Casey was pricing vinyl when she walked in. The door was open. It was early, and he normally greeted customers when he was alone, but he figured it was a regular, poking through the newest used stuff. That or Sean forgot something. Casey continued with the stack until he heard the flutter of a coat and the scrape of approaching feet. When a woman cleared her throat, he looked up.

“Not going to ask if you can help me?”

“Can I help you?”

“I guess you trust people here. Not sure I would.”

He yawned. “What brings you to Seattle?”

“Robert’s nephew, Scott. Remember him? He’s getting married.”

“Why here—doesn’t he live in L.A.?”

“His wife and her family. They’re all from Tacoma.”

“And where’s Robert?”

She said he was back at the hotel.

“Where are you guys staying?”

“I got a deal on the place I stayed in when I used to visit you.”

“And you just happened to be shopping. For music.”

“I had a hunch.”

“A hunch.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That I’d be—”

“You told me you were leaving. I guess you didn’t think I believed you.”

“I had to get back.”

“You glad you left?”

“I missed it here.”

“Even with all the crap that’s going on? Tents up and down the street? You know we don’t have that in—”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“As long as you aren’t living in one, I guess not.”

Casey lived behind the store in a guest apartment. “The owner’s letting me stay there until I get on my feet.”

“So,” she said, “this is what you do now.” She studied him. He needed a haircut. And a shave. His blonde hair curled under his ears. The rest of it was stuffed into a knit cap the color of a barn door.

“Right now, yeah.”

“And you’re happy?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean are you happy?”

He said yes.

She made a sound. Her hair was black and short. Shorter than he remembered. She wore the same boxy camelhair coat that touched her knees. Rain fogged her glasses. She took them off, her pupils dilated in the muted light.

“Are you happy?” he asked. “I’ve always wondered.”

“Of course. What are you trying to say?”

He gazed back at the record on the glass counter: Be-Bop Deluxe. Sunburst Finish. The shop was quiet. Just the two of them. For now. He reached for the price gun, twiddling the knob from $10.99 to $9.99. The plastic device was warm. From Sean’s hand.

She asked him again, jumping a little when the price gun clattered on the glass.

“You know,” he began, “you make everything—your whole life—seem like this paradise. You think if you say it often enough, if you tell me often enough, it’ll all come true. All the stories you’ve been telling me. They’ll become real. You’ll live like you want to live and not like you really live.”

“How do I really live? Since you know. How do I live?”

“You mind keeping it down?”

“There’s nobody here.”

“My boss will be back in a minute.”

“So—”

“And I don’t want them to walk in with you yelling at me.”

“I’m not yelling at you.”

“Whatever.”

“So, how do I really live—hm?”

“You live in a dream world where you and Robert are madly in love. Where you don’t ruin Christmas dinner by screaming at each other. Where you don’t make faces at him when his back is turned. Where you don’t complain about him being on vacation somewhere without you.”

“We’re here together.”

“I’m surprised.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have come.”

“Why did you?”

“Robert told me you worked here. And I told him what you told me that day in your outburst—that you were moving back to Seattle. And then, last month, he said you were already here.”

“How did he know?” Casey anticipated Sean walking in or Billy, the regular who played piano in the park across the street. Casey thought he knew music until he listened to Billy describe Sun Ra’s Atlantis. Billy reminded him of Tom, his English professor breathlessly describing an unwritten novel about Pushkin surviving his duel and renouncing poetry. He invited Casey for a drink after class one night. It was late, and Casey turned him down. They never saw each other again.

“Quitting school,” she said, reading his thoughts. “You don’t regret that?”

“What?”

“Quitting. Because that’s what you did.”

“I know what I—”

“All the time on the phone. Talking about it. For two years. I thought this was what you wanted.”

“I did—”

“And then you just give up.”

“I didn’t just—”

“Stop interrupting me,” she said.

“I didn’t just give up.”

“What did you do?”

“I withdrew. From the program.”

“That’s called giving up.”

“They wouldn’t let me teach.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they wouldn’t let me teach.”

“I thought that’s why you went in the first place.”

“I did.”

“What happened?”

“You have to apply for it. For a teaching spot. And there were only, like, ten spots for twenty of us. And then there’s the interview.”

“You’ve always done well with interviews.”

“Not this time.”

“How come?”

Casey said the committee asked him weird questions.

“Like what?”

“Not weird questions exactly. But they didn’t like my answers.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I—”  

“You told them you had teaching experience.”

“I did.”

“It’s on your résumé or whatever.”

“My CV, yeah.”

“And didn’t that matter?”

“Not really, no. They asked me what my…about my teaching philosophy. And they didn’t like what I said.”

“What did you say?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What do you mean you don’t remember?”

“I said…I said I wanted to help my students become better writers by showing them that writing isn’t supposed to be this whole intimidating process.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. I guess they didn’t like the way I framed the answer. I talked about pulling the curtain away from the wall. You know, removing the mystery.” Casey said he used this technique in the writing center, tutoring accounting, computer science, psychology, engineering, math, and business majors. And it worked. Four hours a day teaching writing to people who hated writing made him feel he could do it anywhere. But his confidence dissolved in the interview, looking across the table at four blank faces—people he’d never studied with. People who didn’t know him and didn’t seem to care for him. “And there was this whole other thing. They had this new dual degree they were pushing on people. ‘Sign up for the dual degree.’ Only one extra year of grad school. Only a few thousand extra dollars of student debt.”

“Isn’t the one degree enough?”

“And in the end, they gave all the teaching slots to people doing the dual.”

“So, you just quit,” she said. “Because they wouldn’t let you teach. You didn’t bother trying—”

“You make it sound—”

“Well, didn’t you?”

“I guess I didn’t feel like I had a lot of options.”

“You’d rather work here.”

“I’m happy.”

“Are you?”

“My boss should be back any minute.”

“Where did he go?”

Casey said the shop had a power surge last night that fried their coffeepot. “She’s grabbing coffee.”

“And we don’t want her to see you talking to your mother. How would that look?”

“How did Robert find out I worked here? He doesn’t know anyone in Seattle.”

“He showed me a picture of you. In Fremont. From Instagram.”

Casey wondered what his stepfather was doing on Instagram.

“I recognized it,” his mother said. “And I called your cousin.”

“And she told you.”

“She didn’t want to. Anyway, I should get back to the hotel. Robert was exhausted last night.” He was probably still asleep. “And you know how he sleeps.”

Casey’s hand brushed the price gun. When he looked up, she was gone.

– Jason M. Thornberry