absolutely no suspicion that I was stealing from the store. Even when I was in a store to actually buy something the people who worked there usually treated me like a potential problem. I thought it must’ve been because I was wearing my Good Shirt, and didn’t have my skate with me. I had to remember this if I ever wanted to go shoplifting again.
As she walked away I slipped another tape into my pocket. I saw the woman behind the counter look over at me, but I didn’t think she’d seen. Just in case, I decided not to take any more for awhile. I acted bored and continued to amble down the stacks of cassettes, as if I was just there to kill some time.
Then I had a stroke of good luck. A group of young girls came into the store giggling and making a ruckus. They looked like Junior High School girls and two of them went right up to the counter to ask about some record and the others went for the magazine section. It was a perfect distraction and I grabbed four tapes and shoved them in my left pocket and two more went into my right.
With bulging pockets I walked past the girls at the counter and out of the store. My heart was pounding and I expected a security guard to grab me and pull me back, but I walked out of the mall and onto the sidewalk unmolested. I wished I had my skate for a quick getaway. After crossing the street I knew I could relax. I walked up a side street and stopped by a garbage can to inspect my booty. I had nine tapes. Krokus, The Atlanta Rhythm Section, Badfinger, Pat Benatar, Jane’s Addiction, Supertramp, Spiro Gyra, Men at Work, and New Order. I began picking the plastic wrappers off the tapes. I took one of the tapes out of its container and wound it with my finger. It would look shady if I sold a bunch of completely rewound ‘used’ tapes. I did the same thing to another one and scuffed it a bit on the sidewalk. As I was doing this I noticed that the Jane’s Addiction tape had a song called Whores, so I decided to keep that one.
I walked up the street, vaguely satisfied with myself. I was unused to walking and since I was out of cigarettes I had nothing to do with my hands. I felt naked, a mere pedestrian. I wondered if it would be possible to shoplift three hundred dollars worth of merchandise a month. Before I reached the bridge that crosses the 210 freeway I heard the familiar rumble of skaters nearby. It was coming from behind a parking structure, and I decided to investigate.
I walked up the alley beside the garage and heard laughter echoing off the cement inside. Whoever was skating was inside the structure, and being loud about it too. I turned down a narrow walkway between the garage and the bank next door. It came out near the garage’s exit, and when I saw it, I realized what was going on. To exit the structure you had to go down a tight, steep spiral that came out of the building in a straight decline and flattened out in front of the ticket gate. They were skating the spiral. I was jealous that I wasn’t doing it, and jealous that I hadn’t thought of it. I could hear the sustained rumble getting louder as they made their decent. The first skater flew out and carved a smooth arc along the decline. When he hit the flat part of the ramp he veered off onto the walkway where I was standing. He sailed by me about ten feet away. There were four steps in front of the bank, and when he got there he ollied down, landing perfectly and speeding off down the street. The second and third guys came out close together and took the same line. When the second guy reached the steps he tried a kickflip and couldn’t land it, but the third guy did something incredible. He ollied up to the handrail and executed a perfect slide. He landed in a low crouch, barely losing any speed. The whole thing took under thirty seconds, and then they were gone.
Walking back up the alley I thought about what Mr. Bennett had said about there being no such thing as space, only time. I’d heard some confusing talk about how time slows down for you if you approach the speed of light, and I wondered if it worked on a smaller scale. How else could those guys execute such a long series of exact movements in such a short period of time. Maybe time slowed down for them because they were going so fast. No, I decided that couldn’t be right. Maybe adrenaline quickened their reflexes, or they’d done it so many times it was just second nature. The only thing for certain was that as a skater, I sucked compared to them.
The guy behind the counter at Dusty Bins Record Shoppe looked like an old head. He was mostly bald and must’ve weighed about three hundred pounds. He sat perched up high, near a plastic record player that he kept occupied with classic doo-wop and soul. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans and had a pair of glasses propped up on his sweaty dome. The place was just a large room filled with row after row of used records. The tapes were all on the back wall, and I don’t think Dusty had a single compact disc on the premises. I walked right up to the counter and pulled the tapes out of my pocket. “Hi,” I said, “you buy used tapes right?”
“Yeah sure, I’ll be with you in a moment.” He pulled a record out of its sleeve and put it on the turntable. When the record was safely playing he turned to me. “Whatd’ya got there?” He asked.
“Eight tapes.” I said pushing them across the counter. He nodded and picked them up. He opened each one and inspected the tape. When he was finished he put them in a neat pile and slid them halfway back to me.
“And how much do you want for these?” He asked.
“Uh… I don’t know. Twenty bucks maybe?”
“You kidding?” He shluffed. “I never give out that kinda money for tapes. I’ll give you a dollar a tape.”
“Can’t you at least give me fifteen?” I asked. “You’re going to turn around and sell them for five bucks apiece.”
He furrowed his brow and fingered the tapes. “No guarantee I’m gonna sell them. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you ten dollars cash for ‘em, or fifteen dollars store credit.” He said.
I took the cash.
7
On my way home I stopped for cigarettes and a bag of chips. The day had been a complete bust. I’d only made off with ten dollars from a high risk maneuver and was no closer to a job. I was wishing I’d stuck around to see the manager of the toy store. I knew the book store wouldn’t be calling. The house was empty and after I’d changed my shirt I got a diet Coke out of the fridge and gulped down half of it. I thought about going out to skate, but the image of the three incredible skaters I’d just seen was still too fresh in my mind. I sat down on the couch and turned on the TV.
I flipped through the channels once and found nothing worth watching. Kate didn’t have cable, so the only stuff on TV at that time of day was golf and infomercials. The brand new VCR sat on top of the set but I didn’t see any tapes. After looking around, I opened the closet in the hall where I found a shelf with four tapes on it. There were also some empty boxes in there, including the box that the VCR had come in. There was a receipt taped to the box, and I pulled it off and looked at it. She’d bought the thing at K-Mart two months before for $185. She’d also bought some washcloths and she paid cash. I put the receipt back and looked at the videos. They were unmarked so I pulled one out at random.
It was a PBS program she’d taped about the hole in the ozone layer. I’d heard of this before. Human beings were destroying a layer of the atmosphere with all the deodorant we were spraying. There were shots of arctic wildlife and big cities and scientists talking about how the world was doomed. They showed some graphs that proved it. The whole thing was narrated by a man with a deep baritone. I drank my soda on the couch and felt reassured that the world was coming to an end, or at least all human civilization. I was completely justified in not giving a shit about my life. By 1995 we were all going to have to wear sunscreen all the time, by 2010 certain areas would be uninhabitable, and by 2025 sixty percent of the world’s population would be dead from skin cancer. Here I was, worried about getting a job.
After it was over I put the tape back and got different one. It was another PBS program, this one about the rainforest and how we were destroying it. Before I had a chance to get into it there was a knock at the door. I stopped the video and looked out the window. Jeremy and Michael were standing on the front porch. They both looked exactly the same a
s I remembered except Michael was a little taller and Jeremy’s hair was longer. I walked over to the door. “WHO IS IT?” I yelled.
There was silence on the other side. I opened it a crack and peeked out. As soon as he saw me Jeremy pushed the door open the rest of the way. “Yo Nick! You’re back!” He said. “Mya told us you were here, but we had to see it for ourselves. How ya doin’?”
“I’m alright. What’s up Jeremy? What’s up Michael?” I said, slapping hands with both of them. “It’s been a long time…” I walked out onto the porch and shut the door behind me, thinking of Kate’s ‘no company’ rule. “What’re you guys up to?”
“Shit… Nothing really, just hanging out. It’s been what? Like a year since we saw you?” Jeremy asked.
“Longer than that.” Michael said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “it’s more like a year and a half.” I sat down on the door jamb and pulled out a cigarette. I offered one to both of them, but only Michael took one. Jeremy sat down on his skate and Michael leaned against the railing.
“So your mom finally got over Lilly and let you come back?” Jeremy asked.
“No, I don’t think so. She let me move back ‘cause my