Friday has been designated a chill night, and so it will be, with the help of a certain novelty.
Thursday had been a handful. Deej worked the morning and had an admissions interview at 2:30 so they shared a ride. Nick got to work a tad early and wanted to bug out early but a workstation started acting up and took most of the day with it. It all worked out since Deej had lunch with Noreen and so he ended up doing a grab and go when they weren’t even there, easier that way. But she floated by after her meeting and hung out in his office in a blue top, baggy tapered-leg pants and hair loosely back in a clip Nick made sure to show appreciation for the added scenery. Not long thereafter Nick was able to find a corrupted file and ran the simulator through a few runs, seems to be fine.
At that point Goody told him to make tracks before something else blows up. As they head to his car, Nick relates how it feels like they’re a power couple these days, then gets in a mild once-over at passenger door. On the way to his house she updates him on the admissions stuff, next step is meet with the faculty and see what’s what.
Back at the house there’s a message from Bain, of all things. Nick heads upstairs to find his bed already occupied and calls Bain from the workbench. Long story short, there’s a repair unit - single CD player component, that someone never picked up after 60 days so Nick is welcome to it if he covers the repair cost of 82 smackers. Needless to say, he’ll be right there, might as well let the beauty sleep.
Nick spent a few minutes catching up and couldn’t avoid the subject of working with Fred Cribb, but Bain wasn’t put off since he only cares about product,
“Hey if you wanna put it out there, all the best, stop by when you need anything, discount still good as long as I own this place.”
This takes just shy of an hour and he finds Deej downstairs catching up with Irene and they shake their heads at his treasure.
“Do you even have anything to play on that?”
“Not yet but the library does.”
“My hero.”
So he stashes his find beneath the bench as Deej emerges through the door with a funny look, to which Nick explains that’s tomorrow’s project for chill night.
“Can we have a chill night? I keep jeans in the car and I can scrounge the rest. Go find some of your silly TV tapes.”
Nick heads out and grabs her jeans to toss upstairs and already has the VCR since he’s the really the only one that knows how to use it. So they curl up to some MST, each doze off a couple times until leftovers sound good. At one point she asks if they’re still a power couple and Nick spins it up as needing to recharge their power through rest.
At some point she recalls, “Oh, Noreen wanted me to let you know that lady, Doris? She moved in to the nursing home.”
Nick has to pause. “Yeah, that’s not surprising.”
Deej gathers her things slowly and they spend a long, silent embrace at her car, then finally she sums it up warily,
“Guess I’m jumping back on the horse soon.”
“Can I be the horse?”
This lightens her up to the point where Nick feels better about things, she promises to call, then does, turns out she and the gals are headed to the store real quick.
Thankfully Friday at the school is a catchup day for Nick, Deej has the day off and Nick is eager to hit the town library and maybe that locally-owned record store on the strip. Once there he finds the CD selection has really grown since his LP harvesting slowed down after high school. Right away he finds the Black Crowes latest with Remedy and some others that 106 plays now that they’re full time rock. He grabs a Faith No More release for the hell of it, sure looks interesting with all the butcher shop imagery. There needs to be a trifecta, and pretty soon there it is, one he’d somehow never gotten hold of, Aerosmith’s ball-buster Pump.
Having lucked out so far it’s over to deposit the paycheck then to Jooce Records and Tapes. He had never really spent time in a CD section but quickly weeded out all the hair rock and wasn’t ready for grunge, although Alice In Chains seems to kick ass. For some reason in the back of his head the new Chilli Peppers release was calling. There are several on the endcap, even after being out for a year now, wow, definitely a new world but the tracks he’s heard so far are so hard and funky and, well, not speaker-safe at home; plus there are a lot of tracks so they must have filled out the full CD format length. After one more sweep around this is the winner. Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
Once home he showers off the day then gets to work wiring up this new contraption, powers it on and watches it come to life. As a test he slips in Pump and gets startled at the hard opening to Young Lust without any hiss or warning except the spinning of the disk. He’d have to let Bain know how it does, so far so good. Might as well get started taping, this will need a 60 so he lets it roll to monitor whilst settling in.
What he hadn’t thought about was seeing if he could just play enough tracks to fill the first 30 minutes of tape, so it just runs itself out. So do we blank out that partial track at the end of the side? Nahh. So he flips the tape and eventually queues up the right track, hits pause, starts the tape, releases CD pause and right away the folksy Dulcimer Stomp starts in. This is gonna be a cool tape to play in the car. He’d almost bought it on cassette when it came out but passed.
As this rolls on Nick gets an idea about what to play tomorrow and finds it in the archive. Seems he’d borrowed the Great White cassette from someone at school and wishes he’d grabbed the CD at the library for a better deal, but for now this should work wonderfully.
Once the Boston Bad Boys finish out the dubbing process it’s time to debut the hot new Chilli Peppers release. Upon first impression it’s definitely not anything he’d heard before but rocks, so much going on, thick as a brick. After a couple more tracks this feels like a background to, well, several things, groups of many or groups of just two even, let alone to put on while working.
By the time the haunting hour comes around Nick had sampled a bit of Faith No More but wasn’t sure he’d tape it so moved on to the Crowes which he knew was a keeper.
Eventually the phone rings.
“Hey, whatcha doin?”
“Taping some CDs.”
“Anything I’ll get to hear?”
“Black Crowes, Aerrosmith. I went and got the new Chilli Peppers.”
“Oh I’ve heard they’re stirring things up.”
“Yeah I can see why.”
“Black Crowes…Hard To Handle?”
“Yes you are sometimes.”
“Yeah yeah, sounds like you got your chill night.”
“Pretty much, how was your Friday.”
“Also chill, I got a call back from Misery and there were never any complaints or anything suspicious found so I’m relieved.”
“No surprise there.”
“Yeah just hope that guy is OK.”
“Yeah.”
“So do you talk to a professor next week?”
“Probably, I’ll get a call or check back.”
“Sounds right.”
“Oh, and you might get a call next week, Dad said something about, well, Tuttle’s ex-wife, she’s still a partner, part-owner I think.”
“Utoh.”
“I wouldn’t worry, from what I understand she kinda keeps an eye on things, I think you understand why.”
“Yeah I can see that.”
“But it was a quiet day, Mom and I donated some old clothes and found some new things at the Mennonite store.”
“More of those floor-length skirts?”
“Yeah keep dreamin’.”
“It’s what I do.”
“Nicky last night was so nice, I didn’t want to come home, glad we could just relax like that.”
“Yeah, still getting used to having you around.”
She pauses. “Noreen said something yesterday that I’m still trying to, like process…more and more she’s sure I’m the only one that could unlock you.”
“Could, or did?”
Another longer pause. “It’s too hard to believe, I don’t consider myself more than average.”
“What do you know about it?”
“She said she sometimes has to keep her mind from wondering, I told her I understand, she feels bad.”
“She’s a great lady.”
Silence.
“So I pick you up about 11 tomorrow?”
“Mmmmm, yeah, so April can leave us all in the dust.”
“And Sam I Am is going with your folks?”
“Yeap.”
Nick can’t think what to say next.
“So you’ll bring me back to an empty house.”
“GULP.”
This gets a hearty laugh.
“Did you really listen to jazz the other night?”
“Mmmm yes I did, you’re right, that’s the only way to soak.”
Nick gets distracted thinking of a mutual soak.
“You still there?”
“My mind wondered.”
“I bet you weren’t thinking about the CD player.”
“Not exactly.”
“Mmmm hmmm…well, we better rest up so we can throw some balls around,” then giggles.
“I’m required to ask, are you strong enough to lift my balls?”
“Yeah yeah, save it for the alley stud, love you.”
“Love you, hon.”