Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

 P  A  R  T

T  W  0

RENAISSANCE

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 E  I  G  H  T

RECORD SHOPS AND

RESTAURANTS

AND MEETINGS

AT

NIGHT

“We fuck it up in the naming.” 

-Logan Aaron Long

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David Lawry went to the record shop that day, and his chief reason was because it was there. He figured he liked music enough, and he needed a thing. Reading wasn’t going to be his thing. He didn’t know a lot about books. Sports wasn’t really his thing either anymore, though he did keep his membership to the health club and exercise regularly. Music could very well be his thing.

The shop was down the street and around the corner from him in that cute downtown that he had promised himself he’d make more use of, and when he pushed the door a little bell jingled, and there was a cat in the window, so perfect, just the kind of place a person was supposed to hang out. And there was even had a phonograph, and vinyl was coming back. He felt odd in the front of the shop, overly exposed, and so he went to the back where the shelves were high and there nearly ran into a woman.

“Pardon me, ma’am!”

“I’ll pardon you if you never call me ma’am again,” she said.

She was the most striking woman David had ever seen. In a younger, dumber time he would have noted firstly that she was Black, and in the back of his mind he’d always thought about dating a Black girl, but that drifted away because a side from her small size, there was little of the girl in her. Deeply, darkly brown, and slim wasted, high breasted, she seemed taller the more he looked at her. A wealth of lustrous black hiar fell straight and heavy down her back, and she was wrapped in a shawl wearing high boots and a fashionable dress, fashionable, Who besides your grandmother wore a shawl, and what woman looked good in one? But she did,  in the world wore shawls? What she may have thought of him was hidden by the great broad brim of her hat, tipped over the eyes that winked up at him, like those of a Siamese cat, wide and startling and blue.  All the wrong questions rose in David’s mind. Not a one of them didn’t sound racist.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, taking all the effort from him.

“I… I ah, actually don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“No?”

“I don’t know anything about music at all.”

“So, you’re just hear to crash into women?”

She was smiling at him.

“Only the beautiful kind,” he said.

“And I’m the beautiful kind?”

She was still smiling, but now he realized it was the way a cat smiled at a mouse and he felt foolish increasingly foolish as his palms sweated.

“I’m just an idiot,” David said, and she bursts out laughing.

“Well, idiocy is sometimes the best place to start,” she said, taking him by the hand, and saying, “First, let’s get you out of the folk music section because I don’t think you wanted to hear music from medieval Romania.”

“Are you kidding?” David said, “Medieval Romanian music is all I listen to.”

“And Russian Orthodox chants?”

“All about the chants.”

“You’re very cute,” she told him.

Her hair, the way it swept along her back like a black river, like… David was not a poet.

“You don’t strike me as a Purcell kind of person,” she murmured, touching her chin while she gazed at an album cover.

“Not everyone can be.”

“I think we can just walk you back to Smashing Pumpkins.”

“You listen to Smashing Pumpkins?” David said.

“What did you think I listened to?”

Her eyes and open lips waited for him to speak, and David said, “Well….. you’re a classy lady. So like…”

“Classy lady music?”

“Yeah. Like…. I really don’t know my music.”

Then David laughed and shook his head.

“I am…. Not good today.”

“Not good at hitting on me?”

“God, you’re….. You’re seeing through me a little bit.”

“Yeah,” she said, “Tell me about it at lunch.”

David grinned at her.

“Tanitha,” she said. “Tanitha Tzepesh. Spelled with a T, but sounds like Zepesh.”

“That’s an interesting name.”

“I think it’s Romanian.”

“You’re… Your father’s Romanian.”

“My family’s a lot of things, but since you’re trying to find a way to figure out these eyes and this face—”

“No!”

“White men are very transparent. And since you’re probably wondering if all this hair is mine—”

“Stop!”

“You stop,” Tanitha almost purred, seeming very unfazed by him, “You may have guessed that my family comes from many places. Now, we’ve patronized this kind man’s store, so why don’t I buy this CD for you, and you buy me lunch, and we can talking about everything else over a nice meal?” 

 

 

“So, this is the one thing I know,” David spread his hands over the food. “Music, not so much. But food.”

“Indian was a good choice,” Tanitha said, lifting the large piece of naan and tearing it in two before dipping it in the chutney.

“I come from up in Lassador, and they have all these Middle Eastern restaurants. Lebanese mostly. I never tried them when I was growing up and so, finally, when I was living in Michigan, I did. I went a couple of times and I realized something.”

“Which is?”

“If it’s not King Gyro and those little spinach pies, I’m not sure I’m that interested. I also learned that to me, Middle Eastern food if just Indian food they forgot to add the flavor too.”

Tanitha covered her mouth,  laughing, then said, “I’ll make sure to only whisper that next time we pass the Lebanese place of Calhoun Street.”

“Maybe they’ll prove me wrong,” David said, scooping up more rice and the red butter sauce on his fork.

“Possibly.”

“We can figure that out on our next date.”

Tanitha blinked at him

“That was very forward of me,” David noted. “Also, are we on a date?”

“Let’s call it a date,” Tanitha decided, spearing a particularly tasty piece of chicken.

“And now, why don’t you tell me how you got here?”

“To Glencastle?”

“Well, I know how you got to to this restaurant, David, so yes.”

“I ah… I’m a detective. Not like a Sherlock Holmes one, but a police detective. And I was working in Lassador and got burnt out.”

“I can imagine Lassador would burn you out.”

David nodded.

“You familiar with it?”

“It’s the nearest big city, so yes.”

“The crime is bigger than the city,” David said.

“Watching the news makes me shake my head and be grateful to live here.”

“And I was up to my neck in it. Day after day.”

David grey quiet and, elbows on the table. He folded his hands.

“The truth is I had a break down. A serious breakdown..”

Tanitha made no noise. She said nothing. She just nodded and looked at him… not even with sympathy.

“I commited myself. I was in a psych ward. I needed to get better. I had seen too much. And then I came here.”

When Tanitha said nothing, David smiled and said, “So now you know I’m crazy.”

“I know you’ve seen things,” is what she said. “And that you had the sense to know your limits. There’s nothing crazy about that, David. And it would be evil of me to mock it.”

David Lawry felt chastened at the same time he felt respected.

“The only thing I feel bad about,” David admitted, “is I was so ashamed… of losing my mind… I was seeing someone, seeing the woman next door. And I just ran away. I never spoke to her or explained anything. That doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Then make it right,” Tanitha said.

“You mean go to Lassador?”

“Yes.”

“And tell her I’m sorry?”

“Yes.”

David nodded after a moment.

“It’s sort of one of the only things I’ve thought about.”