customer: tall, handsome, ambiguous in origin. motorcycle pants. motorcyle helmet. a friend.
purchased: five songs—“Save My Soul” by Sabina McCalla, “There’s No Answer Without You” by Love Apple and Lou Ragland, “If You Know Me” a demo by Hudson Freeman, “pale horse” by Truman Sinclair, and “Babyyy” by Grace Ives”
“So where do you get all of this stuff?” he asked me as he kicked the tires on my booth.
“I have a 1991 Ford Ranger.”
He flicked a shooing look at me.
“Okayyy,” he said as he moved on to examine a napkin-drawn pigplanada pinned to a board. (half piglet, half empanada).
Goochie goochie goo so what I like to make his brain itch. Call me a friend. I didn’t explain how it’s a flying 1991 Ford Ranger and it can zip around and pluck out trinkets for my booth from any part of the world at the drop of the clutch.
The art and trinkets of my booth stared at him as he continued to browse. He wore motorcycle pants and carried a helmet in his hand and wore a black and red shirt that was a medium that probably should have been an XL. He returned polite flat smiles and small greeting bows to the art, doing his corporate best not to push their rude stares to the ground. I followed him and his cordial observation as he made his way towards the music section. After placing his helmet down, he reached into one of the boxes and picked out a song.
“But so, how do you decide what to choose, what to bring back here.”
He flipped the song over in his hand before he pushed his straight black hair back with his hand and looked at me.
“Like this song for example.”
He held out “Save My Soul” by Sabine McCalla
“Oh, that song? Don’t you see it, Shmeesh?” I took the song from his hand.
“This song has arms and legs.” I made it dance in front of his face. “It walked up right up to me. This is a Lima, Peru song.”
“It found me after I drove six hours in traffic. Hellish traffic. Six hours to go six miles. There were shrieks. My bumper started weeping. A fawn was born. I fought over every inch. And after I elbowed my way through and as I did a mental triage over a bucket of chaufa and a beer, this song waltzed right up to me. And I said to it how do you do. It jumped right into my pocket. We traveled the rest of Peru and most of Bolivia together. How else do you want me to explain it.”
He gave me his game show host laugh. He was laughing at me not with me. After shaking his head, he continued picking through more of the songs.
“Any of them you would recommend to me?”
I didn’t tell him it doesn’t work like that because I didn’t tell him that my 1991 Ford Ranger flies.
“Well do any of them have a mustache or a smell or do anything to you.”
“Um, sure. I like this one.”
It was “There’s No Answer Without You” by Love Apple and Lou Ragland, a song I was sure he would hate.
“Take it.”
His face folded together in a quiet concentration. He held out another towards me. It was the “If You Know Me” demo by Hudson Freeman, a deeply cherished song that crawled up through my shower drain not too long ago. I did not want to part with it.
“It’s yours.”
I eventually put him out of his misery and moved him from the box to pick out some songs for him. As I flipped through them I said, “Now these songs might not come to life for you. It’s personal. So no biggie if not. Or maybe they will. Maybe they’ll shuffle your hair and tell you they’re proud of you or put a jansport backpack on your shoulders. Just don’t stare at them too hard or they get shy and won’t dance for you.”
“Alright.”
“And if they don’t, feel free to bring them back.”
I handed him two more songs (“Babyyy” by Grace Ives and “pale horse” by Truman Sinclair)
He said thank you four-times-too-many. So I pushed him out of the booth and sent him on his way—the way friends do. As I watched him walk away, I hoped the songs would turn his motorcycle into a horse and he’d ride it somewhere with dust and peace and where the cacti make nice small talk.
***thank youuuuu for your visit ily hags byyeeeeeee***