Broken Records by Bree Bennett

Chapter 10

An early morning knock on the door jolted Lucy awake with a gasp.

He’s here he’s here run run run

Her hand flung across the bed, but the other side was vacant, the blankets smooth and immaculate. Her heart hammered, and her breathing was shallow as she sat up. Her eyes adjusted from sluggish fog to objective alertness, and she remembered where she was.

Brock isn’t here,she recited, each word a careworn bead on a mental rosary. He can’t find you. You’re safe.

She made her way to the front door and peered through the peephole. At the sight of her visitor, she groaned and thumped her forehead on the wood.

“Why are you here?” she asked, unlocking the door for Jack. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Good morning to you too,” he said, gliding inside and taking a seat at the kitchen table, his legs sprawling on either side of the chair.

“I don’t like surprises. You’re not supposed to be here.”

He gave a noncommittal shrug, tossing a bent manila folder onto the table. “I’m here to help you pack.”

“Why? I have until the end of the week on this place.”

“Because I’m tired of going back and forth. I’ll have a key made for you to make it official.” He hesitated. “Speaking of…” He opened the manila folder, rotating the marriage contract toward Lucy with a dramatic hand flourish. “Trent will be by later to get this.”

The contract was simple, stark, white and black typography with legal jargon and their names sporadically sprinkled throughout, yet it contained the threads of their entire future, broken down into unemotional chunks of Times New Roman. She perused it, making sure all the essential bits were in the right places before searching through her purse for a pen.

“Ready?” she said.

He scoffed at the Elvis-themed pen, but plucked it from her hand. “I guess so.” He scratched out his jagged signature on the appropriate dotted lines. Lucy took a breath and signed next to his name, her swirling, lacy cursive contrasting with his angular letters, different as two signatures could be.

“Okay, Mr. Vincent?” she asked.

“Okay, Mrs. Vincent,” he replied, his expression tight.

Even though she had spent time at Jack’s house before, the final ride from her rental to his was one of the most nerve-racking events of her life. Jack stared at his shoes the entire ride, and she gripped her purse like a life jacket. The closer they got to his place, the more Lucy’s stomach twisted into a sailor’s knot of anxiety.

“Stop that,” Jack threw his head back with an exasperated groan. “You sound like the big, bad wolf over there. You’re huffing and puffing, and I’m about to lose my damn mind.”

“Sorry,” she said, her voice a tinny squeak. “Nerves.”

“Chill, Cottontail,” he said, though his own leg was bouncing like a basketball. “I never thought I’d get married, but if I did, I would want it to be to someone who didn’t go into cardiac arrest at the thought of me.”

The car stopped in front of their home, and they gaped at the townhouse like frightened teenagers outside a graveyard.

“Well?” she whispered.

“I’m getting out of the car,” he said, but he didn’t move, his throat working.

“Count of three?” she asked. He nodded, and she counted off on her fingers. “One…two…three.”

Neither one stirred. The driver cleared his throat.

“I just remembered,” said Jack with robotic enthusiasm. “I need to work in my studio. The other one. The one that is not here.”

“Fantastic idea,” Lucy agreed, and with a word from Jack, the driver delivered them to Raymond’s.

Jack gripped Lucy’s elbow awkwardly as the familiar bell announced their entrance. Sully glanced up from the register and his eyes nearly popped out from his skull.

“Uh…hello,” he stammered, his eyes flying from Lucy to Jack and back again.

“Hi, Sull,” said Jack. “Got a second?”

Sully made a choked noise but followed them to the back room. Jack tapped Lucy’s shoulder several times when she got distracted by the memorabilia around her. They went through a storeroom filled with cardboard boxes and up a creaky wooden staircase to a scuffed green door.

Inside was a sparse but homey studio apartment. The kitchenette could have been lifted straight from a 1950s sitcom, but the living room was cluttered with recording equipment, electric guitars, and amplifiers.

Jack and Lucy sat down on the sofa, misshapen with age, but Sully remained standing, gawking at them. Jack folded a tentative arm around her, and she stiffly reclined back. They looked like two middle school kids on their first date at the movie theater.

“Huh,” said Sully, his eyebrows soaring to his hairline.

“Short version,” Jack said. “Lucy and I are getting married.”

“Huh.”

“Yes, love at first sight or something like that.” Jack sounded anything but convincing.

“Huh.” Sully snorted. “Congratulations?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Jack waved him off. “I thought maybe you could show Lucy around the store.”

Sully’s expression went from perplexed to thoughtful. “Really?”

Lucy gave him a bashful smile. “I would love a tour.”

His eyes flicked to Jack, and confusion clouded his eyes once more. “You coming, Jack?”

“Go ahead,” Jack said, choosing an acoustic guitar and plopping into a patched armchair. “I’m going to play around up here.”

“You’re really getting married?” Sully shook his head over and over, still baffled, as he led Lucy downstairs.

“Yes.”

“To Jack?” He pointed to the ceiling, where the vibrations of guitar chords drifted down.

“Yes.”

“Huh. You must have hit him harder than I thought.” Sully scratched his beard. “It’s about time to open. Come on, I’ll show you around the front. Maybe even let you touch the register.”

The store didn’t get its first customer for a half hour. Lucy sat back, ready to observe Sully’s customer service skills, but he indicated that she approach the middle-aged woman wandering the aisle with uncertain movements.

“Can I help you?” Lucy asked, her stiff arms pressed tightly to her sides.

“I’m trying to find an album, an old one,” the woman said. “There was a song called ‘I’m Sorry,’ and I think one called ‘Dynamite’ or ‘Dynamo’ or something like that.”

The peculiar gears in Lucy’s head began whirring and clicking. “I know that album! Brenda Lee’s self-titled album, 1960. Let’s go look for it.”

She took her over to the “L” albums and flipped through to find the one she needed. The customer’s gasp of surprise filled Lucy with shy pride.

“My mom passed away last month. We used to listen to this all the time,” the woman said, holding the record with shaking hands. “Thank you for finding it.” Lucy gingerly patted her shoulder.

Sully rang the woman up and grinned at Lucy. “Wanna try another?” he asked, with the mischievous smirk of a preteen prankster.

The next customer arrived just a few minutes later. This time Lucy was ready.

“My daughter’s birthday is next week,” he said with that mix of irritation and love possessed by all parents of teenagers. “She wants that album about juice from that Bouncy lady.”

After a moment of puzzlement, she steered him to Beyoncé’s Lemonade. He thanked her, but she didn’t want his gratitude. She was on a high she had never felt before.

She had found her kingdom, and she was the queen.

Over the next few hours, she connected customers with Johnny Cash, loaded up a lady with Lizzo, and recommended the Rolling Stones to a young teen just beginning his journey into classic rock. Jack emerged from his musical man cave and ran out for bagged lunches at Batter Up, which he left in the backroom until she was ready.

It was nearly four when Lucy heard an annoyed cough behind her. She turned to offer assistance, only to find Jack frowning at her with a paper bag in his hand.

“Lucy.” He held up the grease-stained sack. “You didn’t eat.”

“Oh.” She dropped her gaze to the floor. “I forgot.” Her traitorous stomach took that moment to growl.

“You forgot.” His tone was anything but amused. “Did you eat breakfast?”

She gnawed her lip and shifted her attention to a shelf of vinyls. His fingers brushed her chin, and he pivoted her face back to his.

“You didn’t.”

“I forgot.” She flicked her eyes away from his scrutiny. “It happens sometimes.”

“I find it hard that someone who can recite the discography of the Temptations—no, that’s not a request—can forget something as easy as eating.” When she didn’t respond, he shook the bag of food. “Let’s go upstairs; we can heat it up.” He tipped his chin up at Sully, and they headed to the apartment.

Lucy tried to take the bag from Jack, but he motioned her to the couch. “I know where everything is; you don’t.”

“Did you write anything?” she asked. His responding growl reverberated through his chest. “Okay, then…how’d you end up with a music store?” she tried again as he plated her food and put it in the microwave.

His shoulders stiffened. “I’m sure you can guess that things at home could be…intense sometimes.”

Lucy shuffled through her memory, ascertaining what she knew about his mother. Rita Rae. Genre: pop. Instrument: vocals only. First album: 1979. Second album: 1982. One Grammy. Last album, A Rita Rae Christmas, two years ago.

“I don’t know much other than her career,” she confessed. “My trick—if you want to call it that—it’s like baseball cards. For the most part, I know stats. I don’t usually know people. She’s a bit of a diva, right?”

He brooded over that for a second. “My mom is a very hedonistic person. Sex, drugs, gambling—she’s done it all. She’s gone bankrupt several times.”

“But she’s so successful. Doesn’t she host that singing contest show?”

“It doesn’t matter how much you make if you spend it all as soon as you have it.” He rifled around in a drawer, pulling out a table knife. “You should see her apartment. It’s all tacky glitz and gold shit that no one should ever need or want. It makes Trump Tower look like a hovel. It wasn’t a fun place to grow up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There were drunks and junkies and celebrities all over the place. One time I went to brush my teeth, and there was a TV star doing a line of coke at my sink. Not that I was deterred from that sort of thing either. Once I got older, I used to look for other places around the city to go instead of sticking around there. I found this place and ended up striking up a friendship with Raymond, the owner. He had this apartment up for rent, and once it became available, I paid him to keep it open for me so I’d have a place to escape. I kept a guitar up there and would stay for days at a time, lost in my own world. I loved it. I couldn’t let the building go to anyone else when he died. It was my sanctuary, you know?”

He handed her the plate, and her gasp caught in her throat. He had cut her grilled cheese into precise squares. She met his eyes, unable to vocalize her gratitude.

He slid her a bittersweet half-smile. “Eat your cheese squares, Cottontail, so we can finally move in together.”

* * *

Jack had never had a roommate, but he was pretty sure that you were supposed to see them at some point. Passing awkwardly in the hall before bedtime, maybe colliding into each other while getting the mail, that sort of thing. But from the moment he showed Lucy to her room, she had simply disappeared.

He gave her the rest of that night to get herself sorted, retiring to his bedroom with half a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and his neglected guitar. He even allowed her to have the next morning, though he paced the kitchen as he drank his coffee. Having Lucy in his house but not near him unsettled him, and then the fact that he was unsettled tended to unsettle him more, until he was cross-eyed from the paradox of unsettled unsettledness. Jack knew she was alive because every time he wandered by her room—on the way to his own room, of course, and not because he was checking on her—he heard David Bowie’s nasal crooning through the door.

By the eighth time he strolled by her room—because he was doing laundry and not for any other reason—he realized that “Space Oddity” had been playing on repeat for nearly an hour. He set the hamper down and rapped at her door.

“Lucy?” No answer. He turned the brass doorknob and froze.

It was locked. Despite their growing friendship, Lucy still feared him enough to lock the door against him in his own home. In her own home.

“The door’s open,” she called. “Come on in.” He frowned in confusion, attempting the door again with no luck. After a muffled rattling from the other side, commingled with a few inventive curses, the door stuttered open on stubborn hinges.

“The door sticks,” Lucy said with an apologetic grimace. His tense shoulders slackened with relief. She hadn’t meant to keep him out after all.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d fallen asleep in here with your music on repeat.” He gazed around at her room. She had cleaned it, but it looked nearly the same as before—severe and isolated, without any decor. “Are you picking up the rest of your stuff when we see your family?”

“No.” He waited for her to elaborate, but instead, she swept her hand toward her open closet door. “Thanks for the housewarming gift, by the way.”

His face split into a grin at the sight of three brand new Jack Hunter T-shirts hanging crisply from plastic hangers. “Well, they do say to dress for the job you want.”

She rolled her eyes and picked up her phone, restarting the song once more.

“Lucy,” he said gravely. “No matter how many times you listen to it, Major Tom is not coming back from outer space.”

She cackled and flopped back onto the bed, stretching long legs out across the quilt. “Oh, that. Don’t you ever just listen to a song and dissect it?” Tiny flecks of gold in her eyes glittered at him with eager sincerity.

“I mean, I guess that’s what you kinda do in a recording studio. Break it apart and see what needs redone.”

“No, I mean, really listen.” Her lips thinned with indecision, and then she reached a hand around his bicep and dragged him down onto the bed until he was flat on his back.

“Lu—”

“Listen.” She covered his mouth with gentle fingers, and he grumbled a protest against her skin. “Right there. Hear that buzzing electronic piano sound? That’s a Stylophone. It was a weird miniature metal keyboard that was popular in the late 60s.”

He squinted an eye, trying to parse out the sound of the dated instrument, but the only sensation he noticed was the delicate brush of her arm against his as she breathed, as carefree as he had ever seen her.

“Now, I’m going to restart it,” she said, jarring Jack from thoughts of warm skin and silken caresses. “There—that weird hybrid piano flute noise? That’s a Mellotron. Between the two instruments, it just sounds ‘spacey’ unless you know what they are.”

“Groovy.” He gulped against a lump in his throat as a tendril of her hair tickled his ear. Inexplicably, he wanted to rake his fingers through it. “I don’t think anyone’s gone through one of my songs like that.”

“Nonsense.” She made a disbelieving face. “If a song is out there, someone has overthought it. Instruments, chords, lyrics, it doesn’t matter. Besides, you’ve got tons of fans. I bet that right now, someone somewhere is laying in a bed just like us, wondering things about ‘Slow Down.’”

“Sure they are.” He rolled onto his side to face her, close enough that he could count the scant sprinkle of freckles on her nose.

She parted her lips, and he could almost see her thoughts wind up like a yo-yo, about to slingshot into the universe. “Well—why did you choose to use a violin for the bass line on ‘Applejohn Blues’? Why did you write ‘Midnight in New Orleans’ in 5/4 time? Why did you use the name Natalie instead of something more alliterative, like Lady or Lula or Lacey, in ‘Lullaby for Natalie’? Why is there a banana peel on the right-hand side of the cover of your third album?”

Jack blinked at her, and his jaw went slack. Rosy banners of color soared high on her cheekbones.

“You sure you’re not a Jack Hunter fan?” he asked, his index finger tracing the satiny skin beneath her blush.

“He’s okay, I guess,” she murmured, and Jack’s laughter dissolved whatever magic spell had entranced him earlier.

“Those are much better questions than I usually get,” he admitted, tapping his lower lip in thought. “I used a violin because I wanted to make it sound busy under the melody, like a bumblebee. Natalie was the name of my favorite nanny. The 5/4 time was because my manager—the one before Kim—bet me a thousand bucks that I couldn’t do it.”

“And the banana peel?”

“The photographer was a prick during the cover shoot. After I had a banana for a snack, I left it on the ground out of spite. They thought it was some artistic metaphor.” He stretched his foot out and hit a folded piece of paper lying on the edge of the bed. “What’s this?”

“Nothing!” She sat up and tried to snatch it away, but he gripped it between his toes in a surprisingly acrobatic movement. He glanced over the words before raising his eyebrows at Lucy.

“It’s a list,” she said, her shoulders slumped. “Just little things I want to do, now that I’m out here. New York-y things.”

He skimmed the list, stopping at the first item. “Go to a bar? Is that what you were doing that night?” She shrugged. “Shit, did I mess up your goal?”

Lucy gave him a baffled look. “I wanted to go to a bar, so I went to a bar. Whether I found an inebriated rock star there is inconsequential to the completion of the list.”

He lifted a hand in surrender to her logic and read further down her list, pointing to item eight. “I can help you with this one.” She leaned over his shoulder to read, the curve of her chin nestling into the notch by his neck.

“Really?” she asked, straightening. “You would go with me?”

“We can go right now,” he said, offering his hand. Lucy settled her hand in his, her fingers wiggling against his palm in their familiar dance.

Pinky, ring, middle, index. Repeat.

“First, though,” she asked. “Can we go to a florist?”