Like most years the holidays seem weird and jittery, well, at least not like in fourth grade when he got burned out on a stupid school musical that they didn’t halt even though a stomach bug broke out.
This year is jittery but with a sense of mission, albeit one with plenty of unknowns.
His folks were in agreement that Deke’s house arrangement had many more pros than cons, and besides, he knows how to keep the lawn nice (Deke insists that Nick was his best hired greenskeeper ever, although Nick insists that’s just a butter-up). And so he’ll take over utilities soon and gradually make the move. He’s got ample blessing to string wires for radio but there’s a lot of nearby power lines to limit options. It seems vertical antennas might get past that, we’ll see.
Times like this call for a project, especially since he’s caught up at the school lab and his side gig is set to go fully live in the new year and the ramp-up is so go so far. Fred has been chasing down some other leads so time will tell, but either way, he’s finally making Deej a sequel tape.
Of course the reality of now vs, what, six (damn) years ago is these selections really matter now, no wild pitches and even the ones with an in-joke will have purpose. Heh, purpose. Nothing reassures these days like purpose, which is prollably a good thing.
And double of course, well, even though he did this earlier in the year there’s just so much more…yeah, more, this time around.
And so, after a couple weeks of pining, this is what gets etched on a fresh Maxell high-bias 60, not that she’ll get to enjoy the extended range of chrome (although he plans to go as far as adjusting her car’s tape deck so the azimuth matches his deck for greatest effect...) but, again, they’re not eighth-grade brats anymore, and he’s not about to skimp. He’d even thought about going full metal (oxide) but some decks don’t handle those well so we’ll call it good.
And this time he even considered trying to print some glue-on labels, but that would be impersonal - so once again the cassette shell will bear “For DJ - once more” and presented with a blank Maxell insert card, so she can hear it (or, maybe they hear it, together, upon request) and he’ll add a laser-printed playlist later on.
Side One:
1) Now - Krokus (better late than never!)
2) Give It Away - RHCP (for some bump n’ grind)
3) My Morning Song - The Black Crowes
4) The Flame - Cheap Trick (LP version)
5) Mista Bone - Great White
6) Thank You - Led Zeppelin
Side Two:
7) Tear Down The Walls - The Firm (our boy finally wised up…)
8) Desire - U2 (don’t ask why, just needs to be here)
9) She Only - Great White
10) Nothin’ At All - Heart (for the Heart fan)
11) Lost In You - Rod Stewart (this stood out from when WLS still played music and he’d dial ‘em in during showers before school)
12) Pearl Necklace - ZZ Top (just to see how long it takes her to catch on…)
Runners Up:
• Rod Stewart could have appeared twice with an encore of You’re In My Heart or Mandolin Wind
• Save Your Love would have been an alternate GW but, yeah, that Halloween needs to live on.
• Something earlier from The Firm, like Satisfaction Guaranteed or Radioactive - or hell, even Paul Roger’s previous band like Ready For Love…but, somehow, fitting Led Zep on here was perfect, since he first discovered them around the time he made her the first tape.
• Def Lep’s Hysteria would be a double-dip, so, no.
Of course by using a chrome tape he makes every effort to get first-generation sources where possible, and so a lot of the selections are straight from library LPs that he re-checked out and dubbed in stolen moments here and there. Hell, he might make himself a dub of this to play in the car.
As it turns out, Deej gets pensive when he presented the tape, hands it back,
“Make me a copy like you have, on a regular tape, for the car, then I’ll hang on to this in a special place.”
“A pickle jar?”
“No in my bra.”
And so it goes.
They had chosen the senior Eversoles’ basement as neutral ground for Christmas Eve and they kept it simple, she got him a nice leather belt and Great White’s Psycho City on CD, not bad.
For Nick, the tape was a much bigger deal than the promise ring he secretly snagged from the small jeweler in town that’s been in the same spot on Main since the pine trees along the river where just saplings. He kept it in the little bag in his left front jeans pocket until a moment presented itself, then as she leaned on him and nearly dozed off, he acts like he was reaching for a hanky and slips it onto her left hand.
“Nicholas James, what did you just do?”
He can see she hasn’t opened her eyes and is feeling it.
“It’s just a little something, for now.”
“For now, huh?” Deej draws a deep breath and he can feel her getting flushed. “You realize I don’t know whether to kick your ass or swallow you whole, right?”
“We always figure it out.”
Deej draws another deep breath then,
“OK I gotta go show this sucker off.”
Since she’s too flustered to stick around any longer they casually head out for an extended goodbye against her car and settle in to their own spaces. For now.