Page 7 of Resonance

“Yep.” Dan released his hold on my shoulder and gave Terryl the Scout’s honor sign.

“How couldyou let him have those? I feel like I need to take a shower now.” I kept close on Dan’s heels as he strolled toward the front counter after Terryl left. The effect was probably much like some ankle-biting toy poodle nipping at a Bernese mountain dog’s tail, because Dan had at least a foot on me. “Shut up, Ru,” I threw preemptively in the direction of his smirk, and he chuckled and snapped his teeth at me as he headed toward the back.

Dan turned an amused look on my indignation as he picked up the sales slip of doom and held it in the air. “Maybe it butters my biscuit a little, yeah, but you know what else it does? Greases this damn drawer.” In demonstration, he poked the button to send the cash drawer flying open with a clatter of loose change. “Hear that? That’s the sound of a happy cash register.”

“People are gonna see that at that auction and think he actually knows shit about music, actually appreciates it. They’ll probably talk about how generous he is and then swoon over his bedazzled jeans.” I huffed and made a gag face.

“I’m sensing some judgment on denim hardware, which is more than a little ironic considering that jacket you wore last week.”

“That’s different,” I insisted. It had been one of my better thrift store scores. A little bit punk, a little bit country. What could I say? It’d spoken to me. And it’d also been three bucks.

Dan shut the drawer and leaned against the back wall plastered with old show posters and flyers. He folded his arms over his chest and studied me. “Don’t worry about the auction. That’s just one way of seeing it.” He scratched his rough jaw slowly, the way he did when he was about to unleash a Dan sermon, something all of us at Grim’s were acquainted with. I couldn’t hear the scrape of his nails across that rich stubble over the Reba McEntire currently filling the store, but I could imagine the soft rustle of it. I wanted to reach out and touch it. The one time I’d tried to grow a beard, it’d come out patchy and gross.

The scratch morphed into a slow circular rub that picked up the tempo of the song. Dan was one of those guys who had music living inside him as much as I did, as much as Ru. It seeped into our movements, our pulse. Late afternoons when the shop was quiet, just before the after-work trickle came in, we’d often end up in heated debates on this album or that, which artists were killing it, which were selling out, which were doing all of it.

I loved my job. It paid for shit, but I loved it more than a coffee shop or desk job.

Dan’s lips parted, and then he clamped his mouth shut again, a little muscle fluttering along his jaw as he dropped his hand back to his side and pushed off the wall, a total cowboy fantasy. He lacked only a Stetson and a cigarette burning in one corner of his mouth with tendrils of smoke pluming up and shrouding his face. Except he didn’t smoke, and these days I was more likely to see him in a ball cap. Which was almost as good, to be honest.

“Think of it this way. Somebody at that auction is going to be ecstatic to get some Jessup Polk. It’ll probably go for top dollar, ’cause there’ll be plenty of folk there whodoknow his music. And then all those other people who maybe have never heard of him are gonna start wondering who this artist commanding top dollar is. Maybe they start seeking him out, finding his website. Maybe they find their way into this shop. Sound spreads the same as scent does, and sometimes it doesn’t matter who puts it out there. ’Sides, if Jessup gave two shits about it either way, he’d be doing things differently.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Do you know him?” Jessup was mostly legend. As far as I could tell, no one had even determined he really existed. But in music circles, he’d taken on a fantastically legendary quality. Supposedly he lived out in the woods somewhere alone. A misanthrope and his music. Every now and then, some new EP or single would pop up on Spotify. But it’d been a year since he’d released anything, and he didn’t seem to operate with any kind of rhyme or reason—which was either brilliant or dumb. I hadn’t figured out which.

“Nah, just speculating.”

I didn’t believe him for a minute, but Dan was also capable of holding secrets tighter than a Wells Fargo vault. He tipped his head toward the front of the shop where I’d left the broom and dustpan. “Finish that up and you’re good to go.”

I gave up and went to finish sweeping. Secret crush notwithstanding, Dan was a good boss. The best I’d ever had, in fact. Fair and caring and hard all at once. I always felt free to give my opinion on something or rant. Didn’t mean he’d abide by it, but usually he’d listen. I figured that was more than most employees got on a retail job.

I picked up the broom again and leaned over, angling it under the display rack. When it got caught on something, I swept gently side to side to dislodge whatever was under there.

“Hey, be careful, there’s a—”

The front of the case collapsed forward at an angle, throwing stacks of records against the thin rails that held them in. I darted my hand out and caught the edge, managing to stall it as I grinned victoriously. “Not today, Satan!”

And then something else popped and the terrible music of disaster surrounded me as an avalanche of the Osmonds, Otis Redding, and Ozzy poured over the edge. I windmilled, grabbing what I could, and ended up on my ass on the floor, lap filled with records.

Dan shook his head as he came over to the rack. “Kid, you saw me stick that block under there the other day to keep it upright until I could take the whole thing apart and fix it proper.”

“Yeah, well, I was also busy with a customer at the time, so I guess it didn’t register.”

I scooted backward, setting records gently aside as I examined the listing angle of the case and the bent metal railings.

Dan sighed. “Don’t worry about it. Good excuse as any for me to stay late and just get it fixed.”

“I can help,” I volunteered.

He waved me off. “Go home before something else breaks. I got it.”

A muscle in my jaw tightened and I shot a glance up at him, but the comment didn’t seem directed toward me personally, though things did have a tendency to go awry when I was around. No, he mostly looked… tired.

I stacked a couple of records and accepted the hand he extended to help me up.

“You’re a mess,” Dan muttered, taking the records I handed him.

I wasn’t sure if he meant that literally, so I raked a hand through my hair, trying to tuck away the loose ends. I’d been born with rebel strands that tended to go their own way faster than Stevie Nicks’s solo career. It worked in my favor, sometimes. Tousled bedhead was my thing. Guys dug it.

But the way Dan was still looking at me, I figured he just meant I was a mess in general. I got that a lot, too. It was a fair assessment. I had what was politely called anexcitablenature. See also: rambly, scatterbrained, hazard in a china shop. And I tended to get flustered in front of some of the customers. Especially the big names or someone especially good-looking. Like Dan, who had once been a big name and was still especially good-looking. When Ru and Ivy were around, or there were customers wandering the aisles, Dan’s presence felt diffused somehow. But now with just the two of us here and no music playing, god, it was potent. Like standing right in front of an open fireplace. Or some lady at a department store spritzing a perfume sample right at your face. Except there was nothing cloying or sweet about Dan. He was a colossus of leather and aftershave and musk. And maybe a little boot polish. If they’d had a scent like that in a department store, I’d have been all over it.