He had not thought about Big Jim Brekke in years. He had worked quite hard at not thinking about Big Jim Brekke, and the summer of 1976, and the three hundred copies of "Lake Street Moon" his uncle had paid a pressing plant in Shakopee to make, and what had happened to them after. He had built an entire personality, brick by careful brick, on top of that summer, like a parking ramp poured over a graveyard.
And a woman in a coverall had walked in off Lyndale Avenue with it clipped to her belt.
He played the Minutemen. He played a Mekons record. At 3:40 a.m. he put on a side-long Sonic Youth track that gave him eleven minutes, and he picked up the station phone and dialed the number on the receipt before he could talk himself out of it.
It rang six times. Then a voice, thick and furious with sleep: "If this is Stan, Babcia's fine, go back to bed."
"It's not Stan."
A pause. A rustle of blankets. "Who is this? It's—oh my God, it's a quarter to four."
"It's Augie. From the Exchange." He cleared his throat. "Augie Nyquist. Sixteen years old."
He heard her wake up, all at once. He heard, unmistakably, the smile come back into her voice. "Well," she said. "Look who caught a high note."
"I want to make one thing clear. I'm not calling to help you."
"Okay."
"That record doesn't exist anymore. I'm calling because I'd like that tape to also not exist anymore, and I'm prepared to offer you fifty dollars and a store credit."
"No."
"Seventy-five."
"Augie." She sounded entirely awake now, and entirely too pleased. "Where are you calling from? There's something loud in the background. It sounds like someone's stepping on a cat."
"That's Sonic Youth."
"Is it supposed to sound like that?"