The Kid in the Video Store

J. P.'s Video on Johnson Avenue was an anachronism if ever there was one. It had somehow survived Blockbuster, Netflix, and streaming. But it looked different than it did last week.

"Under new management again?" I asked the kid behind the counter -- thin, mauve shirt, wavy black hair and Buddy Holly glasses and maybe 16 or 17. I was pretty sure I hadn't seen him here before, though he looked familiar. Then again, most people looked somewhat familiar to me these days, though I couldn't tell you why.

The kid nodded and pointed to a picture of the new owner on the wall, a beaming man with a big potbelly. He looked familiar too.

I turned to the shelves with the new releases. They unfortunately didn't look the least bit familiar -- typical crop of video store lemons. I didn't know why I kept coming back here. But Sam Cooke was playing on the speakers, I soon realized, and I could listen to Sam Cooke all day and night.

"Sir?"

I turned. The kid was holding up a DVD. "I have something here you might enjoy."

I squinted but couldn't see much. "What is it?"

The kid smiled. "Roy Orbison and Friends. One of the best. I can tell you're a man who likes music."

I smiled back. "Thanks, but I already saw it." The concert was great, one of the best I'd ever seen, in person or on television, but I hated paying to see the same thing twice.

"Actually, it's a new release," the kid said. "Has some riffs that I guarantee you've never heard before."

I walked over to the counter and studied the proffered package. Orbison's voice always made my insides tremble like some ancient gut instrument. "Ok, I'll give it a shot."

The kid nodded and gave me the DVD. I should have known better -- how many times had I been burned over the decades by advice from kids who worked in video stores? But I was also a sucker for Orbison. I gave the kid my credit card, he ran it through , and I sauntered out, humming a harmony line to "Another Saturday Night."

God, that Sam Cooke had a voice on him too -- like hot smooth butter over pancakes.

* * *

Cheryl was already sound asleep. I was drifting off too, later in the evening, when I remembered the Orbison DVD. I put on a sweatshirt, and walked softly down to the living room.

I put in the DVD and sat back in my chair. The black and white scene began with Orbison singing "Only the Lonely." And there was Springsteen sitting on a chair and grinning and strumming his guitar, Bonnie Raitt and Jennifer Warnes and k. d. lang doing girl harmony, and Jackson Browne leading the boy harmony trio. "Dom dom dom dom de doo wah…." I couldn't help singing along and ... Jeez, who was that next to Jackson?

The guy looked just like me! Straggly black hair, beard, and singing the harmony so sweetly with Jackson and the other guy on this song that the three voices sounded like c, e, g notes coming out of an organ... "Oh yea yea yea yeah...."

I watched the rest of the concert with my mouth open.

Somewhere near the end, Orbison introduced the singers and the band. "And right next to Jackson Browne," he says with that tear in his voice, "is Charlie Lottaro from New York City...."

What the hell, was I dreaming here?

I replayed that line more than 10 times. I was sure I wasn't dreaming. I'd always had a very strong sense of my dreams versus my perception of reality, prided myself on knowing whether a call I'd received in the middle of the night was my unconscious kicking ass or a real phone call.

This wasn't a dream.

But what was going on then? I could accept that someone who looked like me was at this session -- I'm not the most unique-looking guy in the world -- but Orbison had spoken my own goddamned name!

He was still singing, but I could barely hear him. My eyes were stuck on me. I was still singing too -- both at the session and on the other side of the screen, at home now on my couch, under my breath.

This was impossible.

I started for the bedroom to wake up Cheryl, but Jenny our daughter beat me to the punch and started crying for some reason. "I'll take care of her," I called out to Cheryl, and went into the next room.

"I had a bad dream, Daddy."

"You and me both," I muttered, though I was by no means clear that mine was all bad, or for that matter a dream. I scooped her up in my arms. "It's ok sweetheart. You're safe with Daddy now. You can go back to sleep."

* * *

Sunlight poked through the window and my eyes. What were they doing open?

I was awake. I heard Cheryl and Jenny in the kitchen.

I shuffled in, kissed them both, and took some orange juice.

"Thanks for taking care of Jenny last night," Cheryl said, "I was really out."

"My pleasure," I winked at Jenny. "Truth is, I was already up.

"Marking papers?"

"Watching the Orbison concert. And I saw myself on it."

Jenny laughed. "Daddy's on television!"

Cheryl wasn't laughing. "You thought you saw yourself in the audience at the Dylan concert on Channel 13 last month, remember? The guy looked nothing like you, and the blonde next to him looked old enough to be my mother."

"Yeah," I said. "But this is different—and this time we have a DVD."

I gulped down the rest of my juice and walked with Cheryl and Jenny to the living room. I rewound the DVD for a few seconds and turned it on. Orbison was singing "In Dreams" -- an emotional landmine at any time. The camera panned out to reveal the background singers and ... I was gone. Just Jackson Browne and the usual gang were singing smooth as you please.

"Where are you, Daddy?" Jenny asked.

"I guess nowhere, honey," I said. I can't say I was surprised -- dreams and nightmares and their ilk after all are supposed to happen only at night. But I was as sweet-and-sour sure as I was of the taste of juice in my mouth that I was awake last night, fully awake, when the Big 0 said "Charlie Lottaro...."

"I'm taking the DVD with me out to Polytechnic," I said to Cheryl as I kissed her goodbye. "Maybe their tech guy can come up with some explanation. Too early for me to go back to the video store -- it won't be open yet."

* * *

Yonkers to downtown Brooklyn -- where Polytechnic University and its shiny new campus held forth like a pearl in the urban substrate -- was only a 45-minute drive.

My problem was straightforward. I had to find out everything I could about this DVD. Somewhere in this glittering disk -- in its recording history, its physical construction, somewhere -- was the key to what had happened to me last night. Even if the disk was as pure as a Raffi video this morning.

I turned on the radio. Ricky Nelson was singing. He had a voice like the malteds I used to drink on the Grand Concourse.

So smooth -- like most of the other voices I'd been enjoying lately. And dead -- also like most of the singers I'd been singing along with in one way or another these days.

Not the most the comforting thought in the world.

The feeble fluorescent light in my office was flickering in its usual neurotic way when I arrived with seven minutes to spare before class. Good.

I picked up the phone and pulled out my antique dialing directory.

"Hallo Jack? Charlie here. You have time to check out a DVD for me? Great –-thanks -- I'm bringing it right over."

Jack was the perennial technical facilitator. I'd known someone like him in every school I'd ever taught in. I could never quite figure what made these guys tick -- they were usually guys, and they always earned a pathetically low salary -- but they always seemed pretty happy in their work, and eager to help.

"Got an interesting problem for you, Jack. Could you run this DVD through your diagnostics and see if you pick up anything unusual?"

Jack took the disk and hefted it from hand to hand. "The Orbison? It's in black and white, right? What are you looking to find in it?"

I told him about last night. What the hell, he probably wouldn't take me seriously anyway.

He laughed. "You used to sing in a rock group, right? You still savoring the fine weed?"

"Nah," I smiled. "Truth is, I never smoked even when everyone else did in the 80s. I'll be back from class in about two hours. Appreciate anything you can tell me about the DVD."

"Sure," he called after me.

* * *

I rushed back after class.

"Well, anything?" I asked Jack, who was hunched over some sort of editing unit.

He looked up, vaguely surprised to see me. The rap on professors is that we're absent-minded, but tech people are often far worse. "Oh, no -- nothing," he said.

"What -- the DVD was blank?"

Jack chuckled. "No -- there was nothing unusual about it. The quality and usage were up to the usual specifications. DVD looks like it's a few months old -- been played a few times. No trace anywhere of anyone who looked like you. Elvis was there, but it was Elvis Costello."

"A few months old?" I asked. "But that session was decades ago."

Jack shrugged. "You told me the kid in the store said it was a new release -- not surprising that the DVD is new."

"Right," I said. "But if this release has nothing unusual about it, why would they bother -- there must be something different about it."

"I'd need to see the original to nail down such a difference -- if it exists. All I can tell you is that technically this disk is in no way exceptional. And hard as I stared, I didn't see you."

"So I was dreaming last night."

"I don't know what you were doing last night," Jack said. "I can tell you that staring at TV screens does strange things to your brainwaves sometimes. You were tired last night, you were impressionable -- who knows. All I can say is that whatever happened apparently left no measurable effect on this disk. And was not caused by anything I could see on it."

* * *

"Deut deut do be deut do be do be do," the Four Seasons were singing "Marlena" as I drove back up the FDR drive. Were any of them dead? Yeah, I was pretty sure Nick Massi, the bass singer, died a bunch of years ago. I shuddered but rolled down the window and added a few "deuts" to the music. Rock was always at its best around open windows in fast moving cars.

"‘Marlena,' with Charlie Lottaro and the Four Seasons. And this is Murray the K on the Swingin Soiree...."

"What?" I glared at the radio and nearly swerved into a Toyota. The doppler sound of its horn pushed me back to some semblance of a straight line and reality.

Murray the K had been dead for years -- lung cancer. I'd seen his wife Jackie on some talk show just a month ago. And was I hallucinating or did I hear him say "Charlie

Lottaro"?

I fished for my phone and summoned Siri. "Could I have the number of WCBS-FM Radio in New York City please? Could you connect me? Thanks."

"Hi. Uh, this might sound like an idiotic question. But have you by any chance -- has CBS Radio -- just been playing old tapes of Murray the K and ... Huh? Who is he? He was a disk jockey in the late 50s and 60s, sort of successor to Alan Freed, and ... never mind. Thanks. I didn't think so."

"And here's a Beach Boys song," a voice that was definitely not Murray's said on the radio. "God Only Knows'...."

* * *

I pulled up to J. P.'s about twenty minutes later. It was open. In one swift motion perfected of years of experience I hopped out my car, pumped quarters into the meter -- yeah, they still had parking meters that took quarters on this street -- and bounded on the sidewalk towards the store fronts.

Something was pounding away on the loudspeaker outside of J. P.'s -- Jim Morrison's "L.A. Woman."

I walked in and approached the big man behind the counter. "And you must be the new J. P.," I said.

He grinned. "J. P. Richardson -- the Big Bopper -- at your service." He had a southern accent -- much like what I remembered the original Big Bopper sounding like -- the one who had died in that plane crash with Buddy Holly. This guy also looked like the Big Bopper, but this was likely just my imagination.

I handed him the DVD. "I had, well, a strange experience with this last night."

Richardson's eyebrows arched. "Really? Was something wrong?"

"Well, not wrong so much as...." I recounted seeing myself singing along with Jackson Browne. I was getting good at telling this story.

Richardson studied the DVD. "What did you say your name was?"

"Charlie -- Charlie Lottaro," I said. "Why? -- Would that make a difference?"

"No, just wondering. Your name does sound familiar to me though."

"Look, the young gentleman who was here last night would know more about this -- he was the one who recommended the DVD to me."

Richardson looked surprised. "Gentleman? Here last night? We closed early."

I was starting to get angry. "You telling me you know nothing of a good looking kid with great hair who was right there behind the counter last night standing where you're standing?"

"Jim," Richardson called out. "You wanna come out here for a moment?"

A scruffy-looking kid slouched out -- long hair and attitude straight from the 60s not the 50s.

"You let any customers behind the counter last night?" Richardson asked the kid.

"Absolutely not," Jim said in a lazy California accent. "Last night was slow, and I closed up around nine o'clock. Like I told you this morning."

Richardson looked at me meaningfully.

"So I'm, what?" I demanded. "Hallucinating that I was here about 10 last night and someone who looked like Buddy Holly gave me that DVD?"

"Buddy Holly?" Jim asked. "He had a wonderful voice, didn't he. Too bad his old lady shot him."

"He died in a plane crash," Richardson said to the kid, and rolled his eyes at me.

"Yeah, " I said to the kid. "You're thinking of Sam Cooke," I said more quietly, recalling that Sam Cooke had been playing in the store last night. I saw Sam Cooke's face, but how the hell did I even remember what Sam Cooke looked like? I also realized I needed more time to think this through.

"No," J. P. said. "Sam Cooke, may he rest in peace, was killed by a woman in a motel lobby, not his wife," and he rolled his eyes again.

"Ok, look," I said. "I guess there was some sort of misunderstanding. I don't know what's going on anymore -- maybe I oughta call my doctor." I started walking out of the store.

"Hey, wait a minute," Richardson snapped his fingers. The pop reverberated through the store, providing a nice rippling syncopation to Morrison's moanings in "L.A. Woman."

"I just figured out why your name sounds familiar," Richardson continued. "Didn't I just hear Murray the K talking about you on the radio about half an hour ago?"

* * *

The daylight was harsh and repellant. I reeled around and staggered back into the store.

The lighting was different. The store was empty. J. P. and Jim were gone.

"Hello?" I said.

Someone arose from behind the counter -- the kid from last night, with at least half a dozen DVDs in his hand.

"You're Sam Cooke, aren't you?" I blurted out. "You were Buddy Holly last night."

"Yes, I am," Sam smiled. "Though I'm a lot younger here than most people remember me. I had too many gigs later on to do this kind of thing."

I realized that "L.A. Woman" was no longer playing on the speaker -- "Bring It On Home" was, one of Sam Cooke's best. "Beautiful song," I muttered.

Sam smiled and proceeded to sing a third line of harmony to the two-way vocalizing he originally had done with Lou Rawls on this record. I would've joined in myself but my throat was too constricted.

"What's going on here, Sam?" I finally managed. I could feel myself drifting over some line, but maybe my awareness of this drifting meant I wasn't entirely over that line yet.

"Just another world opening up to you," Sam said, "a world you've already been in touch with for a long time. Am I right?"

"I don't know," I said. "You mean singing along with records?"

"That's right," he said in that voice like a sweet low clarinet.

"You were with us all along -- every time you joined with a harmony line. We heard you, man -- we heard you, we dug it. This is just the next step. You don't wanna be on the outside looking in all your life -- you gotta be on the inside, man, on our side, looking out -- looking out for yourself. I wish the move wasn't so uncomfortable. But every step has its price."

"Let's say I walked out that door and never came back here? What would happen then?"

"This place is just coincidental," Sam said. "It could happen to you anywhere, once you're ready. And I think you're ready now." He extended one of his DVDs to me -- I didn't take it.

"You mean it hasn't happened yet?"

Sam put the DVD in my hand. "Take a look at this. I think you'll like it."

"Roy Orbison and Friends again," I said. "What's the point?"

"We're reprising last night, aren't we," Sam smiled. "This one has some new riffs that'll blow you away. Trust me."

"You guarantee it, right?"

"That's right," Sam said. "You're getting hipt to the program now."

I let Sam charge my credit card, took the DVD, and left. I should've known better, I know that. But in my defense, how many times had Sam Cooke urged me to rent a DVD prior in my life, and how many times had I been burned?

None. Well, maybe one, counting last night, when Sam was Buddy. But maybe none after all -- because I wasn't really sure if I'd been burned or blessed last night.

* * *

"Dom dom dom dom de du wah...." Cheryl and Jenny were asleep. I'd made it through the evening on automatic, and now I was at last alone with Roy and his friends.

The camera spread out from Roy to Jackson Browne and ... there I was, bleary-eyed and singing along, sitting on the couch.

I mean, I was singing with Jackson, but I could see myself sitting on the couch, watching me singing along with Jackson.

"Feels good, doesn't it," Jackson said in my ear after the song.

I nodded. The tips of my earlobes were still abuzz with harmony.

"Are you alive," I whispered to him a few songs later. We were offstage -- this number was just Roy and the ladies.

Jackson laughed. "Sure I am -- I haven't read anything in the papers otherwise. Have you?"

"No," I said. His manner, like his songs, put me at ease. "But Roy's gone, and well, uh, I thought maybe--"

"You don't have to be dead to do this," Jackson said. He looked at Roy, who was in the middle of a brilliant rendition of "Sweet Dream."

"The dead are just the flash points -- the conduits to these gigs," Jackson added. "They're the ones who give you the signal, tell you in their own way that one of these concerts is opening up to you. And they're a trip to play with. But lots of us -- like you and me, Jennifer, k. d." -- he pointed to the people on stage -- "lots of us are still alive."

"Still?"

"Well, we're all going to die eventually, aren't we," Jackson said. "But you still have plenty of good years left, Charlie, with your wife and children."

"But, I mean, how do I get back to the other side of the screen, to be with my wife and--"

"You'll see. It's easy," Jackson said. "I have family too."

Elvis Costello gestured us back on stage. I took my place at the mike. I missed Cheryl and Jenny. But my missing them dissolved in the fugue...

* * *

The concert was over.

All of us were milling around on stage, taking bows and waving. I was getting anxious again about getting back to Cheryl and Jenny. I loved them. I didn't want to lose them, even for the music. Jackson winked at me, and -- I was sitting on the couch, staring at the closing credits.

I didn't wait to see if my name was there -- I rushed to the bedrooms to see if Cheryl and Jenny were ok. They were sleeping like babies, both of them.

Getting home was easy indeed, as Jackson had said.

This time.

* * *

I dropped by J. P.'s the next afternoon.

"Break on Through to the Other Side" was on the speakers.

Jim was behind the counter this time. Of course.

I handed him the DVD. "Anyone ever tell you you look a lot like Jim Morrison?" I asked.

"All the time," Jim said. "I wonder why."

"You have anything magic in the way of new DVDs for me?" I asked.

Jim shook his head. "Nah -- I'm not your man, Charlie. I've got no magic for you. Let's face it, you were never wild about my music. The only people who can do it for you are musicians who rip your soul out every time you hear 'em. You know what I mean?"

I did. People like Sam Cooke. Even Murray the K had touched me with his endless patter when I was a kid. Submarine race watching, yeah. "Well, do you know when Sam'll be in?"

"Hard to say," Jim said, looking towards the door. "Give me a second to take care of this customer."

She had kinky hair, auburn frosted, in her forties or fifties. She looked familiar. The gleam in her eyes when she looked at Jim was so bright that it hurt mine.

Jim took forever with her.

I overheard tufts of conversation...

"...do the live people in your concert -- the ones who haven't died yet -- do they have some connection to the future?" she asked. "They tell me things...."

"...everyone in this realm does," Jim said. "Everyone who plays music with us gets touched, because we transcend time...."

"...'transcend'," she said "... you sound like a poet -- or a preacher. You have a disk for me tonight?"

"I think so," Jim said. "You want another girl group from the 60s?"

Phil Spector's wall of sound, I realized -- that's where she'd done her wailing. Maybe as a Crystal or a Ronette or one of Bob B. Soxx's Blue Jeans -- zip-a-dee-doo-dah -- da doo ron ron. The sound of Spring. And now she was a peach on the porch after the Fall -- withered, puckered, forgotten on the floor.

I felt embarrassed -- like I was witnessing someone's last-gasp fantasy -- or a drug buy. What you got for me tonight, Mister Jimmy? A bag of dreams for me? Please, Mister, please.

J. P.'s Videos -- mo' better karaoke -- you actually become part of the video. Of special appeal to former and never-quite-made-it vocalists... What was it Rod Serling said? "Submitted for your approval."

I walked out of the store.

I pulled away in my car.

* * *

Bob Shannon was on the radio -- a nice, normal, living disk jockey.

"Here's a group we don't hear too often any more," Shannon said, "the Kingston Trio."

One of the Kingston Trio had died a few years ago, but the group was mostly still alive.

"The Ballad of Charlie and the MTA," Shannon said, "the man who never returned...."

The banjo started, the guitar lead came in, and the Kingston Trio were singing.

I pulled over to the side.

They were singing to me. Now that I'd been to the other side of the screen, it would take more than my driving away to return to my lip-synching life on the outside of what was really going on. I wasn't sure I wanted to. I wasn't sure I could. The very lyrics on this record, reaching out to me across the decades at just this time and place, were evidence enough of this protoplasm of words and music and images that wrapped around me like a second skin. It wasn't a question of choice on my part -- any more than three notes could choose not to become a chord when coming into contact. On lucky nights the interface grew permeable and drew me through it. But it was always with me now. Maybe it always had been, in some form less clear.

"...poor old Charlie," one of the Trio with a bass voice sang.

Not really.

I had a wife, a child, a steady job.

And something more.

I turned my car around and headed back to J. P.'s.

Sam was bound to turn up sooner or later.