The Girl Below(58)

After Pippa had hung up, an even more extreme boredom took hold than the one that had driven me into her room in the first place, and for the second time that week, I climbed onto the vast futon and fell asleep. When I woke up, some hours later, the sky was a murky gray that left me unsure as to whether it was twilight or just an overcast English afternoon. The house had no pulse, nothing stirred, but sitting on the bedside table in my sight line were Ari’s keys, which I’d deposited there after dropping Pippa and Ari off at the airport. Besides the car key, the chain held half a dozen keys, and as I lay there staring at them, I had an idea.

The ladder to the roof screeched as I pulled it down, and when I lost my grip and it crashed to the floor, I jumped out of my skin. On the way upstairs I’d turned on as many lights as I could, but up near the padlock it was dark, and I fumbled with the keys and dropped them. Inwardly, I was ashamed of myself for being so nosy, but not so much that I was prepared to turn back. On my third attempt the padlock yielded, and I was faced with a stiff bolt that gave way only after I’d figured out how to pull it from exactly the right angle. But once it gave, the hatch swung open easily and landed on a soft asphalt cushion.

Up on the roof, the night was clear, with a weak moon hanging on the horizon. I wondered how another entire day had slipped away without my participating in it. Drawn to the shaft of light coming from the hatch, insects ricocheted off my head as I looked around at the neglected roof terrace. What must once have been a thriving garden was now a cemetery of dead stalks and broken clay pots.

In one corner of the roof stood a wooden structure no bigger than a sentry box. It had one tiny window and a peeling black door that rattled but didn’t open when I tried the handle. None of the keys on Ari’s chain fit the lock, and I searched unsuccessfully under pots and on the door ledge for something to open it with. But when I tried the window, it creaked open and I was able to reach in and unbolt the door. This counted as breaking in, I supposed, but there was no question of giving up now, not after overcoming so many obstacles to get here.

Inside, Ari’s lair was tidier than I expected. The compact space was furnished with a coffee table and an easy chair, with the rest given over to the worship of music. An entire wall held built-in shelves, and these were crammed with vinyl records, their spines creating a library of sorts. On a low table sat an old-fashioned turntable and amplifier, and a pair of ungainly headphones. The brown plastic case of the turntable was so lovingly maintained that it showed my reflection, and its chrome dials were polished to a high shine. On the coffee table, a chipped Bakelite ashtray sat empty but caked in soot, recently used.

The easy chair was accommodating, and I sank into its soft cushions and flicked through the nearest row of records, all preserved inside plastic covers. Once or twice a rogue Playboy or Penthouse tumbled out, but they were the same vintage as the records, more coy and amusing than pornographic. Ari’s filing system had an order, but it took me a while to gauge its logic. Albums were grouped together by artist, but not alphabetically. Rather, they seemed to be filed by decade, with the 1950s and ’60s closest to arm’s reach. Ari was in his early forties; the records were too old to belong to his youth, but they were clearly his favorites, as he had collected multiple copies of the same album. There was a lot of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, hardly any Beatles, but what looked like more than one set of the complete works of the Rolling Stones. I counted eleven copies of the same album, a strange-looking thing with what appeared to be a hamburger or a wedding cake on the cover. I took one of the records out of its sleeve. The vinyl felt heavy, satisfying, and I remembered how when I was a child Dad had told me off once or twice for messing with his records. I thought I’d played with them in secret, but my hand had been too small to span from the edge to the hole in the middle without leaving telltale finger marks.

Once the record was in place on the turntable, I lowered the needle gently and it skated over the dusty surface, looking for a song. I plugged in the giant headphones and a tinny guitar riff leaked out into them. The first song was familiar, off a movie sound track, but I didn’t recognize the mournful one that came after it. Before long, I was leaning back in the chair with my eyes closed, oblivious to everything except the sounds that flowed through my ears and acted on my bloodstream like a narcotic. By the end of side one, I felt tipsy, as if I’d arrived at the sweet spot of a really wild party. My foot had been tapping of its own accord for some time, and no doubt other body parts too, when I became aware that I wasn’t alone in the shed. Someone was standing behind me.