Every nerve in Bea's body seemed alive with possibility, every muscle tensed with anticipation. She scarcely dared to breathe as she watched the stranger move, waiting for that wonderful, sweet, glorious moment when he would...
"Thank you, sir, and have a good evening," she said as he walked out the door, leaving the store empty. With catlike reflexes, Bea lunged to the spot where he'd lingered and slid shut the bolt. Friday night, and the store was finally closed! And better yet, she actually had a bona fide Saturday off for the first time in three months. She flicked off the main lights, leaving the store in semi-darkness. Bea knew she'd have no problems cleaning under the dim lighting; four years of working at DefTones Music had rendered the task of closing up instinctual.
She pulled down the shutters over the store window, then sprinted back to count out the drawer. Sixty cents short, but she could always blame that on Kevin. It was probably true, too, she thought as she emptied the wastebasket and tossed the day's returns in the store safe. She saw a can of pop in the trash, and she knew he never carried cash around. He'd probably borrowed some change to use the vending machine. Which meant that Sunday, they'd be sixty cents over. Kevin cared too much about the store to short-change it.
They all did, really. Bea smiled faintly as she ran the broom up and down the aisles while holding the little bag of trash from the wastebasket, remembering her first day at work. It had been the only job she'd ever wanted; she'd spent most of her teen years hanging out in the store, chatting about music with employees that seemed kind of like gods to her. They seemed to know every song by every band that ever existed; she would come in from a concert talking about the opening act, and these guys had already stocked their CD and were talking about the band's influences. That was why DefTones stayed in business when other music stores got sucked under by Best Buys and Cheapos; they knew music better than anyone. If you couldn't find it at DefTones, it wasn't worth hearing. Bea had spent not just most of her teen years here, but most of her teen allowance. The first day she got the employee discount was the best day of her life.
As she moved the dust-pile along to the back of the store, she slid CDs back into position and re-racked albums with an almost mechanical precision. Four years later, and Bea still remained glowingly proud that they trusted her to close the store on her own. Four years later, and she still spent most of her spare cash on music. "Huge music nerd, that's me," she said, pushing her glasses up by the bridge and making a mock snorting noise.
She was just getting up to the listening station when she noticed the small item sitting on the CD racks next to the store CD player. When she picked it up, she realized what it was-an mp3 player, with its headphones still plugged into the jack. Bea frowned. Someone must have taken their headphones off to listen to something in the store, then left it sitting there. She flipped it over, and breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Whoever it was, they'd put a little strip of masking tape on the back and written their phone number on it, just in case. Must be someone used to getting home and wondering where they'd left their mp3 player.
Bea slipped the player into her pocket and finished sweeping up. Lucky for them they'd left it here, instead of at one of the big box stores, she thought as she dumped both the dust and the small bag of trash into the store trash. She hadn't recognized the brand, but it looked to be expensive. But Bea already had a nice model of her own, and she'd have no problem calling up the owner and telling them to stop by the store on Sunday to get their precious playlist back.
She tossed the store trash into the dumpster out back, then went back into the store. Come to think of it...what was their playlist? Bea smiled mischievously and took the player back out of her pocket. She slipped the earbuds into her ears and turned the device on. No harm in seeing if this mystery person had any taste, right? It was just curiosity, the music nerd equivalent of sniffing another dog's butt. And hey, if there was anything good on there, she might just take a moment to copy it to her hard drive before returning the player on Sunday.
The buttons were a bit different from what she was used to, and the thing seemed to be permanently stuck on 'Shuffle'. Bea wondered if maybe it wasn't an import or something. Still, the display worked just fine, and she figured out pretty quickly what button forwarded to the next song. "Good thing, too," Bea grumbled. Whoever owned this, they were pretty clearly addicted to the 1980s beyond all hope of good taste. 'Feels Like the First Time'? 'Jessie's Girl'? Ugh, 'Once Bitten, Twice Shy'? Maybe she'd do this person a favor, empty out their playlist and put some good music on there.
OK, this one wasn't bad. 'In Your Eyes'. Bea let it play, remembering her first time listening to the song. That was one of the truly awesome things about music, the way that it could evoke memory so completely. "...All my instincts...They return...The grand façade...So soon will burn...Without a noise...Without my pride...I reach out from the inside..." And suddenly she was fifteen years old again, nursing a huge crush on John Cusack after seeing 'High Fidelity' (twice a day for a month) and picking up 'Say Anything'.
"Oh, I see the light and the heat...In your eyes...Oh, I want to be that complete...I want to touch the light...The heat I see in your eyes..." Was there a human being born that didn't utterly melt at hearing this song? Cusack could probably have any woman he wanted, even today, just by humming it as he walked by. Bea felt a little warm shiver run down her spine, remembering some of her teenage fantasies.
The next song was by Def Leppard, and Bea hit the fast-forward button with an irritated grunt. It didn't take right away, though. She had to listen to "Out of touch, out of reach, yeah...You could try to get closer to me...I'm in love, I'm in deep, yeah...Hypnotized, I'm shakin' to my knees..." while tapping the button with increasing frustration before she could get it to move on.
