Someone on the other end of the line was not taking the news well.
“It’s very simple, there just isn’t a demand for our inventory anymore. Our clientele is aging and there aren’t younger customers to replace them.”
I brought my records to the front counter to be rung up by the same man I was almost certain had been ringing me up for the past ten years. He was thin and appeared to be turning translucent from age and what must have been many unrelenting winters in Vancouver. I never allowed myself to get quite enough of a look at his hair, which upon first glance appeared to be too deeply brown and shifting unpredictably.
For the first time, there was a spark of recognition.
“Did you come in a few months ago?”
“Yes I did. I was looking for the Beethoven overtures.”
“Did you look over in that section?” He pointed to a few half full racks of records near the front of the store.
“Oh no, I missed those. I’ll be right back.”
“All of those are half off. It’s a good time to buy.”
Meanwhile, the man who I assumed was the owner was still on the phone with what must have been a despairing longtime patron of the store. When he first answered the phone, he was standing and professorial breaking down the state of the recorded music business. He was now sitting, backed into the front corner of the store, equal parts conciliatory and exasperated going over the same points over and again. It must have been the tenth time that day he had had that particular conversation.
“The answer is simple, most people get their music through streaming services and…”
I lingered in the Glenn Gould section for a moment. If this were the last time I’d be in the shop, it would be fitting that my final purchase be a copy of his Goldberg Variations. The contemplative, almost melancholy 1981 version with the aged, stately looking Gould on the cover was prominently displayed in the front of the rack. The last copy of the high flying 1955 recording, with the flailing young man on the cover, must’ve been snatched up weeks ago when Sikora had announced the shop was closing permanently at the end of winter. The store had filled up while I had gone in for my second helping.
I returned to the front desk after selecting a few more records, a Perlman recording of Kreisler that I remembered from childhood and a Milstein recording of the Prokofiev concertos that reminded me of a wedding I’d attended that summer. I left the Glenn Gould behind.
The thin man with the dark shifty hair counted up the records: a Karajan recording of Sibelius No. 2, his visage rendered like a 50’s teen idol on the cover, a worn yet hardly played soundtrack of Flower Drum Song, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Raymonda, and a Rostropovich recording of the Dvorak cello concerto.
I had stopped in every time I’d played Vancouver, at least once a year. On my visit, I would carefully select just enough records to take back to the tour bus that would fit under the bunk mattresses. There would have to be some doubling up this time. I would rarely speak to the man at the counter. I liked to think the fact that just being in the store implied that we had an understanding, a love for a kind of music that did not require explanation.
“How long have you been working here?”
“I started 30 years ago part time, one day a week. Four years later I was full time.”
“When did you announce you’d be closing?”
“Three weeks ago, it’s been very busy since we did.”
The records went in the bag. I turned around and looked at the rows and rows of recordings and remembered what they looked like when they were filled to the brim. Now they reminded me of someone wearing clothes that were too big for them.
I shook hands with the thin man. He told me to come visit before they closed in February. I said this would probably be the last time I’d be in Vancouver before then.
I heard the owner still consoling the person on the line as I stepped out into the street.