High Fidelity (Movie- tie In): A Novel by Nick Hornby, Paperback. Now.. Laura leaves first thing Monday morning with a hold- all and a carrier bag. It's sobering, really, to see how little she is taking with her, this woman who loves her things, her teapots and her books and her prints and the little sculpture she bought in India: I look at the bag and think, Jesus, this is how much she doesn't want to live with me. You can stay until whenever. But we've done the hard part now.
I might as well, you know . She hasn't got a free hand, but she tries to open the door anyway and can't, so I do it for her, but I'm in the way, so I have to go through on to the landing to let her out, and she has to prop the door open because I haven't got a key, and I have to squeeze back past her to catch the door before it shuts behind her. I have felt this before, and I know it doesn't mean that much- confusingly, for example, it doesn't mean that I'm going to feel ecstatically happy for the next few weeks. But I do know that I should work with it, enjoy it while it lasts. Maybe I could get hold of the guy who did that and ask him to do smaller versions here.) I feel OK. I sell punk, blues, soul, and R& B, a bit of ska, some indie stuff, some sixties pop- everything for the serious record collector, as the ironically old- fashioned writing in the window says. We're in a quiet street in Holloway, carefully placed to attract the bare minimum of window- shoppers; there's no reason to come here at all, unless you live here, and the people that live here don't seem terribly interested in my Stiff Little Fingers white label (twenty- five quid to you- I paid seventeen for it in 1. Blonde on Blonde. They're as close to being mad as makes no difference. He's thirty- one years old, with long, greasy black hair; he's wearing a Sonic Youth T- shirt, a black leather jacket that is trying manfully to suggest that it has seen better days, even though he only bought it a year ago, and a Walkman with a pair of ludicrously large headphones which obscure not only his ears but half his face. The book is a paperback biography of Lou Reed. The carrier bag by his feet- which really has seen better days- advertises a violently fashionable American independent record label; he went to a great deal of trouble to get hold of it, and he gets very nervous when we go anywhere near it. With John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Todd Louiso, Jack Black. Rob, a record store owner and compulsive list maker, recounts his top five breakups, including the one in. He uses it to carry tapes around; he has heard most of the music in the shop, and would rather bring new stuff to work- tapes from friends, bootlegs he has ordered through the post- than waste his time listening to anything for a second time. He looks mournfully at his little stack of cassettes and sighs. I found the first Liquorice Comfits album in Camden. The one on Testament of Youth. It was never released here. Japanese import only. The one with Hattie Jacques on the cover. You didn't see the cover, though. You just had the tape I did for you. My flat is full of tapes Dick has made me, most of which I've never played. He'd probably just crumble to dust if I explained that Laura had left. Dick's not big on that sort of thing; in fact, if I were ever to confess anything of a remotely personal nature- that I had a mother and father, say, or that I'd been to school when I was younger- I reckon he'd just blush, and stammer, and ask if I'd heard the new Lemonheads album. Good bits and bad bits. This is obviously the right answer. The stockroom at the back is bigger than the shop part in the front, but we have no stock, really, just a few piles of secondhand records that nobody can be bothered to price up, so the stockroom is mostly for messing about in. I'm sick of the sight of the place, to be honest. Some days I'm afraid I'll go berserk, rip the Elvis Costello mobile down from the ceiling, throw the . He comes to see us about three times a week, and his visits have become choreographed and scripted routines that neither he nor I would want to change. In a hostile and unpredictable world, we rely on each other to provide something to count on. And we haven't got anything that you want to buy. We devised these moves a couple of years ago, so we've got them off pat now. This isn't a job for the wildly ambitious. Barry doesn't show up until after lunch, which isn't unusual. Both Dick and Barry were employed to work part- time, three days each, but shortly after I'd taken them on they both started turning up every day, including Saturdays. I didn't know what to do about it- if they really had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, I didn't want to, you know, draw attention to it, in case it prompted some sort of spiritual crisis- so I upped their money a bit and left it at that. Barry interpreted the pay rise as a signal to cut his hours back, so I haven't given him one since. That was four years ago, and he's never said anything about it. Hey, Dick, what's this music, man? I only get involved when Barry is being really offensive, so I just watch Dick reach for the hi- fi on the shelf above the counter and turn the cassette off. You're like a child, Dick. You need watching all the time. I don't know why I should have to do it all, though. Rob, didn't you notice what he was putting on? What are you playing at, man? He talks a lot about music, but also a lot about books (Terry Pratchett and anything else which features monsters, planets, and so on), and films, and women. Pop, girls, etc., as the Liquorice Comfits said. But his conversation is simply enumeration: if he has seen a good film, he will not describe the plot, or how it made him feel, but where it ranks in his best- of- year list, his best- of- all- time list, his best- of- decade list- he thinks and talks in tens and fives, and as a consequence, Dick and I do too. And he makes us write lists as well, all the time: . Fidelity Investments is the online trading brokerage of choice, offering IRAs, retirement planning, mutual funds, ETFs, and more to help meet your goals. Top five Dustin Hoffman films. What's fun about that? Within seconds the shop is shaking to the bass line of . I don't want to hear . My Monday morning tape. I made it last night, specially. You should get out of bed earlier. But at least this way I've got an excuse.? Bring a bit of warmth to your miserable middle- aged bones? Not 'Walking on Sunshine,' for a start. The Righteous Brothers. He has obviously never heard the Mitch Ryder version. What's wrong with the Righteous Brothers? I just prefer the other one. What's that smug smile for? We're not listening to fucking 'Little Latin Lupe Lu' anyway, so give it a rest. Go and put some old sad bastard music on, see if I care. I just want something I can ignore. That's the fun thing about working in a record shop, isn't it? Playing things that you don't want to listen to. I thought this tape was going to be, you know, a talking point. I was going to ask you for your top five records to play on a wet Monday morning and all that, and you've gone and ruined it. Me, I'll be playing the Beatles when I get home. Abbey Road, probably, although I'll program the CD to skip over . They belong to me, not to me and Laura, or me and Charlie, or me and Alison Ashworth, and though they'll make me feel something, they won't make me feel anything bad. Copyright (c) 2. 00. Nick Hornby. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby . He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn't on it - even though she's just become his latest ex. He's got his life back, you see. He can just do what he wants when he wants: like listen to whatever music he likes, look up the girls that are on his list, and generally behave as if Laura never mattered. But Rob finds he can't move on. He's stuck in a really deep groove - and it's called Laura. Soon, he's asking himself some big questions: about love, about life - and about why we choose to share ours with the people we do.
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