Sound Advice (Sensations Collection #1) (2 page)

In utter confusion, I took a deep sigh of relief, and skipped up the steps in my strappy blue sandals to embrace the woman who’d raised me. Elizabeth Parrish had been more of a mother to me than my own during some of the most trying years of my life - adolescence - and I owed her everything. I slipped my arms around her, and my concerns for the delicacy of her body were confirmed. She was skeletal thin under the drooping jacket. I pulled back too quickly, worried I would hurt her, and she swayed from the release.

“Sit down, my dear. You must be tired from your journey. Let’s sit on the porch for a moment. Tell me about Chicago.”

I couldn’t help but notice there was no porch swing. I looked back at Nana with concern, and her own eyes followed my trail to the empty corner. Nana nervously giggled.

“That John, he needs to get the porch furniture out when he returns from work.”

Nana moved toward the front door instead and I suddenly felt like I’d fallen into a bad episode of the
Twilight Zone
. My grandfather had been dead for nearly seven years, since I was sixteen years old. I followed Nana into the living room, and on the surface things looked the same. Two flowery, overstuffed couches faced off over an antique wooden coffee table, and the ancient Persian rug was faded and worn in the areas where miles of feet traveled to the kitchen from this front room. But underneath the familiar comfort of Nana’s home I noticed the thin layer of dust everywhere. It was on the table and the mantle, a cobweb in the corner, and even on the furniture. I guessed Nana didn’t use this room much anymore, and when she pointed to the couch for me to sit, I reconsidered with my white pants, suggesting a cup of tea in the kitchen instead.

Things were not much better in the kitchen. There were cobwebs in both corners of the window over the sink, and dishes neatly stacked made me wonder if they were even clean. Based on Nana’s thin body, the dishes might have been resting in that dish-drainer for a while.

“On second thought, Nana, how about if you get dressed and we go into town for a cup of tea?”

“Why I am dressed, dear,” Nana replied in surprise, and then she touched her hair. Shaky hands fluttered over the toilet paper rollers and hairpins, and suddenly Nana was horrified, realizing she was dressed for bed. A soft, “Oh,” was her only response.

“Nana, how about a spa treatment? I can take you to your hair dresser and we can fix your hair.”

“My hair doesn’t need fixing.” Nana stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I tried to rephrase my plan. “How about we go to the hair dresser and get your hair all made up? Something special?”

A slow sparkle came to Nana’s old blue eyes again, but it didn’t seem quite like she understood what I was saying. It was as if she interpreted my intention differently.

“Well, Betty only sets on Saturday mornings. But I could call her? John likes it when I do my hair up fresh.” Speaking again as if my grandfather were still alive and going to appear later in the day was starting to freak me out. I wasn’t sure how to respond to this comment either, but I somehow sensed that reminding my grandmother of her husband’s death was going to be a poor decision.

“Why don’t I call Betty for you while you change into day clothes?” I knew Nana believed one should always be dressed to go out in public, and she wasn’t going to just throw on jeans and a t-shirt. It would be a skirt, a blouse, and panty hose, despite the pleasant 75-degree weather. Elizabeth Parrish had been the award-winning writer for the advice column “Matters of Manners” for over two decades. This column prided itself on dispensing codes of behavior and action, and dressing properly was only one of the many rules that Nana lived by. When Nana was ready, she mentioned the radio again.

“Can we drop off this radio? I can’t get any music on it lately. John loves music.”

Truly saddened, I stared at Nana.
What was wrong with her?
She continued to speak as if my grandfather were alive. As if he could hear said music today from the old dusty radio resting on the fireplace mantle. At the moment, I was so overwhelmed with the look of the house, both inside and out, and the state of Nana’s appearance, that I could only shake my head. I picked up the 1930-something wooden box radio shaped like a cathedral window and a swirl of dust floated through the air, tickling my nose. The dust rubbed against the front of my dark blouse and the corner of the radio encasement caught in the thin material. I suddenly felt as ragged as the rest of the items in this home, including my grandmother.

WE DROVE JUST outside of town and arrived at the radio repair shop. Its name was Sound Systems.
Original
, I thought with a smirk. I bumped my head as I dragged the old music-maker across the back seat, dislodging my neatly styled ponytail.
Why had I placed this thing in the backseat instead of the trunk?
I thought as I smeared more dust on the front of myself. I was truly beginning to look a mess, like a bookend match to Nana. I bumped the car door closed with my hip at the same time the glass front door of the shop opened, and out walked a man with a short ponytail and a bandana tied around his forehead.
What is this, a throwback to the seventies?
He didn’t look very old. His arms were tan with lanky muscles, and surprisingly without tattoos, despite the more rugged Brett Michaels look he sported. He walked through the doorway and held the door open for me as Nana remained in the car.

Mumbling my thanks, I struggled to walk with the dirty, awkward-shaped radio and I almost dropped it on top of the wood paneled counter when a voice spoke from behind me.

“What can I help you with today?” I jumped as I felt that voice through every part of my body. I thought the man holding the door was leaving, but he crossed behind me and walked through a counter-height swing door to enter the workspace beyond. Looking up, I caught intense gray-blue eyes of denim. They were a color I’d never seen before.

“My grandmother would like this radio fixed. I don’t know what’s wrong with it other than the fact it doesn’t work. I don’t really know if
you
would be able to fix it, but maybe you could just take a look at it.”

The man seemed to notice my unintentional emphasis on the word “you” and took a quick survey of me. I could almost hear his thoughts.
Oh great, another down-state, Northern-wannabe who thinks she’s better than everyone up here. Probably on holiday from Detroit, doesn’t have a clue about this radio, and thinks I’m the one too dumb to understand common English
. He might not have been too far off in his assessment.

“Well, let me take a lookie,” he said in his best imitation of a Southern drawl, even though this was the Midwest.

I continued to stare at him like the idiot I suddenly thought he was. Taking a quick glance of the surrounding walls, which were also dark wood paneled with shelves of radios and gadgets for sound, I noticed two worktables behind the counter. One area was cleaned off with items neatly in bins on the under-shelf. The other table was piled with wires, tools, and junk I’d never be able to identify. To the left were new stereos, boxed on the floor with the sound systems above on carpet-covered shelves. The music playing overhead was a heavy metal song from twenty years ago.
Typical
, I thought. Michigan had famous musicians – the white, bad boy rapper, the cowboy looking rock star, the classic soulful guitarist, the female who made fishnet stockings famous again – but entering Michigan was like a time warp when it came to music. The radio stations seemed to only play music from decades ago.

“Well, I have to tear it apart and look inside at the wiring,” he continued in his exaggerated drawl, “and chances are the wiring is cloth and would need to be entirely replaced. If that’s the case, the radio won’t really have the same sound. You know, that scratching sound of old radio shows.” Here he scratched his chest to demonstrate the sound, and I noticed the potential shape of solid abs beneath his heather-grey t-shirt. “Not to mention that your grandmother would only get a few stations since this has AM frequency only.”

“Can you just rebuild it or something?” I asked, a little too snottily. Another man walked into the work area through a side door, which slammed shut in the background. He strolled to the messy table and put down a thermos and a white bakery bag.

“Well, what do we have here?” he asked.

“Well, I’m Emily Post, and my grandmother is Elizabeth…” I started to reply in a friendly manner, but stopped when I realized the man meant the radio, not me. He looked up from his workstation and smiled. He was as tall as the other man with the same slender muscled arms, but had a tan not quite as dark. His hair was darker and shaved almost to a buzz cut, and he had the same color eyes, but they smiled just as brightly as his mouth. I giggled from nervousness.

“Continue,” he prompted.

“As I was saying, I’m Emily Post…”

“Oh, Miss Manners…” he laughed.

“No, Emily Post of Chicago.” I smiled again in a flirtatious manner, but then heard the crash of tin on the tiled floor from my right. I whipped around to notice a little girl standing by a child-sized plastic table. I hadn’t seen her before, but she had obviously just dropped the little tin coffee cup decorated with flowers and a larger toy coffee pot on the floor. I smiled at her as well, but she just stared at me with the same bluish eyes as the two men. Her bleach-blond hair stood out pale white against her slightly tanned face.

The counter door swung open and the ponytailed man swept the girl into his arms in one quick motion, swiping up the cup and coffee pot in another. The little girl wrapped her arms and legs around him as he carried her through the opening in the counter and out of my view. As the girl looked over the man’s shoulders, she continued to stare at me as if she’d seen a ghost.

“Is everything all right?” I asked with concern.

“Oh fine.” The taller man spoke without conviction. He continued to look after the other two a moment longer as they disappeared into the back.

“Now, the radio,” he said, returning his attention to me. “Fill out this form and we’ll take a look at it, Emily Post of Chicago.” He shook his head as if shaking his thoughts into focus.

I smiled at him again as I took the pen offered, and began to fill in Nana’s information.

“I’ll only be in town a few days. Will this take long?”

“Well, how about if we open it up first? You never know what’s underneath all the dust. And then you have to learn how it’s wired before you can hear it purr.”

There might have been a subtle meaning in his choice of words. A nervous habit made me pull my chestnut colored hair free of its ponytail and shake it out with one hand. I then remembered I was covered in dust so thick in some spots that it actually hung off my dark shirt that also contained a small tear. I would have thought the man was flirting with me if not for the lump in my hair as I pulled it out of the holder, the dirt smudged on my shirt, and a black streak across my white pants. Oh, and the gold band on his ring finger. Looking over at the other man as he walked to the clean table and placed both hands firmly on the top, I couldn’t help but notice his mouth moving in a strange way, as if he were flexing his jaw to calm himself. The motion emphasized a chiseled face and a brooding look that would make male models envious. His grey-blue eyes turned denim blue as he scowled at me, and not wanting to break that stare I blindly reached out for the pink receipt being handed to me by the friendlier man. With a nod of his head in the direction of my new unknown nemesis, he placed a business card in my hand, forcing me to look away. It read:
Jess Carter, Sound Systems.
 

A gentleman should always have on a clean, pressed dress shirt and proper slacks when trying to impress a young lady. A young lady should wear an appropriate length skirt, feminine blouse, and heels to meet a young man. A hat is also appropriate for a young lady out of doors. Although gloves seem to be going out of style, a polite handshake is acceptable for initial greetings.

“Matters of Manners,” 1962