AJ (I)
The village of Lockland, Ohio sits on the northern outskirts of Cincinnati. It is an industrial town, founded in 1828 along the Miami-Erie Canal. The canal, with its four locks for which the town was named, is no longer in operation; Interstate 75 now runs through the old canal way. Take Exit 12, turn right, and you’ll find Lockland. Most of its residents are blue-collar workers who make their living as laborers, construction workers, truck drivers, and mechanics. Most of its teenagers land their first jobs in food service. Some stay on long enough to rise through the ranks to management positions. Others follow in their parents’ footsteps, becoming the next generation of the blue-collar sect. The few who are lucky enough to go away to college after high school rarely return. As a result, the town’s population of almost four thousand has fallen since the later part of the twentieth century.
Lockland entered the twenty-first century as a town in decline, kept alive thanks to its factories and close proximity to transportation routes, namely the interstate and railway. Most other businesses went under in Lockland, and only an idiot would try to open a retail store there.
Then I, thought AJ McLean, must be an idiot.
He sat alone in the back room of his shop, pouring over the month’s figures. The store had done a fair amount of sales, but after rent, taxes, loans, payroll, and advertising costs, including the billboard on I-75, he’d made no profit. Sighing, he dragged his fingers through his receding hair. It was no wonder he was not quite thirty and already going bald. It was the same story every month: despite his attempts at marketing, budgeting, and improving the overall efficiency, his shop barely broke even. Some months, he even lost money. After two years, he’d expected it to be different.
Alexander James McLean was six months shy of twenty-seven when he followed a girl from his hometown of West Palm Beach, Florida to Cincinnati, Ohio. It seemed like a risky move, but then, what did he have to lose? Sadly, not a whole lot. He’d spent the better part of his twenties meandering from job to job, without a college degree or a clue as to what he aspired to be. His three loves in life, besides women, were music, tattoos, and booze, and he’d found work related to all three, in reverse order. He’d waited tables at a bar right out of high school, working his way up to a bartending position by the time he was old enough. After three years of bartending, he’d taken a job at a tattoo parlor and stayed there for three more.
It was at the tattoo parlor that he’d met Jori, and the attraction had been instant. A year later, he’d found himself living with her in a ramshackle apartment above a hair salon in Lockland, where the cost of living was lower than in the city. When the salon went under, he’d leased the space on sudden inspiration and embarked on a new business venture, devoted to the last and greatest of his passions: music.
The image in his head had been vivid from the start: a record shop, like the vintage vinyl stores he’d perused in his adolescence, specializing in classic, retro, and indie music, music memorabilia, and an eclectic range of products to fit the tastes of other free spirits and old souls. Bringing that image to life had taken a lot longer. Without a college degree, he had no knowledge as to how to start a business, and few resources. That Vintaj had ever made it to opening day was a miracle.
It was a miracle he could only attribute to the miracle worker himself: Howie Dorough. Howie was an old friend of AJ’s from Florida, the only one from their circle to have gone to college. He had earned his business degree in Orlando while AJ was moving up the ranks at the bar, and after making a good living working for other people’s businesses, he’d been well-equipped and open to the idea of starting his own. He had entered the venture as a partner, adding his business sense to AJ’s creative ambitions. Together, they had turned AJ’s dream to reality.
Two years later, the old hair salon was unrecognizable, its walls painted with psychedelic murals and papered with old posters of The Beatles and the Stones, Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix. Its sinks had been replaced with glass merchandise cases, its styling stations with shelves and CD racks. AJ had predicted that by now, Vintaj would have either failed or thrived, but instead, it continued to hang by a thread, doing just well enough to stay in business, though never turning over a large profit. He had a lot of things working against him: small town, low incomes, music piracy. Surprisingly, competition from the larger chain stores wasn’t much of an issue. Their mainstream music inventory attracted a different population than his offerings. Still, he faced an uphill battle every quarter to keep his dream alive.
It was past closing now, and Howie had gone home, but AJ continued to pour over the paperwork. Now was the worst time for his sales figures to flatline. He needed the numbers to peak, not plateau. He had a family to support now, and if the store failed, he didn’t know what he was going to do. There was no way he could raise a child on a bartender’s wages.
With a sigh, he rose from his desk and walked back out to the storefront, checking to make sure that the front door was locked and the neon sign outside had been turned off. Sure enough, the door was secure, and the glass tubes molded to spell out the shop’s name, Vintaj, were dark. Satisfied, he left the store and trudged upstairs to the apartment above it.
Most people assumed the unique spelling of the store’s name came from his own. But the J at the end of “Vintaj” didn’t stand for his middle name, James. J was for Jori, his muse and his soulmate. When he opened the door, her voice rang out, “I’m in here!”
He had already known where to find her, and sure enough, when he followed the sound of her voice and the smell of fresh paint to the smaller of the two bedrooms, there she was, sitting cross-legged on the plastic tarp spread out on the floor, a paintbrush in one hand and a pot of rich, red paint in the other. His eyes followed the progress she’d made across the wall: rows of little red blobs, abstractly heart-shaped, spaced against a backdrop of greenery.
Sensing his presence, she turned her head, long hair whipping over her shoulder, and grinned. “Whatcha think?”
Her smile shone with pride and something more: the desire for approval. She wanted him to like it. He didn’t have to pretend, and returned her smile easily. “It’s gonna look cool, babe.”
“I still have to add the green tops. And the little seeds.” She cocked her head to the side, studying her work. “But yeah. I think it’s gonna look cool, too.”
“You about at a stopping place? I’ll start dinner.”
“I just wanna finish with the red.”
“Okay.” He left her to her painting and went to the kitchen, pulling out a couple of saucepans from the oven drawer, a bag of tortellini from the freezer, and a jar of marinara sauce from the cupboard. While the water boiled and the sauce simmered on the stove, he sliced a loaf of French bread and slathered the two halves with butter and garlic. Unlike a lot of guys, he enjoyed cooking, and making dinner was a job better left to him. Jori was a lot things, but “chef” was not one of them. Besides, she had weird tastes when it came to food. She hated chicken, loved mayonnaise and peanut butter sandwiches, put lemon juice in her macaroni and cheese, and drenched practically everything else in ranch dressing. When it came time for dinner, she would wrinkle her nose at the marinara sauce and get out the bottle of Hidden Valley to pour over her pasta. And those had been her normal eating habits even before she was pregnant.
He’d met Jori Wilder when she was just nineteen, a college freshman on spring break in West Palm Beach. She had entered the tattoo parlor with a friend on a frivolous whim to get a permanent souvenir of their trip, and when he’d looked up from behind the front desk and made eye contact, a pleasurable jolt of adrenaline blazed through his veins, and his heart jumped as if he’d been shocked. He was not enough of a sap to believe in love at first sight, but lust? Oh, yeah.
It was electric, the instant chemistry between them; he’d been drawn to her at once. She looked different from the other girls in Florida, the tanned-to-a-crisp, blonde bimbos he usually saw running around in their bikini tops during spring break. Her skin was pale, freckled by the sun but not tanned, and her hair was dyed a vibrant red rather than bleached blonde. It was otherwise unprocessed, hanging straight and natural down to the middle of her back. She wore no makeup, and though her face was blemished here and there, it was pretty. She had nice features, well-proportioned and delicate. Her eyes were a beautiful light blue, almost turquoise behind the curtains of red hair.
She wanted to get a tattoo, she’d told him, sweeping the hair out of her eyes.
Did she have an appointment?
No. She was a walk-in. Would they be able to fit her in?
Probably, but the wait might be an hour or more. Was that do-able?
She didn’t mind waiting if it meant getting the ink done today. She was only here a week for spring break. Went to college in Ohio, she’d explained.
He’d guessed she wasn’t a local. How was she enjoying her vacation so far?
So far, so good, but she’d only been there one night.
A wild one, by the glazed look of her friend, who was clearly hungover. The girlfriend had gone to sit down in the waiting area while AJ took the girl’s information. Was this her first tattoo?
No, it would be her third. And she turned, sliding up her tank top so he could see the ink on her back: a small peace sign, embellished with curling flourishes, on the small of her back, and a colorful doodle of John Lennon on her left shoulder blade. It was Lennon’s self-portrait, she explained with the pride of a die-hard, and look, there was his autograph below it.
She must be a Beatlemaniac, he’d inferred with a smirk.
She had nodded, beaming back at him. Oh yes. He should see her dorm room.
In that moment, AJ had never guessed that he would actually go to Cincinnati to see her, that their meeting that day would lead to anything more. But the small talk and banter they’d tossed back and forth as she waited had progressed to a real conversation, and before she left the parlor that afternoon, sporting a tiny dove on her right ankle, he had her number programmed into his phone. He had told himself to let it go; she lived in Ohio, and besides, she was way too young for him. But against his better judgment, he’d called her that night, and a one-night stand had turned into a week-long fling. They’d kept in touch, and three months later, she’d called to tell him she was dropping out of school and looking for an apartment. He’d moved to Lockland in June.
Her parents, the shoe salesman and librarian who had raised her in a small town in Indiana, still didn’t approve, and though his mother, the only family he was close to, was more open-minded, she missed him terribly. But none of it mattered. He loved Jori Wilder, and she loved him, and now, more than ever, they were determined to make it work. For each other, and for their baby.
While the garlic bread was baking, he went back to the baby’s room to check on Jori. She was still painting strawberries; there were spatters of red paint on the front of her tattered “Dark Side of the Moon” t-shirt, which was stretched taut over the pregnant belly that took up most of her lap. “You better quit soon; these paint fumes are getting strong,” he chided her, waving his hand beneath his nostrils. “We don’t want little Lucy born with a second head or something.”
“Since when does wall paint cause two-headed babies?” Jori shot back, still making artful strokes against the wall. “I’m almost done. For now.”
This had been her winter project, painting the baby’s room. She hadn’t kept it simple. No daughter of hers was going to sleep in a room with pale pink walls and pastel teddy bears. Her design for the nursery was creative, inspired. It was a colorful tribute to her favorite band, and she’d spent the last few months painting a sprawling mural that went across the universe, with its colorful, swirling galaxies and spatters of tiny stars, to a lovely marmalade sky with the sun coming up over the tangerine trees and blackbirds spreading their wings to fly, to the lush green of the strawberry fields, to the deep ocean, where a yellow submarine churned among the sea life. The ceiling was AJ’s favorite: it was painted like the sky, light blue darkening into navy that faded into the inky black of the universe, and in the corner where they’d put the crib, the painted stars overhead seemed to glitter like diamonds, and there was a round mirror mounted to the ceiling so that when she awoke, Lucy Sky Diamond McLean could look up to see herself, Lucy, in the sky.
Naturally, Jori’s parents hated the name even more than they hated the trippy paint job, but they had no room to talk: they had christened their daughter Marjorie Jean. It was after her grandmother, but Jori refused to let anyone call her that, and AJ didn’t blame her. He couldn’t think of a name that fit her less than Marjorie. And anyway, why should her parents complain? Lucy was a classic name, too, and a much prettier one at that. It was the middle names that bothered them, but that was Jori. AJ knew better than to try to convince her to change it to anything else. He hadn’t convinced her that it wasn’t practical to put so much time into painting a place they were only renting either. “If we move, I’ll just paint over it,” had been her flippant response. Jori did what Jori wanted.
He watched her now as she painted, her lips parted slightly in concentration. “And… there,” she said, rounding off the last strawberry. She sat back to examine her handiwork. “I’ll let these dry and add the finishing touches later.”
“Perfect,” said AJ, reaching down to offer her his hands. “Come on and rinse your brushes while I finish dinner.”
He hauled her to her feet, and she followed him back to the kitchen, carrying her painting supplies. Her belly was so big now, it got in the way when she stood at the sink. She was eight months along, and in just a few weeks, Lucy would arrive.
The baby hadn’t exactly been planned, but she would certainly be welcome. While Jori had always wanted to be a mother, AJ had never thought much about having children, until he’d knocked up his girlfriend. His first reaction when she’d told him had been shock, but the more he got used to the idea of being a father, the more he liked it. He couldn’t wait to hold the little girl who had been growing inside her all these months. He vowed to be a good father, a supportive one, with an active role in his daughter’s life. His own father had left his mother when he was just a baby himself, and AJ barely knew him. It would not be that way between Lucy, Jori, and him. When the time was right, he was going to marry Jori, and the three of them would be a family in every sense of the word. The kind of family he’d never had and, until this point, never realized he’d wanted.
Settling down and raising a child both excited him and scared him. It wasn’t going to be easy. Jori had quit her job to work shifts at the shop and stay home with the baby once she was born, so it was up to AJ to provide for them both. Never had he had so much responsibility and so much at stake. If the record store failed, he failed. So while he looked forward to the new world of fatherhood, the weight of it pressed down upon his shoulders, growing heavier every month.
***
