licorice in one moment and lightened into taupe in another depending on her mood...the purse of her lips, the lyric of her voice...it was a snippet, a sonnet, and it scattered in pieces against his memory like those people in phone booths trying to catch dollar bills.  He drove on, remembering everything and knowing nothing.

Her address was a bit confusing, trees blocking the house so he probably went back and forth a few times before deciding which house was hers.  A short walk up and he knocked on the door, and she opened it.

     Hey, so you found it.

     Yeah, it took me a bit, but I got here.  He walked into the house, quiet and quaint, and stood in the middle of the room.  He then noticed that she had a record in her hand, not a small 45, but rather the old vinyl records from his youth.

     Wow...that's a blast from the past.  What is it?

     It's one of my favorite records she admitted, kind of embarrassed...she held it in front of her like a relic.
     What is it?

She looked down.  The black vinyl shined and reflected the light from the room.  While it was a perfectly innocent question, he knew she was unwillingly revealing.  He felt a bit of warmth from her reaction, watching her squirm a bit.

     It's Kim Weston.  

     Take me in your arms? He asked.

 She looked up at him quickly.  Yes...as a matter of fact.

     You should listen to her song A Little More Love...like a freaking primer on how to treat a girl.

She smiled at that, letting the distance in between them linger.  She then crossed the room and soon she was very close to him, close enough for him to see her eyes that were not as dark as they seemed.  Her eyebrows, her mouth, and that simple clean scent of hers.  The record was the only thin slice between them.

     Why don't you go put it on he said.  He could stand above her and watch her and she slowly turned and moved towards the player.

     I'm not sure if this will work...it's been a long time since I tried this player.  She opened up the wood cover and turned on the power with an audible click.  She put the record on and lowered the arm onto the vinyl.  You could hear the scratching of the needle filling the stereo.

     That is something you don't hear anymore.

Soon the music commenced and the voice of Kim echoed in the small room.  But as the music played, there was a definite skip in the tune.

     Damn scratches she said, getting up to blow on the record and seeing if it was dust or something else.

  And he didn't know what it was in that moment, but he saw her startle for a moment.  He got up, and moved across the room and stood behind her.  She was still leaning over the record player, Kim Weston still scratching and singing her tune.  The needle bumped and skipped now and again, and dulled the tune.

And then he realized she was crying.  A subtle movement, a very tiny shake.  But that she was holding it in and it was escaping without her control.

     I'm sorry. She had a hand pressed against her face like a mask.  He grasped her shoulders so he could turn her, and while she kept looking down he pulled her against him.

     What is it? he asked.  She still felt rigid, like the way a drowning victim pulls down their potential rescuer, he was vulnerable and in very foreign waters.

She didn't answer, and she kept that hand clumsily across her face.  He pulled her in closer and kissed the hand, wet with tears, wet with the salt of her and he realized this was the first time he had tasted her.  Tasted the part of her that she had never shared and as he gently put his lips across the fingers dripping the waters from her eyes he realized that she was as lonely as perhaps he had been.

And he pulled her into him tightly, her breath in short waves, and he wondered if he had stumbled like the needle as it crossed the well worn grooves of the record, stumbling on scratches that she had put on him a long time ago.