Page 37 of Dedicated
When I pushed through the glass-fronted door, a couple of rusty bells emitted a pitiful whimper, and immediately the scent of dust, old paper, and plastic surrounded me. I inhaled deeply for the way it reminded me of growing up and all the music stores I’d loved. Most of them were long gone. Grim’s Record Repository in Nashville was one of the few stalwarts left, and its owner, Daniel Grim, had opened smaller satellites here and in Knoxville and swore he’d die before his shops would.
I grinned when I spotted the man himself crouched over, sorting through a bunch of albums. I strolled down the narrow aisles, letting my fingers trail an uneven path over record sleeves displayed in the roughly constructed plywood racks. He had CDs and even some cassettes, but most of the central floor space was devoted to records.
“Old dude checking out Conway Twitty. There’s a cliché,” I teased as I stopped near his hunched back.
Dan glanced up with a smile and cranked his middle finger up slowly while he sang a few husky bars of “Hello Darlin’.” Dude could sing, and he used to professionally but had quit years ago. He was handsome, too, and not even for an older guy, just flat-out handsome in a rough, world-weary way as if time and tragedy had sanded his features in some places and left him sharp in others. Like his eyes, which twinkled as I cracked up.
He grasped my hand and pulled himself up, and then me into a hug, which he tightened unnecessarily until my lungs compressed and I let out a wheeze.
“Feel that vise? That ain’t old—that’s the vigor of the seasoned.”
Dan released me and I staggered back dramatically, earning a warm chuckle from him.
“How’s tricks?” he asked, sweeping up a stack of records and setting them into the display bin. He nudged the other two stacks aside with the toe of his cowboy boot and tipped his head to keep an eye on me as he started walking up the aisle to the checkout counter.
I followed along slowly, skimming records as I went. “Same old. Working on the new album.”
“Yeah? Got anything good yet?”
“I think so, but shit, I don’t trust my judgment as much this time. I thought the third album was good.”
“It was.” He leaned up against the counter, pulling out a can of nuts from behind it and spilling a handful into his palm. When he offered them to me, I shook my head. “I think it was the timing when it dropped. The market took a hit, people were flailing. The collective consciousness was primed for something light and hopeful and—”
“Black Dovedefinitely wasn’t that,” I finished for him. Dan had all kinds of theories on music, and if I got him going, he could go for hours analyzing and tying an album’s success or failure to fashion trends, politics, even the stock market on the day an album released. It was fascinating and maybe a little crazy, but I always listened anyway because Dan was Dan. He’d had a solid music career that he left behind to open a couple of record stores, so he knew his shit. And he was partially responsible for me and Evan getting together. I’d known him since I moved to Nashville and used to haunt his main store, digging through records, hanging out, or playing shows. I had a huge soft spot for him.
“What’s the new stuff sound like?”
“I’m not telling you, because you’ll analyze it against market trends or something and psyche me out before we can get it finished.”
He grinned. “Fair enough.”
He popped another peanut in his mouth, chewing it thoughtfully as he studied me, and I knew before he even opened his mouth again what he was going to ask. I started drifting over to one of the display racks because I was going to have to lie to him and I didn’t want to. He was still pretty well connected in the music industry, and even if I wanted to tell him the whole story about what was going on, it was a risk with the way gossip was traded in Nashville.
“It true?” He fixed me with a gimlet-eyed stare, then cracked another nut between his teeth.
Yep, there it was. I turned my back to him and picked up a random record without even reading the label, because the dude had a penetrating gaze that might as well have been an X-ray machine for bullshit.
“Sort of.” And that was all I gave him.
He grunted and I thought he read between the lines well enough because when I looked over my shoulder at him, he pulled his thumb and forefinger across the seam of his lips, like he was zipping them, and moved on.
“You looking for anything in particular today or just come down here to distract some words out?”
He knew me too well. “Kinda both. You have any Jessup Polk?”
Dan’s eyes crinkled at the corners as they narrowed. “Shit, that’s a rare one.” He put a hand to his forehead, thumb and index finger running along his brows like he was trying to coax something out. He had a pretty damn good memory, could usually nail an album’s release down to the exact date. “I think I’ve got one or two of his, but they may be at the main store. They’re hard to find now. Want me to call and see?”
“Sure.”
I wandered the aisles, watching him while he made the call. He was probably fifteen years older than my twenty-six, maybe a little less. Back when I first started out, I’d have slept with him in a heartbeat, but the one time I’d tried, he’d given me a gentle letdown. He had a rumored history with another of Nashville’s greats, but it was all wrapped up in some convoluted love triangle that had involved the woman the other guy ended up marrying, and nobody really knew the truth as far as I could tell. I respected Dan too much to ask, though I was curious as shit. For as long as I’d known him, he’d been single.
He foundme staring down Dolly Parton. The cutout display version, this time. She wore a sparkling red dress and a smile the size of Nashville that I matched, thinking about the wax museum.
“Paying your dues?”
I clasped my hands prayer fashion and gave a short bow to her gleaming, dimpled smile and physics-defying tits. “Always.”
“We’ve got it in stock at the main store. Only copy. I had Ru set it aside for you. I can bring it when I come back next week. Assuming you’ll still be here.”