As it threatened to anyway, because Castle Cairfill, catching the drift of things, had also begun to stay after hours, in his case on the pretext of dusting records, ordering racks, or redisplaying the Beatles, happy in the knowledge that his presence would make Joey too uncomfortable to play. Is this on your own time, Joey would ask. And Cairfill would reply, The same time as yours, running a rag over Dolly Parton and looking an album of Dusty Springfield right in the eye. He had heard Joey humming — it was an unconscious habit — so he hummed rather loudly though awkwardly in order to get on Joey’s nerves, which now felt as if jangled by the interminable ringing of the phone they didn’t have. Because it was not simply his humming but Castle’s habit of hanging around to overhear what was being said when Joey was helping a customer that annoyed; as well as his tendency to lurk near the door to intercept patrons the moment they came in and thus carry them off; or his loud forceful suggestions of this or that recording or label or artist — his choices seemed random — a tactic at which he aggressively persisted although the customer had already presented him with the phrase “just looking” like a card on a tray, or the curt word “no” had been testily uttered — by itself, never enough — or even after a definitive request for “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” had been made by someone flustered and in a hurry.
It became a contest to outwait each other by finding some excuse to stay late, each on the side of the shop he had chosen as his territory and each lingering into the edge of the evening, eyeing his enemy uneasily across the display tables, until, as was increasingly the case, Joey, his plans undone by darkness, would abruptly disappear through the rear door, suffering Castle’s triumphant snort like an arrow in his back.
8
One morning, when Joey and Castle entered the shop with Mr. Emil, they found it slightly ransacked, some money and a few records taken. Perhaps they are satisfied, perhaps they will not be back, Mr. Emil said. Should we take an inventory to find out what was stolen, Joey asked. No, it is of no matter, never mind about it, hooligans in uniforms no doubt, a notice, a warning, Mr. Emil said, we’re lightly off if this is what it comes to. But now he visited the rear window as often as he did the front one and seemed to lurk in corners or behind displays as if the marauders were going to return even during broad day. His lips looked chapped, no longer wet and rosy, his eyes wandered, and he had a habit of thrusting the splayed fingers of his left hand out of sight into his beard, which looked bigger than before because it was so unkempt. Joey began to realize that most of the things that were missing, except for a guitar that could not be found, came from the classical boxes, the “Moonlight Sonata” for one. There were no signs of forced entry, the policeman reported, but the back door was unlocked. The authorities seemed at a loss. There was very little crime of any kind in the town. Mr. Emil did not seem able to digest this information. He heard it as if he hadn’t heard, his wife said.
Another morning Millicent accompanied him to the shop and, carrying the key ready in her hand instead of having to have it sent for, opened the door. She stayed with Mr. Kazan till they left together at noon, sometimes tenderly holding the hand that was not playing bird in the bush with his beard, the pair of them getting in the way because they tended to block aisles, wander aimlessly, and otherwise seem unresponsive. Castle, on his best behavior since the robbery, no longer stayed, as it were, after school or played pranks. He did look flushed now, as if he had just finished running hard a great way, and his splotches were bright with — maybe — bad blood beating beneath them. Perhaps, Joey thought, he has tuberculosis and he is a Violetta or a Mimi man after all.
It had to happen that one morning Castle was not in position at the door when Mr. and Mrs. Kazan arrived to open it. Poor Cassie is ill, Millicent said. He phoned to say. She drew back the door, and her husband plunged into the store as if eager for a swim. With a gesture that lightly touched him, Millicent held Joey back a moment. We aren’t angry that you left the shop unlocked, she told him with a warm small smile. Everyone forgets, Mr. Emil most. Nothing matters that is missing. Do not put it deep into your heart. She followed her husband, disappearing into the store whose lights had not yet been switched on. It was the turn of Joey’s cheeks to burn. He stood stock-still and stiff in the morning chill — dumbfounded, ashamed, helpless, enraged.
It was the same morning, serving a customer who needed a new needle, that Joey discovered a box holding half-a-dozen diamond points was missing. He felt as guilty as if he had just then slipped them in his pocket. After the sale, there was only one remaining in the entire shop. Should he tell Mr. Emil that he needed to reorder right away; should he tell Mr. Emil that some of the points had been stolen; should he assure Mr. Emil that it wasn’t he who had left the shop unlocked; should he head off any suggestion that it might have been Joey who had actually swiped the stuff that had been swiped; should he?
He would tell Mr. Emil he needed to reorder right away. Yes. That’s what he would do. He would tell Mr. Emil he needed to reorder right away. Mr. Kazan, sir, Joey said, suspiciously respectful, when I sold a needle just now I noticed that we need to order more, for we are nearly out of stock. Mr. Emil stared at Joey in astonishment. How can you say, he said. How is it that you can? You oyss-voorf! This word, which to Joey was just a noise, was nevertheless received by him as a terrible indictment. He had been denounced.
Millicent hurried to his wounded side. Please, Joey — Mr. Kazan, you must understand, is not himself since the roundup — since the invasion of the store. He is variously a nervous man. She took Joey’s silence to signify skepticism. Oh, you couldn’t know, for years, at night, at home, you see, we stay we eat we sleep with all the lights on, all the lights, all the time. Poor man! He stands sometimes wrapped in the window curtains. Poor man! He believes darkness can come in the middle of daytime like a moving van. So. Do not be dismayed. Please. At last Joey responded with a nod and hurried to a fictional task, in imitation of his tormentor. To dust a cardboard Dolly Parton.
Massenet hadn’t been misfiled. Massenet was missing.
Several Chopins. Of course. The Dinu Lipatti waltzes. Such wonders. The disk had been an economy repressing, but Joey could not yet afford it, cheap as it was.
By closing time Joey could no longer remember the sounds that had signaled his condemnation. The shame had left his face, his chest, and settled in his stomach. To be falsely accused was bad enough, but to know he had no recourse and would forever bear the stigma of such a petty pointless cruel crime, that was unendurable; and Joey sank into a tippy ladder-backed chair Mr. Kazan kept at the rear of the main room so he could sit and survey the shop against what he called lifters — a shop now so dark only shadows could be seen in the light from the street — and there in his boss’s chair, his head at his knees, Joey wondered whether, addressing Mr. Emil, he had said, “When I stole a needle just now,” which might account for the ensuing conniption. In any case, Joey had begun a life of dodging disaster.
He rocked the chair a bit forward to the right, a bit backward to the left, and a bit forward to the right again, in a rhythm that imitated the opening of the missing sonata, although at first he was unaware of the connection, rocking only as the grieving do, back and forth, as if their grief were a crying baby: dum doh dee dum doh dee dum doh dee dum. Then above it, as he rocked, he heard the treble. First, the heartbeat of the quiet world, steady, indifferent, calm, and then the higher incry of consciousness — Joey’s — fluttering, hovering, over it. He sat up then, stood up then, and went to the piano where he played the three-note base just as slowly as it was given — again and again — just as it was given. The initial dum became the final not the first note of the triplet, while in the treble another triplet was performing as though without a net.