Album cover by Alison Berry
Riff in F-sharp minor by the Paul F. Savage Orchestra
Track 7: Study of a Drawing by Bobby Myers
Koi did not lose track of how long he had been standing in front of the record store, and that was because he had not tracked it in the first place. A few days’ worth of fuzz had appeared on his face but he did not notice. Every now and then passers-by would throw coins to his feet. An employee would come out of the store holding a broom, request that Koi leave, and then re-enter the store perturbed by Koi’s dead-eyed silence. At one point the manager was called in to attempt drastic measures – however, a broom waved wildly in the loiterer’s peripheral vision was ineffective, and a broom waved directly in front of his eyes was ineffective as well. Those who worked at the record store came to refer to Koi as the Statue.
After a certain point the Statue began smoking. The Statue coughed from time to time but for the most part smoked calmly, the cigarette smoke permeating the front of his face like puffs of breath on a cold winter day. When he flicked the ash, the wind carried it away from his feet and shirt. Subtle light appeared in his eyes that had not been there before. Sometimes he turned his head this way and sometimes he turned it that way.
‘I think the Statue might be alive.’
‘Don’t be an idiot.’
‘I saw it blink.’
‘Statues don’t blink.’
‘Statues don’t smoke, either.’
‘There must be a hose or something.’
‘I don’t know. I think it might be alive.’
Behind the glass of the storefront window were posters for bands such as Pornographic Cabbages, Drowned Radio, Japanese Bonus Tracks and Las Chapaletas. Much of this soft-boiled indie rock bounced out of the store whenever the door opened. A banner read CDs GAMES MOVIES BUY SELL TRADE. There weren’t any signs that said the record store sold records. The store’s number, hung on a pink awning above the door, was 701B, and it was specific details like this and that and the other that prevented Koi from losing himself completely.
Snatches of conversation were caught by his ears and kept them from going numb:
‘Jesus! What the hell is that?’
‘What, you’ve never seen a hair scorpion before?’
Sometimes he could hear the record store clerks when they were close to the glass, rearranging the used cds and records on the racks behind him:
‘You’ll get head lice if you keep sleeping in that thing.’
‘I’ve already had head lice.’
‘So? That doesn’t mean you can’t have them again. Head lice aren’t chickenpox, you know.’
‘Yeah, but the way I got rid of them . . . I had hair scorpions, and the hair scorpions ate the lice.’
After a city bus passed by Koi about a hundred times, he realised that the front of the store also served as a bus stop, though very few people seemed to get off or on at it. Perhaps that had something to do with the statue he kept hearing about.
Koi soon noticed the sound of scratching, the sound of fingernails flaking something soft yet crispy, and he forced his eyes to the side to determine what was causing it. There he saw a young girl – about twelve, maybe, though most children looked the same to him – standing with a mess of concentration on her face, her hand burrowing into her hair. Light snowfall cascaded down the front of her face, and when Koi realised what it was he made a face of his own.
‘Gross, dandruff,’ he whisper-muttered to himself.
Scratch.
The girl’s eyes shifted towards him. He wondered if she had heard him.
‘Uh.’
He turned his head to face as far away from the girl as possible. He flicked cigarette ash onto the sidewalk and waited for the sound of scratching to continue.
Scratch scratch.
He gazed forward again.
‘That’s a nasty habit.’
Koi looked at the girl to verify that she had, in fact, spoken to him, and then he looked at his cigarette. He looked at the girl again: wearing jeans with faded knees and grass stains, a zipped-up sweater with sleeves that were frayed at the hems and a backpack that had a stick sticking out of it, she looked like a total tomboy. Koi had always found something appealing about calling a girl a boy so directly.
‘It’s, uh, not a habit.’
‘What is it, then?’ the girl asked, crossing her arms.
‘A cigarette.’
He then proceeded to take another puff.
‘Why do you have to be so difficult all the time?’
A synapse burst. The cigarette hit the ground and rolled into a gutter. That had not been a question directed at a stranger. That had not been a question directed at adults in general. That had been a question directed at Koi – Koi the coy, Koi himself – and with it he became aware of the world around him for the first time in several days.
‘Uh.’
‘I know what you’ve been doing: you’ve been doing absolutely nothing at all, in the hopes that everything Vasilisa said won’t come true, and that everything she said isn’t true. You figure Haskell won’t get shot, Trevor Noirchild won’t die and Ryan hasn’t been plagiarising another writer as long as you just stand there and mind your own business. Well, you don’t even mind your own business. You stand there and smoke a cigarette you found behind a crumpled-up Subway coupon, a cigarette you lit with your own lack of imagination. You figure Haskell and Trevor Noirchild will live forever as long as you do that, that Ryan will always be your brilliant friend. That the price you’ll pay for these things is not becoming famous.’
Koi thought about it for a moment.
‘Possibly.’
‘Well, allow me to introduce myself: I am a figment of your lack of imagination. You stored me in your head when you eventually did look into the charge levelled against Ryan. And then you swallowed a lot of pills to forget it, because if what Vasilisa said about Ryan is true, then Haskell and Trevor Noirchild are both dead, and you’re going to become one of the most famous musicians on the planet.’
Koi stroked the bristles of his chin as he gave this some thought.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘That, uh, doesn’t sound like something I would do.’
The girl sighed. As Koi watched on with an awkward mixture of disgust, interest and concern, the girl bent down and grouped together her fallen dandruff flakes into a pile. She clumped the yellowed flakes together in her hands as though they were packing snow, and then she rolled the packed dandruff between her palms until it became a snake. She broke the ends off the dandruff snake so that it became a tube the size of her middle finger, and then she stood up, walked to Koi, placed herself in front of him and popped the dandruff cigarette into his mouth.
‘That’s a good fit,’ she said, admiring her handiwork.
Koi could taste the light salting of dandruff on his tongue. He peered down at the dandruff cigarette sticking out of his lips, the strain hurting his eyes. He then took out his lighter and lit it, puffed a few flakey puffs, and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth with the two fingers most often used to signify peace.
‘I’m going to smoke your cigarette,’ he said.
The girl nodded.
‘And you’re not going to say “uh” anymore,’ she told him.
Koi closed his eyes, breathed in a heavy drag and exhaled slowly, the smoke sailing past the girl’s head.
‘Let’s, uh, not get carried away.’
Koi's Story Continues In Track 8: Loose Change
Track 0: Uh
Track 1: The Nerd Wave
Track 2: Playing Koi
Track 3: She had said the only words that could have affected him totally and truly
Track 4: A Sudden Loud Knocking
Track 5: A Two-Man Play to Be Performed on a City Bus
Track 6: Now It's Summer
Track 7: Study of a Drawing by Bobby Myers
Track 8: Loose Change
Track 9: Foam
Track 10: The First Person
Track 11: Please Be True
Track 12: Title Track