Song 2
The cement floor was not really the color of any cement she’d ever seen. It looked like a vat of maple syrup had been dumped onto the concrete and allowed to harden to shellac. It gleamed under the soft glow of gigantic light fixtures that dangled from cords so skinny they look like they’d snap any second. A pair of fans with massive wooden blades whooshed overhead. Black piping made up the framing of everything from the shelves on the wall, to the retail displays, to the record bins. Behind an endless counter wrapped is brushed aluminum, a pair of hip-looking twenty-something pixies were chatting about something. There were numerous glass display cases set into the face of the counter offering everything from funky jewelry, to crazy stickers, to glass pot pipes.
Is it legal for them to sell those here? Sam wondered.
Throughout the space, there were artifacts like lava lamps, old concert posters, and vintage stereo gear—mostly headphones and boomboxes—scattered about. But the pièce de ré·sis·tance was easily a stack of silver stereo components that seemed to be bolstering half the rear wall. Sam counted them—nine components in the stack plus a turntable on either side. Each component and turntable rested on its own shelf thus making the entire rig at least eight feet high. Two sets of identical speakers, also on their own shelves, were situated vertically on either side of the turntables.
Above the massive reel-to-reel player, which crowned the stack, was a brilliant neon sign that read: “Pioneer Stereo”. Amazingly, the entire stack was lit up with meters bouncing to the song currently playing on the PA system. The whole thing looked like a satellite with the dueling stacked speakers acting as the solar panels attached to the big main silver unit by the turntables on either side. It was a spectacle to behold, it was a delight to hear.
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Excerpt from All or Nothing Girl, the forthcoming novella from Blake Charles Donley
Blake Charles Donley 