Mary Jane by Jessica Blau (debian ebook reader TXT) 📗

talking in a run-on sentence, as if she wanted to say everything she could before someone moved her away from Jimmy.

“My babysitter brought Running Water records to our house ’cause we didn’t have any, see, and she’s a heroin addict now too,just like you, see, and I still listen to Running Water. . . .”

“Uh-huh.” Jimmy nodded. His eyes seemed unfocused and fogged over. He reached his arm toward me and I felt a small tug inmy back shorts pocket. Jimmy had slipped the bill in there.

One of the bodyguard guys escorted the woman away from Jimmy and then moved other employees aside so Jimmy could sign thereceipt. Izzy and I carried the two bags of records as the employee mob walked the four of us out of the store and to thecar, the crowd of fans and shoppers trailing behind.

Gabriel laughed when Sheba put the key into the passenger-side door. “You gotta be kidding me, man. Jimmy and Sheba drivea station wagon!”

“Well, we got the kids.” Jimmy nodded at me and Izzy and then got in the car and didn’t roll down the window. Izzy and I gotin too. Izzy rolled down the window and leaned half her body out, watching everyone give Sheba hugs or kisses goodbye.

When Sheba finally got in the car and closed the door, Jimmy said, “Let’s roll, baby, roll, roll, roll.”

Sheba pulled the car out slowly. The crowd walked behind us, their hands on the back window and hood. It took a long, slowtime to get out into the street and finally pull away.

Once we could no longer see Night Train Records behind us, Sheba slapped the steering wheel with her hand. “That place was fabulous. I mean, there was nothing missing there. Nothing they didn’t have. And Gabriel knew everything about anyone who’s ever made a record. He knew everything about music.”

“Yeah, it was cool.” Jimmy rolled down his window and took a deep breath. “If we go back, I’m calling Gabriel ahead of timeand we’re going in after hours.”

“Will he do that?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Sheba said. “Jimmy and I usually only shop in closed stores.”

“I don’t think we need more.” Izzy slid the records out of one bag and spread them across our two laps. She picked up Hair and stared at the cover, at the man with a neon-red-and-yellow Afro that radiated like a burning sun. The green letteringabove his head repeated the word hair hair hair hair hair—upside down and right side up and sideways. I imagined people singing that word in ten-part harmony. My head felt a littledizzy and full of static, in the happiest way.

 

Mrs. Cone seemed hurt that we had gone to the record store without her. For the rest of the afternoon, she acted like shewas a stranger in the house. As Sheba, Izzy, and I played the new records on the turntable in the dining room, Mrs. Cone saton a chair at the table, a glass of wine in her hand. She rarely sang along and didn’t seem to be enjoying herself.

I was worried about Mrs. Cone, but mostly I was excited to hear the new records. There were so many that we started off by playing only one song from most albums, and two from some. Sheba picked the songs. I thought each one was the best song I’d ever heard, until she played the next one and then I’d think that was the best song I’d ever heard. Izzy requested that we replay “Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone three times because she loved singing it and holding hands with me and Sheba. “We have to sing it because we’re family,” she explained. Once we finished trying all the albums, we went back to Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Sheba wanted to practice the harmonies in “A Case of You,” and she wanted me to memorize it so we could sing it togethertonight.

I had the melody memorized after only hearing it once. The words took me a little longer, and I couldn’t figure out what theymeant. Once I had them down, Izzy and I went off to the kitchen to make baked mac and cheese.

We were stirring the cheese sauce and singing Joni Mitchell when Izzy asked all the questions I’d had about the song.

“What is a case of you?”

“I’ve been wondering that too.”

“How do you drink someone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s about love? About drinking up love?”

“How do you drink up love?”

“Hold the noodle pan still.” I poured the cheese sauce over the noodles while Izzy held the pan on either side. She didn’treally need to do that, the pan wasn’t about to move, but I liked to make her feel like she was involved in every step.

“Could you drink a case of me?”

“Yes! I love you so much, I could drink a case of you.” I handed Izzy the bowl of bread crumb mix we had prepared earlier. She sprinkled it over the mac and cheese slowly, as if the pacing were important. When the pan was covered, she dumped the remainder in the middle so there was a small hill of crumbs. I smoothed the hill out with my hand. Then Izzy put her hand over what I had smoothed and smoothed it again. My mother didn’t believe in touching the food you were preparing—all contact was made through a third party: knife, fork, spatula, spoon. Even when making a pie crust, my mother pressed it into the pan using two shallow spoons. But since I’d been cooking with Izzy, I’d found that to put your hands in the food, to touch, move, tear, bend, and sprinkle ingredients straight from your fingers, gave you a better sense of what you were doing, and made the doing more effective. It might have been my imagination, but I thought the food I prepared tasted better when my hands had been in it. My fingers knew things a spoon or spatula couldn’t.

 

After dinner, Jimmy got out his guitar while Izzy and I served vanilla ice