She had gone back into the kitchen. He cast a glance over his shoulder, saw her flip a pancake.
“You weren’t thinking,” she claimed. “Just walking off the cliff with all the other lemmings.” Then she laughed. “Don’t worry, these will make you forget your troubles.”
Whitey shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. Though it was true, the smell of the pancakes was already making his mouth start to water. “Mind if I play something?” he asked.
“Go for it,” Heidi said, “but choose wisely.”
Choose wisely? Was this a test? “Oh no,” he said, shaking a finger at her. “You’re going to make some judgment based on my choice, I assume?”
Heidi flipped the pancake out of a pan and onto a plate. “Don’t assume,” she said.
He couldn’t decide if she was serious or joking. That was always the problem. It wasn’t like he was a stupid guy, only that when it came to people like Heidi, girls he liked, it was like some switch turned off in his brain and he found himself doubting how he should read them. With Chip it was different—the way that guy thought was just too boring and predictable to follow. His mind rebelled against that. But with Heidi it was probably that he listened too closely and worried he was hearing things that weren’t really there.
He flipped through the records, found the Velvet Underground & Nico’s self-titled album. Shit, she actually had the early edition, where the banana peel was still a sticker, and the sticker was still on. Not bad. That, and wondering where the pops and scratches would come on Heidi’s copy, was enough to convince him to get the record out of the sleeve and put it on one of the turntables, side one up. He started the table spinning and carefully lifted the needle, placing it on track four.
The sound of “Venus in Furs” filled the room. When he turned, Heidi had her wrist balanced on one hip, the spatula balanced loosely in the other hand. She was giving him a wry look.
“What?” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Nothing,” she said.
“Too obvious?” he said. He liked her, so what? It wasn’t like he thought playing “Venus in Furs” was likely to get her to invite him into the bedroom.
She shrugged and began to sing along to the record. After a moment, he joined in as well.
Chapter Eighteen
Steve made his appearance as soon as the pancakes were served. How he’d known food was on, and why he hadn’t come before when he’d first smelled them, Whitey didn’t know. Steve was like that. A much smarter dog than he let on. Kind of freaky, if you thought about it.
But there Steve was, begging bites of pancake until they’d finished their first round and got their second and Heidi told him to go lie down. He did, with a kind of exasperated noise, crawling up onto the fainting couch where he quickly fell asleep. “He’s not supposed to be up there,” Heidi confided to Whitey, but she let him stay anyway. Considering how unhesitatingly Steve had hopped up there, Whitey would guess that probably happened a lot, that Steve had her wrapped around his little finger. Or whatever it was that dogs had rather than fingers.
“This is one sweet apartment,” said Whitey, carving off another bite of pancake. “The rent must be insane.”
“Only three hundred bucks a month,” said Heidi.
Three hundred bucks? He was paying basically double that for a shit hole. “How is that possible?” said Whitey. “What’s the catch?”
Heidi shrugged. “Weird story,” she said. “I was walking Steve and ran into my landlady. We got talking, just chatting about nothing really, and she told me she thought she was going to have an apartment open and asked if I was interested. I was perfectly fine where I was, so I told her no, but then she told me how little she wanted and how could I say anything but yes?”
“You couldn’t,” said Whitey. “Not if you were sane.”
“Right,” she said. “But she’s kind of a freak, too. When we were talking, very first time we met, she grabbed my hand and stroked it like it was an animal or something. For a while she wouldn’t let go. I was on the way to getting creeped out when she told me I could have the place for three hundred bucks a month. I couldn’t believe it.”
Whitey shrugged. “Old ladies have different rules about how long they can hold your hand. My grandma was that way. And for the price, you’re just lucky,” he said. “That’s probably all it is.”
Heidi smeared her syrup around her plate with her fork and shrugged. “I think maybe my landlady has the hots for me,” she said. “That probably explains it. You saw her. She’s kind of got that hippie free-love vibe going on. I mean, she’s sweet, but… I don’t know.”
“My place sucks ass,” said Whitey. “I’m paying a fortune for absolutely nothing. My landlord is some asshole Russian guy, Kazmir Yakov… total cunt.” He pulled himself straight and tried to imitate his landlord. “Vitey, Vitey, you got my rent? In Ukraine, rent is due when landlord knock on door. If landlord have to knock twice, then KGB knock next.”
But Heidi wasn’t listening. She wasn’t looking at him but at some indefinable space beyond him. “Dead air,” she said.
“Huh?” asked Whitey.
“Music,” said Heidi.
Oh, right, thought Whitey, the record ended. He got up and took the record off the platter, slid it back into its sleeve, and then kneeled down to put it away.
“You manage to file things right over here,” said Heidi. “Why can’t you do it at the station?”
“What?” asked Whitey. “Oh, here it matters,” he said. Inwardly, he winced. What was that supposed to mean? She must think I’m an idiot.
He flipped through the closest stack of records, looking for the next thing, his mind wandering. How was he supposed to choose something when she’d make assumptions about him from anything he chose? Heidi’s bag was right there as well, leaning against the side of the milk crate. It was half open, the wooden box sticking out of it. There we go, he thought. Neither of them had heard it, so it wouldn’t say anything about either of them if he chose it.
He put on his landlord’s accent again. “How about this? In Ukraine, music always delivered in wooden box. Like dead body.”
“Sure, whatever,” said Heidi.
Whitey took out the box and tried to open it, but it seemed stuck. He could tell where the lid stopped and the box started, but there didn’t seem to be any latch or hook to separate one from the other. How had she done it again? Embarrassed, he pried at it.
“See those two dots in the symbol on top?” said Heidi. “Press them at the same time.”
“What for?” asked Whitey, but when she didn’t answer, he pressed them. The box clicked and the lid became slightly loose. “Clever,” he said. He carefully lifted the lid off, removed the record from inside.
He held its edges against his palms, still speaking in mock-Russian. “Ah, very thick vinyl… strong like bear.”
Actually, it was unusually thick, and strong, too. He stood and laid the record down on the turntable.
He lifted the needle and set it in place. But as soon as he let go, it immediately slid across the entire record. What the fuck? he wondered.
“Whoa, sorry,” he said, lifting up the needle and hoping Heidi hadn’t been paying too much attention. “Let’s try that again.”
But when he replaced the needle, the exact same thing happened. He set the needle in place and released it and it fled to the center of the record, as though it were blank. But he could see the grooves, which meant something was pressed on it.
“That’s weird,” he said, reaching out for the needle again. “The needle keeps jumping to the other side of the…”