"No. Doesn't exist. I'd know." He picked up a price gun he didn't need. "Probably some vanity thing. Some kid's parents paid for it. Those records, they press a hundred copies, the kid gives ninety to his aunts, the other ten end up as coasters. You're not going to find it. Honestly, you're better off. Let it go. Buy a Talking Heads record. I'll give you ten percent off."
She was quiet. She was looking at him with her head a little on one side, the way people look at a pinball machine that's tilting for no reason.
"You know what," she said, "I don't think you've actually listened to it."
"I've heard plenty."
"You've heard it through a foam pad from three feet away. That's not listening. That's eavesdropping." She unclipped the Walkman from her belt. She pressed STOP, and then REWIND, and the little motor whined, and she watched the counter with great concentration and stopped it at a particular spot she clearly knew by heart. Then she lifted the headphones from around her own neck and held them out across the counter, one in each hand, like a crown.
"Humor me," she said.
"I'm working."
"You're holding a price gun with nothing to price. Humor me."
He should have said no. He would think about that later—how easy it would have been to say no, and how it would have changed nothing, because the tape would still have existed and so would she. He leaned forward. She settled the headphones over his ears with surprising gentleness, tucking a bit of his hair out of the way, and the world went muffled and close.
Then Frankie Szymanski pressed play.
It wasn't the song. It was the end of the song—the last sad wheeze of the organ, the drum machine clicking off mid-bossa, a fade done by somebody turning a knob too fast. And then, over it, crackly and close as if he were standing right there in the room, the voice of a man Augie had not heard in ten years and had hoped never to hear again: Big Jim Brekke, afternoon drive, KTWN 1440 AM.
"—and that's the Vestibules, four kids out of Roseville with a record called 'Lake Street Moon,' and I'll tell you what, folks, the young fella singing that, Augie Nyquist, he's sixteen years old. Sixteen! When I was sixteen I couldn't find my own shoes. Augie, buddy, if you're out there—keep reaching for those high notes, son. One of these days you're gonna catch one. It's eighty-two degrees at the airport—"
Augie stood very still.
Across the counter, Frankie's eyes dropped, slowly and deliberately, from his face to the plastic name tag pinned to his overcoat, just below the Hüsker Dü button. It said AUGIE in black marker, in his own handwriting, which was the same handwriting as the signs.
Her eyes came back up to his.
And she started to smile.