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By the time we reached State Street, the rain had stopped and sunlight was breaking through the clouds, turning the wet pavement bright. We unloaded the records together. Lorrie carried one box inside while I wrestled a display rack through the door. Otis followed us, then immediately shook himself in the middle of the store and sprayed water across the new-arrivals bin.

“Otis!”

Lorrie jumped back shaking her head as he looked delighted.

Brian came out from behind the counter. “What happened to you three?”

“Goat,” Lorrie said.

“Rain,” I added.

“Bad coffee.”

“Broken tape deck.”

Brian looked between us. “I think I’m glad I missed it.”

She was still laughing when she carried the next box inside.

I stood near the door and watched her. For most of the day it had been easy to forget her life outside of Side A.

Paul. Her rich family in Maple Bluff. All the parts of her life I didn’t fit into.

For a few hours, I’d let myself imagine something I had no business imagining. More days like this. Her behind the counter while I unpacked shipments, trips to Minneapolis, discovering bands, expanding the store, and dinners at places with bad fries because everything else was closed for the night.

Nothing big, just a simple, ordinary life. I could picture it, but I couldn’t build anything around a woman who was with someone else.

Twin/Tone asked me for an answer and I’d been treating Minneapolis like something waiting in the background while I waited to see if Lorrie chose Paul or not, and that wasn’t fair to the opportunity or to me.

I watched her bend over a box while Brian talked about a girl he’d met, and made myself decide something.

I was going to Minneapolis to hear what they had to say. Whatever happened with Lorrie, I needed a future that belonged to me.

11

Lorrie

Sunday — August 19, 1984

I woke thinking about the way Claire did that thing when she was trying not to laugh.

For several seconds, I stayed beneath the sheet with my eyes closed, waiting for the answer to come because surely this was nothing more sinister than waking too quickly. People forgot things. At fifty, I’d once spent ten minutes looking for my reading glasses while wearing them, and another memorable morning had involved putting the milk in the pantry and the cereal in the refrigerator, so I wasn’t prepared to declare an emergency before seven.

Claire had been trying not to laugh. We were standing beside each other while a man talked too long about something neither of us found remotely interesting. A school fundraiser, perhaps. One of Paul’s business dinners. Maybe the museum.

I could feel my daughter beside me, could remember looking over and realizing she was about to lose control because she always had some tiny warning before she burst out laughing.

Her nose? She did something with her nose. Wrinkled it? Pressed a finger beneath it? No, what the hell did she do?

My eyes opened as the pool house ceiling came into focus above me. Morning light pushed around the yellow gingham curtains, and the churn of the pool filter came through the open window along with birds in the oak tree and somebody’s lawn mower across the lake.

I tried again. Claire beside me, her brown hair, the smell of her perfume, something citrus?

Her face began to form in my mind and then stopped halfway there, as though someone had rubbed a thumb across a Polaroid before the ink dried.

I sat up.

“No.”