Monday, December 23, 2021
Jennifer picked up the phone. I could hear right away that something was wrong.
“Oh, Peter, it’s you? Yes, he’s here, hold on,” Jennifer said.
Not that she usually answer the phone overly cheerfully, but now she sounded like Eeyore.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nothing, not really. Well, it’s just that … apparently there’s a storm coming in and Sami may not make it home for Christmas,” she replied. “Well, here’s Pete.”
She handed the phone to Pete and I heard her tell him that it was me who was calling.
“Hi, Mr. Eks… Peter,” he said. “
“Hi, Pete. Listen, I need a favour.”
“Of course. Anything,” Pete said, and I could hear his heels clicking together. I imagined him saluting me.
“The mixtape you got? Could you just read out the song titles to me?”
“You, too?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that Sofie made a Spotfy playlist of the songs yesterday at Atlas, but I can read them to you.”
I wrote them on two Post-it notes according to Pete’s dictation and walked back on the street, looking for the Record Store Lady. I didn’t have to wait long. She turned the corner from the other direction. I took a few quick steps to the side and pretended to be looking for something in my pockets and when I saw her look to her left and right and walk in Kim’s Basement, I made my move.
I waited outside until she had got to the counter and was talking to Kim before I pulled open the door.
“Excuse me, miss,” I said. “You dropped this outside. It looks important, some kind of a Top 10?”
She looked at me with a confused look on her face, but Kim was intrigued.
“A Top 10 list, you say? What about?” he said.
“Seems to be a list of songs for a, say, mixtape,” I said and handed the Post-it notes to the Record Store Lady. “Right?”
She looked at me and gave me a slight nod.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “You may want to take a look at this, Kim. Oh, my, is that the time? I must run,” I went on and bid goodbye to them.
“Let me see,” I heard Kim say just as I opened the door.
I was doing a great job as Cyrano My only problem was that I didn’t have a Cyrano of my own.
Right then, I saw Sara park the car outside Atlas. She looked at me, and smiled, but without another word, walked inside. Neither one of us was ready for another argument, not yet, anyway.
“Hey, I’ll be right back, I just need to do something real quick,” I yelled, turned the key, and backed the Beetle out of the parking lot.
I turned the car toward my time machine in the suburb. Because of course I did have a Cyrano. He lived online and his name was Twisted Sister. He’d know what to say.
➡️ More on Someday Jennifer (HarperCollins Canada 2019)